Minister Ng announced investments in export promotion and women entrepreneurs in Alberta

Canada’s Minister of Small Business and Export Promotion shared how the federal government is helping small business owners start up, scale up and access new markets

May 4, 2019 – Calgary, Alberta

Small businesses make up 98% of all Canadian businesses and employ 8 million hard-working Canadians from coast to coast to coast. They are the backbone of our economy and critical to the middle class.

This week, the Honourable Mary Ng, Canada’s Minister of Small Business and Export Promotion, was in Calgary and Edmonton to meet with entrepreneurs and small business owners to talk about the ways the Government of Canada is supporting their success.

On May 3, Minister Ng joined the Honourable Kent Hehr, Member of Parliament for Calgary Centre, to announce a $900,000 investment in nine Calgary-area, women-led companies through the Women Entrepreneurship Fund. The successful recipients will each receive an investment of up to $100,000 to help them innovate, grow and access new markets. That evening, the Minister delivered opening remarks at the 2019 Action Chinese Canadian Together (ACCT) Foundation Leaders’ Summit.

On May 4, Minister Ng travelled to Edmonton where she joined the Honourable Amarjeet Sohi, Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources and Member of Parliament for Edmonton Mill Woods, alongside Randy Boissonnault, Member of Parliament for Edmonton Centre, to announce a $1.2 million investment in 13 local women-led companies through the Women Entrepreneurship Fund. The successful recipients will each receive an investment of up to $100,000 to help them innovate, grow and access new markets.

Later in the day, Minister Ng announced a nearly $1.3 million investment in the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce to expand its Trade Accelerator Program (TAP) to communities across Alberta. These investments in the TAP expansion will help up to 345 small and medium-sized businesses in Alberta export into new markets.

Throughout her tour, Minister Ng met with small business owners and shared the government’s many initiatives that are making it easier for small business owners to do business, such as:

• lowering the small business tax rate to 9%, one of the lowest rates in the world;
• getting credit card companies to lower the fees they charge businesses when their customers use credit cards;
• providing access to over a billion and a half new customers through trade deals like the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement, commonly called the new NAFTA;
• introducing the Accelerated Investment Incentive that will allow businesses of all sizes in all sectors of the economy to write off a larger share of the cost of newly acquired assets in the year the investment is made;
• committing to universal high-speed Internet across Canada;
• investing $2 billion to help double the number of women-owned businesses by 2025; and
• reducing over 450 federal rules that impose an administrative burden on business.