The Toronto Region Board of Trade today responded to the tabling of the federal government's 2026 Spring Economic Update, welcoming its continued shift away from a decades-long bias in favour of consumption spending to growing the country’s productive capacity. We also call for bolder action to unlock the conditions that unleash private capital.
This government continues to move spending in the right direction. Money is flowing into economy-building projects: ports, municipal infrastructure, transit, energy, and other critical areas that have received too little investment for too long. That's certainly one part of addressing our productivity crisis.
The other big need — creating the globally competitive tax and regulatory environment that unleashes a wave of private investment — is where the same urgency is required. With a majority government, and tariffs and trade uncertainty reshaping our economic landscape in real time, now is the time to turn investors’ heads and reframe Canada’s international image on our regulatory and tax environment.
Giles Gherson – President & CEO, Toronto Region Board of Trade
Productive Investment in the Right Direction
The Board welcomes the federal government's continued commitment to nation-building infrastructure and to the municipal investments that make our regions attractive — transit, housing-enabling infrastructure, energy expansion, trade corridors. These are the foundations of a competitive economy, and the government's willingness to commit capital at scale to projects that actually build productive capacity is the right answer to a decade of consumption-heavy spending that moved the productivity needle in the wrong direction.
Building new infrastructure requires the workers to do it, and the new Team Canada Strong initiative supports this. The existing apprenticeship system suffers from significant leakage, with low completion rates hurting our ability to develop a robust pipeline of skilled trades workers. Recruiting, training, and hiring up to 100,000 new skilled trades workers by 2030-31 through a redesigned apprenticeship grant and wage subsidy for employers can help businesses hire and retain the talent they need.
The Other Side of the Coin
However, Canada continues to lag in creating the conditions for private-sector investment, and that gap is now the binding constraint on our economic performance.
Capital and talent are mobile. They flow to jurisdictions with competitive tax environments, predictable regulatory regimes, and fast permitting. Right now, too many of those signals point the wrong way. Targeted, high-leverage measures — like restoring and expanding flow-through share tax credits to crowd private capital into critical minerals and the broader resource economy — are exactly the kind of instruments that turn public ambition into private investment. Paired with serious regulatory reform and faster project approvals, they would meaningfully change the calculus for businesses deciding whether to build here or elsewhere.
We continue to see the right direction of travel, but not enough urgency so far on this critical area.
The Canada Strong Fund: From Idea to Execution
The Canada Strong Fund is one of the most consequential ideas in this Update. A national vehicle designed to deploy patient capital alongside private investors is, in concept, exactly the kind of instrument Canada needs to mobilize the scale of investment this moment requires.
But the proof will be in execution. There is a meaningful gap between announcing a fund and crowding-in private capital.
Put simply, the Fund will succeed if it complements and catalyzes private capital. It will fail if it duplicates existing federal vehicles or substitutes public allocation for private judgment.
The Toronto Region Board of Trade is one of the largest and most influential business chambers in North America and is a catalyst for the region’s economic agenda. We pursue policy change to drive the growth and competitiveness of the Toronto region and facilitate market opportunities with programs, partnerships and connections to help our members succeed – domestically and internationally.
Media Contact
Jason Chapman, Communications and Media Relations Manager