Your health is a succession risk, no one talks about
You have built something that matters. You employ people who count on a pay cheque. Likewise, you have customers who depend on what you deliver. You have suppliers who have planned their operations around your orders. And you have a family whose financial security is tied, in ways most of them do not fully understand, to a business that only you know how to run.
Now ask yourself an honest question: what happens to all of them if your health fails before you have a plan in place?
I have been in M&A advisory for more than 30 years. I have worked on all sides of the table and overseen billions of dollars in transaction value. In that time, I have watched too many owners lose the outcome they deserved, not because their business was weak, but because a health event arrived before a plan did.
This is not a hypothetical. The data make the threat concrete.
The health picture Canadian business owners need to see
Canada performs well on population health by international standards. But aggregate statistics obscure the risks individual owners carry, particularly those in the 50-to-70 age cohort who own the majority of lower-middle-market businesses in this country.
According to the World Health Organization's country health profile for Canada, cardiovascular disease and cancer are the top two causes of death and disability in Canada, collectively accounting for one-third of all healthy life lost. More than 3.4 million Canadians are living with diabetes, and more than 200,000 new cases are diagnosed every year. Heart disease is the leading cause of years of life lost due to premature mortality in Canada, ahead of every other condition, and the absolute number of Canadians affected is growing as the population ages.
Globally, the WHO reports that about 18 million deaths from non-communicable diseases occur every year among people younger than 70. Cardiovascular disease, cancer, chronic respiratory disease and diabetes together account for 80 per cent of all premature NCD deaths. The risk factors: tobacco use, physical inactivity, harmful alcohol consumption, poor diet and air pollution.
These are not abstract population-level risks. If you are a business owner in your mid-50s, running a company with $10 million or more in revenue and a team that depends on you, you sit squarely within the cohort where these conditions strike hardest and most unexpectedly.
The succession gap makes the health risk worse
Health risk would be manageable if most Canadian business owners had a plan in place. The data show most do not.
Canadians 50 and older owned 62 per cent of small and medium-sized businesses in Canada in 2020, up from 47 per cent in 2004. The federal government has estimated that 75 per cent of small business owners plan to retire in the next decade, which could put more than $2 trillion in business assets into transition. Canada has 100,000 fewer entrepreneurs today than it did 20 years ago, even as the population has grown by more than 10 million. The buyers and the capital exist. The plans do not.
A 2025 MNP survey found that nearly two-thirds of Canadian business owners lack a succession plan, even though nearly two-thirds of Canada's private sector workforce depends on those same owners to navigate the transition effectively. Only 8.5 per cent of SME owners have clear succession goals. More than 20 per cent have not considered the question at all.
I do not cite these numbers to be alarmist. I cite them because I see the consequences directly in the businesses that come to me after a health event has already occurred, when the owner's options have narrowed and their leverage is gone.
What a health event actually does to the people around you
Think through the people most immediately affected when an owner is incapacitated, dies unexpectedly or becomes too ill to make sound decisions.
Your employees show up Monday morning. Payroll needs to run. Decisions need to be made. If no one has signing authority, if no one knows who can negotiate with the bank or authorize a supplier payment, the doors may close, not because the business failed, but because no plan existed for the owner to step away.
Your customers have built commitments around your business, contracts, service agreements, delivery schedules. An abrupt or unplanned owner transition, especially one driven by a health crisis, destroys the confidence that relationship depends on. Many will begin qualifying alternatives the moment uncertainty appears.
Your suppliers have extended credit and aligned their own operations around your account. Without clear ownership continuity, they tighten terms, demand early payment or redirect capacity. The operational pressure compounds the personal one.
Your family carries the greatest risk of all. For most lower-middle-market business owners, the eventual sale of the business is the retirement plan. Research from the Exit Planning Institute found that for 70 per cent of business owners, income from the business is essential to maintaining their lifestyle. If the business cannot be sold in an orderly way because no plan exists, the family does not receive the liquidity they were counting on. The asset that was supposed to fund a retirement and leave a legacy becomes instead a source of grief and financial uncertainty.
The "too early" and "too busy" traps
The same Exit Planning Institute research found that 63 per cent of business owners say it is "too early" to start planning, and 45 per cent say they are "too busy."
Both positions assume a health event will announce itself in advance. It will not.
A stroke, a cancer diagnosis, a serious cardiac event: none of these send a calendar invitation. Conditions that affect cognition, decision-making or physical presence can render an owner unable to manage a business before anyone has had time to react, let alone prepare.
The deeper problem is what happens to business value when a health event becomes visible. Buyers discount sharply for uncertainty. Employees start looking elsewhere when leadership is unclear. Customers begin qualifying alternative suppliers quietly. A business that was worth $10 million in a planned, well-executed sale may command significantly less when sold under duress, on a compressed timeline, without the documentation and management depth that transfer value to a buyer.
The time you lose by waiting is not neutral. It is expensive, and the cost is borne by the people who depend on you.
What a proper plan actually requires
Exit and succession planning for a Canadian lower-middle-market business is not a single document or a one-afternoon conversation. In my experience, a transition-ready business needs to have addressed five areas.
Business readiness. Can the business operate and perform without you? Are systems, processes, and client relationships documented and transferable? Does the management team have the depth to carry the business through a leadership change?
Personal readiness. Do you know what your business is worth, and is that value sufficient to fund your retirement and the legacy you intend to leave? Have you modelled the tax implications, including use of the Lifetime Capital Gains Exemption, the Canadian Entrepreneur Incentive and, where relevant, an Employee Ownership Trust structure?
Legal and governance readiness. Is there a shareholders' agreement that addresses incapacity or death? Is there a power of attorney for property and personal care that extends to business decisions? Who has the authority to act on your behalf if you cannot act yourself?
Transition structure. Who are the candidate successors? Are you selling to a third-party buyer, transferring to family, transitioning to management, or exploring an employee ownership trust? Each path has different timing, tax and structural requirements that take years, not weeks, to execute properly.
A written plan with a timeline. Not a conversation you had once. A document that has been reviewed by your M&A advisor, your accountant, your lawyer and your financial planner, and that is reviewed at least annually.
The cost of waiting is not shared equally
The people who pay the highest price when a plan does not exist are not the advisors. They are not the banks or the buyers. They are your employees, your customers, your suppliers and, most of all, your family.
Statistics Canada data cited by the BC Chamber of Commerce projects more than 1.1 million job openings in British Columbia alone between 2024 and 2034, with 60 per cent driven by retirement departures. Every province faces a version of the same dynamic. The business closure rate in Canada edged up to 4.8 per cent in October 2024, above the historical average of 4.6 per cent. These are not abstract numbers. They are businesses that did not make it through a transition.
The owners who protect the people around them are the ones who start the planning process while they still have full capacity, full information and full negotiating leverage. Not when the diagnosis arrives. Not when the bank calls. Not when the accountant raises it at year-end.
Now. While you can.
I write about the planning and process of selling a Canadian lower-middle-market business in my monthly newsletter, The Canadian Exit Briefing. If this piece raised questions you have not yet answered about your situation, the newsletter is a good place to start.
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Sources
Government of Canada, Public Health Agency of Canada. Report from the Canadian Chronic Disease Surveillance System: Heart Disease in Canada, 2018. canada.ca/en/public-health/services/publications/diseases-conditions/report-heart-disease-Canada-2018.html.
The Future Economy / OWNR. Business succession: navigating the exodus of small business owners. thefutureeconomy.ca/op-eds/business-succession-planning-shane-murphy-ownr. Published March 2024, updated July 2025.
On-Site Magazine. Succession gap looms for Canadian businesses (MNP survey). on-sitemag.com/construction/succession-gap-looms-for-canadian-businesses/1003984507. Published February 2025.
Coastal Edge Consulting. Succession planning: the future of work depends on it. coastal-edge.ca/insights/succession-planning. Published September 2025.
Project Equity. 20 key business owner statistics on exits and succession (Exit Planning Institute, Gallup, ideas42). project-equity.org/news/employee-ownership-insider/business-owner-statistics-exit-planning. Published April 2025.
BC Chamber of Commerce. Addressing barriers to succession planning for small to medium enterprises. bcchamber.org/policy-search/addressing-barriers-succession-planning-small-medium-enterprises-2025. 2025.