Eighteen ideas on how to kickstart the Canadian economy

The Canadian economy faces an un-precedented challenge – several of them, actually. Luckily, ideas abound on how to give this country the productivity boost we need to thrive no matter what the man in the White House throws at us next.

We spoke to leaders in a range of sectors – from manufacturing and finance to philanthropy, tourism and beyond – about what to tackle in 2026.

Give Canadian entrepreneurs an unbeatable incentive to stay in Canada

Daniel Debow, chair of Build Canada and former Shopify vice-president

Daniel DebowWade Hudson/The Globe and Mail

A recent Leaders Fund study revealed that just 30 per cent of high-potential Canadian-led startups launched in 2024 stayed in Canada. This isn’t just a brain drain – it’s a surrender of our economic sovereignty. We cannot build a prosperous, independent nation if our most ambitious citizens are effectively paid to leave. They aren’t leaving because they stop being Canadian; they’re leaving because the math forces them to. The U.S. tax code aggressively rewards risk. Ours punishes it.

To fight back, national pride is not enough. We need a policy that makes the business case for Canada undeniable. That single high-leverage change is a superior capital gains exemption designed to beat the U.S. Qualified Small Business Stock regime.

We should immediately raise the exemption to $15-million, or 10 times the investment – surpassing the American cap – and apply it per venture, not per lifetime, to encourage serial builders. Crucially, we must democratize this reward by removing the 5-per-cent minimum ownership rule so that early employees, not just founders, benefit, and expand eligibility to all sectors of the economy.

Finally, we must unlock risk capital by allowing tax-free rollovers, ensuring gains from one win can be instantly deployed without penalty into the next high-risk Canadian venture. This is not a handout to the rich. This is a strategic defence of our future to keep our builders building here in Canada.

Create an Economic Council

Jim Balsillie, philanthropist and chair of the Council of Canadian Innovators

Jim BalsillieJenna Muirhead/The Globe and Mail

Over the past 30 years, Canada’s economic structure became more akin to Russia’s: exporting raw resources and foodstuffs, while losing promising tech talent and startups to the U.S. All this despite enormous public investments into research and development, creating a highly educated population, and funding a myriad of innovation programs.

Forty years after the advent of the knowledge-based economy, Canadian policy-makers have proven incapable of dealing with the opportunities and challenges afforded by the global economy of IP, data and AI.

An Economic Council would provide the government with the research, expertise and capacity to produce policy agendas for the array of evolving and cross-cutting competitiveness and security issues Canada faces. Staffed with experts from the public and private sectors who understand how the nature and structure of contemporary firms have changed, it would also help governments navigate modern trade agreements, which have since the early 2000s become less about liberalizing trade through tariff reductions and more about regulatory remote control, technical standard-setting and spreading monopolies.

Governments have extraordinary capacities for marshalling resources and effecting change. That same energy can and should be used to create an Economic Council that would kickstart an intellectual renaissance inside our civil service and broader policy community.

Modernize home-building

Geoff Cape, CEO of Assembly Corp., which produces mass timber panels for prefab housing

Producing and shipping raw lumber south of the border isn’t working. To kickstart Canada’s economy, we must build a housing industry focused on quality, affordability and speed. While European and Asian countries are setting the pace, Canada has the opportunity to leapfrog ahead by embracing modern methods of construction, AI and robotics – powered by entrepreneurial courage.

Across the country, architects, engineers, builders, trades, policy-makers, and wood and materials producers are showing what’s possible by standardizing designs, digitizing production and shifting construction off-site. This shift can dramatically reduce costs, increase productivity, and create a new generation of skilled jobs, all while delivering better, more affordable homes.

Grow our tourism industry

Zita Cobb, founder and CEO of Shorefast and the Shorefast Institute for Place-Based Economies, and Fogo Island Inn

Our tourism industry should account for 7 per cent of Canada’s GDP. But we’ve got to help people get to Canada, whether they’re coming through Vancouver or Toronto or Montreal. And then we need what every other OECD country has, but we don’t, which is a regional air access network.

In most countries, regional air access happens because there’s some kind of collaborative relationship between markets, governments and communities. Who’s going to pay for you to fly to Yellowknife? If we leave it to the market, which is what Canada has done, it won’t happen, because there aren’t enough people going there.

Tourism supports cultural institutions. It supports all the hiking trails. It’s all connected. What’s not understood is that trade follows tourism. People come to Canada for vacations, fall in love. Then they want their kids to go to school here and start to become interested in investing here. The Nordic countries understand this. You see it in Fogo Island. That little inn has added $250-million to the economy of not just Fogo Island, but to Canada and Newfoundland. It hangs by one thread of a flight. Every flight that lands adds millions to our economy. Why would we just leave that to the market?

Set a goal, make it bold, get it done

Linda Hasenfratz, executive chair of Linamar

Linda HasenfratzTrina Koster/The Canadian Press

When we look for leaders at Linamar, we look for people who are passionate and who come up with good ideas, but who can also execute. You can plan all day long, but if you’re not getting stuff over the finish line, it’s not helping.

We need a three-point plan: Focus on trade, get more efficient, and increase the incentive to invest. The federal government has made steps in the right direction, but a lot of it’s just not getting over the finish line quickly enough. The government has been quite focused on international trade deals. We should totally be doing that, but we cannot do it to the exclusion of our relationship with the U.S. We need to secure a stable, mutually beneficial trade relationship with the U.S. and get it done quickly, instead of dragging on for months.

We also need to help companies get competitive on exporting by reducing the cost of establishing overseas relationships and investing in export-oriented infrastructure. Then we should reduce our government work force. Business productivity has been steadily growing over the past 20 years, but government productivity has been flat. Finally, Prime Minister Mark Carney has talked about pipelines, but again, it’s not getting done.

Look what we did during COVID-19 – things you would never in a million years be able to get done that quickly got done because everybody understood it was critical.

Sell your small business to a First Nation

Bill Lomax, president and CEO of First Nations Bank of Canada

Over the next 10 years, 76 per cent of Canadian small business owners are looking to exit—a transfer of more than $2-trillion in assets. At least half aren’t going to the kids or some related party. So who do you sell $1-trillion in assets to?

You could sell your company to a private equity firm that would probably parse it for parts. But if you care about what you’ve built and the people who will continue to work there, First Nations can be an excellent option. They’ll pay a fair price, and unlike private equity, they’re likely to keep management, try to build the company from where it’s at, add value and then hold it forever.

With all the major projects being built, we’re going to need small businesses that can provide services, including construction and engineering companies, companies that operate camps, and ones that provide safety services and security.

This is an interesting play for both the boomers and the First Nations. Some 80 per cent of startups fail. If you buy an established company, only about 20 per cent fail. So the win rate for the First Nation is significantly higher. It’s a good financial opportunity for the seller, and your company could go on to benefit hundreds, if not thousands, of people from the income and jobs it creates.

Indigenous communities are still growing. We have the population to run these things. If your kids aren’t interested in running the business, we are.

More competition at home, more collaboration abroad

Denise Hearn, director of strategic initiatives at the Long Now Foundation

There’s a difference between competition (at home) and competitiveness (abroad). For too long, we’ve conflated the two, imagining that homegrown monopolies and oligopolies – which sell cellphone packages and bank accounts, not globally tradeable goods – will produce gains for Canada. We’ve run that experiment, and it has failed. Sheltering domestic incumbents doesn’t create global champions; it simply extracts rents from Canadians while weakening the broader economy.

Instead, our solution should be to increase competition at home, making domestic markets much more accessible to startups and scale-ups through tailored, open market access regulations, investment in R&D commercialization, and protection of Canadian IP from foreign appropriation. We can use regulatory, tax and procurement levers to shift capital toward growth companies and truly invest in Canadian-made innovations. This will make us more globally competitive. Simultaneously, we’ll need to increase collaboration with new allies and middle powers with shared interests to stimulate new supply chains, trade relationships and technology transfers that can position Canada strategically for the decades to come.

Convene a Royal Commission on Tax Competitiveness and Investment

Benjamin Bergen, CEO of the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association

Canada has not convened a royal commission focused on federal tax policy and competitiveness since the Carter Commission of the 1960s. In the decades since, global competition has fundamentally changed, driven by mobile capital and a knowledge-based economy operating across borders. Yet Canada’s tax framework has evolved incrementally, without a coherent national strategy to anchor prosperity and ownership in Canada.

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Mark Carney framed Canada as a middle power navigating an era of intensifying global competition, a distinction that carries real consequences. Middle powers do not set the rules of the global economy. They succeed by acting faster and competing with greater discipline than larger, hegemonic states. If Canada wants to keep and attract capital, it must be among the most tax-competitive jurisdictions in the world.

In 2023 and 2024, roughly 104,000 Canadians emigrated, most to the U.S., making the costs of inaction visible in real terms. But migration alone does not capture the full picture. Capital is flowing outward, leaving firms to scale elsewhere and shifting strategic ownership beyond Canada’s borders. Capital moves with firms and talent toward jurisdictions that reward risk-taking, sustained investment and long-term ownership. Canada increasingly does not.

Canada’s capital gains treatment and overall tax and investment framework have drifted out of alignment with peer countries just as ownership has become central to economic sovereignty. Canadian founders sell early or scale elsewhere. Strategic assets migrate offshore. We export upside and lose control.

This Commission should operate on a fixed timeline and be grounded in industry realities. Its work should be judged against global best practices for supporting predictable conditions for investment and domestic ownership.

For a middle power like Canada, competitiveness is not optional. It is existential. This is how we meet the moment.

Electrify Canada’s truck fleets

Monica Curtis, senior director of communities and decarbonization at Pembina Institute

Medium- and heavy-duty trucks are 4 per cent of the vehicles on Canada’s roads, but they’re responsible for about 30 per cent of transport emissions. Traffic-related air pollution contributes to thousands of hospitalizations and premature deaths in Canada every year, and that’s a weight on our economy. It highlights the urgent need for a solution that can kickstart benefits to businesses but also reduces unnecessary costs.

For companies to electrify, they have to do a lot of things on their own, and this is why we think there needs to be leadership from government to strengthen the local supply chain. We don’t do a good job of rewarding businesses for the benefits they provide from a societal perspective. For example, when a vehicle is electrified, there’s a value that load can provide to the utility system. Yet we don’t make it easy for our utilities to create rates that support that business.

There are about 150 zero-emission heavy- and medium-duty truck models available in Canada. We have to help expand that domestic supply chain so they’re out there selling these trucks more effectively to fleet owners. Government can be a first customer. By building that domestic market, you create the capacity for export, which creates an opportunity for the Canadian economy and strengthens our energy security by insulating businesses from diesel fuel price swings.

Revive the 60-year-old Swede who shamed a generation into getting fit

Marc Parent, recently departed CEO of CAE Inc.

We have to realize that Canada’s future prosperity isn’t guaranteed. It’s not our birthright. A lot of people assume that tomorrow will look like yesterday. It won’t. Our productivity has lagged. It sounds like an abstract notion, but very simply, we’re producing less wealth per person. If we don’t act, everything we need for our standard of living is going to spin. We need to spark that level of urgency.

Remember the ParticipAction ads from the 1970s? The 60-year-old Swedish man taking a cold-water bath? The ad told us in no uncertain words that he was fitter than the average 30-year-old Canadian. That narrative woke us up on fitness, and real change followed.

You could use that approach with a whole host of issues to capture the imagination of Canadians. We’ve normalized things that don’t make sense, like internal barriers. We don’t have real labour mobility. It can be easier to trade with Europe than across provinces. We have ample resources, but it takes 10 years to get a permit.

We have proximity to the U.S. We have resources and goods the world needs. We have talent and a trusted brand. But we need that urgency to eliminate trade barriers. We need the equivalent of the 30-year-old Canadian–60-year-old Swede moment.

Build a Canadian sovereign wealth fund

John Ruffolo, founder and managing partner of Maverix Private Equity

Canada is dangerously reliant on foreign capital to build industries that are essential to our sovereignty: energy, food, data, AI, health care, mobility and defence. That dependence is increasingly risky when every major economy is prioritizing its own interests.

The solution is straightforward: Canada should create a national sovereign wealth fund. Countries like Norway and Singapore understood long ago that sovereignty requires permanent, professionally managed capital. Norway’s fund—built on resource revenues—is now worth US$2-trillion.

Canada, by contrast, has fragmented capital spread across dozens of programs and agencies, many focused on grants rather than ownership, scale or long-term returns. A Canadian fund would consolidate existing federal investment assets, recycle resource revenues and shift subsidies into equity ownership. Its mandate: to invest in Canadian-owned companies in sectors of sovereign importance, while generating sustainable returns that compound for future generations.

Governance must be independent, insulated from politics and focused on long-term outcomes – more like the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Canada than a government program. Canada doesn’t lack talent or entrepreneurs. What we lack is domestic capital at scale. A sovereign wealth fund would be a statement of maturity and a necessary step if Canada wants to control its economic destiny, rather than outsource it.

De-politicize immigration policy

Martin Basiri, CEO of Passages Inc.

Martin BasiriKate Dockeray/The Globe and Mail

Our immigration system is very politically driven. We make decisions to open or close the gate on a purely political basis. My idea is to create an independent body that makes immigration policies based on economics and mathematics, not politics. We’ve done this in monetary policy, by creating an independent body called the Bank of Canada.

Canada’s median age is 42. We provide free health care and education. We have a lot of seniors. We are aging massively. We need continuous work force growth. Without immigration, our population is shrinking.

An independent body made up of economists, statisticians and scientists should come up with immigration policies that the government can execute. That body should be completely shielded from politics.

Long-term issues like Canada’s low fertility rate, and investing in higher education for the next generation of Canadians and for future immigrants – no one’s taking care of them. We need to think about how Canada is going to look in 2050.

Focus philanthropy on a handful of key sectors

Jennifer Bernard, president and CEO of SickKids Foundation

Jennifer BernardJanice Reid/The Globe and Mail

My big idea is to help Canada in this pivotal moment by focusing on a small number of areas we could dominate, with philanthropy as the catalyst.

This would be a two-step process. One is to make Canadians focus their philanthropy on Canada. Second is choosing a couple of key industries where philanthropy can move the dial quickly. We could have public-private partnerships, almost like venture capital–type activity, happening with philanthropy, government funding, and industries coming together to look at sectors like medicine, AI, climate modelling and tech. Instead of the scattergun approach, philanthropy could be a great partner in a few targeted sectors.

This starts with the government saying, “These are the sectors we care about. We’re going to create more research chairs and invest alongside philanthropists to lift them more quickly.” Often, you’ll get federal funding in dribs and drabs spread out across the country. Unfortunately, this is a moment where not every sector will get equal attention. It won’t be about giving everybody a little bit. It’ll be about who is the best positioned to move us forward, and investing in institutions by choosing the horses they want to bet on.

Leverage sustainable financing rules to drive green investment

Barbara Zvan, president and CEO of University Pension Plan Ontario

The 2024 budget announced a voluntary sustainable finance taxonomy, something few people understand. It’s a classification system that categorizes investments in alignment with climate targets. My analogy is the Energy Star rating system on your dishwasher. How do you use this tool to encourage money to flow into sustainable projects? One example: Algoma Steel. Governments gave Algoma money to make green steel but didn’t encourage Canadian demand. A taxonomy would fix that, first by credibly classifying Algoma steel as a “sustainable investment,” which encourages banks to lend more to projects using classified sustainable steel. That’s how we get more buyers for Algoma and help it compete with regular steel.

The taxonomy could be used by Canadian pension plans to show members how aligned their investments are with climate targets. As investors with long time horizons, we have to consider this stuff. It’s about giving investors the tools to integrate sustainable financing into their strategies and the clarity to allocate capital away from risk and toward opportunity part of our investment strategies.

Drive agri-food productivity

Justine Hendricks, president and CEO of Farm Credit Canada

Canada’s agriculture and agri-food industry is one of our most strategic economic assets and a cornerstone of our global influence. It contributes over $150-billion annually to GDP, employs one in nine Canadians and accounts for nearly $100.3-billion in annual exports. And it’s uniquely positioned to tackle four of the biggest challenges facing our planet: food insecurity, health, climate change and economic growth.

Farm-level productivity is the growth engine for the entire ag and agri-food industry. Restoring productivity to historic levels of 2 per cent a year could generate up to $30-billion in additional farm income, increase GDP by $31-billion and create nearly 23,000 new jobs over the next decade.

But productivity alone is not enough. Canada must build more processing capacity so we can turn raw outputs into high-quality, market-ready products. Building value-added manufacturing is how Canadian agriculture can strengthen inter-provincial trade, support food sovereignty and diversify exports, reaching high-value markets in Europe, Asia and Latin America.

Put the brakes on AI

Ron Diebert, political scientist and director of Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

Ron DiebertRiley Stewart/The Canadian Press

I’m feeling really uncomfortable these days about some of the decisions being made around prioritizing the economy over other social values. That’s best illustrated by how governments are treating AI – it’s all gas, no brakes, and we’re seeing a slew of harms as a consequence. Everyone needs a job. But instead of kickstarting the Canadian economy, we need to be thinking about where and how to apply brakes to industries that are operating in a largely unfettered manner.

Take any of the major AI platforms, especially OpenAI and Grok. What we see is an experiment being conducted on billions of people in real time, without any form of licensing or regulation. We’re beginning to see the harms, and part of that is a legacy of the fact that anything that’s technologically related, going back to the early days of the internet, has for the most part received a free pass. That’s the approach of this government and Minister of AI and Innovation Evan Solomon, who appears to be an unabashed cheerleader of all things AI.

Not everything needs to orient around the economy. It should be more along the lines of, what type of seat belt should we have? Where’s the brake? Who’s going to be applying pressure to that brake in the interest of public safety? Because right now, it’s out of control.

Talk to your customers

Ron Bedard, CEO of ArcelorMittal Dofasco

Ron BedardAdrian Wyld/The Canadian Press

We are meeting with customers coast to coast, building relationships that didn’t previously exist or expanding on partnerships that were smaller. We all have to do that in a meaningful way. These are relationships from B.C. to New Brunswick.

You’ve got to go and look people in the eyes and express that commitment to the Canadian market, and to building Canada from within. My commercial leadership team and I have been doing this from the time the tariffs were announced. We’re going to work through this by leaning into the strength of our people and our company.

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Editor’s note: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Benjamin Bergen is the former CEO of the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association. Bergen remains in this role.

Eighteen ideas on how to kickstart the Canadian economy