The email arrived on August 26 bearing the imprimatur of the Honourable Evan Solomon, Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation.
As a co-founder of an AI-based technology company, I opened it
with a rare feeling: optimism. Here, at last, was a federal announcement that seemed to be sincerely trying to bridge the gap between Ottawa’s tech ambitions and the capital-starved reality of Black entrepreneurship in Canada. FedDev Ontario, the press release declared, was investing $15 million (a meagre sum) to strengthen opportunities for Black entrepreneurs across southern Ontario in tech—money to help founders like me build, grow, and scale.
Then I read past the headline and took a look at where the money actually goes.
It funds nine non-profits to run training programs, mentorship streams, business advisory services, and "ecosystem navigation" for Black entrepreneurs. If you read the project descriptions on the government's own page, a pattern emerges: accelerators, cohorts, advisory services, capacity-building. What you won't find is a single dollar flowing as capital into a founder's business to spend as they see fit. The money builds programs around Black entrepreneurs. It doesn't reach them.
Effectively, the government has announced $15 million in capital for Black entrepreneurs while carefully filtering it through non-profit programming rather than landing as capital that Black founders can control. That $15 million reaches entrepreneurs only indirectly, if at all.
