32 Accessing Entrepreneurship and Business Development

Even more alarming that the data around workplace inclusion covered in the previous chapter are the statistics around entrepreneurship and corporate leadership.  According to a BDO Canada study, despite nearly one in five Canadians living with a disability, only 0.5 per cent of small or medium-sized businesses in Canada are owned by a person with a disability.^[1]  Moreover, Ontario vastly outranks the other provinces, even on a per capita basis.  Alberta, for example, is closer to 0.02 per cent, which means able-bodied people own 99.98 per cent of the small and medium businesses in Alberta. Eyra Abraham, founder of Lisnen, a mobile app that uses AI to convert audio alarms to visual and tactile signals for deaf individuals, notes that there is an “awkward silence” whenever she is in a room with potential investors.^[2]