Special Series: Always Canada. Never 51.

A combination of rising U.S. tariffs, a weakening Canadian dollar and a generation of business owners nearing retirement has created the perfect storm for a wave of foreign takeovers. SCP's Michelle Arnold, Futurpreneur's Karen Greve Young and Venture for Canada's Scott Stirrett on how a few targeted policy changes could enable aspiring entrepreneurs to buy existing businesses, keeping jobs and ownership local while injecting fresh energy into our Canadian economy.

From fighter jets to TikTok, nothing is off the table when Canadians talk about how best to counter Trump's economic assault on Canada. SCP brings you some creative, crowdsourced policy ideas gathered by our Chair Jon Shell on a recent LinkedIn post. More evidence that new voices entering the policy discussion will help us get through the current crisis and emerge in a more hopeful place.

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.

Today, Canada’s main streets are more likely to feature American chains and less likely to be locally owned. We already face economic assault from the south—SCP's CEO Matthew Mendelsohn and Fellow Rachel Wasserman on why we cannot accept unchecked serial acquisitions as a tactic in this economic war against us and what we can do about it.

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.

Despite the fact that governments, business leaders, workers and Canadians all say they want to be less economically vulnerable, there is a real risk that, two years from now, even more of our businesses and assets will be owned by U.S. investors. SCP's CEO Matthew Mendelsohn and Chair Jon Shell propose four ideas to prevent American finance from gobbling up the Canadian economy.

Trump’s tariff threats have opened the door for economic thinking that pushes Canada way past business as usual. In Policy Options, Executive Director of the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project Keldon Bester argues that, from airlines to banks, fixing Canada’s competition problem starts with smarter domestic reforms.

Canada’s value proposition aligns with the values most Canadians hold, even if we execute on them imperfectly: diversity, inclusion, freedom, equality, democracy, respect and reconciliation. SCP's CEO, Matthew Mendelsohn, on why he would rather invest in a country that strives to uphold those values and build an inclusive, democratic capitalist system than invest in the uncertain, volatile mess that is the United States right now.

Foundations in Canada, both private and community, hold hundreds of billions of dollars in their endowments. Our CEO, Matthew Mendelsohn, lays out how endowments held by our universities, colleges, hospitals and other public-purpose institutions, including our philanthropic foundations and those who manage our donor advised funds, need to reorient their investment practices to meet this moment.

Under economic threat from the Trump administration, Social Capital Partners launches a Special Series of policy ideas that support Canadian economic sovereignty, advance ownership for Canadians and reduce dependence on the U.S. Our CEO, Matthew Mendelsohn, explains how we need to seize this opportunity to advance the interests of workers, small businesses, the economically vulnerable and young Canadians who have known for a long time that our economy is not working well for them.

When U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to launch a full-blown trade war with its closest ally, many Canadians felt as if their best friend had suddenly turned around and stabbed them in the back. The Star spoke with economists, academics and other experts, including SCP CEO Matthew Mendelsohn, about how the country should best navigate this new era of Trump's isolationism, and found there are realistic steps we can take to reduce our dependence on the States.

Canadians are more vulnerable to Trump’s economic warfare today because our housing system is in crisis and has left many Canadians without affordable places to live. Some of our own bad policy choices have put us in this position of vulnerability. We've got three housing policy ideas we want the team at Missing Middle to look into.

Living next to a superpower run by oligarchs is not where we expected to be 20 years ago, says Matthew Mendelsohn. But it’s where we are. Pretending otherwise doesn’t serve our interests. Canada is big enough, powerful enough, smart enough and rich enough to build a stronger, more independent economy if we start now.