Proposed by:
Matt Cohen
Founder & Managing Partner at Ripple Ventures
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To ensure a prosperous, sustainable, and growing economy, Canada needs to invest in building new businesses and supporting entrepreneurs. They create jobs, drive GDP growth, and create economic mobility for workers. Yet, the number of entrepreneurs is falling despite the population increasing.
Canada’s current capital gains tax policies are not globally competitive and disincentivize investors and entrepreneurs from building Canadian businesses. The result? Canadian capital and workers are leaving for other countries.
To support entrepreneurs, Canada needs to increase access to capital. To achieve this, our outdated capital gains policies must be revised to align with global standards.
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Increase SMBs per 1000 people over the age of 18 from 33 to 50 to match global averages.
Increase the number of early-stage financing rounds (Pre-seed, Seed, Series A, and Series B) for new businesses from 482 in 2024 to over 1000+ per year.
Increase investments in new businesses through industry-agnostic venture capital financing to 1% of GDP, up from 0.35% of GDP, to get closer to the USA’s figure of 1.12% of GDP.
(CVCA Source) (Carta) (NVCA)
Supporting entrepreneurs who build small to medium businesses (SMBs) is crucial to creating a strong and growing economy.
SMBs create more jobs than large companies, increasing employment opportunities while reducing the strain on social unemployment programs (5). This holds true globally, two-thirds of all jobs in developed countries come from SMBs (1)(2). Canada is no exception; SMBs accounted for ~64% of private sector employment opportunities and contributed to half of all net new jobs added last year (3).