The Green Party of Canada is the party for small business. Small businesses employ most Canadians, and the economic impact of their success primarily remains in Canada – circulating dollars in the local economy.
Raising venture capital has become a lot more difficult since the 2008 financial market meltdown, particularly for small businesses and new technologies. The shift to a smart, lower-carbon economy requires venture capital investment in a wide range of innovative firms across Canada, including smaller firms that historically have had a much more difficult time in raising capital.
An easily-accessible and integrated system for business development and growth must be made available in cities of all sizes in Canada to create the business climate that will entice home-grown entrepreneurs to stay. This model has been very successfully applied in Sweden in the form of Technology Centres or ‘Incubators for Mutual Support and Shared Services.’ Most successful applied research and commercialization is done by small and medium-sized businesses, and these business ‘clusters’ attract new businesses seeking the direct and indirect benefits of networking and collaboration.
Green Party MPs will:
- Establish a federally-funded Green Venture Capital Fund to support viable small local green business start-ups;
- Set up a Green Venture Capital Funding Program providing matching federal funds for locally-raised venture capital up to a set limit per community;
- Reduce the paperwork burden on small businesses by eliminating duplicative tax filings and red tape. Government agencies will operate using shared information from the same database;
- Bring in legislation to require a consideration of the impact on small business of all new legislation, based on a similar law in the European parliament.