Policy Matters: Co-creating Canada’s Economic Future

April 14, 2026

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Despite the title of this series, Policy Matters, we won’t be focusing on federal policy in this edition. Instead, we’ll be focusing on the other half of the equation: Business agency.

While a significant part of what we do at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce is make policy recommendations to government and advocate on behalf of business at the federal level, we also help businesses exercise their own agency. Yes, there’s a lot the government should do. There’s also a lot business can do. The private and public sectors are co-creators and shared stakeholders in Canada’s economic success and a better life for all.

Business and a better life for all

First, we think it’s important to explain the connection between business and a better life for all. The connection between business and economy is easy enough to understand — businesses contribute to GDP. They provide jobs. They sell us the products and services we want and need for everyday life.

What’s less easy to see is the connection between business and community. However, the stable quality of life so many of us enjoy is thanks to the risk comparatively few entrepreneurs have taken. Canadians may not intuitively see business growth as something positive, but in addition to our jobs depending on a thriving and growing business community, the social programs and services we value also rely on the public revenues generated by the private sector.

For every $1 in GDP, the federal government collects about $0.16 in revenue. Since every dollar of government spending started as a business or personal tax dollar, when businesses grow and contribute more, the government’s spending power goes up.

The positive influence of business on Canadians’ lives extends beyond jobs and GDP. Businesses contribute to well-being, health and prosperity through activities such as scholarships, employer-funded benefits and health plans, and the sponsorship of local events and teams.

To us, it makes sense that taking care of the business community and taking care of Canadians goes hand in hand. Business success is a force for societal good. It lifts us all up.

Leaning into business agency

Business leadership matters — and given the events of the past year, it matters more than ever. In this uncertain environment, it is easy to see how the decision business leaders make either take our society and our economy in the right direction or the wrong one.

The opportunities we say yes to, the challenges we overcome, and the new thinking we try as business leaders and the chambers that support them will make Canada a better place to live, our national business community stronger, and our communities happier and healthier.

This is the thinking governing our new event, the Future of Business Summit, happening April 20–21 in Ottawa.

The Future of Business Summit

Through our Canadian Chamber Network, which spans businesses of all sizes and sectors, 400 chambers of commerce and boards of trade and more than 100 trade associations and government partners, the Canadian Chamber has access and insights into every part of Canada, giving us a convening power no other organization can boast.

This convening superpower has allowed us to bring in speakers from business, government, labour and civil society and to put together an event agenda that will help answer some of the monumental questions facing Canada:

• As geopolitical tensions reshape our alliances, what is Canada’s place in the world?
• Can we find common ground on internal trade before another year slips by?
• Can we turn defence spending into lasting industrial strength?
• How do we give businesses the certainty they need to build the transportation, energy and trade infrastructure economic growth desperately requires?
• Will Canadian businesses adopt artificial intelligence at the scale required to solve our productivity challenge?
• What is the connection between trust brokering and a resilient economy? 
• How do we empower Indigenous entrepreneurs and achieve true economic Reconciliation?
• What does Canada’s changing demography mean for economic growth, competitiveness, and long-term prosperity?
• How do we deliver an Arctic strategy that will unlock the economic potential of Canada’s North?
• How do we close Canada’s productivity gap?

The Summit is designed as a working forum, geared to tackle the needs of the economically turbulent time Canada is in and move us from diagnosing our challenges to developing practical, business-driven solutions and coordinated action.

It will take all of us, working together, to create a better life for all Canadians.