Canada’s food system faces growing threats from climate change, supply chain disruptions, labour shortages, and global tensions. Despite these critical challenges, there’s no single national strategy that prioritizes food security as it truly should be: an essential service fundamental to the health, economic stability, and overall well-being of all Canadians, much like universal healthcare or access to clean water and reliable electricity. Recognizing food security as such a vital pillar of our society is crucial to ensure every Canadian has consistent access to safe and nutritious food.

Recent decisions by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) to reduce funding and restrict scope for Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) based on assumptions of declining immigration are shortsighted, given evidence that immigration levels are persisting, labour shortages remain high in many regions, and that language-training is a settlement service needed well after just the year of arrival for newcomers. LINC, particularly its higher level classes, is vital in helping newcomers develop job-ready language and changes that shift focus away from employment outcomes undermine newcomers’ ability to participate in the workforce and contribute to Canada’s economy.

Canada has several thousand kilometres of coastline along which communities are located. For example, the Fraser River and other rivers flow through BC communities that are vulnerable to flooding. Floods from rivers and oceans could destroy or affect residential, commercial, industrial, and agricultural properties as well as affect transportation means (roads, highways, bridges) and cause widespread disruption to day-to-day living requiring significant expenditure to restore areas back to pre-flood conditions.

The damage to the economy and businesses due to floods are significant, in the hundreds of million dollars.

Canada’s long-term prosperity hinges on the expansion of its industrial base. However, municipalities face mounting challenges in funding the infrastructure needed to support job-creating development. Municipalities require predictable revenue to fund growth-related infrastructure without resorting to unsustainable tax-funded exemptions. Industrial developers deserve access to flexible cost recovery mechanisms just as residential developers now do under recent legislative changes.

Access to mortgage financing remains a significant barrier for Canada’s 2.9 million self-employed individuals, freelancers, gig workers, and small business owners. Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), while instrumental in supporting aspiring homeowners, maintains underwriting criteria that heavily favour traditional salaried employment and T4 income. These criteria systematically exclude a growing portion of the Canadian workforce whose income is structured through dividends, retained earnings, or variable self-employed earnings. This creates inequity in housing access, stifles entrepreneurship, and limits regional development opportunities, particularly in rural communities.

Despite strong trade volumes, Canada lacks a formal policy guiding our economic and diplomatic engagement with China. The absence of such a framework has left Canadian businesses exposed to retaliatory measures, regulatory uncertainty, and missed strategic opportunities. A structured approach is urgently needed to guide trade, manage risks, and support long-term economic development.

Global supply chain disruptions continue to impact businesses and consumers worldwide. While trade and e-commerce have stabilized since the post-pandemic surge, new challenges – such as geopolitical instability, climate-related events, and labour shortages – cause persistent delays across critical sectors. Canadian businesses face mounting pressure to manage these disruptions while maintaining service and cost expectations. These issues are compounded by underinvestment in technologies that provide real-time visibility into supply chain operations, and in contingency planning strategies. Strengthening these areas is essential to ensuring Canada’s long-term economic competitiveness and ability to respond to future crises.

Canada’s economic growth is being held back by persistent labour shortages, demographic pressures, and skills mismatches. Employers across key sectors face growing difficulty finding qualified workers, especially in rural and remote regions. As retirements accelerate, immigration remains essential to sustaining the labour market and boosting productivity. Recent federal measures like placing a cap on international student enrolment and a reduction in temporary residents aim to address housing concerns but risk worsening workforce gaps. A proactive strategy is needed to align immigration, credential recognition, and workforce development with Canada’s real-time labour market needs.

Canada’s economic future depends on its ability to move energy reliably and efficiently across regions and to global markets. This resolution calls on the Government of Canada to collaborate with provinces, territories, and Indigenous partners to establish a nation-building, Pan-Canadian energy corridor. Such a corridor would connect producers to tidewater, enable clean energy transfers across provincial grids, and ensure strategic infrastructure investments like dredging and intertie restoration are nationally prioritized.

The Office of the Procurement Ombud (OPO) has a mission to promote fairness, openness and transparency in federal procurement. In their most recent annual report, the OPO outlined multiple concerns with government procurement processes in Canada, such as overly complex processes, restrictive evaluation criteria, and a lack of transparency, debriefs and documentation {1}. These issues hinder the competitiveness of the procurement process, create barriers for businesses, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and reduce public trust in how taxpayer dollars are spent. Addressing these challenges is essential to ensure a fair, efficient, and transparent procurement process that supports a diverse range of suppliers.