A year of growth and evolution at Generate Canada
How did 2025 fit so much into just 12 months?
Surely, 2025 can’t be the same year that Mark Carney became our new prime minister, ‘tariffs’ became a household term, and Canada’s baseball team made us stay up past our bedtimes, can it?
Not only was 2025 a year with the same 12 months as any other—it was a year that brought the country together, challenged us in unexpected ways, and asked us to step up and meet the moment like never before.
At Generate Canada, we responded to this unique moment by harnessing the energy and expertise of our staff and partners to innovate, test, and scale future-fit and made-in-Canada solutions, together. We forged new partnerships, evolved our approaches, and even went to Ottawa for our inaugural Day on the Hill where we connected with leaders who are working toward the same goal—to create a strong and inclusive economy that is respected at home and abroad.
Below you will read some of the achievements our Solution Spaces were able to realize over the past year. In looking at all we’ve accomplished across the organization in 2025, it’s safe to say we are not the same organization we were at the beginning of the year—and that’s intentional. As a nimble social innovation platform, we continually evolve in order to respond to the context and opportunity around us—all while keeping our eye on the north star of creating an inclusive economy that thrives within nature’s limits.
We know that scaling investment in nature from all sources (public, private and philanthropic) is critical to halt and reverse biodiversity loss, build resilience to climate change, and support well-being in Canada, and we know there are financial instruments that can play a fundamental role can play a fundamental role in helping us get there.
The Nature Investment Hub spent the past year laying the foundation to support the scaling of nature finance, in order to close the current funding gap. With a deep understanding that this work can only be advanced through collaboration and collective action, the Hub welcomed 24 new partners in 2025 expanding its network to 39 partners.
Adding to this momentum, the Hub launched the 5X for Nature Roadmap—an urgent solutions-focused convening of the country’s leading experts, practitioners, and community champions around a suite of nature finance instruments with the greatest potential to mobilize capital for nature in Canada–and published the inaugural Investor Survey Report: Taking Stock of Nature Investment in Canada, taking a pulse on the motivations, expectations, and preferences of Canadian and international investors interested in nature in Canada.
The Hub also participated in Canada’s first-ever Canada Climate Week Xchange, by co-convening The Nature Pitch with Realize Capital Partners-–a gathering focused on showcasing investable solutions for nature that attracted 75 participants and built awareness of emerging trends in the nature finance market in Canada.
What’s ahead for 2026: The Hub will host Canada’s first Nature Finance Bootcamp in April 2026—an immersive learning experience designed to build the personal and technical capacity needed to catalyze transformational change in Canada’s emerging nature-finance market. Keep an eye out for the opening of the application process, which will run until the end of January 2026. The Hub will also continue its 5X for Nature convening, culminating in the launch of a draft roadmap for further engagement in Spring 2026.
In Canada, circular solutions for plastics are gaining momentum, but scaling impact requires coordinated action across regions and value chains.
The Canada Plastics Pact (CPP) deeply understands this and through their work this past year, they put this understanding to action. In 2024-25, CPP closed their first two national accelerators; brought the value chain together at a Partner Summit to imagine a National Strategy for Plastics Action; celebrated the impact of our packaging design efforts; and released foundational work on data standards and advanced recycling. Each of these efforts continues to move the system towards greater circularity.
To further strengthen its alignment across borders and sectors, the CPP endorsed the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s 2030 Plastics Agenda for Business and Global Commitment. This global framework is designed to mobilize businesses, governments, and organizations worldwide to eliminate plastic waste and pollution through individual business action and system-wide collaboration.
The CPP also updated the Golden Design Rules for Plastics Packaging–rules that have made real-world progress across value chains and have been implemented by companies who are creating practical, scalable solutions. Earlier this month, CPP Partners, innovators, and leaders from across Canada gathered to celebrate these early successes. This event was a powerful reminder of what’s possible when industry comes together with purpose and ambition.
What’s ahead in 2026: To move beyond pilots and reach national scale, circularity must be demonstrated as not only environmentally necessary but economically viable—with clear evidence of job creation, infrastructure returns, investment potential, and innovation benefits. In 2026, the CPP will focus on providing a comprehensive economic picture of the full risks and opportunities of a circular plastics system. Over the year ahead, CPP’s priority will be to deliver this economic clarity and help build the conditions—across infrastructure, incentives, policy, and markets—that enable a mature, scalable circular plastics economy in Canada.
When your long-term goal is to scale climate-smart agriculture across 14% of Canada’s farmland by 2050, progress depends on partners who are willing to collaborate and lead together to make it happen. And that’s exactly what happened with the launch of the Million Acre Challenge this year.
In October, CANZA introduced this bold initiative to accelerate the adoption of regenerative farming practices across Canada. Launched with an initial catalytic $7 million contribution—as part of a broader $50 million commitment from the Weston family—this initiative was developed in partnership with Canadian farmers to ensure that the Challenge offers participating farmers cost-sharing and agronomic support to adopt climate- smart practices, while helping de-risk adoption and strengthen long-term economic and environmental resilience at the farm level.
The Million Acre Challenge is laying the groundwork for a thriving agricultural sector, one that works for farmers, strengthens the economy, and delivers environmental outcomes. Reaching one million acres is ambitious, but it’s only the beginning.
What’s ahead for 2026: CANZA is building on the strong foundation of 2025, stepping into 2026 with plans to expand participation in the Million Acre Challenge, advancing the development of an environmental outcomes marketplace, and scaling CANZA’s national measurement, monitoring, reporting and verification (MMRV) work. Together, these efforts will help move climate-smart agriculture from early adoption towards durable, long-term practices across Canada.
Creating a circular economy isn’t about one sector or solution, it’s about changing the entire system. This year, Circular Economy Leadership Canada focused on advancing foundational, critical enablers of the circular economy—enablers with the power to create systemic change.
CELC worked with the finance sector to help investors better understand circular versus linear risk and opportunity, with a goal of deploying more capital to scale circular business models, projects and infrastructure investments. They standardized circular economy measurement through their Government-to-Government Policy Incubator, working with industry and all levels of government to incorporate global best practices. CELC also published a new Buying as a Service Guide for industry to show how—and why—businesses should transition to circular procurement.
And in what was perhaps the most energizing highlight of 2025, CELC co-hosted the bi-annual Canadian Circular Economy Summit in Montreal this past April, bringing together nearly 1,000 delegates from across the country to accelerate circular economy efforts.
What’s ahead for 2026: Next year brings an exciting pivot for CELC. They will be focusing and doubling down in an area of strategic importance and growing momentum—circular construction. Stay tuned to learn more in the new year.
2025 marked a milestone for the Energy Futures Lab–their 10th anniversary! As of this year the Lab has catalyzed over 100 initiatives, showcasing their unique ability to bring diverse interest holders together on issues regarding Alberta and Canada’s energy transition.
Also this year, the Lab released the 2025-26 Fellowship Solution portfolio, showcasing the solutions-focused work of their current cohort of fellows, and published the Alberta’s Future Competitiveness report offering insight into the province’s next wave of growth and the pathways to seize it. They also advanced their work around Canada’s critical materials and battery value chain, launching the Western Canadian Critical Materials Alliance and hosting the first in a series of regional workshops. And most recently, in line with its Alberta Electricity Future work, the Lab published a research summary on Demand Side Management–a widely recognized tool for increasing the affordability and reliability of electricity systems around the world.
What’s ahead for 2026: The Lab was one of the first Solution Spaces in Generate Canada’s portfolio and over the past decade it has grown to become Canada’s leading social innovation platform for energy transition. In 2026, the Lab will be taking an important step in its evolution—Energy Futures Lab will evolve from a Generate Canada Solution Space into its own independent organization. Generate Canada looks forward to collaborating with EFL in this new capacity.
As we reflect on the work we have accomplished over the past year, it’s clear that our greatest potential to scale impact comes from aggregating and harnessing the cross-cutting and continually-evolving knowledge, insights, and opportunities that emerge from our work across our Solution Spaces.
We are stepping into 2026 excited to work with the collective influence of our partners to innovate new technologies and business practices, inform public policy, make supply chains more efficient, and mobilize new investments on issues of importance to Canada that go beyond one industry, sector or Solution Space. Because together, we are greater than the sum of our parts.
