Good morning from Intersect, a Globe and Mail event that kicks off in a couple of hours in Toronto with remarks from a news-making list of decision makers who span politics and business.

In the second year of The Globe’s Intersect event – you can read more about it here – our journalists will interview and introduce leaders who will weigh how to defend the country’s sovereignty, confront a slowing economy and chart a path forward.

If you aren’t able to attend, you’ll soon be able to find our live blog at around 8 a.m. ET at theglobeandmail.com. And if you aren’t in Toronto, Intersect is hitting the road this year:

• Calgary: May 13
• Halifax: June 10
• Vancouver: June 23

You can learn more about what who’s speaking and what we’re following below. If you’re at the event, come say hi. I’ll be hovering around the coffee. My e-mail: cws@globeandmail.com

Trade: Carney unveils new Canada-U.S. advisory council ahead of USMCA talks. (More on that below.)

Central banks: U.S. Fed chair nominee Kevin Warsh vows independence as Trump renews rate-cut demands.

Globe investigation: The union leader, the numbered company and the $4-million house.

In one of the final speeches of last year’s Intersect event, Michael Sabia drew applause when he landed on a rallying cry to ramp up investment in Canada.

“Both for the economy now and for our future: Charge ahead,” said Sabia, then the chief executive of Hydro-Québec. “Go forward.”

Canada’s clean-energy industry faced a “hallelujah” moment as the United States pulled back from climate leadership, he said. But then he zoomed out even further, warning that Canada had an “ambition deficit” that stood in the way of foreign investment.

His calls to condense layers of regulation that discourage foreign investment had a familiar ring – The Globe had just reported that Ottawa was already laying the groundwork for what would later that month emerge as Bill C‑5, which rewired Ottawa’s approach to approving major projects.

And they made even more sense when, just a few days later, the Prime Minister announced that Sabia had been appointed Canada’s top public servant, placing him at the centre of Canada‑U.S. negotiations.

Flash forward to Intersect 2026

Nearly a year later, it’s hard to point to major advances on climate, even if Canada has put more policy and institutional scaffolding in place. But that’s largely because the world has absorbed yet another disruption – a war in Iran that has pushed geopolitics and energy security ahead of almost everything else.

Headway on trade is more conspicuously absent. With only months to go before the automatic review of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, a return to business as usual now looks firmly off the table. In a speech yesterday, Janice Charette, Canada’s chief trade negotiator with Washington, urged businesses to lobby their American counterparts to “help them to make the case for the economic relationship with Canada.”

“It’s not clear that we are going to go back, necessarily, to the beautiful tariff-free existence we had.”

In the months since Sabia’s call to action, the U.S. has become a more disruptive force on the global stage, and a hard lesson has emerged: Even Canada’s most experienced corporate and political operators seem to be hard-pressed to win attention – much less sympathy – from the White House.

The rupture of Canada’s decades-long free-trade agreement with the U.S. is the most consequential threat to the economy, but The Globe team will capture how external shocks are beginning to stretch from coast to coast and across global supply chains.

Five key issues we’ll be watching include:

1. Turning ambition into action. Much of today’s conversation turns on whether Canada can finally bridge the gap between demand and delivering results. Faster approvals, new institutions and major policy resets are now moving along. But do labour shortages and weak capital flows still risk walling off advancement?

2. What’s up our sleeves? With the USMCA review approaching and “business as usual” effectively over, where else do trade negotiators have room to manoeuvre? Why can’t I ever spell that word correctly the first time?

3. Fighting amongst ourselves. External pressure is pushing Canada to close ranks, but internal divisions remain sharp – between provinces, between governments and Indigenous nations, and across regions with very different economic futures.