Budget 2026 is a Builder Budget

_Ottawa, November 5, 2026_ — Build Canada welcomes Budget 2026 as the first federal budget in over a decade to recognize and reward entrepreneurship as a key driver of economic growth. The government has adopted the core elements of tax reforms widely recommended by builders and entrepreneurs across Canada, while also beginning to take measures to improve competitiveness and government efficiency. "This budget changes the math for founders and early employees," said Lucy Hargreaves, Co-Founder and CEO of Build Canada. "A Canadian who sells a company and starts the next one now has more reason to do it here. That is how a country creates a strong innovation ecosystem and gets a generation of repeat builders to stay and build here." ### What we welcome Measures to incentivize and reward entrepreneurship, including: * The Canada Growth Incentive, a new tax exemption on up to $15 million in capital gains earned from successful eligible investments for Canadian builders. * The enhancement of the small business rollover to allow increased deferral of taxes on capital gains when proceeds are reinvested in another Canadian small business. * The expansion of the SR&ED tax incentive program to include certain commercialisation expenses. Measures to increase competition, including: * The Cabinet Directive on Regulatory Competitiveness and Red Tape Reduction. * Efforts to make it easier for consumers to switch providers by expanding data portability rights to additional sectors, including telecommunications and air transportation. * Strengthening Competition Bureau investigations. Measures to improve government efficiency, including: * The establishment of Digital Transformation Canada to lead the adoption of AI across the public service. * The establishment of a Fellowship Program through Build Canada Exchange to recruit outside expertise to support priority projects. * The Cabinet Directive on Regulatory Competitiveness and Red Tape Reduction to put Canada’s long-term competitiveness at the centre of how federal regulation is developed. * Efforts to streamline the delivery of federal financing. ### What still needs work *Public debt.* The budget projects a deficit of $65.3 billion for FY 2026-27 and debt-to-GDP of 39.9% rising to 40.1% by 2030-31. Public debt charges are $60.2 billion for FY 2026-27 and will reach $85.5 billion by 2030-31 — more than Ottawa will spend on the Canada Health Transfer and the fastest growing budget line item. While some may argue there is fiscal room to absorb this, long term interest rates are unpredictable and our fiscal position would be more resilient with a reduced deficit. *Old Age Security reform.* OAS costs are projected at $89.4 billion this year and still leaves 400,000 seniors in poverty. Moving the recovery threshold to $100,000 of household income would save $15-16 billion a year and end seniors' poverty with $2 billion of it. The budget leaves this untouched. *More aggressive tax reform.* A comprehensive review of the tax system is needed to further identify ways to simplify our tax code for individuals and businesses. ## Quotes from Builders "Every great Canadian company started with someone deciding to take a risk here instead of somewhere else. For too long we made that decision harder than it needed to be. Today's budget says, clearly, that if you build something in Canada and win, you keep what you earned and you can put it right back into the next Canadian company. That is how you create a culture of builders, not just a handful of success stories. The founders in Waterloo, Montréal, Calgary and Halifax now have one less reason to leave and one more reason to go bigger. Canada just told its entrepreneurs it is betting on them. Let's prove it right." _Harley Finkelstein, President of Shopify_ "Canada's competition problem has been a grave shortage of new entrants in all protected sectors. This budget treats competition as a government default rather than a sector file: a competition objective for OSFI, a one-year path to a bank licence, data portability in telecom and air travel, and a Competition Bureau that can actually get information from the rest of government. The test of whether our competition policy works now is simple: can a new telecom carrier, a new bank or a new airline get in and scale?" _Brice Scheschuk, Managing Partner, Globalive_ "Capital goes where the after-tax return is best. For twenty years that meant a Canadian angel or founder got a worse deal backing a company in Vancouver than an American got backing one in Seattle. Today that gap closes. A $15 million exemption for anyone who puts cash into an early-stage Canadian company, and a rollover that lets you move an exit into the next startup without losing years to tax, change the math on every seed round in the country. This is the right kind of policy. It does not pick winners. It makes the private investor want to." _Boris Wertz, Founding Partner, Version One Ventures_ _Build Canada is a non-partisan civic organization that publishes bold, actionable policy ideas for a strong economy and builds tools that helps Canadians understand government. Published memos can be found here: buildcanada.com/memos._ Media contact: Zander Fraser, [email protected]