This week (Nov 18 – 24) marks the Global Entrepreneurship Week, hosted in Canada by the Canadian Youth Business Foundation (CYBF). Premier Stephen Harper talked about tax reform and the $60 million his government has pledged to business incubators and accelerators, which is part of his government’s economic action plan for 2013. He also mentioned a recent trade deal which has been completed “in principle” and which The Economist calls “more ambitious than anything on the table at the WTO”.
While the trade deal, CETA, is ambitious, it does pose some challenges, as all trade liberalization does. However, while the EU is a trading partner that is significantly larger than Canada, and while Canada has negotiated meaningful deals with China and the US – who are bigger traders than the EU, the EU is in a particular slump these days. CETA is a trade deal that does to services what NAFTA does to products – which means that it will get easier for Ernest&Young to hire their expert financial accountant from London to work here in Toronto. It doesn’t necessarily reflect small businesses ability to survive and may result in overall wages falling.
The pledge to fund Business Incubators, however, seems much more promising – but other than stating that $60 million will be made available over 5 years, the government was scant to provide additional details.
But, Entrepreneurship Week is not about stuffy government policy. It is about meeting like minded individual – being an entrepreneur, more often than not, can be lonely. Another reason why many choose coworking spaces in lieu of traditional offices (also, why OfficeExec introduced their first coworking spaces this month).
Using their official website, you can search for interesting events, meet like minded people, exchange ideas, and potentially collaborate and innovate!
Our favorites:
Budgeting Your Startup: A Panel
Webinar: How to realign your focus to continually increase the sales you make going forward
Introduction to Customer Discovery
We hope that you can attend at least some of the events and maybe we see you at one!