ALL ESSAYS
Everything published so far about where Canada’s oceans meet finance, policy and stewardship.
95 pieces
Canada has a very large blue economy. That tells you almost nothing about whether its oceans are being financed well. The two get confused all the time, and the confusion is comfortable, which is exactly the problem.
The Belize and Galápagos transactions worked through in detail: what debt was repurchased and at what price, where the savings came from, who bore which risks, what the conservation covenants oblige after closing, and where the fee and accountability questions sit.
Blended finance brings development and commercial capital into one structure. A proposed World Bank coral bond shows what that structure can change, and what it leaves alone.
A blue bond is a use-of-proceeds bond applied to ocean activities. The repayment promise is contractual. The blue commitments are published, reviewed and reported on, and generally work through a different kind of pressure.
Canada has no single authority in charge of ocean conservation. Legal power, money, accountability and the work on the water sit in different hands, and outcomes turn on whether those reach each other
In Canada, the path to ocean outcomes runs through Indigenous governance. The arrangements that last are built inside it, and governance left outside a structure can leave it exposed.
IFC will treat a fish plant as blue only in jurisdictions enforcing sustainable quotas, and offshore wind only after a year of baseline surveys. What blue finance principles change is how far outside a project a financing decision has to look.
Blue carbon is the carbon held in mangroves, tidal marshes and seagrass meadows, in the plants and in the ground they grow in. How much a place holds, how fast it builds, and whether protecting it helps the climate are three separate questions.
Canada has no federal protocol for coastal carbon and no settled answer to who would own a credit. What would have to be in place before a Canadian salt marsh or eelgrass meadow could sell carbon, and why Australia's protocol did not solve it.
The Canada Infrastructure Bank lends federal capital at rates no commercial lender can match, but only to projects that generate revenue. A CAD 1 billion loan to BC Ferries shows what that buys, and the revenue test explains which ocean assets it can reach and which it cannot.
The ’Wuìk̓inux̌v Nation and Coast Funds worked through 2025 and into 2026 assessing how to finance salmon stewardship on the central coast, including a salmon impact bond. What they are exploring, and how far the work has progressed.
Fishing and trapping accounted for CAD 1.414 billion of Canadian bank lending in the first quarter of 2026, against CAD 58.983 billion for agriculture. The rest of a bank's ocean exposure is booked under whatever the borrower happens to be, and no supervisory return asks anyone to add it up.