Budget 2026 focuses on delivering prosperity for Canadians by increasing investment, growing competitiveness and strengthening sovereignty. The strategy recognizes our natural wealth as an advantage – aligning with the views of 96% of Canadians – but more work is needed to fully realize the opportunity to build Canada well through nature.
This year’s budget includes a recommitment to the federal government’s $3.7 billion A Force of Nature strategy as recognition that nature can be the foundation of our economy, sovereignty and well-being. When properly valued, Canada's forests, farmlands and waters can generate billions in economic value, attract private investment, create jobs, strengthen rural and Indigenous economies and improve resilience amid growing environmental and economic challenges.
Canada’s Nature Advantage welcomes commitments that align with our recommendations for valuing nature as an essential driver of prosperity and strength:
- Significant investments in Canada’s forest sector, including support for sustainable forest management, innovation and Indigenous partnership. The new $4 billion Forestry Sector Accelerator and related measures reflect the type of early-stage de-risking needed to unlock private investment and build globally competitive nature-based industries.
- Commitments to advance carbon market mechanisms, including updated industrial carbon-pricing benchmarks, greater interprovincial carbon-market alignment and continued emphasis on investor certainty.
- The continued commitment to sustainable finance, including the development of a Sustainable Bond Framework, investment taxonomies and enhanced disclosure requirements. These initiatives help create the transparency investors increasingly require.
- A reinforcement of the importance of Indigenous partnership in Canada's economic future, including commitments to the Tla'amin Nation acquisition through the Indigenous Loan Guarantee Program, the Great Bear Sea/Northern Shelf Bioregion Reconciliation Framework Agreement and forest-sector investments explicitly supporting Indigenous partners.
While these commitments help lay the foundation for a future where nature is recognized as a driver of economic growth, more action is needed to fully realize the value of nature as a strategic economic advantage. Canada’s Nature Advantage has identified the policy foundations that can deliver this future by further unlocking large-scale private investment in nature-positive working landscapes.
To support the ambition to build a stronger, more resilient economy, Canada should:
- Deliver a forest strategy that includes clear mechanisms to strengthen Indigenous equity participation, incentivize stewardship outcomes and build the next generation of forest credit market projects.
- Extend its credit market-building approach to nature-based solutions and environmental credit systems that can reward stewardship practices and help finance restoration, stewardship and conservation outcomes at scale.
- Build the data and tools needed to measure nature’s economic value, unlock private investment, and attract capital to entrepreneurs and innovators developing the next generation of nature-positive technologies and business models.
We look forward to working with the federal government and the Expert Taskforce on Natural Capital Accounting and Nature Financing to advance these solutions and build an economy where people and nature thrive.