Above all, the research aims to help determine a set of appropriate and informed parameters by which the effectiveness of labour-sponsored funds may be analyzed and evaluated over time. In this way, the CLMPC wishes to contribute positively to ongoing debate.

When research began in 1994, there was very little intelligence about labour-sponsored funds that existed in written form, particularly outside of Québec. This changed recently with the publication of several reports, such as the report of the federal Standing Committee on Industry (Taking Care of Small Business, 1994), a study of the Fonds de solidarité by the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (1995), and the CLMPC's The Role and Performance of Labour-sponsored Investment Funds: Some Preliminary Findings which was presented to the federal Standing Committee on Finance in April, 1995.

The range of quantitative and qualitative data on the funds will be advanced further by publication of the companion piece to this paper — Adding Value: The Economic and Social Impacts of Labour-sponsored Venture Capital Corporations on their Investee Firms, written by Ted Jackson and François Lamontagne of Carleton University's Centre for the Study of Training, Investment and Economic Restructuring (CSTIER).

For this report, the CLMPC overcame an information gap only with the co-operation of the funds and sponsors. The leading funds gave the CLMPC complete and unprecedented access to confidential files and records. These data were supplemented by exhaustive interviews with senior directors and officers as well as, in many cases, their written answers to CLMPC-drafted questionnaires.

In reading this document, it should be remembered that the legal and market environment for labour-sponsored funds is in a constant state of flux. With respect to many factual details, what follows is best seen as a snapshot of the funds taken in the period 1994-95.

The CLMPC would like to thank participants in this exercise and, especially the following: Fernand Daoust, président du conseil d'administration, Pierre Laflamme, premier vice-président, Denis Leclerc, vice-président, Michel Blondin, directeur, Michel Coulombe, directeur, Angèle Houle and Raynald Aubin, the Fonds de solidarité; Ron Begg, President, Working Ventures; David Levi, President and CEO, Mike Phillips, Vice-president, and Anne Cameron, Manager, Working Opportunity Fund, Ltd.; and, Sherman Kreiner, President and CEO, the Crocus Investment Fund, Inc. Other directors, officers, and staff of all eighteen funds and sponsoring labour centrals/unions, are also warmly acknowledged.