Finally, a major economic actor in Canada has recognized the important contributions of self-employed Canadians. The Business Development Bank (BDC)’s report, The Entrepreneurial Spark of Canada’s Self-Employed, confirmed what many advocates have long argued: self-employed Canadians have distinct needs and make significant contributions to our economy.

But the report also revealed something else — a narrow and troubling definition of economic value.

BDC places particular emphasis on what it calls “agile and ambitious self-employed” individuals, those who plan to hire employees and transition into employer firms. In doing so, it reinforces a hierarchy that values business growth measured by payroll size above all else. Self-employed Canadians who do not aspire to become employers are implicitly cast as less economically valuable.

This narrow framing plagues small business policy in Canada. It shapes programs and supports that exclude many, particularly women, Indigenous, Black, racialized, disabled and other equity-seeking entrepreneurs, and limits their ability to participate fully and equitably in the economy.

Nowhere is that exclusion clearer than in Canada’s parental income support system.

The invisible majority of women entrepreneurs

There are one million self-employed women in Canada. They represent 11 per cent of the total women’s labour force and a staggering 80 per cent of all women who earn business or professional income. Only 20 per cent of women earning business income own small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Yet BDC’s Index of New Entrepreneurial Activity defines “entrepreneurs” exclusively as those with employees. By that definition, 80 per cent of women who generate........

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