Ottawa Opens Bidding for Women Entrepreneurship Strategy Ecosystem Fund

Small Business Minister Valdez has launched a call for proposals for the Women Entrepreneurship Strategy Ecosystem Fund, opening a fresh round of federal funding for organizations that support women entrepreneurs across Canada.

The announcement, reported by The Globe and Mail, signals the latest disbursement cycle under the Liberal government's broader Women Entrepreneurship Strategy, a program designed to increase the number of women-owned and women-led businesses and to help them scale.

The Ecosystem Fund targets not individual founders directly, but the intermediary organizations that serve them: nonprofit groups, chambers of commerce, business accelerators, incubators and similar bodies that provide training, mentoring, networking and advisory services to women entrepreneurs. Successful applicants will receive federal money to expand or enhance that support infrastructure.

For organizations interested in applying, the call for proposals sets out a competitive process. Groups will need to submit applications demonstrating how their programs increase access to capital, markets and networks for women business owners, and how they would deploy the federal funds.

The Women Entrepreneurship Strategy has been one of the federal government's flagship initiatives aimed at closing the gap between male- and female-led entrepreneurship. Canada has historically trailed peer economies in the share of women-owned businesses, and successive federal budgets have allocated money toward narrowing that divide through ecosystem investments, financing and mentorship programming.

The launch of the call for proposals gives service providers a defined window to compete for the next tranche of that funding. Organizations that miss this cycle will likely have to wait for a subsequent call, which typically depends on remaining program allocations.

The move comes as policymakers across developed economies intensify focus on female entrepreneurship as a lever for economic growth. For Canadian women's business organizations, the practical question now is application timing: preparing competitive proposals before the submission deadline will determine which groups control the next wave of federally funded support services for women founders.