Ottawa, Insider Only Top Stories

Two Carleton profs want to help Canadian businesses ‘pull up their socks’ in face of U.S. tariffs

February 19, 2025

Already an Insider? Log in

Get Instant Access to This Article

Become an Ottawa Business Journal Insider and get immediate access to all of our Insider-only content and much more.

Two professors from Carleton University’s Sprott School of Business have developed a program to help Canadian businesses counter the negative effects of U.S. tariffs and a potential trade war. Tony Bailetti, academic director of the Technology Innovation Management program and a Carleton professor since 1971, developed the “Up Our Game, Canada” program for businesses in tandem with Ian Lee, director of the MBA program and an associate professor of strategic management. “The original idea was to be able to help Canadian (small and mid-sized enterprises), which are the ones that are going to be most vulnerable to the tariff war with the United States and counter the negative effects,” Bailetti told OBJ on Tuesday. The 22-module program will be available through a series of YouTube videos created with artificial intelligence using research by Bailetti and Lee. For audio learners, it will also be turned into a conversational-style podcast through AI. The modules will fall under five categories: short-term cost reduction, market diversification, long-term adjustments, collaboration and advocacy, and value addition and differentiation. The urgency in creating this type of program, Bailetti said, stems from the fear of what could happen to SMEs under the scenario of U.S. tariffs and a trade war. “These companies are going to cease to exist. I don’t think there’s a single SME in Canada that can survive (tariff threats) no matter what they do … I just can’t see how they’re going to compete. I see massive layoffs. A lot of these folks will move into the United States. There’s a tremendous amount of urgency for me not to sleep until this is done,” he said. If the initiative is successful, Bailetti said he hopes it will help SMEs become more competitive. “I think that the framework is going to be our guidepost to guide our little companies to be able to survive. If they cannot diversify, if we cannot do business in Canada and sell to each other and we cannot protect what we’ve been doing in the United States, there’s no business for us,” he said. When U.S. President Donald Trump started talking about tariffs on Canadian exports in December, Bailetti said he knew he had to do something. “I’ve been doing this for almost 50 years. That’s my expertise. What can I do to help?” Bailetti said. Protecting current trade with the U.S., trading domestically and diversifying trade abroad are three of the ways Bailetti and Lee show businesses how to counter the impact of tariffs. While Bailetti said SMEs are their “first audience,” they’ve now shifted to include policy-makers and investors as well. “Investors have stopped investing in Canadian companies. I say this is probably a good opportunity for Canadian companies because now they’re forced to do things differently. We cannot do what we’ve been doing in the past because we’ll just lose. We need to change and the question now is, change to what?” he said. Bailetti said the initiative is a business-world equivalent of research methods developed by medical schools – turning research into practice. “We take the literature that is relevant to this particular topic and leverage AI to be able to summarize and synthesize the literature. It helps us create the frameworks and the templates that you will see in the modules. We’re providing companies with playbooks. It’s very flexible from the application side, so as a company you’ll be able to use it and create company-specific templates that will suit your needs,” he said. Bailetti said the name of the program reveals its intent. “(Businesses) have to pull up their socks and be better in the future than they’ve been in the past,” he said. With “great support” from the university and his peers, Bailetti said he hopes to bring his research to workshops across the country. “We’re planning to do this across Canada. In order to do that, we are going to have partners. Hopefully every university and college in Canada would allow access to our materials and customize our workshops into things that are relevant (to that city),” he said. The project was started in December and Bailetti and Lee are officially launching the “Up Our Game, Canada” initiative on Friday at CU@Kanata facility at Kanata North’s Hub350.