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.
Watch the video: EOTs in Canada – a new succession option for business owners with Jon Shell
In this episode of the Moolala: Money Made Simple podcast, Jon Shell joins Bruce Sellery to explain how employee ownership trusts (EOTs) work and why they could reshape business ownership in Canada. They discuss what employee ownership means and how it works, the purpose of the new Employee Ownership Research Initiative, current research gaps around employee-owned businesses and how employee ownership has evolved in Canada in recent years. The conversation explores how employee ownership could support business succession, strengthen workplaces and create new pathways for shared prosperity.
Watch the video: Why would a company sell to its employees?
Canada is facing a $2-trillion business handoff. What if employees owned more of it? In this video, our Director of Policy Dan Skilleter explains why a company would sell to its own employees, how it happens and who stands to benefits. Spoiler alert: employee-owned companies are shown to be 8-12% more productive, share more wealth with their workers, keep businesses Canadian-owned and shore up the resilience of local communities and the broader economy.
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.
Advocates urge Ottawa to extend ‘no-brainer’ tax incentive for employee ownership | CTV News
The federal government first proposed tax changes to facilitate employee ownership trusts in 2023. One of the key measures included in the fall economic statement that year offers a $10-million capital gains tax exemption to owners who sell their companies to their employees through the trust mechanism. But, as CP's Craig Lord writes, that exemption was only planned for three years and is set to expire at the end of 2026, unless the federal government moves to extend the measure. Advocates for employee ownership trusts say letting the tax exemption expire would undercut the model before it’s given a chance to shine.
The Latest
A housing boom isn’t a win for wealth equality and here’s why
Canada's wealth gap appeared to narrow between 2019 and 2023 and we set out to make sense of this. SCP's Director of Policy Dan Skilleter, the lead author on our 2024 Billionaire Blindspot report, connected with sector colleagues working on wealth concentration and dug into all the best available data. What he found was that the dip was largely a mirage, driven by a pandemic housing boom that temporarily inflated the one asset ordinary Canadians hold: their home. Meanwhile, these soaring prices locked out an entire generation from building wealth altogether.
A Conservative case for Community Benefits Agreements?
When a developer builds a new bridge or transit line, a Community Benefits Agreement ensures the project will also benefit the people living nearby. In Canada, CBAs have long been seen as a progressive policy tool. But what if Conservatives embraced them too, just with different priorities? In this piece, SCP's Director of Policy Dan Skilleter explores how Conservative governments might champion their own vision for CBAs and what that means for advocates on the left. The lesson: if you want good social outcomes from big projects, stop letting perfect be the enemy of the good.
Watch the video: The risks and benefits of opening up private markets to everyday investors
The Ontario Securities Commission wants to give retail investors access to private markets. But as Rachel Wasserman tells BNN Bloomberg, when you look closely, it starts to look less like democratization and more like offloading risk onto people with the least power to absorb it. Private equity is already underperforming and PE's biggest historical champions are quietly reducing their exposure. This proposal to offer retail investors access to PE stands to benefit the asset managers and intermediaries, with everyday investors bearing the costs and risks.
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