VANCOUVER — The B.C. government has chosen Christine Bergeron, the head of Vancouver-based credit union Vancity, to chair the board of its new $500-million strategic investment corporation. Bergeron, who has been with the credit union for about a decade but who only officially took on the top job at the start of this year, will head InBC Investment’s nine-person board.

“I am pleased to be appointed to this position. We have a vitally important job to do in building a climate-resilient and prosperous B.C. as we recover from the pandemic,” said Bergeron in a statement to The Logic; she was not available for an interview. She said she looked forward to working with the board “to emerge stronger out of the recovery, create jobs and address issues such as climate change.”

Bergeron joined Vancity in 2011 as an investment manager, working her way up to interim and then permanent CEO after Tamara Vrooman left the top post in June 2020. She also serves as a board member at Avios Wealth and represents North America on the UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative’s Banking Board. Before Vancity, she worked within the cleantech, sustainability and impact-investing sectors, co-founding Shoreline West Asset Management and Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital. 

Innovation Minister Ravi Kahlon told The Logic the government wanted to make sure it found a chair who embodied InBC’s values, which he said boil down to profit, planet and people. “Christine is a champion,” he said in an interview Thursday, citing Bergeron’s experience with venture capital firms and cleantech-related funds, as well as Vancity’s similar values. The credit union prides itself on considering the financial, social and environmental well-being of its co-operative members. “So, she’s an excellent board chair.”

The other eight board members B.C.’s NDP government appointed Thursday offer a blend of private-sector, public-sector and non-profit experience. They include Ingrid Leong, chief investment officer of the philanthropic Houssian Foundation; Suzanne Trottier, vice-president of Indigenous trust services at First Nations Bank Trust; Iglika Ivanova, a senior economist at the B.C. office of left-leaning think-tank Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives; Kevin Campbell, managing director of investment banking at Haywood Securities; and Glen Lougheed, described in a release as a serial tech entrepreneur and angel investor. Lougheed most recently co-founded Applied Post, where he serves as CEO. Rounding out the board are the province’s deputy innovation minister Bobbi Plecas and deputy finance minister Heather Wood, as well as former B.C. finance minister and deputy premier Carole James.

Kahlon said he believes “the entire board … is phenomenal,” and highlighted its diversity, including its seven women members, which he called “quite rare” for this type of board but reflective of InBC’s values. The government wants to ensure diversity on all its boards, he said, noting it was one of Premier John Horgan’s priorities. B.C.’s board-resourcing office started looking for potential candidates last year, Kahlon said. “There were so many names. Sometimes you hear, ‘Oh, well, there’s not many women that are in this field,’ or you hear, ‘There’s not many racialized women that are in this field.’ But to be honest, if you start looking hard, there are, and there’s a lot of qualified people.”

Kahlon met with the new board members and chair virtually for the first time Thursday. He anticipates they will have their first official meeting in the coming weeks, but a date has yet to be set.

The board members will offer strategic guidance, accountability and oversight for the new investment agency. They will report to the finance and innovation ministers, and will oversee hiring senior executives, including a CEO and chief investment officer, this spring and summer. Asked what criteria she’ll consider when hiring for these two positions, Bergeron said it would be a discussion for the full board. Kahlon said he believes the person selected to lead investments will reflect the corporation’s values. “I suspect that the applicants that want to be involved in this want to make a change in society.” It seems the search won’t be limited to the province. “We’re expecting applications from different parts of the world for this role.” The fund will not be in a position to start making investments until the end of this financial year.

Neither the government nor the board is supposed to influence InBC’s investment decisions, though its investments are expected to be in line with the government’s priorities. While its investment criteria have yet to be published, the government has offered some insights into the fund’s approach. It “will make an impact by investing on a triple bottom line basis,” according to its website. It boils that down to considering profits (a return on investment), people (ensuring equal opportunities) and the planet (protecting the environment). Its investments will look for financial returns, and also focus on environmental, economic and social impact. They will align with what the government has called its five foundational principles to inform recovery efforts, including fighting climate change and meaningful reconciliation. 

“Climate change is a major piece for us,” said Kahlon of his government; InBC can be a tool to add capital to growing home-grown cleantech and climate-change solutions. Another “critically important” piece is distributing funds throughout the province, rather than favouring one part, and giving Indigenous communities the ability to participate. 

The government announced the creation of the new investment agency in September 2020, an overhaul of the existing BC Immigrant Investment Fund (BCIIF) and unveiled as part of its COVID-19 economic recovery plan. Kahlon introduced legislation on April 27 to incorporate it. While the concept of public dollars being invested directly into the province’s tech startups isn’t new, InBC represents a change in strategy the government hopes will be more in line with a post-pandemic world. 

Until 2014, BCIIF had offered loans to groups that report to the government, mostly post-secondary institutions, and made both direct investments in B.C. tech companies and venture capital funds. It put money into funds at Vanedge Capital, Lumira Ventures and Yaletown Partners, among others, and its direct investments included Vancouver-based Mojio, a connected-car-solutions company; D-Wave, a Burnaby, B.C.-based quantum-computing company; and Vancouver’s Tasktop, which provides a value-stream management platform. Jill Kot served as the BCIIF board’s most recent chair.

The new corporation’s mandate is to invest in local small- and medium-sized firms that could turn into high-growth companies in an effort to grow and anchor “talent, intellectual property, innovation, investment and jobs” in the province, according to InBC’s service plan. It’s partly an effort to overcome one of the most-cited challenges in the province’s tech industry: the challenges startups face in growing into anchor firms. The industry sees it as such a challenge that last year, 11 organizations in the province banded together to ask for $41 million in combined provincial and federal funding to create a local version of the Ontario-based Scale-Up Platform. BC Tech Association head Jill Tipping told The Logic last month that the group is “so convinced that this is the necessary programming” that it won’t stop advocating for it.

While she and her colleagues had hoped for specific funding for their proposal in the provincial NDP’s April budget, she noted its setting-aside of the previously promised $500 million to fund InBC’s activities is “a hopeful sign.” The budget allotted $100 million for 2021–22 and $200 million in each of the next two fiscal years.