There's no mandatory license to sell a business in Canada. If you're getting ready to sell the company you spent twenty years building, or about to spend your savings buying one, the person advising you on the biggest financial decision of your life may have no formal training, no oversight body, and no consequence if it goes wrong. With a wave of business owners approaching retirement over the next decade, that gap is only going to matter more.
That's not a knock on the many capable business brokers already practicing in Canada. It's a structural gap: professionalism in this industry is inconsistent, and buyers and sellers have no reliable way to tell the difference — until after they've already signed an engagement.
Building on what already exists — not starting over
Organizations like the International Business Brokers Association (IBBA) have spent decades building credentials — the CBI and mCBI designations — and a real community of practice around them. That work matters, and ProBX isn't trying to replace it.
What's still missing is a way for the public — not just other brokers — to check, in the moment they need to, whether the person in front of them has actually met a real standard. That's the piece ProBX is building: a public standard for business brokerage that sits alongside the credentials that already exist, rather than competing with them.
What ProBX is doing about it, starting now
The first concrete step is Business Brokerage Education (BBE) — a foundational program covering business preparation, valuation, marketing, sale, and transition, delivered live online and accredited for 12 PDP hours through BCREA.
BBE isn't a marketing badge. It's a real curriculum, built from decades of practice in real estate law, commercial brokerage, and business transactions, condensed into a program any advisor can take to demonstrate they've done the work.
What's next
BBE is stage one of a longer plan: additional stages of advanced and specialized study, a growing multidisciplinary advisor network spanning law, accounting, financing, and valuation, and — over time — a public way to verify an advisor's standing before you ever pick up the phone.
A note on what ProBX is — and isn't
ProBX is not a government regulator, and BBE is not a government license. It's a private industry standard, built because the public deserves one. We'll stay upfront about that distinction as this platform grows.
If you're reading this
If you're a business owner or a buyer: ask your advisor what training and credentials stand behind their advice. It's a fair question, and a good advisor will welcome it.
If you're an advisor: explore BBE and see what a 12-hour, BCREA-accredited program actually covers, or join the ProBX advisor network to help build this standard from the ground up.
Michael Hwang is Senior Counsel at Coal Harbour Law, a licensed Commercial REALTOR® with RE/MAX Commercial Advantage, and the founder of ProBX.