The “Buy Ontario Act” Must Modernize What Counts as an Ontario Business

By Skaidra Puodziunas
CCI Director of Ontario Affairs

"Getting the best value for our money is critical. But today, value means more than just cost …. It means keeping public-sector dollars in Ontario and across Canada."

These are the words of Stephen Crawford, Minister of Public and Business Service Delivery and Procurement, but they could just as easily be lifted out of one of CCI’s policy reports. 

The government’s enthusiasm for strategic procurement as an economic driver is great, but to actually deliver results, Ontario will need a more rigorous definition of what makes a homegrown business.

For many years, CCI has been talking about government procurement as a key economic driver.

Did you know that government procurement at all levels makes up about 14% of Canadian GDP? That’s roughly equivalent to the whole Alberta economy!

Historically, Canada has done a very poor job of prioritizing Canadian companies in Canadian government procurement, so that massive spending isn’t being targeted toward strategic economic development.

This has been a problem for a long time, but the negative impacts are magnified in the 21st century innovation economy. 

In today’s knowledge-based and data-driven economy, value really accrues back to the headquarters for companies that own and commercialize their intangible assets.

While a local auto manufacturing plant will create a lot of jobs and high-value economic spinoffs through local parts suppliers, a satellite office for Google or Meta in downtown Toronto doesn’t create the same kinds of economic ripples.

That’s why it’s so important for our leaders to understand the importance of strategic government procurement, as a way of building up the homegrown innovation champions who can become major wealth and job creators in the 21st century economy.

For years, CCI has been tracking the Building Ontario Business Initiative (BOBI), and we’ve applauded the Ontario government for recognizing the importance of strategic procurement. Minister Crawford’s commentary shows that he gets it.

But if Ontario wants to fully capture that value, the government must confront a foundational question: What actually qualifies as an Ontario business in the 21st-century economy?

Under the BOBI, any company with 250 full-time employees in Ontario is treated as an “Ontario Business.”

Under that definition, foreign-owned multinationals with branch-plant operations qualify for the same procurement advantages as homegrown firms that are headquartered here, develop intellectual property here, commercialize research here, and reinvest profits into Ontario communities.

Defining an “Ontario Business” based on employment may have worked in a manufacturing-centric economy, but it no longer fits for the economic realities where value is driven by intangible assets like data, intellectual property and software.

Recent volatility in U.S. economic relations has also underscored how quickly multinational branch plants can retrench, leaving Ontario communities exposed.

So where do we go from here?

One pathway to explore this question is by considering something like the sovereignty score developed by the Canadian SHIELD institute. It serves as a practical framework to evaluate policy decisions by considering how government trade decisions strengthen Canada’s long-term outlook and economic transformation.

As we noted in response to Ontario’s 2025 Fall Economic Statement, strategic procurement can be one of the province’s strongest tools for building resilience, especially when paired with value-added investments like those to the Critical Minerals Innovation Fund.

Now is the time to reexamine the definition of an “Ontario Business” so public dollars maximize long-term economic security, not just short-term employment counts.

About the Council of Canadian Innovators

The Council of Canadian Innovators is a national member-based organization reshaping how governments across Canada think about innovation policy, and supporting homegrown scale-ups to drive prosperity. Established in 2015, CCI represents and works with over 150 of Canada’s fastest-growing technology companies. Our members are the CEOs, founders, and top senior executives behind some of Canada’s most successful ‘scale-up’ companies. All our members are job and wealth creators, investors, philanthropists, and experts in their fields of health tech, cleantech, fintech, cybersecurity, AI and digital transformation. Companies in our portfolio are market leaders in their verticals, commercialize their technologies in over 190 countries, and generate between $10M-$750M in annual recurring revenue. We advocate on their behalf for government strategies that increase their access to skilled talent, strategic capital, and new customers, as well as expanded freedom to operate for their global pursuits of scale.