The following is an op-ed by UBI Works founder Floyd Marinescu in The Star, published Sat Nov 15, 2025 (read original). Special thanks to our friends at Patriotic Millionaires Canada, of which he's a member, for helping us place this op-ed. They're a nonpartisan organization of high-net worth Canadians advocating for increasing taxes on the wealthy and combating extreme inequality.

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By Floyd Marinescu Contributor — Floyd Marinescu is an entrepreneur and angel investor who is the founder of UBI Works and a member of Patriotic Millionaires Canada.

Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne has tabled the first budget of the Carney era, one the government has framed as historic, bold and memorable. The ambition is warranted to face our challenges: geopolitical risk, unreliable trade partners, rapid technological change, a strained health-care system, and a cost-of-living crisis.

Carney’s north star is clearly growth, attracting investment, catalyzing innovation and unlocking entrepreneurship. As an entrepreneur and an angel investor, I welcome that focus. But I also know, from being in the rooms where real investment decisions get made, that this budget misunderstands what actually motivates founders and funders.

We cannot buy our way to prosperity purely with tax credits.

While there are no revenue-raising tax proposals in this budget, the Carney government has instead leaned into the idea of “pro-growth” tax cuts. These include speeding up the timeline for corporations to write off certain business investments, an expansion of an oft-abused tax credit that refunds research and development costs, and, for some reason, the elimination of the underused housing tax and luxury taxes on yachts and aircrafts.

One downside is that billions will be lost in revenue over the next few years that could have gone to crucial investments. But the number one problem with corporate tax cuts? They just don’t work. Economists at the London School of Economics studied 50 years of tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, across Canada and 17 other OECD countries, and found that while they increased inequality substantially, they had no significant effect on economic growth or unemployment.

In my experience, that makes total sense. Because tax cuts are not what motivates investors or entrepreneurs, they’re not what creates jobs, and they undermine the things that do: broad economic stability and strong consumer demand.

We have gone down this road of magical thinking before, that we can cut our way to growth. No matter how many times our neighbours to the south are determined to make that mistake, we do not need to follow.

The truth is that when people start companies, and when people invest in them, tax incentives are not their motivation or concern.

The main concern is customer demand, and confidence in that demand.

Any business leader knows that the true enemy of investment is uncertainty. Entrepreneurs take risks when they believe customers will be there to buy their products. In a world where uncertainty is rising, from AI to tariffs to geopolitics, the smartest thing we can do domestically is lower uncertainty for Canadians themselves.

The government is pledging to spend five per cent of GDP on national defence to keep Canadians physically safe. For as low as one per cent of GDP we could keep each other economically safe by guaranteeing a basic income floor.

A banker might see tax rates as the answer. But as a founder, I know that decisions, small and large, are made based on sentiment, confidence and the belief that demand will be there so that my return on investment is predictable.

This is exactly why so many entrepreneurs support Universal Basic Income. It creates reliable consumer demand beyond subsistence spending, gives founders and investors confidence that customers will exist, ensures those customers have spending power, gives people the security to lobby for better wages, or go back to school to retrain — all of which grows our economy.

The Canadian Centre for Economic Analysis found in 2020 that unconditional cash programs to people who will spend it, like the Canada Child Benefit, grew the economy by two dollars for every one dollar disbursed. To enact a moderate basic income today would cost roughly $36 billion, but would grow the economy by over $80 billion, add $10 billion annually in tax revenue, and that’s before we even consider the long-term improvements in education, new venture formation, retraining, and productivity. Not to mention, more people take entrepreneurial risks when they know they will not be destroyed financially if things fail.

Canada should not race the U.S. to the bottom with tax credits, but position ourselves as the country where talent can take risks, where families experience genuine long-term security, and where investors know domestic demand will be stable and growing. That is our competitive advantage.

Budget 2025 was titled “Build Canada Strong,” but if we really want to do that, we need to invest in everyday Canadians, and the things that make our country attractive to investors and entrepreneurs, not cut taxes for large corporations and yacht owners. That’s how we unlock the innovation, entrepreneurship and confidence needed to meet this moment together.

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