Walmart Canada

Okay.

Walmart Canada or Walmart USA?

No, Walmart.ca.

So you're going to rent yourself a cube van.

The cynicism is still there, the detachment is still there, and the joy doesn't come back.

Hajo Barbado, my former CEO at Walmart Canada, spent more than 30 years learning this the hard way.

At one point, just hours before a flight, he cancels a trip at a major conference rather than pushing through, and he put it perfectly.

I need to slow things down to go fast.

Those aren't small things.

Those are the joys that life is built on.

A few months into the pandemic, I was on an almost empty flight back to Toronto, about to start as Chief HR Officer at Walmart Canada.

And I was trying to write my 90-day plan.

Ranking Canadian Supermarkets on Refrigerants Against this backdrop, the results of the EIA's 2026 Canadian Climate-Friendly Supermarket Scorecard are abysmal.

None of the assessed major retailers passed, Sobeys is on top at 56%, followed by Metro, Costco Canada, Loblaw, and Walmart Canada.

There are bright spots.

Sobeys reports 16% of its stores have transitioned to CO2 refrigeration.

Those farms supply some of the country's biggest shrimp exporters, including one called MinFu.

And MinFu has shipped shrimp to Canadian importers whose brands sit in the freezer aisles at Sobeys and Walmart Canada.

None of those companies respond to the investigator's questions, which is kind of interesting.

The records show a link between these companies.

And then Joseph Godsey, has been appointed the chief operating officer.

He's coming from Walmart Canada, where he was the chief growth officer.

We know that Walmart does a lot of operational stuff.

Really, really good because of a lot of Joseph's tenure there as well.

Exactly

... what was, what was really fascinating also was that you and your partner, you guys walked into Walmart Canada, uh, into a buyer meeting, you know, with a couple of samples, and then you were able to, you know, walk out with a golden ticket.

So that's a incredible story.

So I mean, can you walk us through kind of what led to that and how they were convinced exactly?

We're in over 80 stores across, uh, s- across, uh, Western Canada today.

That's growing every week, and we've just signed a deal with, uh, Walmart Canada to be in Walmart stores, uh, and Walmart online this year.

Wow.

Yeah.

You know, we looked at one poster child company in particular called Tianyu, which is a huge salmon farm in Xinjiang, and tracked its supply chain and found that, you know, it is mass producing salmon, and some of that salmon is ending up to a major, uh, Canadian, um, uh, importer.

And that importer in Canada, um, uh, supplies over a half dozen major grocery stores, Walmart Canada and others, uh, in Canada.

So a lot of this Xinjiang based farmed seafood is indeed ending up in Canada.

It's an incredible story.