The Creative Enterprise Act
A new legal structure for Canada's creative entrepreneurs.
A federal policy proposal to create a corporate structure designed for how creative businesses actually work.
The Problem
Canada's business formation rate is declining, and the cohort most associated with firm growth — self-employed Canadians with paid employees — has fallen sharply since 2000. The conventional entrepreneurship policy conversation has missed a large, structural cause: Canada’s creative workforce.
Canada's 668,000 artists, designers, makers, musicians, writers, filmmakers, and digital creators are already behaving entrepreneurially — but most cannot safely formalize their practice. Statistics Canada and Canadian Heritage researchers, analyzing 458,106 active cultural firms in 2020, found that 92% were unincorporated, up from 88% in 2008. This makes Canada's cultural sector one of the least-formalized major industries in the economy.
The corporate structures available to artists expose their intellectual property, cost more than they can afford, and were designed for a different kind of business.
The Creative Enterprise Act is a proposed federal reform to fix that.
The Proposal
A new corporate structure.
A federal Creative Enterprise Corporation (CE Corp), amending the Canada Business Corporations Act. Statutory IP protection, creator-majority control, separated economic and governance rights, standardized affordable formation.
Better support infrastructure.
Conditions attached to federal entrepreneurship-support funding to ensure BDC, Regional Development Agencies, and federally-funded incubators can actually serve creative-sector founders.
No new spending. No new program envelopes. Multi-partisan. A legal-structural reform, not a subsidy — modelled on Colorado's Artist Company Act, signed into law June 2026.
Independent & Fiscally neutral.
What would the Creative Enterprise Act do?
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Creative founders must hold at least 51% of voting power at all times. Written into the statute, not modifiable by agreement. The people making the work control the company.
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Intellectual property contributed to or created within a Creative Enterprise Corporation reverts to its creators if the company dissolves — protected from investor claims and creditor seizure. Not a contract clause. Federal law.
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Economic rights — revenue, royalties, distributions — are legally separable from governance rights. Investors can back creative enterprises without acquiring creative control or ownership of the work.
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Artistic and creative work is recognized as a legitimate in-kind capital contribution. Founders can hold real equity without putting in cash.
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Corporations Canada produces standardized fill-in templates. The protections that currently cost $5,000–$15,000 in custom legal work become the default form.
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Strengthened reversionary provisions for traditional knowledge and community-derived cultural expression, grounded in UNDRIP principles.
Your voice shapes this policy.
A short anonymous survey is gathering direct evidence from Canadian creative entrepreneurs.
The findings are already striking: 79% of respondents operate outside the incorporated economy. 65% would likely or very likely incorporate under the proposed structure. But the case is stronger with voices from every province and territory and every discipline.
Questions about The Creative Enterprise Act
Is this a subsidy for artists?
No. There is no new program spending, no grant envelope, no ongoing cost. It's a legal-infrastructure reform — a corporate form that doesn't currently exist. One-time implementation cost is estimated at $300,000–$650,000.
Can't artists already do this with existing structures?
Technically, yes. Custom shareholder agreements, IP holding companies, and weighted voting arrangements can achieve most of it. They cost $5,000–$15,000 per business in legal fees. That's accessible to a well-capitalized production company and out of reach for most independent practitioners. The standardization is the reform.
If investors can't claim the IP, why would anyone invest?
Investors receive economic rights — participation in revenue, royalties, and distributions, with defined exit mechanics. What they don't receive is ownership or control of the creative work. This is a different investment product, and it's one that already exists in music royalty participation, film slate financing, and publishing revenue structures. Today it requires expensive custom structuring. The CE Corp makes it standard.
Who counts as an artist?
Drawing on Colorado's medium-agnostic definition and Canada's own Status of the Artist Act, which has three decades of tribunal precedent on professional artist status. A light professional-practice qualifier prevents the structure being used by investors claiming artist status. Final drafting is a legislative task requiring counsel.
What happens when a company has several founders and dissolves?
Reversion follows contribution — the composer takes the soundtrack, the writer takes the literary work. Jointly created works revert as joint copyright under the Copyright Act. Derivative rights are allocated at formation through standardized template options.
Does existing work automatically transfer in?
No. Existing IP stays personal property unless a founder chooses to assign it, through a standardized IP contribution schedule. Assigned work gets the same statutory protections and reverts to whoever contributed it.
Is this happening?
The proposal was filed with Finance Canada as an independent submission to the 2026 Pre-Budget Consultations. It has political support and active engagement with national sector organizations, corporate and IP counsel, and entrepreneurship organizations. It is a proposal, not law. Colorado's equivalent took roughly two years from concept to signature.
Where the Proposal is Now
September 2026 — Independent submission filed with the Department of Finance for the 2026 Pre-Budget Consultations.
August 2026 — Submission to the Hunter Prize for Public Policy.
Ongoing — Primary research with Canadian creative entrepreneurs (n=69, English and French, six provinces and territories).
Ongoing — Engagement with national sector organizations, corporate and IP counsel, and women's entrepreneurship organizations.
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About the Author
Tamara Jensen is an entrepreneur, visual artist, arts administrator, and entrepreneurship educator based in the Niagara Region of Ontario. She has spent more than two decades building and supporting businesses at the intersection of creative practice, strategy, and community — including founding and exiting her own ventures, teaching creative entrepreneurs, and working inside innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystems as both a practitioner and a systems-level thinker. She currently works with a university incubator, where she supports early-stage founders and contributes to the development of entrepreneurship programming and infrastructure in the region.
In her early career, Tamara worked in policy at Correctional Service Canada, where she evaluated and made recommendations on correctional, educational, and employment programming for federal offenders. Tamara graduated with distinction with an M.A. in Psychology from Carleton University, and holds a certificate in Corporate Strategy from the University of London. She brings to this policy proposal a practitioner’s understanding of what creative enterprises need to survive and grow, and a firsthand account of the structural gaps that prevent them from doing so.