PROFILE - MICHAEL MCCAIN | MAPLE LEAF FOODS CEO

Michael Harrison McCain (born 13 November 1958) is a Canadian business executive, currently serving as the President and Chief Executive Officer of Maple Leaf Foods since January 1, 1999.

Born in Florenceville-Bristol, New Brunswick, McCain is the son of Wallace McCain, the co-founder of McCain Foods and Margaret McCain, a Canadian philanthropist.

McCain is listed on Canadian Business Magazine’s 100 richest Canadians with a net worth of CA $4.15 billion as of August 2019.

McCain studied at the Mount Allison University and then Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario. He graduated in 1979 with a Bachelor of Arts in business administration. In 2014, McCain received an honorary doctorate from Carleton University in recognition of his leadership in economic development.

In 1979, he joined McCain Foods sales department and worked up into management. By 1986, he became the President of McCain Citrus Incorporated and in 1990, was appointed as the President and Chief Executive Officer of McCain Foods USA Incorporated. In the 1990s, a prolonged legal dispute between McCain co-founders and brothers Wallace and Harrison McCain over succession to the company leadership ended with the departure of Wallace and Michael from McCain Foods.

McCain joined Maple Leaf Foods as President and Chief Operating Officer in April 1995, and is currently President and Chief Executive Officer of the firm. McCain is also the director of Maple Leaf Foods, McCain Capital Corporation and McCain Foods Group Inc.

McCain is also a board member for several Canadian firms including Royal Bank of Canada, the American Meat Institute, and also serves on the board of trustees of the Hospital for Sick Children. He was also director of the American Frozen Food Institute and Bombardier, the Canadian multinational manufacturer of commercial jets.

Maple Leaf Foods employs roughly 12,000 people across Canada, the U.S. and Asia with 75% of their business in Canada. Maple Leaf is also the first large-scale manufacturing food company in the world to make an effort to become carbon neutral.

The 2008 Canadian listeria outbreak in Canada was linked tocold cuts from a Maple Leaf Foods plant in Toronto, Ontario.There were 57 total confirmed cases, resulting in 22 deaths.

As CEO of Maple Leaf Foods, McCain was lauded for his handling of the outbreak. The Globe and Mail hailed McCain as "a role model for crisis management" for his contributions toward containing the incident. Writing in The Conversation, Deborah de Lange praised McCain's transparency, ethics, and leadership skills during the outbreak, referring to his "track record of leadership", and Hill+Knowlton Strategies's Jane Shapiro referred to it as "a textbook example of how to handle a crisis."

McCain was named the Business Newsmaker of 2008 by the Canadian press. Writing a 2013 case study in the Financial Times, business theorist Morgen Witzel noted that in addition to accepting responsibility, McCain's recovery strategy included a hiring freeze but open hiring in the food safety department, which was to hire at any cost.

In January 2020, McCain attracted attention by lambasting Trump, calling him "a narcissist in Washington" and holding him responsible for the events that led to the Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 being shot down by Iran, in which a colleague at the company lost his wife and 11-year-old son.

Following his comments, McCain, well-known for his philanthropic endeavors, has been complimented by some for his humanity, and criticized by others, for neglecting shareholder interests, as reactionary calls for a boycott of the company after his comments made their way into mainstream news impacted stock prices.