Thank you very much, Madam Chair and members of the committee.
My name is Dave Morrow. I'm a Canadian Armed Forces veteran, founder of Morrow Consulting and Training Inc. and creator of the Hard to Kill project at hardtokill.org. This includes an internationally awarded podcast, the Hard to Kill podcast, a bestselling book on Amazon, Harden the F*ck Up and an online “Veterans Getting Fit AF” community, which is the first to offer frontline medical coverage and plant medicine consulting through the A-Vet protocol and to receive Veterans Affairs Canada funding to improve the health and fitness of our female warriors with our world-class A.T.H.E.N.A. program.
I'm also the only Canadian veteran, as far as I know, who has co-organized an international entrepreneur conference at the largest military entrepreneurship conference in the world, the Military Influencer Conference. I've spent the last six years talking shop with some of the biggest American and Canadian veteran business leaders. I'll also slip in here that if it were not for the Hard to Kill podcast and my team, there wouldn't be nearly as many Afghan interpreters and their families here in Canada.
Let me start the way any good entrepreneur should—with an offer. My offer is simple: Work with me to map, measure and unlock the veteran entrepreneurship pipeline in Canada—not in theory and not in another glossy brochure, but through a proper, evidence-based strategy that treats veteran founders as a national economic asset rather than a side project.
I'm not going to give you a 10-point solution in five minutes; that's obvious. That would be consultant malpractice.
What I am going to do is lay out the problem, show you what we know from the United States and make it painfully clear how little we actually know about veteran entrepreneurs in Canada. If you want real answers, that's what a follow-on mandate is for.
In the United States, the picture is very clear. There are 1.6 million businesses contributing one trillion dollars' worth of revenue per year. Research has shown that American veterans are almost twice as likely to be self-employed as non-veterans and 80% more successful in their businesses than their civilian counterparts. In other words, the U.S. can actually measure both the upside and the friction in its veteran entrepreneurship ecosystem.
Now let's cross the border. In Canada, there are about 460,000 veterans. Roughly 8,500 members transition out of the Canadian Armed Forces every year.
Here's the uncomfortable question: How many of them own businesses, in what sectors and with how many employees? What are their failure rates, their capital gaps and their export potential?
No one in this room can answer these questions with confidence, because we haven't bothered to build a proper national picture. We have signals, but not a system. We have grassroots initiatives like shopveteran.ca and programs like the Prince's Operation Entrepreneur—which is now, unfortunately, defunct.
That's the first barrier. We're flying blind.
My personal experience as an entrepreneur navigating the minefield of VAC and PCVRS programs includes being threatened with benefit suspension for not following the vocational plan of becoming a CBC radio host, even though I'm a biochemist with a master's degree in education; having my DEC decision delayed due to the suspicion that since I hosted a podcast and coached veterans, I was making employment income and not declaring it while on the IRB; and not being eligible for a work chair from VAC for my service-related injury because I'm self-employed.
From my work with Canadian veterans and from the largest military entrepreneurship conference in the world, a few themes keep coming up. One is data and visibility. Veteran founders are invisible in our national stats. If you're not counted, you're not planned for. You're not in the procurement strategies, in the innovation funds or in the export playbook.
Another theme is capital and the benefits cliff. In the U.S., they at least know that veterans are more likely to be entrepreneurs and still face financial gaps. In Canada, a veteran weighing a start-up has to navigate a maze of VAC benefits, tax rules and provincial programs, often with a very real fear that trying to build a business will jeopardize the safety that keeps food on the table.
The fact that we prevent income growth while on disability is beyond comprehension to me. It implies that we would rather people sit at home, collect their cheque, shut up and smoke their cannabis.
The supports are fragmented. There's no clear front door for Canadian veterans who want to start and grow a business. Instead, there's a patchwork of non-profits, boot camps, short-term projects and well-meaning pilots. These are good people and good work, but from a systems perspective, it's a bag full of parts; it's not an engine.
As for culture and identity, we train people to follow orders in the Canadian Armed Forces and then drop them into a world in which success depends on breaking patterns, questioning assumptions and pitching themselves. For many, especially those who, like me, are dealing with injuries, chronic pain and operational stress injuries, entrepreneurship is both an opportunity and a psychological minefield.
Back home in Montreal, I'm surrounded by a friend network of veteran entrepreneurs who never mention that they're veterans because it's bad for business. Why? Canada has consistently driven home a message in the media that we are unhinged sex predators or “grumpy old man” veterans who complain about our benefits. The reality is that only veterans buy from other veteran-owned businesses. There was not a single increase in sales during my elbows-up campaign, unfortunately.
What do I want from you today? I don't want a new brochure or another pilot. I want this committee to treat veteran entrepreneurs as economic policy, not charity. It means three things at a high level.
The first is to count us. Direct the VAC, StatsCan and partners to properly identify, track and report on veteran-owned businesses as a distinct category.
Second, follow the outcomes, not the intentions. Tie funding and programs to measurable results, revenue growth, jobs created, exports and innovation, not just to seats in a workshop.
Third, stop assuming that “jobseeker” is the only postservice identity available. For a significant portion of veterans, the right question isn't, “Who will hire you?” but “What will you build, and how do we get out of your way?”
Here, my consulting offer comes in. My team and I know this landscape from the ground level—Canadian and American. We built programs, navigated VAC, secured funding as a for-profit company and worked directly with veterans who are trying to create value instead of just surviving.
I'm not here to hand you a prepackaged solution. I'm here to say that you have a massive, underused engine of economic growth sitting in your veteran community. Right now, you don't even have the dashboard wired up. Give us a mandate to build the dashboard and the road map that follows, and five years from now, we won't be guessing how many veteran entrepreneurs Canada has. We'll be arguing about how to scale them faster.
Thank you.
