Marc-André Blanchard: ‘We need people invested in the kind of change they want to see’
Marc-André Blanchard received the 2025 Testimonial Dinner Award on April 24 in Toronto. Now Vice-President and Head of CDPQ Global, Marc-André has led a career of consensus building and driving change at a global level.
Here is his acceptance speech:
I want to begin with just one word — gratitude, but gratitude in three parts. First, the five distinguished Canadians with whom I have the privilege of being honored tonight, they each inspire me.
Anil Arora. Anil is a legend amongst the global statistician community, I saw it with my own eyes at the UN.
The honourable Elizabeth Dowdeswell, a life dedicated to building and strengthening resilient local communities in Canada and around the world.
Chief Crystal Smith, your focus on economic reconciliation and building innovative partnerships is exactly what we need, not only for our national reconciliation, but also globally, for a more sustainable world.
Steve Paikin, last week’s debate reminded us how lucky we have been to have had you as a pillar in journalism and in our country for so long.
And Alfred, well, your optimism and generosity and focus on action will bring all of us somewhere else.
Second, gratitude to this room, to this community, to the Public Policy Forum. And allow me a special thanks, that’s never easy to do, to my wife Monique, merci.
Our sons, Adrian and Laurent, who are here tonight. This is my family. (In French: I would never have been here without you. You are my north star.) Thanks also to all of my friends here and my former colleagues, whether from McCarthys or from the public service or at CDPQ, or all of the organizations, my alma mater. Thank you. I’ve been so lucky in my life that my life has crossed your paths, and thank you for being here.
And third, I’m grateful for the opportunity to share some of my thoughts. And don’t worry, they’re not that long. It’s a gift, and I’m deeply thankful to all of you for giving me the reason and the space to pause, reflect and share.
The first thing I recognize is this — despite our deeply troubling times, like most of you, I’m certain I stand before you as someone who remains deeply, deeply hopeful in our future. To state the obvious, the challenges that brought me into public policy and public service, the kind that shaped my purpose, are today even more complex, more urgent and more intertwined than ever before. Never has the distance between our ideals and our actions been so radically exposed, so consequential, and so necessary to bridge.
Well, I happen to know a thing or two about idealism. You know, after all, I served in the halls of the United Nations for nearly five years. And when I arrived in the spring of 2016 there was so much hope. The world had just adopted the sustainable development goals and the Paris Accord, the world would finally get to work on two of its biggest and most pressing challenges — inequality and climate change. Then, within a few months, Brexit, President Trump, a few years later, the pandemic, Syria, Ukraine.
So, I’ve lived through the great declarations and stirring speeches. I’ve also lived through the disappointments left by our institutions’ inability to deliver what is being promised to citizens. This disappointment is felt in Canada and almost everywhere else in the world. Throughout the world, it has eroded the trust in our democratic institutions. And globally, the multilateral institutions so dear to Canada are being sidestepped without much reaction by the populations.
A friend of mine, Baroness Valerie Amos, the Master of University College of Oxford, recently said people need to see the difference that institutions make in their lives, and they need to have a mechanism that enables them to have an influence on those institutions. So how do we get our institutions to deliver for the people on the ground? How do we get from our idealism and our values to results?
Well, to me, a big part of the answer is about engagement. We need results. To get results, we need people invested in the kind of change they want to see. I can think of three rules of engagement that if applied, would deliver results faster, and of scale.
First, as I mentioned, engagement must be focused on results. Populism is not an anomaly. It’s a symptom, a warning sign of deeper democratic fatigue. Populism can only thrive in the void left by a lack of real results, in the absence of meaningful, visible change in people’s lives. To succeed in delivering faster, we need to remember that excellence in public policy does not require perfection. It requires progress, delivery and results.
Engagement, therefore, must be redefined, not as dialog alone, or even worse, a process, but as a deliberate, measurable pursuit of relentless impact.
Second, engagement must break down the silos and lead to innovative partnerships of the kind we heard just before. Well, this is tougher than it sounds. And to my dear friends of the public sector, my public sector colleagues, let me tell you a well-kept secret of the private sector. The private sector has silos, too.
In today’s world, with this climate, this economy, this global uncertainty, the real breakthroughs, the ones that will shape the next generation, will come when both sectors, public and private, start truly collaborating.
Well, let me brag a little bit. So I promise, I’ve been a citizen of Toronto, I promise not to make any explicit comparison with the Eglinton line here in Toronto. But I can offer no better example than the RAM (Réseau express métropolitain) in Montreal, a very innovative partnership between CDPQ and three levels of government, various Crown corporations and the private sector, involved in delivering in a very short time — started the construction in 2018, first line going up in 2023 at reasonable cost — 67 kilometers of light rail train. If there had been no trust, there would have been no RAM.
Which leads me to my third and final rule. Engagement must be built and rebuilt on trust. They say that trust is earned in drops and lost in buckets. And in recent years, here at home and around the world, we’ve watched too many of those buckets spill over. There is no shortcut to trust. There is only the steady, honest, often uncelebrated, work of listening, of engaging with people who disagree with us, not thinking we know better, of standing in someone else’s shoes, of doing the right thing and the right thing is often not theoretical perfection, but a good old Canadian compromise, even when it’s hard. Drip by drip. Act by act.
As we look to the future, please remember this. Every grand plan, every vision to reinvigorate our democracy, to renew our economy or realign our world will demand deep collaboration and even deeper trust. Without that trust, we’re left with talk, with the illusion of progress and none of the results. The reality is that listening builds trust and relationships. Trust and relationships accelerate action. And engagement leads to impact.
So thank you from the bottom of my heart for this honour, really. And let’s never forget that there is no challenge that we cannot overcome. After all, together we’ve built the best country in the world.
Vive le Canada et merci beaucoup.
Hear from more 2025 honourees:
- Steve Paikin, renowned journalist and longtime host of The Agenda on TVO, winner of the 2025 Hyman Solomon Award for public interest journalism
- Alfred Burgesson, founder and CEO of Tribe Network, winner of the 2025 Emerging Leader Award
- Elizabeth Dowdeswell, the longest-serving lieutenant-governor of Ontario
- Anil Arora, former chief statistician at Statistics Canada
- Chief Crystal Smith, leader of the Haisla Nation