Alternative ownership

Smith School of Business at Queen's University is launching Canada's first-ever research initiative focused on deepening Canada’s knowledge and understanding of a powerful succession model that can enhance outcomes for owners, employees and communities: employee ownership. With funding support from Jon Shell, Chair of Social Capital Partners and a board member at Employee Ownership Canada, the Employee Ownership Research Initiative (EORI) will be housed in Smith’s Centre for Entrepreneurship Innovation & Social Impact (CEISI). The initiative will shape a made-in-Canada approach to employee ownership and create a multi-disciplinary network of academics, researchers, practitioners and businesses to fill gaps in relevant data, expertise and business-oriented resources to support employee-ownership activities across the country.

Blue Jays pride notwithstanding, many of Canada's most iconic companies and brands have been quietly but steadily purchased by foreign entities in recent years. As Danny Parys writes in Policy Options, policymakers should do more to keep Canadian companies in Canadian hands by providing more support to expand financing opportunities, expanding awareness of untraditional ownership models and beefing up Canada’s net-benefit review requirements. These quiet foreign sales not only lead to major frustrations for consumers, but workers also feel the impacts because, as corporate leadership moves further away from the community, so do quality and accountability.

We share the disappointment felt across Canada’s business and advisory community that Budget 2025 did not make the $10 million capital gains exemption for sales through Employee Ownership Trusts (EOTs) a permanent feature of Canada’s tax system. The current incentive, passed only in 2024 with an expiry set for December 2026, means that the business community has not had adequate time to act on this opportunity or build adequate momentum for this promising succession model. In this statement, Employee Ownership Canada responds to the Budget and reaffirms its strong commitment to working with government and partners to make the capital gains exemption permanent, ensuring employee ownership trusts remain a viable, long-term option for Canadian businesses.

There is some confusion out there about Budget 2025 and employee ownership trusts (EOTs). To confirm, the federal government did not extend the $10M capital-gains exemption for sales through EOTs, in the budget released on Tuesday, November 4, 2025. Because the sale of a business to an EOT is a process that often takes more than a year, certainty on the rules is essential for owners, advisors and employees planning succession. In this FAQ, Employee Ownership Canada answers key questions about what’s enacted now, why the incentive matters for uptake and how the sector, businesses and the organization are moving forward from the Budget news.

As companies consolidate under ever larger pools of private capital, there’s growing unease around who’s actually benefiting from corporate growth. Falice Chin writes in The Hub that it’s no coincidence, then, that voices across the political spectrum are now revisiting models of employee ownership as a potential antidote to widening wealth inequality, fading community ties and a growing distrust in capitalism itself. This deep-dive looks at how employee ownership trusts, or EOTs, could be an elegant policy remedy to a crisis of confidence in the modern economy.

Budget 2025 offers Canada a chance to make employee ownership permanent by extending tax incentives for employee ownership trusts (EOTs) and worker co-ops. In Canadian Dimension, Simon Pek, Lorin Busaan and Alex Hemingway write that doing so would boost productivity, reduce inequality and secure business succession, while keeping jobs and decision-making local. A modest investment promises significant economic and social dividends.

For what it’s like to be on the inside of an employee-owned company, we spoke to a few of the 750 employees who recently became 100-per cent owners of Taproot Community Support Services, a social services provider across B.C., Alberta and Ontario. Rewards the employees highlighted include company morale and spirit, for sure. They also include financial rewards paid out annually to each employee as dividends. Last year, each employee would have received about $1000 to $1500 on top of their salaries—and as the company succeeds over time, the employees will share financially in Taproot’s success.

At the recent Victoria Forum, community and philanthropic leaders outlined creative community finance and impact investment ideas that could mobilize big pools of private capital to invest in local businesses, social purpose organizations and community infrastructure. However, as SCP CEO Matthew Mendelsohn writes, despite the growing maturity of the social finance community, Canada still lacks the social and community financing infrastructure and policies to make this happen. With some important fixes to fragmented financing and outdated regulatory frameworks, the coming Budget could make it easier for social finance investments to properly scale and deliver the kind of outsized impact Canada needs at this time.

Neil Corbett of the Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows News reports on locally based Taproot Community Support Services making some business history in Canada. Taproot's 750 employees in B.C., Alberta Ontario will now own 100 per cent of the business, becoming the largest Employee Ownership Trust (EOT) in Canada and the first in the social services sector. Finance minister Francois-Philippe Champagne explains why this is a perfect example of what EOTs can do, calling the trusts "a powerful, timely tool that helps Canadian employees become owners of the businesses they work for, while helping entrepreneurs find the right people to carry their legacy forward."

On Sept. 2, 2025, B.C.-based Taproot community support services surprised its 750 employees with the news they will become equal owners of the company they helped build. Minister of Finance & National Revenue Francois-Philippe Champagne joined CEO Mike Fotheringham and Social Capital Partners Chair Jon Shell to celebrate the new worker-owners and Canada’s largest Employee Ownership Trust (EOT) to date. In the Globe and Mail, Meera Raman reports on Taproot's milestone and how this succession model keeps companies Canadian, keeps jobs in local communities and builds wealth for workers.