When you see the scope and depth of Perrin  Beatty’s curriculum vitae, it’s eminently clear why the Canadian Chamber of Commerce chose him to lead nearly seventeen years ago.

Just twenty-two when he was elected to Canada’s House of Commons, Beatty later became the youngest person ever appointed to a post in the country’s Cabinet (the Treasury Board) in 1979. From 1984, he served the nation in several other top ministerial posts—overseeing the national revenue, Canada Post, national defence, welfare, foreign minister and communications—as well as a term as its solicitor general. He pivoted in 1995 when Prime Minister Jean Chrétien appointed him to run the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Four years later, Beatty took over as president and CEO of the Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters to promote the interests of Canadian industry and exporters.

And those are just the topline details.

Back in August 2007, the Canadian Chamber named him its president and CEO. What drove Beatty’s decision to take on this multifaceted and pivotal role? “My professional career, both when I was in Parliament and since, has centred on how we can leave a better country and a better world for future generations,” Beatty responds. “The quality of life of every Canadian depends on having a healthy economy and a successful business community. The Canadian Chamber of Commerce’s mission is to help make Canada more prosperous and more successful.”

Guiding the Flock

For nearly seventeen years, Beatty has wrangled the more than 400 chambers and boards of trade in the Canadian Chamber Network, Canada’s largest and most activated business network representing roughly 200,000 businesses of every size, sector and region across Canada. That translates into serious policy influence. In 2023 alone, for example, the Chamber used its collective advocacy power to steer policy on housing and healthcare in the country’s immigration levels plan, get a year’s extension on the CEBA loan repayment deadline, and help set a national supply chain strategy. Beatty, however, is already scanning the business landscape’s next century.

“The Canadian Chamber will celebrate its hundredth anniversary next year,” he says. “We’ll commemorate our accomplishments over the past century, but our primary focus is the next hundred years. As society changes, our institutions—even ones as venerable as the Canadian Chamber of Commerce—also need to change. I believe the Canadian Chamber is more modern and representative, more respected and more influential than ever before. Perhaps our greatest success was continuing to grow in size and influence and to provide more services through the pandemic and beyond. We need to continue on that track.”

According to Beatty, there are no typical days in his Canadian Chamber life. “One of the great things about the Canadian Chamber is that, while our mandate and mission stay the same, every day is different,” he states. “In the last couple of weeks, for example, I’ve been in Seoul for a Team Canada Trade Mission and led a delegation to to Washington, D.C., to discuss North American economic security. We’ve also been busy in Ottawa promoting measures that are good for business and opposing others, like the new capital gains tax provisions that were announced in the budget. And we’ve been working with our Canadian Chamber Network to provide services like the Business Data Lab to give SMEs across the country the individually tailored data they need to be more successful.”

Pandemic Countermeasures and Chamber Potential

As it did to organisations virtually everywhere, the COVID-19 pandemic altered the Canadian Chamber, its activities, and the way it interacts with member businesses as well as other chambers, associations and stakeholders.

“The pandemic demonstrated that, if chambers are important during the good times, they are essential during the tough ones,” Beatty notes. “We doubled down on our relationships with our members and with the government, on the basis that we were all in this together and had to work together to manage the crisis. Because of our network, governments and larger businesses saw us as their link to Main Street Canada.”

As just one example, he says, the Canadian Chamber partnered with the government and the Canadian Chamber Network to get millions of rapid test kits into the hands of small businesses across the country. “These kits helped many businesses reopen and survive,” he adds.

That latter initiative was actually an outgrowth of the Chamber 2025 Strategic Plan, which started up in 2021 to bolster SMEs with the tools they need to adapt and thrive. “We’re currently undertaking research to determine how the Canadian Chamber can best serve the most entrepreneurial businesses and next-generation business leaders that are often under-represented in business organisations,” Beatty says.

More recently, in 2023, the Canadian Chamber  assembled its first Gateway to the World team, which is tasked with developing and executing a strategy that will position it as the indispensable organisation for Canadian companies seeking to engage in international policy or global trade and investment.

“International business is of ever-growing importance to Canada,” Beatty observes. “We play a vital role in supporting Canadian businesses at home, and we want to be an essential link between the Canadian business community and the world by influencing global economic and trade policy, by helping businesses prepare themselves for global markets, and by working to fortify and extend our supply chains. We will also be collaborating with international partners to take the friction out of doing business.”

The Canadian Chamber’s online profile specifically mentions two topics related to the Canada-Japan relationship—energy security and agri-food. In a December 2023 piece in Policy, the magazine of Canadian politics and public policy, Beatty states that this could be Canada’s moment. “More than ever before, Canada has what the world needs,” he notes. “That starts with the ‘Three Fs’ of food, fuel and fertilizer, but also includes critical minerals and technologies like AI. We’ll continue to press the government to build infrastructure, remove barriers and aggressively market these products to Japan and to the world.”

The Canadian Chamber is also intent on building an innovation and research partnership. “We’re working closely with government and with our members to see how we can do more to unlock creativity and to generate commercial benefit from it,” Beatty explains. “Canada’s recent performance in this area has been well below its potential, though, so we’re doing everything we can to ensure that we up our game.”

Perrin Beatty; with First Nations Bank CEO Bill Lomax; talking to the media.

Smooth Exit

According to Beatty, the Canadian Chamber has never been more modern, more relevant or more successful. “Most importantly, we’ve never had a stronger team,” he adds. “I hope my legacy will be to leave my successor a solid base from which to take the Canadian Chamber to even greater successes.”

Even while heading the Canadian Chamber, Beatty had enough bandwidth to serve as the chancellor of the University of Ontario Institute of Technology and serve on Canada’s COVID-19 Supply Council. What does the future hold for someone with all this talent and perspective?

“I’ll be fascinated to find out,” he says with a smile. “At this point, I’m focused on ensuring that we maintain our momentum and that there is a smooth transition to the next CEO. I’ll turn my thoughts to what’s next for me after the end of August. I don’t know what it will be, but I hope to keep my hand in both business and public policy. The greatest privilege of my lifetime has been to be a citizen of Canada. I want to keep making a contribution.”