Canada’s Policy for Prosperity
Supercharging Small Businesses Across Canada
The return of U.S. tariffs has put Canada’s small businesses on edge—amplifying long-standing issues like high rent, rising insurance costs, and limited support for growth. With the trade environment shifting rapidly, this is a critical moment for the federal government to step up.
But this is also a moment of opportunity. By investing in local ownership, reducing operating costs, and building more resilient infrastructure, Canada can shape a stronger, more self-reliant small business ecosystem.
Supporting Canada’s Small Business Future: Clear Solutions for 2025 and beyond
Almost two-thirds of all Canadians work for a small or medium-sized business employing less than 500 staff.
(Key Small Business Statistics 2024, ISED Canada)
Small businesses fuel Canada’s economy and create jobs in every community.
Yet across all our provinces and territories, business owners face mounting pressures from rising commercial rents, insurance, workforce challenges, and economic uncertainty. Their resilience through COVID-19 proves their adaptability, but they have not yet fully recovered – and now they are being dealt another blow.
For them to not only survive – but to continue creating the jobs and revenue that carry half of Canada’s economy – they need a government that responds to their unique needs.
Small businesses compete differently than large corporations – they aren’t little big businesses. When local businesses thrive, they create good jobs, drive innovation, and keep wealth in our communities. Canada’s next government must reduce barriers to competition and ensure balanced, transparent markets are accessible to all entrepreneurs.
Small Business Quick Stats
(Click stats for external links to data)
- Retail Rents Have Surged in Toronto (and other cities) since late 2023 68.5%
- Less than half of Canada’s restaurants are profitable 47%
- Insurance costs are a top-concern for over 2/3rds of businesses 68%
- 1/3rd of businesses are worried about accrued debt & interest rates 33%
If Ottawa wants to boost small business growth, it should:
1) Update policy to make everyday transactions faster and cheaper
2) Lower cost pressures that choke off investment and job creation
3) Design a marketplace that turns marginalized businesses into engines of growth
With heightened market uncertainty and a (now-global) trade war, Canada’s priority must first be to ensure our domestic marketplace fosters business growth and job creation. With a bolstered economy and a productive, skilled workforce, Canadian businesses will be ready for domestic and international commerce with new partners beyond the U.S.
What this means in practice is to keep costs and policies that impact day-to-day business operations in check – preventing them from being exploitative or overly burdensome. It means ensuring small businesses can access the capital they need to deliver – getting creative with risk reduction and service improvement so even the smallest businesses can have outsized performance.
From Survival to Prosperity | Revving up Canada’s SME Engine
Business Barrier
Rising Costs of Rent & Insurance
Proposed solution: Work with the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) to lower barriers for business owners to buy their commercial property.
Local Canadian businesses are increasingly being priced out of their spaces. In Toronto, retail rents rose 68.5% on average in a single year (TRREB).
A helpful solution would be for business owners to buy a property to house their business – such as their storefront, cafe, or manufacturing facility. In fact, it’s a major reason why long-lived businesses last (think of that corner store laundromat!).
But right now, this is almost impossible to do.
Down payments being demanded are much too high, and lenders don’t want to take a risk on a business, even if it has a long track record of success.
The Better Way Alliance is calling on Ottawa to help small businesses buy their spaces—not just lease them. Right now, the BDC requires high monthly cash flow and personal guarantees that are infeasible and unrealistic for many small business owners.
We’re proposing a new mortgage guarantor program through the BDC, giving businesses with solid rent histories and steady revenue a path to ownership.
With the government backing the risk, more small businesses could escape the rent rollercoaster, build equity, recirculate local wealth, and provide more consistent employment in their neighborhoods.
Business Barrier
Buying & Selling a Business
Proposed Solution: Establish a NextGen Ownership Fund to help local buyers purchase businesses from retiring owners individually or as a group.
Buying and selling an existing business is expensive and cumbersome, leaving many jobs, future profit and tax revenue unable to exchange hands.
Canada is on the brink of a major ownership transition: $1 trillion in business assets is set to change hands as a wave of owners retire. This “silver tsunami” is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to empower new entrepreneurs to take the reins, keep businesses alive, and preserve jobs in our communities.
We’re proposing a NextGen Ownership Fund to unlock the power of business acquisition.
Accessible and affordable financing would help local buyers (individuals and groups) acquire retiring businesses, avoiding closure or loss to Private Equity consolidation. Local ownership would keep wealth in our local economies, preserve jobs, and foster resilience for another generation.
Business Barrier
Access to Capital
Proposed Solution: Audit funding programs to ensure they support marginalized business owners, including women, newcomers, and racialized people.
Newcomers start more businesses than long-time Canadians, yet they have a harder time accessing capital to grow. Women start more businesses in Canada than men do, yet they have a higher failure rate. Black business owners carry more debt than white business owners and therefore have less financial resilience and are more at risk of failure.
Canada can do better in recognizing the diversity that makes its small business community special.
We propose the government ensure business financing opportunities have specific targets and access requirements for newcomers, women, racialized, and marginalized entrepreneurs.
This would give all business owners the fair chance they deserve, and give Canada a more dynamic, resilient economy rooted in inclusion, innovation, and shared opportunity.
FAQ – Questions for your local candidate
What specific actions will you take to curb the rent issues that are forcing small businesses to close?
Small businesses across Canada are being squeezed by rising rents. For example, square footage rental costs rose 68.5% in one year in Toronto between 2023 and 2024. These costs eat into margins, limit growth, and put local jobs at risk. The Better Way Alliance is advocating for federal support for a small-business-focused mortgage program to address these issues, tailored to the unique size, cash flows, and seasonality of Canada’s small businesses. Ask your candidates how they will support these proposals to create stability and fairness in the market.
How will you ensure small businesses have fair access to funding, especially for growth, expansion, and purchasing their spaces?
Access to capital is critical for entrepreneurs to expand, innovate, and adapt. Yet many small businesses—especially women-led or micro-businesses—face barriers to securing loans and mortgages. The federal government can audit and revamp funding opportunities to ensure they have specific targets and access requirements for newcomers, women, racialized, and marginalized entrepreneurs. Ask your local candidate if they support examining financing opportunities to ensure fair access for all entrepreneurs.
What is your plan to level the playing field so that big corporations can’t edge out small, locally-owned businesses?
Corporate monopolies often dominate markets, pushing small businesses out with unfair competition. This not only limits consumer choice but also stifles innovation and local job creation.
BWA is advocating for policies that curb monopolistic practices and promote transparency in commercial leasing and insurance markets. Without a change, rents & insurance will continue going up and eventually only chains and big businesses will be able to afford these high costs – meaning more main street chainification.
Ask your local candidate what policies they’ll introduce to protect Canada’s small businesses from being displaced.
How will you support retiring business owners to ensure local businesses remain open & locally owned?
Retiring business owners often struggle to transition their businesses to the next generation due to red tape and a lack of accessible financing options. Over the next decade, it’s expected that over 70% of Canadian small business owners want to retire. Instead of selling to private equity, it benefits everyone in Canada to keep these businesses locally owned. Every dollar spent at a local business gets circulated 2-4x more than that same dollar spent at a chain.
BWA’s proposed NextGen Ownership Fund aims to simplify these transitions to keep businesses local and jobs secure. Ask your local candidate how they’ll ensure retiring business owners can pass their legacies to local successors.
Canada’s government can revitalize local business assets, jobs and innovation
We believe Canada can be a leader in innovation, productivity, and good jobs – especially during a time of economic uncertainty – with a government that supports small businesses.
Quotes and Further Info
The Better Way Alliance is Canada’s only national business focused on both policy and marketplace solutions to quickly changing commercial real estate & rental markets.
The Commercial Renter Bill of Rights is a policy idea guide for provincial governments to consider while updating Commercial Tenancy Acts. Commercial renters have zero rights in negotiations, and as the commercial real estate market has consolidated, small business owners are often negotiating against multi-billion dollar companies.
The Bill of Rights offers governments a way to level the playing field and reduce red-tape between tenants and landlords.
“For Ontario’s locally owned businesses, the status quo doesn’t cut it. 2025 is survival or surrender. With trade pressures mounting, we need creative, bold policies that secure our economic future.
There’s no runway left for incremental change. Ontario’s government must adopt bold market and capital measures to secure our local business ecosystem.”
Liliana Camacho, Knowledge Director at the Better Way Alliance
“Ontario can lead the continent in innovation, productivity, and quality job creation in uncertain times. Bold political leadership will ensure an Ontario business ecosystem built to last.
We encourage Ontario’s new government to champion creative & fundamental solutions for locally owned businesses that drive Ontario’s long-term success.”
Aaron Binder, Communications Director at the Better Way Alliance