Negócios em Ação holds its fourth edition on Saturday 26 September at the Columbus Centre in north Toronto, with six speakers and a room that seats 79. It is built for Brazilian and Portuguese entrepreneurs and professionals in Toronto and the surrounding region, and the programme leans towards the questions that come with running a business across two countries.
The event runs from 12:45 pm to 6 pm at 901 Lawrence Avenue West, organised by BRS Management Solutions. Parking is free. It lands in a month that has been unusually full for the Brazilian calendar in the city. Tickets are on sale through Eventbrite, where the listing carries a selling fast label and states that the room holds 79 people.
Who is speaking
Six speakers are listed on the ticket page. The organiser has published the subject for two of them so far, on its own promotional cards.
| Speaker | Subject, as the organiser states it |
|---|---|
| Arnon Melo | Entrepreneurship in Canada during a tariff war: challenges, logistics and opportunities. Listed with Mellohawk Logistics. |
| Raquel Camargo | Artificial intelligence, framed as the question of which businesses AI names when someone looks for one like yours. Canadian firms are still largely undecided about adopting it. |
| Marcelo Caixeta | Subject not yet published. |
| Marcus Rocha | Subject not yet published. |
| Paula Civolani | Subject not yet published. |
| Rui Gomes | Subject not yet published. |
Vini Vilela, a financial educator and consultant, and LiUNA Local 183 both appear on the organiser’s material as sponsors of this edition. LiUNA Local 183 is backing the event for the first time.
What is on the agenda
The programme is not the usual growth-and-mindset bill. The listing puts cross-border tax and pension questions at the front: exit tax planning for people leaving the Brazilian tax system, and how retirement entitlements work between Brazil and Canada, both with specialists.
Alongside that there is a Hot Seat session with a Toronto entrepreneur who works in the food and investment industries, and blocks set aside for networking, partnerships and the practical business of scaling a company in Canada.
It is worth saying plainly what that agenda signals. A room that has organised itself around exit tax and cross-border pensions is not a room of people wondering whether to start something. It is a room of people already trading, thinking about structure.
What it costs and how many seats are left
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Date | Saturday 26 September 2026 |
| Time | 12:45 pm to 6:00 pm, 5 hours 15 minutes |
| Venue | Columbus Centre, 901 Lawrence Avenue West, Toronto |
| Capacity | 79 people |
| Early Admission | CA$55.36, including CA$6.37 GST and HST |
| Refunds | Up to 7 days before the event |
| Parking | Free |
One thing on the ticket page is easy to misread. The header still advertises a price from CA$27.69, but that figure belongs to a two-for-one early admission tier whose sales have ended. When we checked on 16 September the only tier on sale was Early Admission at CA$55.36.
Why a room like this, now
There is a reason an agenda about structure and scale lands with this audience, and it shows up in the national numbers.
In February 2025 Statistics Canada published a study of immigrant-owned firms drawing on tax and payroll records from 2001 to 2020. Adjusted for firm characteristics, firms majority-owned by immigrants came out 9.4 per cent less productive per worker than comparable firms owned by Canadian-born people. The interesting part is how that number moves with size.
| Firm size | Productivity gap |
|---|---|
| Fewer than 5 employees | 8.8% |
| 100 or more employees | 20.9% |
The gap at the top of the size range is about 2.4 times the gap at the bottom. Whatever it is measuring, it is not a difficulty in starting a company. It shows up as the company grows, which is exactly the stage this event is pitched at. Size keeps turning out to be the variable that matters, as it did when we measured who gets trained on new technology.
The same study found the tax column running the other way. Firms with immigrant majority ownership paid 16 per cent more in net taxes per employee than firms owned by Canadian-born people, and firms with immigrant minority ownership paid 23 per cent more.
The authors are careful about what sits behind the productivity figure, and so are we. Labour productivity here is output per worker, a ratio and not a verdict on anyone’s effort. They point to tighter financial constraints and to concentration in low-margin, highly competitive sectors such as small retail, restaurants and personal services, where economies of scale are thin by the nature of the business. They also find education, business experience and language at arrival strongly associated with the outcomes, which rhymes with a separate finding on where a degree was earned and what it is worth here. Association is not mechanism, and the study does not claim one. The data also stops in 2020.
Frequently asked questions
When and where is Negócios em Ação 2026?
Saturday 26 September 2026, from 12:45 pm to 6 pm, at the Columbus Centre, 901 Lawrence Avenue West, Toronto. It is the fourth edition, organised by BRS Management Solutions.
Who is it for?
Brazilian and Portuguese entrepreneurs and professionals living in Toronto and the surrounding region, from people already running companies to people moving into business from employment.
How much is a ticket and how many seats are there?
Early Admission was CA$55.36 including tax when we checked on 16 September 2026. The ticket page states a capacity of 79 people. A cheaper two-for-one tier existed and its sales have ended. Refunds are available up to 7 days before the event.
Who is speaking?
Six speakers are listed: Arnon Melo, Marcelo Caixeta, Marcus Rocha, Paula Civolani, Raquel Camargo and Rui Gomes. Published subjects so far are entrepreneurship in Canada during a tariff war, with Arnon Melo of Mellohawk Logistics, and artificial intelligence, with Raquel Camargo.
What is on the programme?
Exit tax planning and Brazil to Canada retirement questions with specialists, a Hot Seat session with a Toronto entrepreneur from the food and investment industries, and networking.
Sources and method
Event details, speaker names, capacity, prices and the refund policy were read on the organiser’s Eventbrite listing on 16 September 2026 and may change before the date. Speaker subjects and sponsor credits are quoted as the organiser describes them on its own published material. Where a subject has not been published, we say so rather than guess.
The productivity and tax figures come from Huju Liu, Chaohui Lu, Haozhen Zhang and Jianwei Zhong, Economic and fiscal performance of immigrant-owned firms in Canada, published in Statistics Canada’s Economic and Social Reports on 26 February 2025 and summarised in The Daily. The data is the Canadian Employer Employee Dynamics Database, 2001 to 2020. Statistics Canada publishes the gap at each firm size; the ratio between the two size bands is our calculation.
