Watch the video: New ideas for a democratic economy | DemocracyXChange 2025

Canada can’t become a sovereign country by doing the same old things, explains a new compendium of essays co-sponsored by the CCPA, the Centre for Future Work and several national civil society organizations. Elbows Up: A Practical Program for Canadian Sovereignty is a response to corporate rallying cries responding to Donald Trump with a familiar playbook: deregulation, austerity, tax cuts and fossil fuel expansion. The collection includes contributions from 20 progressive economists and policy experts, including SCP CEO Matthew Mendelsohn and others who participated in the Elbows Up Economic Summit held in September 2025 in Ottawa.

Smart investments in natural resources and AI alone will not get us through this moment of geopolitical rupture. As Matthew Mendelsohn writes in an op-ed for The Hill Times, SMEs contribute just over half of Canada’s GDP and employ 64 per cent of our people. We have to make more low-cost capital available to the smaller businesses, locally owned enterprises, not-for-profits and social enterprises who crucially employ and reinvest locally, act as important local economic infrastructure and provide services that are crucial for well-being. They are automatic stabilizers in the face of tariff threats outside our control.

Mainstream, or “neoclassical,” economics still dominates how we teach, study and understand our economy, even though much of it doesn’t match reality. In this piece, economists Louis-Philippe Rochon and Guillaume Vallet explain why outdated economic ideas persist and how they can lead to harmful policies. They challenge five common myths about inflation, growth and inequality, showing that today’s economy is driven more by power and institutions than by perfect markets. As "heterodox" economists, they argue it's time for a new kind of economics that reflects how the real world actually works.