06/16/2026
Yesterday at the Trade Diversification Summit in Toronto, the announcements signaled something important: governments are putting real capital behind global expansion.
Premier Doug Ford announced new Export Readiness Programming to help Toronto businesses expand into global markets — part of the Province's broader commitment to SMEs. FedDev Ontario and the City of Toronto announced investments in the Future of Sport Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University.
The funding matters. But what struck me more was the conversation underneath it.
Canadian businesses are being asked to do something many haven't done at scale: diversify markets, build expansion capacity, and mitigate risk in geographies where the playbook is still being written.
That isn't a funding question. It's an ex*****on question.
The companies that will use this funding well already know where they want to grow, why, and what they need to build. The ones that won't will treat it as money to chase opportunity rather than capital to build discipline around it.
Trade diversification isn't a strategy. It's a discipline applied to where you're going next — and the leaders who understand the difference will move very differently than the ones that don't.
This is exactly the territory I'm focused on at Case Advisory Group.
