Talking Sugar, Pork + Population Stats and Part 1 of our interview with Diane J. Brisebois President & CEO, Retail Council of Canada

This week on The Food Professor podcast, we dive into the latest news - hot off the grill!

Maple Leaf Foods is set to buy a selection of Canadian pig farms so we dig into what this backward integration means for the company from a strategic lens. We discuss consumer trends in the meat industry and Canada’s “trifecta” of proteins.

As it turns out - the kids aren’t alright. Sylvain voices his concerns about Britain’s intervention in marketing high-sugar and high-fat products to children. We talk about the fine line between oversight and overreach, and reflect on Canada’s efforts to regulated marketing in the food industry.

Join us for part one of our two part exclusive interview with Diane J. Brisebois, President and CEO of Retail Council of Canada, one of the biggest trade associations in the country representing retailers coast-to-coast including the grocery sector.  In part one we meet Diane and get to know her background, the organization's mandate and tradecraft, and important role in the political process and in Canadian's lives. Stay tune for part two of our interview in our next episode when we dive into grocery specific issues like the Code of Conduct!

Finally, the latest data on Canada’s demographics are reflecting some serious shifts in population growth. We talk about the impacts that this will have on the grocery sector and investigate solutions. 

If you listen until the end, you’ll get the first look at the political party that we’re starting. You can’t miss some of the hilarious names that we come up with!

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.

Michael LeBlanc is the president and founder of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc, a senior retail advisor, keynote speaker and now, media entrepreneur. He has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career.

Michael 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 Marketing conference with leaders from Walmart & Google. He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience with Levi's, Black & Decker, Hudson's Bay, CanWest Media, Pandora Jewellery, The Shopping Channel and Retail Council of Canada to his advisory, speaking and media practice.

Michael produces and hosts a network of leading retail trade podcasts, including the award-winning No.1 independent retail industry podcast in America, Remarkable Retail with his partner, Dallas-based best-selling author Steve Dennis; Canada's top retail industry podcast The Voice of Retail and Canada's top food industry and one of the top Canadian-produced management independent podcasts in the country, The Food Professor with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois from Dalhousie University in Halifax.

Rethink Retail has recognized Michael as one of the top global retail experts for the fourth year in a row, Thinkers 360 has named him on of the Top 50 global thought leaders in retail, RTIH has named him a top 100 global though leader in retail technology and Coresight Research has named Michael a Retail AI Influencer. If you are a BBQ fan, you can tune into Michael’s cooking show, Last Request BBQ, on YouTube, Instagram, X and yes, TikTok.

Michael is available for keynote presentations helping retailers, brands and retail industry insiders explaining the current state and future of the retail industry in North America and around the world.