Solidarity Fund selects veteran as CEO
New leader means ‘reform without breaking’: FTQ
The board of directors of the Solidarity Fund has decided the right person to oversee a change of culture at the Quebec institution is someone who has worked there since 1989.
It announced Thursday its unanimous endorsement of Gaétan Morin as president and chief executive officer of the $9.7-billion investment fund of the Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du Québec (FTQ), succeeding Yvon Bolduc, terminated in March in the wake of embarrassing revelations at the Charbonneau Commission inquiry into the awarding of public contracts.
Morin, who has a master’s degree in economic geology from the Université du Québec à Montréal, started at the Solidarity Fund as a financial analyst and portfolio manager and most recently held the post of executive vicepresident, corporate development and investment.
Chairman of the board Robert Parizeau said the selection committee started with a list of 17 candidates and whittled it down to six, some of them outsiders, but Morin had the best combination of attributes.
“In addition to being a consensus-builder and a leader, Gaétan Morin has demonstrated the highest level of integrity and a strong commitment to ethics throughout his career,” Parizeau said.
Morin is also bilingual, credible, respected and a strong ambassador for the institution, he said. His “intimate knowledge” of the organization is also a plus.
At a news conference confirming his appointment, Morin said he was proud to work at the fund and honoured to now be taking the helm of an institution “that plays a primordial role in the economic development of Quebec” and is “more important now than when it started 30 years ago.”
Among his priorities, he said, will be accelerating a review of its strategic plan, implementing the fund’s new corporate-governance measures unveiled earlier this year, and attempting to convince the federal government to change its plan to phase out the federal tax credit for fund investments over three years starting in 2015.
In matters of ethics and transparency, there will be “no compromises,” Morin said. Fund employees who feel pressured or see something untoward going on now have the option of calling an outside number and reporting it anonymously, he said.
Bolduc, who headed the fund for eight years, left under a cloud, though with a severance of $1.1 million.
At the Charbonneau Commission, he was heard in a wiretap conversation saying the Solidarity Fund had paid half the cost of construction magnate Tony Accurso’s yacht the Touch, something that “shouldn’t get out.”
FTQ president Daniel Boyer said the Solidarity Fund needed “reform without breaking” and the appointment of Morin fits that objective.
“He’s the ideal person,” Boyer said of Morin. “He’s climbed all the echelons of the fund and has the leadership to push it further and effect change.”
Morin said the fund “went through a storm” and needed modernizing, but its mission is noble and results have been good. “It learned. It changed.”
He’ll earn slightly more in base salary than Bolduc, but his total remuneration will be about 18 per cent less, Parizeau said, without specifying the amounts.