Series - Editorial Fellowship: Transforming Funding Models

Baby Boomers are retiring. Here’s what Canada should do to put their businesses in employees’ hands — and build community wealth.

Author Gabe Oatley
In January, US-based Taylor Guitars transitioned to 100% employee ownership — financed for the first time ever by a Canadian pension plan. Could the ESOP movement move north?

Why It Matters

In the next decade, nearly three quarters of Canadian small business owners will retire – businesses worth over $1.5 trillion. Most will look to sell. In a country where the gap between the rich and poor is widening, and could do so exponentially in the pandemic’s aftermath, experts say this transition provides a huge opportunity to share wealth with workers.

var TRINITY_TTS_WP_CONFIG = {"cleanText":"Baby Boomers are retiring. Here\u2019s what Canada should do to put their businesses in employees\u2019 hands \u2014 and build community wealth.. In early January, Aldo Bustos stood in a factory parking lot in El Cajon, California and learned that he was about to become an owner of one of the top guitar manufacturers in the world.\u00a0 Bustos is the day shift supervisor of the \u2018neck division\u2019 of Taylor Guitars, an American company that employs over 1,200 people and creates premium acoustic and electric guitars. He loves the \u201cmeditative\u201d quality of the job, sanding the necks of the guitars as they pass through the production line. As a kid he grew up playing the air guitar. Now he and his colleagues build them and ship them to 60 countries

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