Four in five Canadians polled early this year told Angus Reid that they are more fearful than hopeful. After the overwhelming and exhausting year we’ve had, can you blame them? Our national courage and confidence have been truly tested.

When I started as CEO of the Canadian Chamber in 2024, my first speeches highlighted Boston Consulting Group research that Canadians did not see how their well-being was served by a healthy economy. Today, you could ask almost any Canadian and they would tell you exactly how economic uncertainty is impacting their daily life. When businesses struggle, it doesn’t take long for communities to struggle too.

Our Business Data Lab — an expert team of economists and data scientists — rank the present business outlook as “challenging” in most areas tracked. Their BDL Nowcast expects a contraction in Canada’s real GDP quarterly growth.

From turbulent global trade to seismic technological change to elevated global and local security concerns, the era of permacrisis has brought unparalleled levels of disruption through the doors of businesses. And these compounding challenges are not dissipating as new ones emerge.

What can businesses — especially small ones — do when they are faced daily with these problems that are impacting their hiring, productivity and scaling?

How will they generate the economic activity that our public services depend on? How are business leaders to react when presented with such a bleak outlook?

They know they cannot go it alone. The collective ability of business leaders to move in the right direction when everything seems to be going wrong is increasingly central to our security and way of life.

The success of our businesses, our economy and of Canadians are one and the same. Businesses on Main Street as much as Bay Street are who Canadians are depending on.

Even more difficult in contending with a country-wide shift is the fact that conversations are subdivided into sectors, regions and those of similar scale.

Our silos make for effective short-term organizing units but do not set us up for cross-cutting collaboration.

Thankfully, unity and partnership are the DNA of organizations like ours.

We as businesses and institutions are expected to pivot, and pivot fast, all the while showing resilience and stability despite the mounting pressures.

And we are stepping up.

Across the country, businesses, and the associations and chambers that support them, are acting as problem-solvers. They are tackling issues like addiction, crime and homelessness, and helping safeguard consumers against cyber threats. The grassroots problem-solving happening in communities across Canada must now scale to our national and global context.

The Canadian Chamber may not be a business in the traditional sense, but we are an employer and we represent hundreds of thousands of other employers across the country. And we have one advantage that many others do not — a unique ability to convene a national conversation on what we should do next.

This was the thinking behind our first Future of Business Summit this week, which bring together all our members and partners across the country like never before. We are putting hundreds of entrepreneurs, business leaders and community-minded leaders in a room to do more than hear speakers but to engage on the challenges of our times in the spirit of business agency.

The global economic upheaval and the more local stressors are not for governments alone to steer us through. Governments play a significant role and will do their best, but public policy is not enough. Government counts on the private sector to do a significant amount of the legwork.

Every Canadian recognizes they are in a pivotal moment. From the smallest business to the C-suite, every business leader conversely feels challenged to be a part of this change. Nation building, community building and business building all go hand in hand.

Because business leaders cannot just ignore challenges. Not when those challenges come through their front door. And they have to be courageous to not only stay open but to seek to resolve the issues facing them and their neighbours.

Starting at inception, creating a business is an act of courage because it involves taking on risk. Businesses struggle with the goals of opening, hiring, stabilizing, growing and growing again. When you walk through a community and see healthy businesses, it almost always corresponds with a thriving community. That’s no coincidence.

When businesses are hit by things out of their control — like pandemics or recessions or global conflicts — their impulse is to lean in, not duck. In this difficult moment for our economy, we can unapologetically say that business leadership matters — and it matters more than ever.

The path forward is courage, collaboration and shared purpose — among Canadians, government and business. And we’ll find that purpose by first acknowledging that the future of business success is the future of Canada.

Candace Laing is the president and CEO of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.

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