About

Blue Finance Canada is an independent publication that examines how financial decisions reach the ocean. Lending, investment, and capital allocation touch marine systems through what they fund, on timelines that run well past the decision itself. This site traces those connections plainly, across the instruments of blue finance, the Canadian ocean industries they touch, and the governance around them.

Canada is the natural place to do this work. We have the longest coastline in the world, three oceans, and a financial system with real capacity, yet practical use of blue finance inside Canadian institutions remains thin. Part of what this site does is translate emerging ideas into forms a Canadian credit committee, investment team, or board can put to use.

I’m Brian Rogers, and I write it. I grew up moving every few years as my father’s work took the family across the country, and a good number of the places we landed sat near the water: the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia, the Atlantic off Jacksonville, the Salish Sea on Vancouver Island, where I finished high school. The beach is where most of my childhood memories are set, and being on and under the water has stayed with me ever since.

After a commerce degree in finance, I spent more than thirty years in commercial banking and credit, lending to Canadian businesses across forestry, agriculture, real estate, manufacturing, and trade. Along the way I earned an MBA, the CFA charter, and the ICD.D. The last stretch was in the credit union sector, where I ended as Chief Risk Officer.

Two things, a quarter century ago, set the direction I’m on now. Around then I took up a contemplative practice, and spent two weeks on a field expedition in Iceland helping scientists gather climate research. The first changed how I think about the natural world; the second showed me how much our way of living is changing it. I carried both through the rest of my career in finance.

I am not an oceanographer or an activist. What I know is how capital gets allocated and how risk gets priced, and I’m using that to look, plainly and without advocacy, at a connection I think deserves more attention than it gets. I am not against growth, I am against growth that never pays its full cost. I can be reached at Brian@BlueFinance.ca.