Conception of the Crocus Investment Fund, Inc., like that of the Fonds de solidarité and Working Opportunity, was linked with precise provincial economic challenges. Manitoba's historically stable and diversified prairie economy has recently experienced persistent employment losses in its manufacturing sector and investment rates below the national average.
In the late 1980s, the Manitoba Federation of Labour (MFL), with a current membership of 88,000, developed its proposal for a labour-sponsored investment fund that would emphasize job creation and preservation through a strategy of “capital retention.” This meant that savings leakage and consequent disinvestment — caused chiefly, says the MFL and others, by non-resident firm owners and financial institutions — would be prevented. Instead, Manitoba resources would be mobilized for the use of local industrial activity.
To obtain enabling legislation (and seed financing necessary due to Manitoba's finite population base), this Crocus Fund proposal was formally presented to government. The province's Conservative administration responded in 1991 with passage of the Manitoba Employee Ownership Fund Corporation Act, which, in turn, led to incorporation of the Crocus Fund in March, 1992. Federal authorities were also of assistance in the fund's inception of the fund.
A central mandate of the fund is employee participation in corporate governance and management and employee financial participation and ownership. In fact, legislation was precipitated in part by federally-supported research into the efficacy of worker ownership and buyouts, including those facilitated by a friendly equity institution, such as a labour- sponsored fund. To this end, Spain's Mondragon system and the American ESOP's have been informative models.
The Crocus Fund has experienced marked growth since 1992, as Figure 23 illustrates. At present, the fund's net assets total over $26 million and there are approximately 6,600 provincial shareholders.