Todd Hirsch

2-MAR-2026

My GPS has better emotional regulation than most humans.

I miss a turn. No problem. “Recalculating,” chirps the female voice, almost as if she’s pleased. I fail to stay in the right lane to merge. No worries. “Recalculating.” I turn on the wrong set of lights. Hey, it happens. “Recalculating.”

No raised voice. No judgement. No panic. Just calm, steady recalculation.

Now imagine the economy in 2026 with a human voice sitting in the passenger seat.

“TARIFFS?! You’ve ruined everything!”

“INFLATION again?! I said raise interest rates and you didn’t!”

“GEOPOLITICS?! This is going to blow up commodity prices!”

“SEPARATISTS?! There goes investment!”

It’s a familiar soundtrack. And it’s completely unhelpful.

Markets don’t respond well to panic. Neither do leaders, nor most households.

Yet panic is often our default response when the world feels volatile, when the path ahead is obscured by uncertainty, and when the economy refuses to follow the tidy forecasts we pencilled in six months ago. We expect the system to behave predictably, and when it doesn’t, we assume something must be broken.

But the economy isn’t broken. The roadmap is just changing. Quickly.

We are living through a period of profound economic transition. Global trade patterns are being rewritten. Climate change is injecting new risk into insurance markets, infrastructure planning, and food systems. Demographics are reshaping labour supply. Technology is accelerating faster than institutions can adapt. Politics is fragmenting in ways that make long-term planning harder.

This is a complex, unpredictable environment. And pretending otherwise doesn’t make it go away.

In business, leaders often ask me for certainty: Where is the economy going? What’s the outlook? When will things return to normal?

These are reasonable questions, but they’re also the wrong starting point. In times like these, the goal isn’t a perfect prediction. It’s preparation. It’s adaptability. It’s the ability to navigate through chaos without losing your head.

Nearly 2,000 years ago, the Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius offered advice that feels eerily modern:

“Objective judgement, now, at this very moment. Unselfish action, now, at this very moment. Willing acceptance—now, at this very moment—of all external events. That’s all you need.” Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9, Section 6.

In other words, separate signal from noise, act with integrity, and stop burning energy fighting things you can’t control.

That’s not passivity. It’s discipline.

Recalculating doesn’t mean giving up on the destination. It means acknowledging that the original route no longer makes sense. It means absorbing new information, adjusting expectations, and moving forward with clarity rather than fear.

Canada’s economy in 2026 will continue to face shocks. Global trade disputes, climate-related disruptions and geopolitical threats will continue to ripple through markets. Some of these forces are within our influence. Most are not. The mistake is treating every deviation from the plan as a crisis rather than as data.

The most successful organizations and the healthiest economies are not the ones that never encounter obstacles. They’re the ones that respond calmly when they do. They don’t scream at the dashboard. They pause, reassess, and move.

So maybe we should take a cue from the calm, unflappable voice of our GPS.

Breathe. Get objective. Accept what you can’t control.

And then, with purpose and confidence… recalculate.