The Rules
Can Canadian Directors Raise Environmental Issues at the Board?
A Canadian director can raise ocean exposure at the board. The harder problem is that the exposure is spread across functions and nobody owns the whole picture.
Brian Rogers
Over thirty years in Canadian finance, most recently a credit union Chief Risk Officer, now writing Blue Finance Canada. CFA, MBA, ICD.D.
Taking Stock
Who Remembers a Company’s Environmental Record?
A missed payment follows a borrower to the next lender. A fuel spill in a First Nation's fishing grounds usually doesn't. Why environmental history stays behind, and where it travels.
Where Things Stand
How Do We Know What We Are Doing to the Ocean?
Collecting and processing ocean data has got cheaper and faster. Knowing what we are doing to the ocean has not. Observation, interpretation and assurance are three different problems.
The Basics
What Financial History Can Teach Us About Blue Finance
Amsterdam in 1609, Lloyd’s coffee house and a Chicago grain elevator all turn on the same question: what has to exist before a stranger will finance something they cannot inspect?
Industry Profiles
The Ocean Economy Beyond Ocean Industries
The industries that are obviously part of the ocean economy are not hard to identify. They are not the whole story. The ocean economy extends into agriculture, insurance, energy, retail, and municipal finance through pathways that are real and consequential but rarely made explicit.
Industry Profiles
Blue Carbon: Industry Profile
Blue carbon has the scientific case, the policy intent, and the private capital interest. Progress is still slow. The reason is not lack of ambition. It is that the measurement infrastructure required to make blue carbon credits bankable does not yet exist at the scale the opportunity requires.
Industry Profiles
Seafood Processing: The Onshore Half of the Fishery
Harvesting gets the attention; processing and distribution capture the value. Across 551 facilities, Canada's processors turn $7.8 billion in revenue into an export trade that runs on certification, cold-chain capital, and currency risk.
The Players
How Pension Funds Allocate Ocean Capital
A pension liability and a port terminal share an unusual trait: both run for decades. That makes pension capital a natural home for ocean infrastructure, and Canada's funds already hold it. What they lack is an allocation category that would let them fund the ocean economy on purpose.
Industry Profiles
Shipbuilding and Naval Infrastructure: Why Canada's Shipbuilding Ambitions Outrun Delivery
In 2020, Canada chartered a foreign icebreaker for Arctic search and rescue while promoting a multi-billion dollar domestic icebreaker program as evidence of sovereignty. Both things were true simultaneously. That is the central tension in Canadian shipbuilding policy.
Industry Profiles
Shipbuilding and Naval Infrastructure: Finance
Seaspan won a fixed price contract to build three fisheries science vessels, delivered them, and lost significant money in the process. That outcome is not a scandal or an anomaly. It is a precise illustration of how shipbuilding finance actually works in Canada.
Industry Profiles
Shipbuilding and Naval Infrastructure: The Industry
Canada's National Shipbuilding Strategy is worth approximately CAD 60 billion and represents around 0.1 percent of GDP. That contrast is the starting point for understanding what Canadian shipbuilding actually is and is not.
Blue Currents
August 2026
Canada and British Columbia committed $106.5 million to a new fisheries fund. The taxonomy consultation closed on whether Indigenous consent is a condition or a disclosure. Four dry months in Panama turned into fewer ships through the canal.