Our Work
Over the past thirty years, most of the benefits of economic growth have gone to the wealthy. We want to help fix that with ideas and policies that create more opportunities for working people to build wealth and own assets.
The Ownership Solution
This special series features policy solutions that help more workers and communities profit from the value they create. We can redesign how our economy is owned so more Canadians benefit.
How Canada can curb the serial acquisitions quietly reshaping our economy
In many cases, threats to the affordability of everyday goods and services are the byproduct of what competition experts call serial acquisitions—a pattern of larger firms buying up a series of smaller players to try and corner the market. As Michelle Arnold and Kiran Gill explain, a fair and competitive economy does not emerge by accident. The Competition Bureau's proposed Merger Enforcement Guidelines will play an important role in preventing bigger firms from creating unfair playing fields that hurt Canadian small businesses, workers and consumers. The next step for the bureau should be aggressive enforcement of the new guidelines.
Sign the open letter | Make the Employee Ownership Trust incentive permanent
Employee Ownership Trusts (EOTs) offer a practical succession pathway that keeps businesses Canadian-owned, empowers employees to share in the value they help create and supports long-term investment in our communities. With the right policy support, employee ownership can be a strong, proven path forward for Canada’s economy. If this is something you support too, you are invited to read and sign Employee Ownership Canada’s national open letter.
Watch the video: Are foreign takeovers good for Canada’s economy?
We all want more investment in Canada's economy. But as SCP Chair Jon Shell explains in this video, when it comes to foreign investment in the Canadian economy, or FDI, we have to ask: is it investment that builds? Or investment that buys? Because these are two very different things.
Four reasons our economy needs employee ownership now
Employee ownership offers a timely solution to some of Canada’s most pressing economic challenges, writes Deborah Aarts in Smith Business Insight. Evidence shows that when employees share ownership, businesses become more productive, innovative and resilient. Plus, beyond firm-level gains, employee ownership can help address the coming mass retirement of business owners, protect local economic sovereignty, boost national productivity and reduce wealth inequality. There is enough data about the brass-tacks benefits of employee ownership to sway even the most hardened skeptic.
The Latest
From Guidelines to Action: Feedback on the Proposed Merger Enforcement Guidelines
The Competition Bureau's proposed Merger Enforcement Guidelines represent meaningful progress against trends towards corporate consolidation in Canada. In our formal feedback submission to the bureau, Social Capital Partners outlines that we strongly support the new guidelines. However, we believe that the operationalization of these guidelines will be the real test of their impact. Guidance documents shape expectations, but enforcement outcomes shape behaviour. Serial acquirers are sophisticated actors who model regulatory risk into their strategies. To succeed, the bureau must demonstrate visible capacity to track, analyze and challenge roll-up patterns that are driving up prices and sacrificing quality and service in key sectors.
A youth employment supplement could rebalance Canada’s generational divide | Policy Options
Canada is overdue for a broader debate on intergenerational fairness and how our taxes and benefits support—and exclude—different age groups. As Kiran Gill and Matthew Mendelsohn explain in Policy Options, we continue to live with programs designed by baby boomers to provide security to seniors, even if those seniors are well off. Meanwhile, young adults in our country face challenges entering the labour market, securing stable employment and saving to build some measure of economic security in the face of rising costs. They propose a policy designed to make the economy work for younger Canadians—a youth supplement to the existing Canada Workers Benefit. This youth employment supplement—aptly coined a YES!—could help rebuild financial security and allow younger adults to buy homes, finance education for themselves or their children and save for the future.
Mark Carney’s Davos speech is a manifesto for the world’s middle powers
Mark Carney's recent speech at Davos matters because it treats this moment as a rupture, not a passing disruption. It’s in this rethink, write Matthew Mendelsohn and Jon Shell, that there is also relief: “From the fracture, we can build something better, stronger and more just,” Carney said. “This is the task of the middle powers.” The world's middle powers are not powerless, but we have been acting as if we are, living within the lie of mutual benefit with our outsized and increasingly erratic neighbour. Without the U.S., the world's middle-power democracies are rich, powerful and principled enough that we can unite to advance human well-being, prosperity and progress.
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