Disruptors
by RBC Thought Leadership, John Stackhouse
Latest episode
Space Race: Getting Canada to Orbit
Space Race: Getting Canada to Orbit
About this podcast
Disruptors, now in its 11th season, has become your front-row seat to Canada’s innovation story—200+ episodes exploring the people, ideas, and technologies reshaping Canada’s future.
Each episode, hosted by John Stackhouse, SVP, Office of the CEO at Royal Bank of Canada—and former Editor-in-Chief of The Globe and Mail—cuts through the hype and focuses on what you need to know.
This season, we’re leaning into urgency: the global economy is shifting, geopolitics are noisy, and Canada needs to respond. You’ll hear from founders, investors, scientists, operators, and policy leaders at the forefront. Listen for a clearer understanding of the tech and innovation shaping Canada and the world—and practical insights to help you make sense of what’s coming next.
Episodes
The newest 20 of 243 episodes
- Space Race: Getting Canada to Orbit · 21 min · Season 11 Episode 8Canada builds world-class satellites, but it still relies on other countries to launch them. Recorded live at SpaceBound in Gatineau, Quebec, John Stackhouse talks with Telesat…
- Clear Skies: Direct air capture and Canada's advantage · 18 min · Season 11 Episode 7Deep Sky CEO Alex Petre joins John Stackhouse at Deep Sky Alpha in Alberta to ask whether direct air capture can scale, and whether Canada can turn carbon removal into an export…
- Permission to Fail: A case for youth entrepreneurship · 23 min · Season 11 Episode 6Canada needs more entrepreneurs, especially young ones. Ronnen Harary explains why your 20s are the optimal decade to start a business—when energy, fresh perspective, and…
- Digital Refineries: Data centres as Alberta’s new resource · 25 min · Season 11 Episode 5Alberta's technology minister on attracting AI data centres without subsidies, and the grid rules that make it work.
- Canada's Biotech Challenge · 26 min · Season 11 Episode 4China is industrializing drug discovery and AI is reshaping it. A serial biotech founder on where Canada stands and what it needs to do.
- Two Middle Powers. One AI Bet · 20 min · Season 11 Episode 3Live from ALL IN 2026 in Montreal, three German business leaders join Disruptors to talk about what's driving the biggest Canada-Germany tech push in years.
- Canada's AI Potential · 15 min · Season 11 Episode 2Two kinds of uncertainty met in Toronto this week: one in the bond market, one around AI. At the Milken Institute's Global Dialogues Toronto, timed to the Canada Investment…
- David, Goliath, and Drones: The New Map of Geo-Technology · 26 min · Season 11 Episode 1Economist Noah Smith joins John Stackhouse to break down "geo-technology," China’s grip on the electric tech stack, and why drone warfare is redefining global power and…
- REBOOT: The Trust Advantage: How OpenText is Securing Canada’s Information Layer · 37 min · Season 10 Episode 18The world is investing billions in data centres and compute. Canada’s edge isn’t bigger boxes—it’s Trust: rules enforced at home, private information secured under Canadian…
- REBOOT: Beyond the Battery: Inside Quebec’s Mine-to-Refine Transformation · 30 min · Season 10 Episode 17As the world electrifies—from cars and buses to datacentres and defence—demand for battery materials is exploding. Today, China refines more than 90% of the world’s graphite into…
- REBOOT: Port to Prosperity: How Roberts Bank Terminal 2 Is Rebuilding Canada’s Pacific Gateway · 27 min · Season 10 Episode 16Canada’s prosperity depends on how efficiently it can move goods to market — yet its largest ports have fallen behind the world’s best. With global trade accelerating and supply…
- From Ottawa to Orbit: Two Views on Canada’s Big Day · 23 min · Season 10 Episode 15Season 10 of Disruptors asked one question, in a lot of different ways: does Canada have what it takes—the tools, the ambition and the will—to compete in the economy being built…
- Own The Stack: Canada's Data Sovereignty Test · 28 min · Season 10 Episode 14There are roughly 11,000 data centres in the world. Canada has about 300. The United States has 5,000 and that number is growing fast. Canada is putting real money behind…
- Can AI Fix ER Wait Times? · 27 min · Season 10 Episode 13Canada’s national AI strategy puts healthcare on centre stage – and for good reason. If you ask Canadians about the healthcare system, many will say they value it deeply, but…
- Canada’s Tech Growth Challenge · 26 min · Season 10 Episode 12Canada has helped shape major technology waves, from AI to quantum. But when companies move from promising startup to global contender, the harder questions begin: where does the…
- Permission To Prompt: AI’s Path From Experimentation to Scale · 28 min · Season 10 Episode 11AI is no longer a future technology. It is already changing how work gets done, how companies make decisions and how economies compete. This special edition of Disruptors was…
- The Canadian Unicorn Who Stayed · 27 min · Season 10 Episode 10Canada has a scaleup problem. We create entrepreneurs, but too many of them feel they need to leave to build world-class companies. Fred Lalonde is one of the exceptions. He is…
- From MLB to Metallica: The Canadian Company redefining live events · 35 min · Season 10 Episode 9In this episode, John Stackhouse visits Ross on the outskirts of Ottawa to talk with CEO David Ross about how the company grew from a small Canadian manufacturer into a global…
- Street Smarts: The Waterloo company tackling global gridlock · 26 min · Season 10 Episode 8Congestion isn’t just annoying, it's an economic drag. In this episode of Disruptors, John Stackhouse speaks with Kurtis McBride, co-founder of Miovision, about how a…
- AI's power, pitfalls, and potential · 34 min · Season 10 Episode 7We’re all using AI more, but how many of us actually trust it? AI is now used by more than a billion people worldwide, but trust in these systems is far from settled. In this…
