Social Finance in Quebec: An Ecosystemic Approach to Financial Innovation

Social movements across the world have been spearheading citizen-based economic initiatives for several decades. Social finance is a key component of this growing reality, integrating social, economic, and environmental goals into financial decisions. No longer on the margins, it has drawn the attention of financial analysts, policy-makers, savers, and investors. This new and burgeoning financial market transforms finance into a means to achieve societal goals, all the while generating returns for investors. The “Quebec experience” in social finance is widely known internationally because it is embedded in the socioeconomic landscape of Quebec and is recognized as a significant economic actor. The Quebec social economy and social finance ecosystem is considered a model or a “template” in many regions and countries around the world. This chapter presents a portrait of the social finance landscape in Quebec. It describes the overall ecosystem of support for the social economy and details the numerous social finance instruments, their impact, and their origins, including the role of civil society and of public policy. It outlines how these instruments are part of a collaborative ecosystem, including CAP Finance, a network of social finance organizations. Many lessons have been drawn from the Quebec experience, including the need for a bottom-up approach (for processes of co-construction) and the importance of collaboration in developing an eco-systemic approach with a diversity of tools. These lessons are being shared internationally and the experience of knowledge transfer from Quebec to South Korea is briefly summarized.