For an entrepreneur, the Canadian economy arrives in rather ordinary envelopes: an insurance renewal, a supplier’s revised price list, a financing proposal. It appears in the position that remains vacant and the customer who takes longer to commit. It occupies the afternoon spent deciphering a requirement that nobody seems able to explain.
Economic debate tends to separate these problems into categories. Business owners experience them simultaneously.
The difficulty is cumulative. Higher costs consume cash that could fund new equipment. Recruiting absorbs time that could be spent winning customers. Uncertain demand makes investment harder to justify. Administrative work fills whatever space remains. A business can be viable, busy and full of potential while leaving its owner with the persistent feeling of running uphill.
Recent evidence supports that experience. In Statistics Canada’s third-quarter business survey, 41.6% of businesses expected inflation to be an obstacle over the following three months. A quarter anticipated difficulty recruiting skilled employees. Input costs, transportation and insurance also featured prominently. Yes, hiring pressures have eased from their post-pandemic peaks, but a softer national labour market does not ensure that the right person, with the right skills, is available where a business needs them. We often see this from our main office in Kelowna, BC. An employer seeking a technician or experienced supervisor cannot fill the position with an unemployment statistic. The business needs qualified people who are available where the work is.
Financing presents a similar distinction. The Bank of Canada has held its policy rate at 2.25% throughout 2026 so far. Yet longer-term bond yields have risen, and businesses’ borrowing costs also reflect lenders’ assessment of risk. A steady policy rate offers limited reassurance to an owner reviewing a more expensive financing proposal.
Meanwhile, trade uncertainty complicates decisions about customers and suppliers. Uneven economic growth makes sales harder to forecast. Technology promises greater efficiency while requiring money, training and management attention before those efficiencies materialise.
Red tape adds another demand on scarce time. Useful regulation protects customers, employees and businesses themselves. Poorly designed processes, duplicated requirements and unclear approvals consume resources without producing an equivalent benefit. Smaller firms have fewer people available to absorb the work.
Together, these pressures create a demanding combination: businesses are being asked to become more productive while much of their attention is occupied with keeping things moving. And yet the picture is far from uniformly bleak. Most respondents to Statistics Canada’s third-quarter survey remained optimistic about their businesses’ prospects. Ambition survives difficult conditions. The question is how to give it somewhere useful to go.
So we’ve spent some time asking our clients how they have started to resolve this on a playing field closer to home. Many have come back with the same feedback…
Entrepreneurs should spend more time in one another’s businesses.
There is a familiar expression for stepping away from the endless commentary and reacquainting oneself with the world: touch grass. For a business owner, the commercial equivalent might be visiting a supplier’s workshop, having coffee with another employer or asking a customer what is becoming difficult in their operation.
The value lies in what these encounters reveal.
From a distance, another business is a logo, a competitor or a name on an invoice. Up close, it becomes a collection of capabilities and constraints. Someone has equipment that is underused. Someone needs a supplier they can trust. Someone has solved a training problem that another owner is approaching for the first time. These are the details from which useful cooperation can grow.
Consider skills. An individual employer may struggle to justify a specialised training programme. Several employers with similar needs could give a college enough demand to develop one. Each business gains access to a stronger pool of candidates; workers gain skills with value across more than one workplace.
Or consider a small manufacturer seeking its first substantial customer. An established company that offers a manageable trial order, clear specifications and prompt payment can help that manufacturer establish a record. The buyer gains another potential source of supply. The manufacturer gains an opportunity to demonstrate its competence.
That relationship may do more for the smaller company’s prospects than another seminar on the importance of growth. Businesses with complementary products could explore a new market together, sharing the expense of research, travel or distribution. Owners could compare their experience of implementing new technology before each spends money discovering the same limitations. A company with a full order book could introduce a capable business to work it cannot take on.
None of these arrangements requires a national programme. Each requires someone to know enough about another enterprise to recognise a useful connection. That knowledge takes time to develop. It also requires a different sort of conversation.
Business gatherings can become exercises in exchanging polished accounts of how well everyone is doing. More useful meetings make room for unfinished problems: a project that needs a partner, a skill that is missing, a procurement process that excludes a capable supplier.
A practical starting point would be a small group of owners meeting regularly, taking turns visiting one another’s operations. Each brings a problem and considers what they can contribute. The meeting ends with an introduction, a visit, a trial or a specific piece of work to pursue. Over time, that can create something valuable: a network in which help is informed, commitments are credible and opportunities travel beyond the people who usually hear about them. These improvements are modest individually. Together, they can make businesses better able to withstand disruption and more willing to invest.
They also give the business community a stronger voice. A roomful of frustrated owners is easy for governments to acknowledge and move past, and we have seen this in many election cycles both nationally and provincially. Businesses that document the same approval delay, identify its consequences and propose a workable change present a more useful challenge. Cooperation turns a private grievance into evidence that can support public action.
Governments must fulfil their responsibilities too. Our view is that governments still have substantial work to do. Predictable approvals, effective infrastructure, simpler administration and a functioning national market remain public responsibilities. Entrepreneurs are pressing for them. Collaboration among businesses cannot indefinitely compensate for policy that makes productive activity unnecessarily difficult.
Granted, the market is full of uncertainty and turmoil. It feels like at every turn there’s a headline about some new national or international issue. But there is a cost to putting every ambition on hold until the environment improves.
Canada’s economy is built through decisions about whom to hire, where to buy, which ideas to back and whether to give an unfamiliar business a chance. Those decisions shape communities as surely as they shape company accounts.
A business with several dependable suppliers is better placed to handle an interruption. An employer connected to a training network has more options when skills are scarce. An owner who knows other owners has somewhere to test an idea before risking the company on it.
This is how resilience can be built deliberately, through relationships that become useful before a crisis makes them necessary. Canada has no shortage of people able to describe what is wrong with the economy. It would benefit from more people walking into one another’s workplaces and discovering what they could build together.
A stronger country can begin with a very practical question: what could we do together that neither of us can readily do alone?
A QUESTION FOR YOUR NEXT MEETING
What could we do together that neither of us can readily do alone?
Sources and further reading
Research checked October 22, 2026. Survey figures describe expectations at the time of collection. Business examples are illustrative; recommendations and observations are Amati’s analysis.
- Statistics Canada, August 31, 2026 — Business conditions in Canada, third quarter of 2026.
- Statistics Canada, October 20, 2026 — How are small businesses doing? Survey collection: July 2–August 6, before the latest round of trade measures.
- Statistics Canada, September 2026 — Review of business conditions since 2021. Labour-related obstacles have eased from earlier peaks.
- Bank of Canada — Policy interest rate history. The latest decision available on October 22 held the policy rate at 2.25%.
- Bank of Canada, September 2, 2026 — Bank of Canada maintains the policy rate at 2¼%. Also discusses higher long-term bond yields.
- BDC, July 2026 — The Bank of Canada is on hold. Your borrowing costs may not be. Explains bond yields, risk premiums and credit conditions.
- Bank of Canada, October 19, 2026 — Business Outlook Survey, third quarter of 2026. Trade uncertainty, cost pressures, investment and hiring.
- CFIB, January 2026 — 2026 Red Tape Report Card. Regulatory administration and the compliance burden on smaller firms.
- Qi Wu, Policy Options, April 16, 2026 — Canada’s productivity problem: escaping the economic comfort trap. Commentary on investment, competition and technology adoption.
- Rupak Chattopadhyay, Policy Magazine, August 25, 2026 — Federalism, National Unity, and Trade: From Bilateral Shock to National Renewal. Commentary on economic integration and resilience.
