Warren Smith

I am the Director of National Sentiment Alignment at Tim Hortons. Canada just dropped to 25th in the World Happiness Report. Fifth in 2014. Twenty-fifth in 2026. We had an emergency meeting. Fourteen people. A PowerPoint called "Double Double Down: Reclaiming Joy." Slide one was a graph. Canada's happiness ranking over the past decade. Slide two was a graph. Tim Hortons' customer satisfaction over the past decade. They are the same graph. Nobody mentioned this. Slide three said "Tim Hortons IS Canadian Happiness." We all nodded. Our brand value is $7.5 billion. Sixth most valuable restaurant brand on Earth. The happiness of 40 million people is, technically, our department. In 2014, a Brazilian private equity firm acquired us for $12.5 billion. That same year, Canada was the 5th happiest country in the world. By 2018, we were 7th. By 2023, 12th. By 2024, 18th. Now, 25th. Completely unrelated, in 2014 we also moved donut production to a centralized factory. Flash-frozen. Shipped to stores. Finished in ovens. The phrase "par-baked" was used. The word "fresh" was not. Our slogan was "Always Fresh." We quietly retired it. Freshness, like happiness, is easier to claim than to measure. So we stopped measuring both. The researchers at Oxford blamed social media for the decline. We also blamed social media. Not the frozen donuts. Not the franchise lawsuits. Not the fact that a medium coffee now costs what a large used to cost, and a large costs what a therapy session should. Finland has been the happiest country for nine years straight. Finland does not have a Tim Hortons. We see this as an untapped market. The Americans are 23rd. Happier than us. The country that invented "thoughts and prayers" as a complete healthcare policy is now measurably happier than the country that invented "sorry." We have 5,700 locations in Canada. The Americans have better pastries. These two facts are also unrelated. Quebec alone would rank 5th in the world. Canada without Quebec drops to 35th. Quebec has high-quality independent bakeries. We did not include this slide in the PowerPoint. Our franchisees filed a class-action lawsuit. They said production costs tripled. From six cents a donut to eighteen. They needed new freezers. New microwaves. To heat the frozen donuts we told the public were fresh. That's optimization. Optimization is a form of progress. We created Roll Up The Rim in 1986. A physical cup. You rolled it. Sometimes you won a donut. An entire country organized its morning around this. In 2020, we made it digital. An app. You tap a screen. The country did not organize its morning around this. Participation declined. We called it a "digital transformation." Our CEO proposed a "Happiness Combo." Medium coffee. One donut. $4.99. The cup reads: "You're Doing Great, Canada." The focus group cried. Not from happiness. Our parent company, Restaurant Brands International, plans to open 300 to 400 new locations a year through 2028. The theory is: if you cannot make a country happy, make sure it cannot drive three blocks without seeing your logo. That's proximity. Proximity is a type of happiness. We measured it. In the lobby of our Oakville headquarters, there is a framed poster from 2013. It shows a smiling woman holding a fresh donut. Below it, in Helvetica, it says: "Made Fresh. Every Day. In Every Store." None of these things are true anymore. The poster is still there. Canada was the 5th happiest country in the world the year we were acquired. We are now worth $7.5 billion. Canada is now 25th. One graph goes up. One graph goes down. Every quarter, we present the one that goes up. As long as the shareholders are happy, someone in Canada is.

I miss serious old people. There's something fundamentally wrong with having elders acting like children.

Landed in London. The United Kingdom is one of Canada’s oldest, and most-trusted, partners. In a more uncertain world, we’re working closely together to create greater certainty, security, and prosperity on both sides of the Atlantic.

TRINH: It's your one year anniversary. You promised major projects, you promised to remove tariffs that the US had levied against us -- CARNEY: I promised the best deal for Canada. That's the difference, Judy. And we have the best deal for Canada right now.