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.

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.

Canadian municipalities are experiencing growing infrastructure needs, a strain on services, and population growth, with insufficient revenue sources. The Government of Canada collects a Goods and Services Tax (GST) on property transactions that could provide municipalities with a predictable and sustainable funding source tied to growth without burdening residents or homebuyers with new taxes.

Allowing Canadian-controlled private corporations (CCPC’s) to split income would create consistency within the treatment of income taxes. It would also support the success and enhance the growth of small businesses, especially family-based businesses.

A fully integrated income tax system, as stated by the Carter Commission Report, would avoid double taxation under the corporate income tax system and the private income tax system, while ensuring that there is relative indifference between earning income through a Canadian corporation, by salary or by dividend. It would also address other distortions in Canadian taxation.

Canada’s housing crisis is a national issue, with record-high rents, historic low vacancy rates, and rapid population growth driving demand beyond supply in every region. While institutional investors have scaled up development – often with federal support – small and medium-sized businesses, the backbone of local economies, are blocked by outdated tax rules that treat rental income as passive investment, taxed at rates nearing 50% and ineligible for the Small Business Deduction. This punitive treatment discourages local investment in urgently needed rental housing.

Charitable donations in Canada are at the lowest point in 20 years. This comes at a time when many charitable organizations are facing sustainability challenges due to rising operations and overhead costs. There is an urgent need to streamline the charitable tax credit to ensure the sector’s long-term health and impact.

Canada’s housing market is at a critical juncture. Communities across the country are increasingly burdened by a severe shortage of affordable rental housing, driven in part by an underdeveloped supply of multi-unit residential properties. Currently, the prospect of another tax bill disincentivizes developers and landlords from selling existing assets and reinvesting in higher-demand, new multi-unit developments. Alternatively, there exists the potential act to encourage experienced landlords and developers by creating an exemption to the capital gains tax when explicitly reinvested and redeploy capital into eligible multi-unit projects.

Besides carrying the majority of infrastructure funding, municipalities nationwide continue to face pressures surrounding a myriad of issues including housing affordability, homelessness, transit, and public safety. These are issues that affect the lives of residents and business owners, yet the financial resources and legislative abilities provided to municipalities to find local solutions receive limited support. A formal review is needed with all ‘partners’ to find a way to create a fairer distribution plan to ensure the needs of Canadians are met through local solutions that can promote business confidence and economic prosperity.

At a time when affordability and the cost of living are top of mind for many families in Canada, it’s important to look at which household expenses are costing Canadian families the most. According to a recent study, taxes are the largest single expenditure for the average family, even bigger than expenditures on basic necessities. According to almost every indicator including economic growth, business investment, entrepreneurship, and the employment and unemployment rates, Canada’s private sector is struggling, negatively impacting the economic wellbeing all families.