For 136 years, the Board’s Annual Dinner has been the place where Toronto region business shows leadership and focus on the most pressing issues of the day. This year’s event under the banner Dare to Lead, was not simply a theme, it was a clarion call. It was an urgent rejection of the incrementalism that has held us back.
Opening the evening, our President and CEO Giles Gherson set the stage for a region ready to claim its future: “Ambitious business leaders are leaving behind the ‘same old same old’…Unleashing our competitiveness – that’s how our economy achieves escape velocity.”
A Mandate for Change: Daring to Lead
The Canadian economy has spent decades treating a slow retreat as if it were stable success. Throughout the evening's remarks, the message from the stage was clear: incrementalism acts as an anchor, keeping our productive capacity stuck while the rest of the world accelerates. To break this standstill, Board Chair Sasha Krstic issued a clear imperative to the room, noting that "we have to become comfortable with discomfort as we surmount challenges ahead."
That discomfort is the prerequisite for the strategic pillars that defined the evening: risk, trust, the next generation, commercialisation, and playing to win. To reach escape velocity, we must unleash the private sector to radically modernise how the country builds and creates. It requires fostering the trust necessary to take the risks required to lead. It’s about ensuring the next generation of talent has what it needs to own the commercialisation of innovation here at home. Modernized tax and regulatory structures to enable businesses to grow and invest. Against a backdrop of shifting trade and generative AI, these remarks served as the starting gun for an era of leadership defined by the grit to dare to lead on the world stage.
Toronto Talks: Innovation and the Power of Risk
The Toronto Talks segment, a focal point of the evening, was introduced by the Board’s partners at Odgers. Carl Lovas, Chairman, and Brad Beveridge, President and CEO, remarked on their privilege in working alongside the influential individuals who are currently shaping our economy and building the next generation of talent.
Raymond Chun, Group President and CEO of TD Bank Group, opened the talks by pushing the room to move from defence to a strategy of playing to win. Serving one in three Canadians, TD sees firsthand that while innovation often starts here, the ownership of that value often moves elsewhere. Chun, who moved to Canada from Korea as a child, described himself as a product of the "promise of Canada" and argued that thoughtful immigration is a necessity for a country that intends to lead. He noted that the very AI reshaping the world was born at the University of Toronto, yet the country continues to lack the momentum to commercialise that innovation at scale.
The stakes of this gap are currently playing out in Toronto’s bid for the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank (DSRB). As a global financial powerhouse, Toronto is the only Canadian choice with the financial heft and capital markets sophistication to host this $135-billion international institution. Chun argued that we must leverage our financial credibility and diverse talent to clinch these global prizes.
Following Chun, Laurie May and Noah Segal of Elevation Pictures brought the room inside an industry defined by risk, instinct, and creative conviction. May pulled back the curtain on the independent space, where distributors often make high-stakes decisions long before a movie is even filmed, assuming risk by betting on stories at their most fragile stage to avoid being priced out later.
For Segal, daring to lead means moving beyond competition to claim true ownership of the value chain. Six years ago, Elevation vertically integrated by building an in-house production division to export Canadian talent directly to the global market. Segal pushed back on the “Hollywood North” label. If our artists are shaping culture and setting trends, he said, the old framing no longer holds. “We are not north of them. They are south of us”.
Honouring Leadership
The presentation of the Toronto Region Builder Award, presented by CPA Ontario, honoured Ivan Zhang, co-founder of Cohere, for building a Canadian breakthrough into a global leader. Introducing the award, President & CEO Carol Wilding reminded the room that “there is no Canada Strong without Toronto Strong.” She sharpened that message, adding “our national prosperity and sovereignty depends on transforming homegrown breakthroughs into homegrown businesses. It can be done…and Cohere has shown us how.”
Zhang’s journey from a child who arrived in Canada with his family to tech pioneer serves as a roadmap for the region’s potential. He introduced the concept of "quiet competence" defining the Canadian edge as the discipline to build enduring systems that hold firm while the rest of the world is distracted by hype. However, he warned that this must never be confused with passive observation: Canada does not need to be the loudest country, but we cannot afford to be the slowest. His final mandate was simple: Canada is ready. Now, let’s go build.
A Celebration of Raw Brilliance
The evening's strategic intensity was matched by a celebration of the raw brilliance this country projects when it finally stops asking for permission to lead. The night featured high-energy performances by Maestro Fresh Wes, Jully Black, and Simone Denny, serving as a reminder of the talent and cultural influence the Toronto region exports to the world.
Conclusion: Owning the Moment
As Premier Doug Ford reminded the room, the time for dreaming about potential has passed; it is time to bet on the proven capacity and the business leaders in this room and in this region to lead.
"If we bet on Toronto, we’ll win the world."
Toronto Region Board of Trade couldn’t agree more.
