Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced on 8 September that CAD 80 million (USD 58 million, EUR 49 million) of the CAD 1 billion (USD 720 million, EUR 617 million) tariff relief fund he announced on 5 September will go toward supporting small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Atlantic Canada.
The CAD 1 billion fund is itself part of a CAD 5 billion (USD 3.6 billion, EUR 3.1 billion) policy package intended to strengthen Canada’s economy.
"This funding will help equip Atlantic Canadian industries with the tools they need to respond to modern challenges – to innovate, to modernize, to expand operations and customer bases, to take full advantage of new opportunities,” Carney said while making the announcement at the Newdock shipyard in the city of St. John's, Newfoundland.
According to Canadian government statistics, the nation's Atlantic provinces host more than 14,000 registered fishing vessels, which brought in 554,986 metric tons of fish in 2024.
Additionally, about half of the nation’s aquaculture production occurs in Atlantic Canada, a percentage which will likely increase as the nation moves to ban net-pen salmon farming in British Columbia by June 2029.
Explaining his government’s motive for the new programs that aim to benefit such enterprises, Carney said that though Canada still has the “best deal” of any U.S. trading partner, “the economic future of our country is caught up in a storm as the United States fundamentally reshapes all of its trading relationships.”
Outlining the details of the SME relief fund, Carney explained that “there are some businesses that are very acutely affected by these U.S. tariffs."
"They need immediate liquidity relief; they need immediate funds to adjust,” he said.
Some of these funds, he said, would be loans with repayment periods up to nine years, but others, which included up to CAD 1 million (USD 722,000, EUR 617,000) in funding, would be contributions which businesses did not have to pay back.
SMEs in the region will also get a boost from other aspects of the nation's new Buy Canada program, which will mandate that the federal government contract with Canadian producers and encourage provincial governments to do the same.
“It’s time that we become our own best customer, buying Canadian to build Canadian,” Carney said, pledging to reduce federal barriers to internal trade.
Though there will be a focus on domestic commerce, Carney also said he intends to expand the reach of Canada’s exports, such as seafood, far beyond North America, referencing the need to support and grow both the packaging and the cold chain logistics sectors, which he said would support Canadian producers who wanted to export their products to new markets farther away.
Carney said that the “rupture” of the formerly warm trade relationship between Canada and the U.S. has brought “immense uncertainty” to Canadian businesses.
“When you have that uncertainty, that can paralyze decision-making, hold back investment, and stifle growth," he said. "This is not the time to delay and hope for the best. Hope is not a strategy. It’s time to control what we can control.”
