The CEO of the United States of America, the world’s largest organization, with $27 trillion in turnover and 333 million employees, is 81 years old.
His 4-year term is coming up in November and he hasn’t had a test to determine if he’s mentally competent, even though he’ll be 86 when he plans to walk out of his office at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington for the last time.
But the 51 million Americans who watched Joe Biden’s performance against Donald Trump on June 27 didn’t need a doctor’s opinion to tell them their President was not up to the task on that day, let alone for the 1,461 days of his second term as U.S. President.
Given Mr. Biden’s mental frailty, there are already calls for mental competency tests for politicians. Republican Nikki Haley, for one, has urged U.S. politicians over the age of 75 to take the Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test, the standard for assessing mental decline.
Three quarters of Americans support this idea.
The Senate halls echo with highly public incidents of frailty on parade via Senator Dianne Feinstein who died last year at 90, and Senator Mitch McConnell, 82. Then there’s Donald Trump who’s 78, and regularly forgets the names of world leaders, and his nemesis, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is 84.
This issue is all about pride and power, which is why First Lady Jill Biden called Haley’s proposal “ridiculous” and stated that she and President Biden would “never even discuss something like that.”
Like depression, alcoholism and cancer (a word you still don’t dare mention in Japan), people generally don’t want to talk about losing their faculties or acting erratically, and many people of wealth and power are blind to what the entire world can see.
But also given that some companies generate more economic activity than some countries (Canada’s GDP is $2.14 trillion; Apple Inc’s turnover is $3.5 trillion, which makes it bigger than Britain and closing in on India), why should only political leaders be vetted?
Why not corporate leaders?
Surely, not having early stage dementia or Parkinson’s or the thousand other shocks that flesh is heir to, should be table stakes for qualifying as a CEO or the Chair of a Board.
And since these are diseases of old age, and they rarely strike suddenly, the older you get, the greater the risk we’ll live to see our minds die before our bodies do.
Indeed, dementia is one of the fastest-growing diseases in the country. In 2013, the number of Canadians living with dementia was 402,000. Last year, it had grown by 47% to 733,000. By 2033, close to one million Canadians will be afflicted.
Today, the CEO’s of Canada’s 10 largest companies are safely in their 50s, save for David McKay, 60, at RBC Financial, and Bahrat Masrani, 67, at TD Bank Group.
But if we look at the Chairs of their Boards, it’s a different story. Again, most of the Chairs of the 10 biggest companies are in their 60s. The exceptions are Pamela Carter, Chair of Enbridge, at 74, and Frank McKenna, Chair of Brookfield Corporation, at 76.
Given our aging nation and aging corporate leaders, I think the CEOs and Chairs of Canadian public companies should have a mental competency test when they turn 70 and every year after. Think of this test as a form of insurance, with incredibly low premiums and a huge payout.
There are precedents for this. When Canadian commercial airline pilots turn 40, they must undergo mandatory physical and mental health assessments every six months.
I understand that disappointing some of the shareholders is not the same as killing all the passengers. But the costs of slow thinking in the C-suite can be especially punitive at a time when business is changing faster than ever. The financial, social, environmental, and opportunity costs of a late or ill-thought-out decision brought on by old age, can be in the billions.
Another precedent involves doctors, including the hundreds who are Civil Aviation Medical Examiners. In Ontario, all doctors must undergo a peer and practice assessment when they reach age 70 (if they have not had one within the previous five years), and then every five years thereafter. Again, perfectly normal and to be expected.
But how can this get done?
Why not ask the ‘regulator’, in this case, the Ontario Securities Commission, to mandate compulsory mental competency tests for CEOs and Chairs once they reach 75?
Last year, the Toronto Stock Exchange and the Institute of Corporate Directors released an update of the Dey Report, which was written 40 years ago. Chart the Future laid out a series of new best practices for Canada’s public companies. It addresses issues of gender, race, specialized expertise and more. But nothing about mental capacity. Perhaps its next edition can, because surely Joe Biden’s career-ending display of incapacity can serve a greater purpose in the world of work.
Meanwhile…
1. What we get wrong about…where new Canadians come from…beer girls…AI, which still can’t even spell the word ‘strawberry’…and technology (written by Tim Harford in 2017).
2. Suits and suitors: My, how the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue has changed since it began 60 years ago.
3. Annals of medicine. There’s much talk about ‘precision medicine’ which can treat my heart disease differently from yours, even though we have the same disease. But when mental illness seems to be everywhere, what’s the promise of precision psychiatry’?
4. The LA Olympics will be in 2028. Here they are…and a future L.A. Games 1,000 years from now. But we don’t have to wait 1,000 years for Olympian construction projects. Here’s what’s being built this year.
5. Is it possible to Trump Trump? Here are his latest Presidential campaign ads on… Biden’s foreign policy…the US economy…and the Arlington Cemetery fiasco… plus, the latest ads from Republicans against Trump…And here is a history of his previous campaigns for everything from Trump University to Trump Steaks.
6. Performative men. Evil men. “Decency and integrity do not grow out of performative harmlessness.” And in the valley of evil, here’s Sally Armstrong on the Taliban’s brutal new edicts for women’s behaviour in Afghanistan. The reason? “Women and girls cause the Taliban extraordinary fear as they believe they won’t be able to control themselves sexually in their presence.”
7. We could do with more: Gardening, mapping, balancing, and bordering.
8. Useful skills. How to get your stolen phone back. How to spot climate tipping points. Where to get opera tickets for $11. How to create a crossword puzzle.
9. Wild! First, the best wildlife photography of the year. Next, wild prices for Toronto hotel rooms when Taylor Swift comes to Toronto in late November. The Chelsea Hotel usually charges $104 per night. On nights that Swift performs, they rise to $506 per night.
10. 12 signs that you’re mature. “We might be 92 and still, very slowly, leaving adolescence behind. If we lived to be 450, many of us would still be struggling to acquire the fundamental constituents of a grown-up mind.”
11. Who we’re liking. Isabelle Ouellette has been a member of the Bank of Montreal Dining Services Team for more than 10 years. She has Down Syndrome. In June, Women of Influence hailed her as a Champion of Workplace Inclusion, and in July the Bank hosted a luncheon in her honour. The links to the Women of Influence initiative got over a million views.Times are changing.
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ON SEPTEMBER 23, TANYA TALAGA STANDS CANADA’S PAST ON ITS HEAD. BE THERE.
The Knowing reshapes our sense of Canada in a way only Tanya Talaga can.
The famed Anishinaabe journalist and Massey Lecturer reveals how all-embracing our mistreatment of our founding people was, and offers a way forward to real reconciliation.
Big new ideas like hers are rarely comfortable, and The Knowing is the big new book of the year. So it deserves a big hall to hear what’s vital to us all.
Tanya will also be interviewed by Mark Sakamoto, author of Forgiveness: A Gift from My Grandparents. 
Date: Monday, September 23, 2024
Time: 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. (Doors open at 6:30 p.m) ET
Place: Koerner Hall, 273 Bloor St. West, Toronto, just west of the ROM
TICKETS HERE
Please pass this invitation on to like-minded friends and family.
Cheers,
Bob Ramsay
In partnership with
