Introduction

Since Buy Social Canada began over a decade ago, our work has been grounded in collaboration with governments, corporations and other delivery partners both nationally (through the Social Enterprise Ecosystem Project (S4ES) and Investment Readiness Program (IRP) initiatives), and within local communities where champions of social procurement and social enterprise have driven forward local progress in communities including Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, and Peterborough.

Our collective work is driven forward by community activism and knowledge, and supported by champions across all levels of government, corporations, institutions, and social enterprises across Canada. Despite the growing divides impacting our communities we continue to see an ever growing and aligned movement of individuals and organizations who believe that we can build a social value marketplace that builds sustainable, resilient, and thriving communities.

It’s important to acknowledge that there are many people and organizations entering 2026 feeling exhausted and disappointed. For every step forward we take, we also see emerging and ongoing challenges both globally and locally, including ongoing genocides in Palestine, Sudan, and Myanmar, climate catastrophes, and trade wars.

In the context of our work in social procurement, 2025 offered moments of pushback and challenges. We ended the year with a disappointing outcome in Vancouver. Once a leading champion of social procurement and community benefit agreements, the City is now falling behind and failing the most vulnerable in the community by stepping back from prior commitments. Despite extensive community efforts, and the efforts of some city councillors, the City of Vancouver ABC Party Councillors, who hold the majority, voted to remove the mandatory aspects of the CBA policy, in effect removing the policy from active implementation on new projects. Despite this change, what can’t be taken away is the robust data we now have showing us that CBAs work, that they result in hundreds of millions of dollars reinvested into local communities, that they sustain and grow the innovative services and social impacts of social enterprises, and help newcomers make connections and build solid and sustainable livelihoods.

This pushback can be seen as an indication that those who benefit most from the extractive and inequitable status quo are afraid and that they know that these tools work. This inspires us to continue to work with communities across the country to build a movement of community capital creators in 2026 and beyond.

2025 was also a year of community capital creators coming together and advancing policy, program, and practical community outcomes. From the Federal Government’s commitment in Budget 2025 to support social enterprises through federal procurement and infrastructure investments, to the launch of Community Sector Council of Newfoundland’s (CSCNL) new Social Enterprise through Acquisition (SETA) program, to Certified Social Enterprise The Raw Carrot growing across provinces and out of Ontario for the first time with their new franchise location opening in Winnipeg.

This blog post celebrates the outcomes and impacts of social procurement and social enterprise this year. Looking into 2026, we also outline some of the things we intend to focus on this coming year.

Buy Social Canada Impact and Outcomes

These numbers tell part of the story of Buy Social Canada’s impact and reach in 2025, but behind each metric are relationships built, systems shifted, and communities strengthened.

Match Supply and Demand

Over the last decade we have seen a growth in social procurement policies, which are creating a solid foundation for incorporating social value into the procurement decisions of governments, corporations and individuals.

This progress doesn’t necessarily translate to greater sustainability and growth of social enterprises and other social value suppliers, unless purchasers actively commit to this work.  For example, the Government of Nova Scotia has had a policy since 2009, and in 2025 Buy Social Canada was contracted by the government to develop a comprehensive strategy and Action Plan to ensure policy achieves social, Indigenous, accessibility, environmental and diversity goals – showing leadership and a renewed commitment to leverage purchasing for good in the province.

In 2025 we worked with community partners on Market Capacity Assessments in Ottawa, Peel Region, and around the Toronto Downsview Redevelopment to better understand the existing capacity and needs of social enterprises, local and diverse suppliers, and inclusive workforce intermediaries, to begin to match this capacity to upcoming infrastructure developments, and to explore what is needed next within the community to advance access to social finance and markets.

Traditional procurement processes have had decades to develop, they form the basis of core procurement education training, and they influence the relationships which procurement staff develop and nurture through their work. Social procurement is a non-linear journey of learning and un-learning, and in 2025 Buy Social Canada delivered the Social Procurement Professional Certificate Program for procurement professionals across the country including to public sector purchasers in Saskatoon as part of an ongoing community wealth building project with Quint Development Corporation, a custom cohort for Social Purchasing Partner Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries, and many other corporations and governments who attended our virtual cohorts.

Social procurement initiatives have also focused on building relationships between purchasers and social enterprises through trade shows, showcases and roundtables. Corporate sponsors like Destination Vancouver and SAP are key to creating these enabling spaces. In 2025, Destination Vancouver hosted the first annual Social Value Tradeshow to connect their members with social enterprises and Indigenous businesses in the Vancouver region to support them on the next steps of their social procurement journeys.

In another innovative approach, City of Winnipeg, which Buy Social Canada supports on a multi-year Sustainable Procurement Action Plan (SPAP), hosts quarterly supplier showcases to connect their internal buyers with local social enterprises and diverse suppliers. Buy Social Canada has also continued to host quarterly social procurement roundtables for the greater Vancouver and Toronto regions, along with a national Community of Practice to connect buyers and suppliers committed to buy and sell with impact.

Measure What Matters

As social procurement practices mature more organizations are looking at how they can measure the impact of their procurement decisions.

In Vancouver, the New St Paul’s Hospital project has now been reporting on the socio-economic outcomes achieved through the implementation of a Community Benefit Agreement on the project for the last 4 years. At the end of February 2025, the project reported that $210 million, or 12% of the project’s total spend, had been procured from suppliers within Vancouver’s city core, and $23 million of the project spend had specifically gone to businesses in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. On employment, the project reported that 35% of all new employees have voluntarily self-identified as belonging to an equity-seeking group. Of those equity-seeking hires, 9% live in postal codes most local to the project in Vancouver’s city core. On social procurement, the project reported nearly $100 million in project spend, including approximately $3.8 million of which specifically went to Downtown Eastside-based Buy Social Canada Certified Social Enterprises. These are significant contributions to community resilience and local economic growth.

Buy Social Canada is a partner of The Shorefast Institute for Place-Based Economies, established in 2025. Shorefast seeks to empower places to take control of their economic destiny with tangible tools and teachings. In 2025, their Economic Nutrition^CM program began a pilot with 13 organizations, including five social enterprises and two municipalities, using the design of food nutrition labelling to make local spend and impact more visible.

Collaborate in 2026 to advance the social value marketplace

2026 holds much promise. We have a solid policy foundation to build on to expand social procurement practices across the country, but a social value marketplace requires that social enterprises and other diverse-owned businesses have access to:

• Procurement: Marketplace opportunities that are accessible and appropriate, including modified procurement processes that remove barriers for diverse suppliers
• Business capacity building supports: Business courses, programs and advice which recognize the unique models of social enterprises, many of which are non-profits.
• Right fit capital: Access to financing and funding which allows social enterprises and diverse suppliers to sustain and grow their social impacts alongside their business activities

2026 also marks 10 years since the last comprehensive survey of social enterprises in Canada. This year we want to work with government, foundations, and partners across the country to:

• Build an updated, shared dataset with a national survey of the social enterprise sector
• Convene community capital creators from across the country to connect social enterprises to growing marketplace opportunities

In 2026 we will work to continue growing a marketplace for social enterprises and social value suppliers through social procurement. Activities will include:

• Bring Social Procurement Professional Certificate programs to businesses and communities across the country

• Advocate with partners for local governments, institutions and corporations to develop social procurement policies and implementation frameworks

• Release tools and resources which help communities across the country to advocate for and implement social procurement and social enterprise including the upcoming Generate, Circulate, and Distribute Community Wealth resource which explores tools to advance community wealth building

If you want to work with us on any of these initiatives please reach out, and let us know if you have campaigns or initiatives to highlight in 2026. Together we are stronger.

With gratitude,

Elizabeth Chick-Blount, CEO
Tori Williamson, COO
Emma Renaerts, Communications Manager
Niamh O’Sullivan, Manager of Social Enterprise and Networks
Jess Nadeau, Operations Analyst
Em Woykin-Miller, Social Procurement Consultant
Jenna Stevenato, Ontario Regional Coordinator