National Adult Literacy Database

In recent years, issues pertaining to access to capital for productive investment have risen steadily on Canada’s public policy agenda. They have also emerged more prominently as concerns of Canadian business and labour, the two constituencies of the Canadian Labour Market and Productivity Centre (CLMPC). An important new focus for the CLMPC is a current trend towards localized financial innovations in all parts of the country.

In 1997, the government of Canada’s four regional development agencies and the CLMPC worked together to study examples of recently established local investment financing models (LIFMs), in order to learn what micro-level institutions and practices have achieved in attempting to reduce financing barriers for small business in communities and regions across Canada. The results of this collaboration have been recorded in this document, with relevant data and analysis provided by the CLMPC through eighteen case studies of LIFMs in western Canada, Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada. This report contains information that would be useful to private and public sector actors and decision-makers in communities and regions eager to obtain information about the practical experiences of their counterparts nation-wide.