MNP Agri-Food Power Index Preview, Shatner's Salmon Soliloquy, The Last Timbit, and guests Victor Thomas, President and CEO of the Canada-India Business Council & Colleen Martin, CRO, Caddle

The Food Professor

We have two exceptional guests on this final live episode of Season 4.

First, we welcome Victor Thomas, President and CEO of the Canada-India Business Council. This not-for-profit organization aims to strengthen the economic ties between Canada and India by promoting bilateral investment and trade. We delve into the vast opportunities for Canadian agriculture to help feed India's enormous and complex nation and discuss the political and regulatory considerations involved in large-scale trade. Interestingly, Victor is a former student of Sylvain's!

Next, Colleen Martin from Caddle joins us with exclusive research found only here on The Food Professor podcast. We talk to nearly 10,000 Canadians about their perceptions of cashiers sitting versus standing at grocery checkouts. Having just returned from Europe—the land of seated cashiers—Sylvain shares his thoughts on this cultural difference.

In the news, we discuss William Shatner's profanity-laden commercial produced by Ryan Reynolds' Vancouver agency, which calls for an end to open pen salmon fishing. We also cover the latest inflation data for May, our upcoming Global Agri-Food Power Index project with MNP, and the Capital Gains showdown. Plus, we touch on summertime politics and the quirky Tim Horton's Musical.

Though this is our last live episode, stay tuned throughout the summer for a series of live interviews from SIAL every Thursday with fascinating figures in food and agriculture. Season 5 kicks off in late August.

Links mentioned in the show:

https://the-food-professor.simplecast.com/episodes/special-encore-interview-episode-guests-isaiah-robinson-kitasoo-xaixais-nation-stephanie-columbo-canada-research-chair-in-aquaculture-tim-kennedy-canadian-aquaculture-industry-alliance

https://www.timhortons.ca/60

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/9.6433107

https://youtu.be/DMtI2rtiQ-Q?si=QsOYt4ColaRaqMcz

About Victor

Victor Thomas is the President and CEO of the Canada-India Business Council — a not-for-profit working to strengthen the Canada-India economic corridor by promoting bilateral investment and trade. He is also Chair of Precision AI, an AgTech company striving for sustainable farming practices in the autonomous farming revolution, and Chair of Marval Capital's Investment Advisory Counsel, which invests in India's leading small and mid-cap publicly listed companies. He is a director emeritus of the Rideau Hall Foundation Board of Directors and a National Executive Member of the 2026 Governor General's Canadian Leadership Conference.

The Food Professor #podcast is presented by Caddle.

About Us

Dr. Sylvain Charlebois is a Professor in food distribution and policy in the Faculties of Management and Agriculture at Dalhousie University in Halifax. He is also the Senior Director of the Agri-food Analytics Lab, also located at Dalhousie University. Before joining Dalhousie, he was affiliated with the University of Guelph’s Arrell Food Institute, which he co-founded. Known as “The Food Professor”, his current research interest lies in the broad area of food distribution, security and safety. Google Scholar ranks him as one of the world's most cited scholars in food supply chain management, food value chains and traceability.

He has authored five books on global food systems, his most recent one published in 2017 by Wiley-Blackwell entitled “Food Safety, Risk Intelligence and Benchmarking”. He has also published over 500 peer-reviewed journal articles in several academic publications. Furthermore, his research has been featured in several newspapers and media groups, including The Lancet, The Economist, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, BBC, NBC, ABC, Fox News, Foreign Affairs, the Globe & Mail, the National Post and the Toronto Star.

Dr. Charlebois sits on a few company boards, and supports many organizations as a special advisor, including some publicly traded companies. Charlebois is also a member of the Scientific Council of the Business Scientific Institute, based in Luxemburg. Dr. Charlebois is a member of the Global Food Traceability Centre’s Advisory Board based in Washington DC, and a member of the National Scientific Committee of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) in Ottawa.

About Michael

Michael is the president and founder of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc, a senior retail advisor, keynote speaker and media entrepreneur. He has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career. He has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions and participated worldwide in thought leadership panels, most recently on the main stage in Toronto at Retail Council of Canada’s Retail Secure conference with leaders from The Gap and Kroger talking about violence in retail stores, keynotes on the state & future of retail in Orlando and Halifax, and at the 2023 Canadian GroceryConnex conference, hosting the CEOs of Walmart Canada, Longo's and Save-On-Foods Canada. Michael brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience with Levi's, Black & Decker, Hudson's Bay, Pandora Jewellery, The Shopping Channel and Retail Council of Canada to his advisory, speaking and media practice.
Michael also produces and hosts a network of leading retail trade podcasts, including the award-winning No.1 independent retail industry podcast in North America, Remarkable Retail,
Canada's top retail industry podcast; the Voice of Retail; Canada's top food industry and the top Canadian-produced management independent podcasts in the country, The Food Professor, with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois.
Rethink Retail has recognized Michael as one of the top global retail influencers for the fourth year in a row, Coresight Research has named Michael a Retail AI Influencer, and you can tune into Michael’s cooking show, Last Request BBQ, on YouTube, Instagram, X and yes, TikTok.
Available for keynote presentations helping retailers, brands and retail industry insiders explaining the current state of the retail industry in Canada and the U.S., and the future of retail.