SMEs and Entrepreneurs

Financing SMEs in Canada: Barriers Faced by Women, Youth, Aboriginal and Minority Entrepreneurs in Accessing Capital (2002) evaluates barriers that may exist as a result of business owner characteristics. Phase 1 of the report presents a review of existing literature and examines obstacles to small business financing for various profiles of business owners in Canada, with particular emphasis on discrepancies attributed to gender, youth, Aboriginal, visible minority, and language minority business ownership.

Phase 2 of the report provides further analysis and evaluation of the literature review undertaken in Phase 1 in order to identify any business owner characteristic-related barriers to financing that are evident on the basis of existing data; identify data gaps that need to be filled in future data collection, a gap analysis model will be developed depicting any gaps in data available; and recommend data collection methodology to fill identified information gaps.