Canada is a nation of builders – it’s time to build businesses.
America is trying to fundamentally restructure its economy and is destabilizing the global economy as collateral damage. This crisis poses an enormous risk to businesses in Canada and it requires a steady hand to manage the uncertainty. Mark Carney has a plan to help our economy withstand this uncertainty and attract investment and capital to Canada.
Businesses in Canada need to be able to excel, to rapidly scale, to grow, and to draw in global talent and investment. Yet business investment in Canada has dropped from 14% of GDP in 2014 to 11% in 2024, undermining long-term economic growth and workers’ wages.
A change of course is desperately needed.
As one of his first acts as Prime Minister, Mark Carney announced that Canada will cancel the proposed hike in the capital gains inclusion rate, because we recognize the vital role that builders, investors, and small businesses play in creating a strong economy.
Entrepreneurs and risk takers need clear incentives to take risks during this crisis. And we need to increase our productivity so that Canadians can have better, higher paying jobs. To be the strongest economy in the G7 we need to foster economic dynamism and, like other leading economies, bet on winners.
Helping Builders Build
America is attempting to weaken our economy—to attract investors away from Canadian innovators and companies. A Mark Carney government won’t let that happen.
It’s time to be ambitious, to invest in high-potential companies, to make sure that Canada is where the best and the brightest want to be.
Canada creates the greatest innovators and entrepreneurs there are, but too many of them have been drawn away from Canada. Great ideas and innovations that are born and nurtured in our educational institutions, companies, and economy should stay here, grow here, and create jobs here – not move to the U.S.
A Mark Carney-led government will:
- Reduce the cost of investment for Canadian companies and make sure they are internationally competitive by extending immediate expensing for manufacturing or processing machinery and equipment, clean energy generation, energy conservation equipment, and zero-emission vehicles, as well as the Accelerated Investment Incentive.
- Drive increased private sector investment in research and development by increasing, to $6 million, the claimable amount under the Scientific Research and Experimental Development Tax Incentive Program (SR&ED) for Canadian companies, along with other reforms, to drive economic growth for small and medium-sized businesses. This program will help Canadian companies stay on the cutting edge, build in Canada, and stay ahead of foreign competitors.
- Invest in our homegrown startups by recapitalizing the Venture Capital Catalyst Initiative (VCCI) by $1 billion. Combined with Mark Carney’s previously announced reversal of the capital gains hike, this will encourage Canadian capital funds to take risks and invest in promising companies. It’s about fueling our startup ecosystem, commercializing Canadian science, and betting on our own companies. This will include a defence-specific stream to catalyze our early-stage defence companies.
- Incentivize investment in innovation, especially in Canada’s startups, to help them grow and scale by introducing flow-through shares to our Canadian startup ecosystem, supporting companies in AI, quantum computing, biotech, and advanced manufacturing to raise money faster. This works by allowing companies to issue new shares that allow investors to deduct eligible R&D expenses directly from their taxable income, lowering the risk of investing in innovative Canadian companies. This builds off the successful model that has drawn investment into Canada’s world-leading mining sector and will help our startups to scale up and be the best in the world.
- Bring IP back to Canada and attract talent by creating a Canada Patent Box that will reward builders who locate or stay in Canada. This will encourage more businesses to grow at home and create jobs here. This will reverse the flow of made-in-Canada ideas to the U.S., ending the trend of subsidizing the U.S. economy with Canadian-grown ideas.
- Make the Black Entrepreneurship Program permanent and provide ongoing funding to support Black-owned businesses. The more entrepreneurs with good ideas that are supported, the more resilient and sustainable our growth will be. Supporting Canadian businesses from every community is how we build Canada strong.
- Secure the Canadian advantage in strategic industries like biomanufacturing, quantum computing, and ag-tech. These industries protect our sovereignty and security—from being able to make our own vaccines and medicines, to protecting our security, to ensuring food security. These industries will keep us sovereign, set Canada up to lead in the economy of the future, and create high paying jobs.
- Invest in the Women’s Economic and Leadership Opportunities Fund [more].
Catalyzing Private Investment to Make Canada More Competitive
It is estimated that:
- Extensions to immediate expensing and the Accelerated Investment Incentive will support nearly $90 billion in private investment over the next five years.
- Enhancements to the SR&ED program will support over $11 billion in private R&D over the next five years.
The Economy of the Future
To grow the strongest economy in the G7, Canada needs to build a modern, tech-enabled economy. Making sure Canada takes advantage of the opportunities presented by Artificial Intelligence (AI) is critical for our competitiveness as the global economy shifts – and for making sure we have a government that actually works.
Canada is where some of the most important developments in AI happened. We used to lead the world but have fallen behind in important ways. Artificial Intelligence is the key to unlocking productivity, higher paying jobs, and new prosperity that will benefit everyone. AI reduces the repetitive tasks workers have to do so they can focus on other more valuable aspects of their jobs, including for workers in the public service. AI can lead to advances that make our companies more competitive, especially our small and medium-sized businesses.
We will be relentless in looking for ways to make government more efficient. The potential of AI to improve services and delivery must be included in that work. In 2025, a modern, industrialized economy must integrate these technologies—it is how government improves service delivery, it is how government keeps up with the speed of business, and it is how government maximizes efficiency and reduces cost.
All this adds up to higher productivity, which is about more prosperity for Canada’s middle class.
A Mark Carney-led government will:
- Build AI infrastructure by:
- Investing in nation-building energy infrastructure and cutting red tape to make Canada the best place in the world to build data centres. Canada must have the capacity to deploy the AI of the future and ensure we have technological sovereignty.
- Building the next generation of data centres quickly and efficiently by leveraging federal funding and partnering with the private sector to secure Canada’s technological advantage.
- Invest in AI training, adoption, and commercialization by:
- Measuring growth by tracking the economic impacts of AI in real-time – not just occasionally – so we can proactively help Canadians seize new opportunities, boost productivity, and ensure no one is left behind.
- Boosting adoption with a new AI deployment tax credit for small and medium-sized businesses that incentivizes businesses to leverage AI to boost their bottom lines, create jobs, and support existing employees. Companies would leverage a 20% credit on qualifying AI adoption projects, as long as they can demonstrate that they are increasing jobs.
- Catalyze commercialization by expanding successful programs at Canada’s AI institutes (Mila, Vector, Amii) so that we can connect more Canadian researchers and startups with businesses across the country, which will supercharge adoption of Canadian innovation in businesses, create jobs, and strengthen our AI ecosystem.
- Improve AI procurement by:
- Establishing a dedicated Office of Digital Transformation at the centre of government to proactively identify, implement, and scale technology solutions and eliminate duplicative and redundant red tape. This will enhance public service delivery for all Canadians and reduce barriers for businesses to operate in Canada, which will grow our economy. This is about fundamentally transforming how Canadians interact with their government, ensuring timely, accessible, and high-quality services that meet Canadians’ needs.
- Enabling the Office of Digital Transformation to centralize innovative procurement and take a whole-of-government approach to service delivery improvement. This could mean using AI to address government service backlogs and improve service delivery times, so that Canadians get better services, faster.
Championing Science and Research
Researchers, scientists, and leading thinkers are under attack around the world. Idealogues are attacking their work, undermining evidence-based research and scientific frontiers, and attacking rights to freedom of expression and freedom of thought. Discoveries made by scientists and researchers have the potential to seed massive companies and new jobs. The current U.S. administration has had a chilling effect on research, including in high-demand fields like STEM, and many of those affected are Canadians. For too long, Canadian-trained researchers have gone elsewhere to pursue their careers and build their businesses, many to the U.S.
Canadian expertise can solve the world’s biggest problems; it’s time to strengthen our science and research community so homegrown discoveries can benefit our workers and build a strong economy for Canada.
A Mark Carney-led government will:
- Attract leading researchers to Canadian institutions by creating the Canadian Sovereignty and Resilience Research Fund. If the U.S. cuts a researcher’s project funding, we will work with the Canadian research ecosystem if projects can directly help Canadians or be commercialized here. Where the U.S. is squeezing out researchers, we will look to welcome research here in Canada. Eligible researchers could include professors and graduate students. More researchers at home will help us solve Canadian problems, and export more Canadian solutions to the global marketplace.
- Finalize Canada’s modernization of science and research, through the creation of a capstone organization that will ensure the federal granting agencies are driving mission-driven research that brings Canadian expertise to big global challenges and effectively commercializes homegrown ideas.
- Enable the fuller inclusion of people with disabilities in academic, social, and professional life by requiring Canadian publishers to provide an accessible copy of all e-books produced or released in Canada by 2030.
