What distinguishes the Quebec experience is that an institution like the Fiducie du Chantier de l’économie sociale doesn’t just supply capital to enterprises that pursue a triple bottom line. The Fiducie is one part of an overall development strategy that acts simultaneously to reduce the risk to investors and to increase the capacity of social economy enterprises and organizations to carry out their missions.
By means of intermediary institutions, the suppliers and users of capital collaborate to design financial instruments and to expand the demand for the products and services of the social economy, and to advise the government about supportive policy, programs, and legislation. Instead of making isolated adjustments to the mainstream economy for the good of social enterprise, in Quebec actors from the private sector, government, and civil society are co-constructing an arena of economic exchange in which the public good is pre-eminent – the social economy.
