When I turned 50, something clicked in my head and I said, 'I'm not going to live to 100. I'm half-cooked already.' I set the family down and I said, 'Listen everybody, we're now entering the decade of Daddy. We're going to start doing things that I want to do.

Don’t let the dark clouds of greed confuse you

If you put Canada into $1.5 trillion in debt and interest rates go up just 200 basis points, you cannot provide the services to 36 million people that were guaranteed to them in the social contract they have with Canada. That's a very, very scary prospect. You can't burden this economy with that much debt. The risk you take on is insurmountable. You have to assume for the next 50 years that rates don't go up? That's insane. That's irresponsible. That's stupid.

I think every entrepreneur in Canada owes the next generation a road map of how to do it again.

I like gold because it is a stabilizer; it is an insurance policy.

We need physical exercise to prepare our brain for long periods of concentration

Downturns are the best time to start businesses because you develop discipline that's very lean and mean in terms of how to spend money. And those habits serve you very well in good times.