Lead with growth, not savings: 78% of Canadian owners now say growth is the goal

What’s happened.

The Business Development Bank of Canada, the federal bank that lends to small and mid-sized companies, asked 2,500 Canadian owners and executives what they plan to do next year. In its annual State of Entrepreneurship report, 78% said they are focused on growing the company, up from 67% a year earlier. That is a jump of about one in nine owners switching from holding steady to going after growth, and it happened in a year of tariffs on Canadian goods, rising costs and slower economic activity.

The detail matters more than the headline number. Of that 78%, 46% want moderate growth and 22% want significant growth, while only 10% plan to radically change their business. So the money is going into expanding what already works, not rebuilding from scratch. Pierre Cleroux, BDC’s vice-president of research and chief economist, wrote that owners are “actively looking for ways to strengthen their competitiveness” by adopting artificial intelligence and selling into new markets. Firms under the most pressure moved fastest: among small businesses hit directly by the US tariffs imposed in February 2025, 58% added new products or services, compared with 39% of small and mid-sized firms generally. And 64% of those firms won new customers over the past year.