Three ways Ottawa can build community resilience
Recently the first Canada Investment Summit put 167 projects before global investors and set a target of $1 trillion in new capital over five years. The pitch was for pipelines, mines, ports and data centres: large projects seeking big cheques. It is the right ambition for a country whose most important trading relationship has been put in a blender.
It is also incomplete.
A sovereign economy is not only built through national megaprojects. It is built through tens of thousands of businesses, non-profits and projects across the country. Sovereignty is who owns ‘Main Street’ – those small local independent and family-owned businesses – whether communities can house their workers and whether the wealth generated in Canadian communities stays in Canadian hands.
Following the Summit, nearly 500 people from over 300 organizations sent an open letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney. Catholic nuns and Islamic charities signed it. So did the chair of one of Canada’s largest credit unions, foundation and university executives, a pension plan director, Indigenous organizations, land trusts, students and retirees. The signatories come from Estevan and Edmonton, Victoria and Victoriaville, Yellowknife and St. John’s. Together, they represent more than $235 billion in assets.
People across geographies, generations and sectors spoke with one voice: build community resilience into Budget 2026.
Community resilience must be experienced by Canadians on their own streets, in their towns, cities and regions. It means homes people can afford, sustainable and sovereign food systems, healthy natural systems, Indigenous sovereignty and economic self-determination, racial and gender equity in economic life and resilient local economies with good jobs.
Canada does not lack capital. We hold some of the largest pools in the world including trillions in pension funds, bank balance sheets and endowments. Nor do we lack the institutions to move it. More than 700 community finance organizations, from loan funds to land trusts to Indigenous financial institutions, already hold billions and deploy it locally through lending and investment.
What Canada lacks is the policy architecture to get capital where it is needed.
Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) received just 11.5 per cent of outstanding business loans in 2024, against an OECD average of 44 per cent. There is no federal legislation recognizing community finance institutions, no local capital strategy and only a patchwork of tax incentives.
Policy builds markets. We even have a home-grown example. Quebec deploys billions into communities because of its enabling policy for community finance, from tax credits for Fondaction to framework legislation.
What can the federal government do to drive community resilience? There are three core pillars:
First, create a $3 billion Community Resilience Fund to capitalize community finance institutions and finance impact at scale.
Second, enact guarantees, tax credits and regulatory changes to unlock private, philanthropic and retail capital and give Canadians pathways to invest locally.
Third, pass legislation giving community finance institutions a statutory definition and accreditation, and making community resilience a national priority.
The package for this trio of initiatives would cost roughly $3.2 billion over four years and would mobilize up to $15 billion in investment and public savings.
It’s a good investment for Canada in terms of jobs, growth, leverage and impact. Every $10 million invested supports roughly 158 jobs and returns more than a dollar in GDP per dollar spent. A $50 million a year tax incentive could mobilize hundreds of millions more. Community-financed housing, for example, can avoid billions in public costs.
None of this requires the government to finance everything itself.
Co-financing, guarantees and tax credits multiply public dollars, which is what our federal government strategy seeks for megaprojects. The same logic applies to a Scarborough housing project, a St. John’s storefront or a First Nations forestry business in B.C.
Community resilience is the outcome. Community finance is the mechanism. Economic sovereignty makes both a national priority.
The Summit showed Canada can convene global capital. Budget 2026 should put our own capital to work in our own communities. The nuns, bankers, foundations and community leaders are ready. So is Main Street.
Photo courtesy of Eurasia Group, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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