In the media

The wrecking ball that Donald Trump has taken to international trade has wounded relations between Hamilton businesses and their American suppliers and customers, reports Eugene Ellman in Hamilton City Magazine. Now, they’re looking east and west to replace traditional links to the south and pushing back. When Trump started pontificating about how Canada should become the 51st state and claiming the United States was subsidizing its northern neighbour, SCP Founder Bill Young and the team responded with Always Canada. Never 51 - part economic populism mixed with methodical policy-making, the series is devoted to the issues of wealth inequality and Canadian sovereignty.

If we allow for private equity ownership of law firms, it isn’t unreasonable to expect a similar result as we are seeing in other professions—lower quality of service and work for clients and lower job satisfaction for lawyers. In an op-ed for Bloomberg Law, SCP Fellow Rachel Wasserman of Wasserman Business Law outlines why law firms should decentralize, not consolidate, to provide good service and keep lower overhead.

We predicted that American investors would be looking to buy up Canadian businesses and assets, and that this would threaten our national security and economic sovereignty. Now Canada has to make a call on whether to kill Texas-based energy giant Sunoco's takeover of Parkland Corporation. In the Toronto Star, SCP CEO Matthew Mendelsohn and Chair Jon Shell ask: do we want to be owned by American billionaires, to work for them and have our wealth stripped away to pad bank accounts in New York and Dallas? If we really want Canada to remain ours, they argue, then we need to think and act like it.

CBC News profiles new advocacy group Patriotic Millionaires Canada who say their organization is looking for broad changes to wealth taxes and capital gains in this country. The group says it believes lower-income citizens often pay tax on much of their income, while wealthier investors can leverage dividends, investments and capital gains to change what they pay and how. Chair Claire Trottier asks: when are we going to recognize that massive growing runaway wealth inequality is a danger to democracy?"

As Trump’s mercurial tariff mandate unleashes market mayhem and geopolitical unease, Canadians have galvanized—buying local, putting the maple leaf on everything, ratcheting our elbows way up. Over the course of a dozen sessions at Public Policy Forum’s 2025 Canada Growth Summit, more than 40 speakers, including SCP's CEO Matthew Mendelsohn, put forward a series of smart, actionable ideas for how governments, businesses, policymakers and communities can work together to advance our collective fortunes.

While Canada’s policymakers try to figure out how to make the Canadian economy less vulnerable to Trump’s whims, many Canadian businesses are going to look like a good deal for American investors. A weak Canadian dollar, low interest rates and expected liquidity challenges create the conditions for an acceleration of private equity-led buyouts of Canadian firms. In ImpactAlpha, SCP's CEO Matthew Mendelsohn explains how, as Canada faces Trump’s mercurial and predatory approach to trade and economic policy, employee ownership can offer much-needed stability and resilience.

Sabrina Maddeaux and Michael Moffatt explore how the inability to afford housing not only affects individuals but also poses systemic risks to the Canadian economy and society. They delve into the implications of economic vulnerability, the talent exodus to the U.S. and the growing disconnection among younger generations, emphasizing the urgent need for a cohesive housing policy that addresses these interconnected issues to ensure a stable and resilient future for Canada.

With Canada’s sovereignty at stake, we must invest in every approach to keeping Canadian businesses in Canadian hands. If we match the U.K.'s success in incentivizing employee-ownership conversion, we would see 300 Canadian companies sold to their workers each year. SCP Chair Jon Shell and Employee Ownership Canada CEO Michael Ras explain how very few policies promise as powerful an outcome.

For Canada to build a more resilient economy, we must secure local assets, democratize the economy and ensure wealth circulates within communities rather than being extracted by distant, corporate interests. In The Conversation, SCP Fellow Audrey Jamal and Heather M. Hachigian write that a promising solution lies in community wealth building.

If Canada were to build a civil defence program on the scale of those in Sweden or Finland, the numbers would be game-changing. As MASS LBP principal Peter MacLeod lays out in The Tyee, Canadians must be prepared to defend our sovereignty and citizens have roles to play.