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The Honourable Perrin Beatty is President & CEO of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the voice of Canadian business. Enbridge is a long-standing member of the Chamber.

The question on many people's minds is: Can sustainability truly exist in a capitalistic world? What’s your view, Perrin?: I’m an ardent capitalist. I believe that far and away, this is the most efficient and productive economic system in the world. But the free enterprise system can’t exist to serve itself. It will survive only if ordinary people feel that it serves the public interest broadly. And those of us who are part of the system have to recognize that we will be able to participate in the free enterprise system only if society as a whole believes that it’s beneficial.
But do you think companies can remain competitive and commit to sustainability at the same time?: Absolutely. In Canada our future lies in high-value-added operations, ones in which there is a knowledge component.; Look at the competition that Canadian companies are facing from low-wage countries. Our differentiator is quality. Quality in terms of the design, in terms of the manufacturing process, in terms of the services provided and in terms of other social considerations, such as the impact on the environment, which are important to people who will be purchasing our products.; In essence, we can derive sustainable competitive advantage directly from our awareness of the concept of sustainability.
How do businesses go about doing that?: In my view the first change is internal. It’s cultural. And in many ways that’s the toughest. It’s getting beyond the belief that the investments in sustainability are a cost and starting to see them as genuine investments for which there is an economic return.; If you can make that leap, then suddenly the measures that you take become more obvious. The good thing here is that there are all sorts of people who have already blazed the trail, and we needn’t all reinvent the wheel.; There’s an expression that’s used sometimes: "steal with pride." It means that we can borrow each other’s best practices or good thinking. That’s what Canadian businesses need to do. They need to work together.; If there’s a good side to the pressures that we face in the global economy, it’s that it has resulted in the recognition that finger pointing or denying that there’s a problem simply doesn’t work. We’re all in this together. We all will fail together or we all will succeed together. It is eminently possible to succeed together.