Ontario has launched a new five-year strategy that will help social enterprises grow their businesses, enter new markets and create jobs, while addressing complex social and environmental challenges.

Ontario's Social Enterprise Strategy 2016-2021 sets out significant commitments in three key areas:

• Equipping social enterprises with solid business fundamentals
• Connecting social enterprises to markets and capital to grow and scale
• Demonstrating the value of social enterprise and social finance to investors, government, and communities 

Ontario will invest more than $6 million in the first year of this renewed strategy. The province will leverage Ontario's existing entrepreneurship infrastructure, impact investment capital, and a growing market opportunity to support social enterprises. Some of the feature initiatives include: 

• Integrating specialized social entrepreneurship supports, such as impact measurement, into mainstream entrepreneurship programs, such as those offered through the Ontario Network of Entrepreneurs
• Developing a Social Enterprise Procurement Action Plan to increase the Ontario government's procurement from social enterprises
• Designing a new Social Venture Investment Fund to accelerate the flow of private investment capital to growing social enterprises
• Establishing an Impact Measurement Task Force to build consensus on uniform impact measurement standards for social enterprises
• Piloting one or more Social Impact Bonds to improve social outcomes
• Establishing a Centre of Excellence in Social Enterprise and Social Finance to help government leverage social enterprises and social finance as tools to achieve policy objectives