As a quasi-private, quasi-public institution, the labour-sponsored investment fund is quickly becoming integral to the mobilization and organization of savings for investment and capital formation in Canada. The preceding has been a brief, if detailed, description of this new and singular financial institution which may be of interest to decision-makers and policy-makers in government and the private sector, as well as international observers.
The preceding has also been an investigation into the applied standards, investment activity, and programs of labour-sponsored funds, based on information acquired under the CLMPC's 1994-95 research project and by other studies produced in recent months and years. Necessarily, some issues, concerns, and policy questions have been left untouched or have been treated in a cursory fashion. It is hoped that this will be the beginning of further, more intensive, and updated research efforts.
It was suggested earlier that as a government tax expenditure program, labour-sponsored funds have been the object of particularly close and searching scrutiny. CLMPC research interviews with the Chairpersons of Boards of Directors, President and CEO's, and other directors and officers, indicate that the funds themselves welcome this scrutiny. Indeed, as a vehicle of several clear public policy aims in the venture capital market — and in the Canadian economy and society, more generally — directors and officers believe that labour-sponsored funds, individually and collectively, must always be held accountable for the mandates that treasury dollars support. Furthermore, as a market-based institution, it is appropriate that this capital supplier, like any other, always be responsive to ever- changing demand expectations in industry.
To be adequately examined and assessed, the rationale for having labour-sponsored funds in Canada must be comprehended. This document has attempted, first and foremost, to establish an analytical framework — derived from original precepts and principles, determined in statutes by Canadian governments in federal and provincial jurisdictions, and by labour in the private mandates of the funds — for monitoring and evaluative purposes.
To this end, it is concluded that the ten salient institutional qualities identified here: