Good morning. Report on Business Magazine is back with its annual collection of profiles of exceptional leaders – chief executives whose companies are succeeding both financially and culturally. Give them a read; your employees (and your bottom line) will thank you. That’s in focus today, along with a tale of two investors.

Energy: Ottawa and Alberta sign an MOU to build a new pipeline and lift an oil tanker ban, but without the support of coastal First Nations, it is expected to be challenged in court.

Analysis: Prime Minister Mark Carney’s approach to fighting climate change has finally come into full view. Maybe that’s why career environmentalist Steven Guilbeault resigned as a member of the Liberal cabinet.

Mining: A source says that Ottawa has cleared Anglo American’s proposed $20-billion acquisition of Canada’s Teck Resources, on national security grounds.

Streetwise: Tradelogiq is now also looking to buy Cboe Canada, in a rival bid to the Canadian Securities Exchange.

Hi, I’m Dawn Calleja, the editor of Report on Business Magazine.

As we limp our way through the remaining days of 2025 – one of the most economically hair-raising, geopolitically devastating, just plain exhausting years in recent history – we could all use a little inspiration. And that’s what our annual CEO of the Year issue is all about: showcasing leaders whose performances are a bright spot amid the gloom.

Each year, editors and reporters from across the newsroom submit their nominations for exceptional chief execs. Then the debates begin to determine the winners, and things can get pretty raucous, let me tell you. But this year’s list was worth it.

Our Corporate Citizen of the Year is Algoma Steel’s Mike Garcia. In a year dominated by trade chaos, Garcia shone. When Donald Trump doubled tariffs on Canadian steel imports to 50 per cent, the U.S. Army veteran launched Project Superman to figure out how to save the 123-year-old steelmaker, which sold 60 per cent of its product into the U.S.

As the drama unfolded, Garcia became the only steelmaker to publicly counter the narrative spewing out of the U.S., all the while overseeing an ambitious plan to save Algoma by securing half a billion dollars in emergency funding, persuading the federal government to roll out a range of measures that would keep the entire domestic steel industry afloat and expediting a new business plan to shift to electric arc furnaces, which would completely change how his company operates.

Bill Lomax of First Nations Bank of Canada is our Newcomer of the Year. He’d built a stellar career in the U.S., managing investment portfolios for tribal nations. Then First Nations Bank came calling, in search of someone who could help it do the economic part of reconciliation. The Saskatoon-based bank found that someone in Lomax, a member of the Gitxsan First Nation (a 16-hour drive north of Vancouver) with a law degree, a Columbia MBA and years of experience at firms such as Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs. Since taking over in 2023, Lomax has delivered fast results – with plenty more to come.

The Innovator of the Year nod goes to Neil Cawse, an AI evangelist who runs a tech giant you’ve probably never heard of. Cawse emigrated to Canada from South Africa 25 years ago and launched Geotab shortly after landing. Today, it’s one of Canada’s largest privately held tech companies, with annual revenue of more than $1-billion, and a global leader in telematics – electronically gathering data from commercial vehicles to help fleet operators more efficiently manage their vehicles. Geotab now has some 100,000 customers on every continent (yes, even Antarctica) and more than 5.6 million vehicles carrying its tech. And it processes more records a second than most of the largest banks – 100 billion data points daily.

Our Strategist of the Year – and the overall winner for 2025 – is Gord Johnston of Stantec. When he took over in 2018, the company was being dragged down by its construction division. One of Johnston’s first moves was to sell it off and refocus on what Stantec does best. Today, it’s a global giant in engineering and design, with 34,000 employees in 450 offices globally and some 60,000 projects under way, from bridges to subway expansions, solar farms and water filtration systems.

Now, it’s positioned to capitalize on the massive spending boom about to hit Canada and countries the world over, as governments look to replace or repair hundreds of thousands of pieces of major infrastructure, while at the same time responding to revolutionary forces such as climate change, a growing demand for critical minerals and rising concerns about resource security.

You can find all four profiles in the magazine, accompanied by outstanding photography by Duane Cole, and a little more from behind the scenes. Happy reading.