B.C. venture capitalist eyes run at leadership
Rick Peterson, a Vancouverbased fi nancial services executive, is mulling a bid to lead the Conservative Party of Canada.
He is in the process of filing papers with the party and plans to enter the race in late September. sources say.
The fluently bilingual Peterson, 61, who attended the University of Alberta and has a graduate degree in political science from the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris, has lined up key supporters across the country to help.
This is not the first foray into politics for Peterson, who runs Peterson Capital, a firm that “helps Canada’s leading private and public companies in the micro-cap, small- cap and mid- cap sectors raise funds and increase their capital markets support.” He has been a Conservative party supporter for more than 30 years and two years ran for the leadership of the B.C. Tories.
“He has had multiple runs at political office and has worked for the party,” said Chris Morris, founder of RC Morris & Co., a Vancouverbased investment and restructuring firm.
As British Columbia’s representative on the PC Canada Fund, Peterson helped raise money for the 2003 merger between the Progressive Conservative party and the Canadian Alliance. He has also been active in Vancouver’s Quadra riding as a board member and fundraiser.
“All it has achieved is to cost him time and money,” said Morris, who will act as financial agent for Peterson’s campaign.
Morris, who describes Peterson as “a traditional Red Tory,” met the candidate in 2005.
“I was new to Vancouver, he took a meeting and helped me get a job,” he said, adding that for the past decades under prime minister Stephen Harper, voices of the party’s Progressive wing were largely silent.
He thinks the Conservatives need a leader who has not been associated with Harper. “The last 10 years were very polarizing,” he said, arguing that the situation calls for an outsider.
Peterson has also established a beachhead in Montreal, where Denny Matte, a managing director at the publicly listed brokerage firm Canaccord Genuity, is lining up financial and other support. Matte, a friend of Peterson’s for about three decades — t hey worked together at Midland Walwyn — says he supports Peterson “because he is one of the few who have an understanding of the whole country and the Quebec difference.”
Matte refers to Peterson’s “impeccable French” and his continuing association with Montreal through work and family ( two of his children, Stephan and Sarah, l i ve there).
“He understands the Quebec situation," he said. “For the PC government that’s very big because they can circle off the whole country. For me the last great leader they had was Brian Mulroney.”