A new legal home 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: our 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. The corporate structures available to them 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. A legal-structural reform, not a subsidy — modelled on Colorado's Artist Company Act, signed into law June 2026.
Fiscally neutral.
Your voice shapes this policy.
A short anonymous survey is gathering direct evidence from Canadian creative entrepreneurs.
The findings are already striking: 74% of respondents operate outside the incorporated economy. 70% would likely or very likely incorporate under the proposed structure. But the case is stronger with voices from every province and every discipline.
Where the Proposal Is Now
July 2026 — Survey opened. First 47 responses received.
July 2026 — Proposal shared with MP Chris Bittle (St. Catharines), who has offered to facilitate meetings with culture and finance Cabinet Ministers.
July 2026 — Preparation for Budget 2026 Pre-Budget Consultation submission.
August 2026 — Hunter Prize for Public Policy submission filed.
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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 Brock University’s LINC, 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.