For a Monday night, Ottawa’s Metropolitan Brasserie was unusually busy.
On Sept. 22, the popular watering hole for politicos played host to entrepreneurs, policy wonks and volunteers at an event hosted by Build Canada, a civic advocacy group.
At the front of the room, Build Canada’s CEO Lucy Hargreaves laid out her concerns with the pacing of a startup pitch and the gravity of a central bank briefing.
“Over $130 billion in capital has left our country since January of this year, and investors are losing confidence,” she said.
The remark was met with solemn nods by the dozens in attendance.
Build Canada began in January with the publication of a series of policy memos by veterans of corporate Canada. Eight months later, it has a formalized structure, the backing of some of Canada’s highest profile entrepreneurs, and more than a thousand members.
Today, Build Canada pushes a single, simple premise: Canada’s growth problem is solvable if citizens build, not just lobby.
“We have all of the ingredients in this country to do better,” said Hargreaves, whose career has spanned roles in government, nonprofits and a San Francisco-based software company. “We just need to put them together in that perfect recipe, and in the right way, to act with urgency to build the future we want.”
Build Canada’s bet is that practical, open tools — paired with a non-partisan, volunteer ethos — can cut through Ottawa’s reputation for incrementalism and force a reckoning with stagnation.
‘Fleeing friction’
Hargreaves, who helped found Build Canada alongside former Shopify executive Daniel Debow, says falling productivity, skittish investors and fleeing founders have become recurring themes in Canadian business circles.
A recent report found that the U.S. went from producing 11 times more high-potential startups than Canada in 2015 to 45 times as many in 2024.
“Founders aren’t fleeing Canada because they don’t like Canada as a country. They’re fleeing the friction that our country has created for them,” Hargreaves said, referencing the report.
Yet her pitch to the Ottawa crowd was less a lament than a recruitment drive.
“In just a few short months, our movement has grown to over a thousand members,” she said to cheers. “We have volunteers who have spent hours and hours building some of the projects that we’ve been working on.”
These projects include policy memos penned by leading executives on topics ranging from immigration to AI to energy. And they include tangible, digital tools, some of which were shown off at the event.
Toronto-based software engineer Mikaal Naik demonstrated his Builder MP tool, which summarizes every new federal bill and provides an assessment of its strengths, risks and what “Builders should push for.”
For example, a Builder MP assessment of the One Canadian Economy Act — Ottawa’s legislation to boost interprovincial trade — concludes the legislation has strengths such as faster approvals and regulatory certainty, but could lead to weakened standards, executive overreach and legal challenges.
It concludes that, “Builders should push for: transparent quantitative criteria for ‘national interest’ listings; public release of safety rationales and Indigenous consultation outcomes,” among other disclosures.
Naik says his aim is to make it easier for Canadians to engage with policy developments.
“I personally do not have time to read a 200-page appropriation bill,” he told Canadian Affairs. “My goal is to make it slightly easier to care about these things.”
In a similar vein, Build Canada’s Canada Spends tool aims to make government spending intelligible to non-accountants.
Build Toronto
Build Canada is also turning an eye to regional issues.
This September, it launched Build Toronto, an initiative chaired by urbanist Eric Lombardi, a vocal housing advocate.
“I wouldn’t view Build Toronto as a separate organization, but rather like a project of Build Canada,” Lombardi told Canadian Affairs in an interview.
Like Build Canada, Build Toronto aims to influence policy, only at the municipal level. Lombardi says it plans to release a public platform in the run-up to a mayoral election.
“My hope is that the [2026 Toronto] mayoral campaigns, as [candidates are] looking for ideas to back, that we’re giving them a repository of well-thought-through ideas that could improve the city in a variety of different areas of policy,” he said.
Build Toronto has already published memos pushing for congestion pricing and automated platform doors on city subway platforms to reduce accidents and delays.
Lombardi’s theory of change is straightforward. “Elevating good ideas can often result in outcomes that wouldn’t have happened otherwise, simply because someone decides to make it an issue.”
The demand for new policy solutions, Lombardi says, predates the movement itself: “I actually think that people who live here understand that Canada has an immense amount of potential, and it’s not being realized.”
Non-partisan
Build Canada, which describes itself as non-partisan, says its plans draw from entrepreneurial experience rather than party platforms. Hargreaves told Canadian Affairs that Build Canada is funded by more than 50 private donors.
Some of the organization’s public backers are well-heeled.
Build Canada’s early memos have been authored by numerous high-profile executives and entrepreneurs, including Tobi Lutke, CEO of Shopify; Andrew Graham, CEO of Borrowell; and Brad Carr, CEO of Mattamy Homes.
In recent months, the group’s public footprint has grown — as has criticism of it.
In April, The Tyee magazine published an article drawing parallels between Build Canada and the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an Elon Musk-led initiative within the Trump administration aimed at reducing regulation and wasteful spending.
A statement on Canada Spends, Build Canada’s sister website, rejects the comparison. And Hargreaves herself insists the movement is civic, not partisan.
“We’ve united over this shared goal of prosperity in Canada,” she said at the Ottawa event.
“ We’ve had interest in outreach from governments and elected officials, not only here in Ottawa, but across the country at multiple levels of government,” she said.
Adding weight to this claim, after Hargreaves had concluded her remarks, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre made a surprise appearance.
Whether Build Canada can turn this kind of momentum into tangible impact will depend on staying power and breadth: keeping volunteers engaged, broadening its coalition and convincing decision-makers to take its memos seriously.
Interesting article. While I like the general concept of Build Canada, it seems too linked to government budgeting issues. I went to the Ottawa event and noticed an interesting paradox… the featured speaker told a story of starting a business and selling services to the federal government. This was important. It sounded like a nice story…. until… he explained he sold the business to a company in the USA. His business is now listed as an office for the US company. I’m sure he did well but does this build Canada?