Jeffrey Crelinsten is the Publisher and CEO of Research Money and President and CEO at The Impact Group.

As the country comes together to celebrate the Toronto Blue Jays, I’m struck by how national pride is so powerfully triggered by winning and success in sports. Olympians and all-star players in hockey, baseball, basketball, soccer and football are revered as inspirational reminders of Canada’s excellence. A well-organized system of bantam, junior and intermediate leagues offers young Canadians opportunities to play and acquire the skills and attitudes that foster success in sport.

What scares me is that our successful entrepreneurs aren’t celebrated and honoured in the same way. Instead of being inspired by someone’s success in business, the average Canadian is either apathetic, jealous or resentful. Instead of being inspired to entrepreneurial pursuits for themselves or their children, most Canadians want our winning entrepreneurs to “pay their fair share.” There’s no system in place for young Canadians to acquire the skills, attitudes and entrepreneurial mindset that foster business success.

I don’t see any signs of national pride when a Canadian company is successful. I don’t see any media interviews with Canadian entrepreneurs about how they felt when they just acquired another company or when their export sales grew by 50 percent.

Canadians don’t care about our entrepreneurs. They don’t see how their successes are Canada’s successes that contribute to our prosperity and quality of life. We should all feel proud when our companies succeed on the global stage.

Why does this lack of pride in our entrepreneurs scare me? In today’s dangerous world, we want to build a resilient and prosperous country – an innovation powerhouse, as Prime Minister Mark Carney likes to say.

To achieve this ambitious goal, we need successful entrepreneurs and companies that sell innovative solutions to Canadians and the world. Yet we don’t support the very people whom we are relying on. We make it harder for them to succeed and we don’t celebrate them when they do.

This antipathy toward successful business has created a toxic culture for Canada’s entrepreneurs. Our startup founders face additional hurdles beyond the usual challenges faced by their peers in other countries.

Starting a company is not for sissies. Taking a risk on an innovative idea, investing time and money, taking care of partners, employees and customers, failing and pivoting and trying again – it’s a rocky journey anywhere in the world.

But in Canada, no one cares enough about you to make the journey easier. Government business innovation support programs are largely designed and administered by risk-averse bureaucrats who have never started or run a company. The National Research Council’s Industrial Research Assistance Program, which has industrial technology advisors with business experience, is a rare exception. 

Procurement policies are stacked against domestic firms competing against foreign multinationals that have extensive government relations and business development teams. Regulators are hyper-focused on protection and have no incentive to incorporate economic development goals in their regulatory mandates and toolkits. 

For those entrepreneurs who grow past the startup phase, it’s even worse. Foreign actors begin to notice them, competition increases and potential acquirers start circling with enticing investment offers and invitations to relocate outside Canada.

Canadian banks refuse to offer favourable loans to scale-ups that lack physical assets, but have enough revenue to service non-dilutive debt. Large companies in regulated industries prefer to buy solutions from well-established foreign providers rather than work with a Canadian scale-up offering an innovative product or service.

It's no wonder that so many Canadian entrepreneurs sell their businesses before scaling to become a large domestic anchor firm in their sector. Many of these sales go to entities outside Canada, who reap the rewards from the revenue, talent and the intellectual property.

As a consolation prize, we typically hope that once founders sell, at least they will become investors in Canadian firms starting up and scaling. Think again.

Canada is awash with capital sitting in family offices, pension funds, large corporations and high-net-worth individuals’ investment accounts. The vast majority of this money is invested in real estate and other infrastructure investments. A tiny fraction finds its way into supporting a Canadian startup or scale-up.

Why would someone invest hard-earned, newfound wealth in a Canadian company developing an innovative solution when all the cards are stacked against it here? First of all, they know from their own entrepreneurial experience how hard it is. And second, as a wealthy person, they know that many Canadians resent them and demand that the government tax them heavily to make them “pay their fair share.”

So, Canadians face a conundrum. We are indifferent, even hostile, toward the very people we depend upon for our prosperity.

How do we solve this dilemma? First, the various players have to stop operating in silos. Entrepreneurs, policymakers, investors, regulators, educators and business leaders in established firms, financial institutions and the media need to interact and listen to one another. They need to align their individual goals with the national goal.

Most importantly, we need to tell stories about our entrepreneurial successes to Canadians. We need to celebrate our entrepreneurs and business winners, just like we do our sports heroes.

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