Conclusion 
As the country prepares to mark the second National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, Indigenous communities are calling on Canada’s capital markets to support the rebuilding of Indigenous economies.
Yvon Chouinard, Patagonia, Founder announced 
Karsten Wenzlaff, Advisor
August 26th, 2025
Karsten Wenzlaff is a Crowdfunding and Fintech Expert from Germany. He is Secretary-General of Digit[...]
Category Archives: ESG, Financial Inclusion, Sustainable Finance
Opinion: Crypto and Financial Inclusion – Dispelling Narratives
Brookings | Tonantzin Carmona | Oct 26, 2022
Conclusion
Before embracing cryptocurrencies or overstating their potential, policymakers should first clarify the problems they are trying to solve, and more importantly, why they are trying to solve them.[87] When it comes to crypto and financial inclusion, there are fluctuating and contested terms and narratives. Thus, it may be difficult to discern what groups, problems, or pain points we are striving to address.
When examined closely, crypto’s current capabilities do not match the needs of the groups it purports to serve, and it carries a host of risks and drawbacks that undermine its benefits. More alarming, we can observe parallels between crypto and other predatory products, which highlights crypto’s potential to exacerbate unequal financial services to historically excluded groups.
See:
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BIS Report: Can CBDCs be designed to help financial inclusion?
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So what is financial exclusion in the era of Open Finance?
Considering this reality, we can either encourage inequitable and exclusionary banking systems to persist by enabling others to profit from the inequities, or we can develop the courage to ensure that banking is truly inclusive. For these reasons, rather than endorse crypto as a tool for equity, we should instead promote and explore policy solutions that can more directly and impactfully achieve and bolster financial inclusion.
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The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Indigenous Communities Call on Canada’s Capital Markets to Help Rebuild Economies
Investment Executive | Melissa Shin | Sep 19, 2022
As the country prepares to mark the second National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, Indigenous communities are calling on Canada’s capital markets to support the rebuilding of Indigenous economies.
- In June, more than 20 Indigenous organizations released the National Indigenous Economic Strategy, which contains immediate actions industry, governments and institutions can take to support Indigenous prosperity.
- The strategy argues that Indigenous prosperity is tied to Canada’s prosperity, citing 2016 research from the National Indigenous Economic Development Board that found economic marginalization of Indigenous peoples costs the economy $27.7 billion each year, or 1.5% of GDP.
- Actions specific to the financial services industry include mandating the disclosure of Indigenous procurement and requiring that publicly traded companies report on Indigenous employment and contracting.
- Mark Sevestre, founding member and senior advisor to the National Aboriginal Trust Officers Association (NATOA), said institutional investors — Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike — also are demanding that companies improve their relationships with Indigenous communities. NATOA advised on the Indigenous economic strategy.
Video: OneFeather - Redefining the Indigenous Experience through Innovation and Tradition
- In June 2021, a bill stating that all Canadian law must be consistent with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) received royal assent. The law requires an action plan to be developed within two years of the bill’s passage.
- Since November 2021, Bull has sat on the Indigenous advisory council to Toronto-based Canadian National Railway Co. “To me, it’s an opportunity for transformational change because you’re bringing Indigenous leaders into your boardroom,” she said.
Tabatha Bull, president and CEO of the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business (CCAB):
Indigenous people were intentionally excluded from the economy in Canada. Because that exclusion took place over centuries, remedying the situation is going to take more than decades, and we can’t wait any longer.
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The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Patagonia: Earth is now our only shareholder
The Guardian | Rupert Neate | Sep 15, 2022
Yvon Chouinard, Patagonia, Founder announced he was giving away all of the shares in Patagonia to a trust that will use future profits to “help fight” the climate crisis.
“Earth is now our only shareholder,” Chouinard, 83, said in a message to staff and customers. “Instead of ‘going public’, you could say we’re ‘going purpose’. Instead of extracting value from nature and transforming it into wealth for investors, we’ll use the wealth Patagonia creates to protect the source of all wealth.”
- Forbes 2017 article: In the article, Forbes crowned Chouinard as a billionaire and added him to its list of the world’s richest people. While many people daydream of achieving a nine-zero fortune, for Chouinard it was a sign he had failed in his life’s mission to make the world a better and fairer place.
- The publication of a magazine article in 2017 “really, really pissed off” Yvon Chouinard, the mountain climber turned reluctant businessman and founder of outdoor clothing company Patagonia.
- I don’t have $1bn in the bank. I don’t drive Lexuses.” Chouinard, who drives a beaten-up Subaru with a surfboard strapped to the roof, says he hopes giving away the company “will influence a new form of capitalism that doesn’t end up with a few rich people and a bunch of poor people”.
- “But that’s not even the point,” Chouinard continued. “Being a dirtbag is a matter of philosophy, not personal wealth. I’m an existential dirtbag.”
See: Bill Gates Announces $20 Billion Donation and Obligation to Return His Resources to Society
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Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman, Chouinard wrote that if he “had to be a businessman” he was “going to do it on my own terms”. “Work had to be enjoyable on a daily basis. We all had to come to work on the balls of our feet and go up the stairs two steps at a time. We needed to be surrounded by friends who could dress whatever way they wanted, even be barefoot,” he wrote.
“We don’t care when you work, as long as the work gets done”
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The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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A conversation with Catherine McKenna former Minister of the Environment and Climate Change: Fighting greenwashing
MaRS | Jul 21, 2022
Photo illustration by Monica Guan
Net-zero commitments are a critical first step in the fight against climate change. But to stave off the worst effects of a warming planet, we actually have to ensure governments and business leaders live up to those promises.
In this episode, we chat with Catherine McKenna, head of the UN Task Force against greenwashing, about regulations and accountability when it comes to net-zero targets, as well as how incentives might help.
We need to quickly scale climate solutions; which means tackling bureaucratic hurdles. Nothing is off limits.
Featured in this episode:
- Catherine McKenna, Canada’s former Minister of the Environment and Climate Change. Catherine’s current role (as founder and principal) focuses on scaling Climate and Nature Solutions. She’s also the Chair of the UN Secretary General’s new High-Level Expert Group on Net-Zero Commitments of Non-State Entities, and if that wasn’t enough — Catherine is an avid open water swimmer and mother of three. She shares her perspective on what it takes to make progress on the climate file.
See: The Steps to Designing a more sustainable and digital economy
There’s so many innovative opportunities, but we need folks to really think differently. And this is where, making sure for cities in towns, that climate is an across-the-board theme. That you have a climate lens on everything you’re doing, that you are thinking every time you invest a dollar — you’re saying to yourself, is this going to reduce emissions? Is this going to adapt more to the impacts of climate change?
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Post-Merge, PoW Die-Hards Plan to Fork Their Own Ethereum Chains
The Defiant | Samuel Haig | Aug 3, 2022
The biggest upgrade in the history of Ethereum is rapidly approaching. The Merge will convert Ethereum into a Proof-of-Stake-based blockchain from a Proof-of-Work one. The shift will make the No. 1 blockchain for smart contracts and dApps faster and more affordable. Jazzed investors have sent Ether soaring 52% in the last 30 days.
But not everyone is happy. 'Maintain the Original'
- Some die-hard miners are facing the obsolescence of billions of dollars worth of mining hardware and a fall in revenue. And they are threatening to maintain the original, Proof-of-Work version of the Ethereum network to protect their investment.
- Colin Wu, a Chinese cryptocurrency journalist, recently estimated The Merge will displace $5B worth of GPU and ASIC-based mining hardware.
- On July 31, Wu reported that Chandler Guo, a Chinese miner and former advisor to Binance, predicted roughly half a dozen PoW forks will emerge after Ethereum moves to PoS.
See: Vitalik’s Announces Next 4 Phases of Ethereum’s Development Which is Only 40% Done
- In response, Llama Salami pondered whether an “NFT black market” could emerge on a PoW fork of Ethereum. But many onlookers are skeptical that post-merge PoW Ethereum forks will survive for long.
Perspectives
- Justin Drake, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, dismissed the threat of PoW forks. Drake said he expects there will be little economic activity on the PoW chain because there’s a very strong social buy-in for moving to PoS.
- Marc Zeller, head of developers relations at Aave, said stETH would be worthless on any PoW forks. In a post onTwitter he said stETH won’t be redeemable for Ether, creating a “$1.4B hole” in the books of a PoW fork of Aave.
- Bob Summerwill, the executive director of ETCCooperative, an organization providing grants and funding to the Ethereum Classic ecosystem, also told The Defiant that PoW Ethereum forks will ultimately fail due to the network effects of DeFi and stablecoins.
See: Blockchain-based replacement for traditional crowdfunding: DAOs
“All the dApp websites will stop working because they will reference ETH, not the fork,” he said. “Even if it’s possible for somebody to bring up clone websites, servers, etc, that needs doing for every dApp, and then somebody needs to maintain all those forks, too. Some likely not even possible, because you would need admin keys to be able to operate them, and those belong to the existing operators.” - Bob Summerwill
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The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Why Data is the Lifeblood of a Modern Regulator
FCA | Jun 16, 2022
Speech by our Chief Executive, Nikhil Rathi, delivered at the Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM) 20th anniversary seminar.
The future of regulation
- As the complexity and breadth of data broadens, so too will our remit. Financial service products are moving away from legacy institutions to tech firms and other challengers who hold data.
- And while data can help institutions identify risk, it can also entrench bias and make it more difficult for consumers to access loans or products such as insurance.
See: Insurance Industry Sitting on Treasure Trove of Big Data, As Regulators Wrestle Data Privacy
- Nobody can control how that data is used or which organisation, individual or regime looks at it.
- Regulators in the coming decades may have to step in to decide on the boundaries of firms’ interventions. And they will also have to decide whether it is appropriate for financial institutions to differentiate on access and pricing of services on the basis of tracked data.
Data and the AI to help with risk
- Our regtech systems monitor transactions and spot outliers that could suggest fraudulent behaviour and our organisation has moved to the Cloud and revolutionised the ease with which we can access vital data to prevent financial crime and protect consumers.
- We have migrated more than 52,000 firms and 120,000 users to our RegData platform, which grants access to flexible and scalable data collections.
- The disclosures we are requiring on environmental, social and governance (ESG) products are already breaking new ground and the FCA is partnering with other regulators to share our experience.
- More data will give customers more power to choose products with better ESG ratings.
The future for regulators
- International coordination in this area is becoming increasingly important – both in terms of effectively protecting consumers from the increased risks of digitalisation and from gamification across the provision of financial services.
- For regulators, the policy challenge for the future will be about complexity and breadth: in the AI and data space, rules will cover multiple areas including financial services, data protection, labour law, competition policy.
See: OSC TestLab selects 7 businesses to help improve new capital markets testing environment
- Regulators will have to ensure that firms can show not just how this data was gathered or stored or used, but why it was decided it was important in the first place and how they avoid it being used to discriminate against minorities and people with other protected characteristics.
- That’s why we have to create diversity of thought in our culture and in our organisations so we can have a fighting chance of pre-empting multiple and competing interests.
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The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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EV Developer, 7GEN, Closes $8M Series A to Help Fleet Operators Electrify
BC Business | Rushmila Rahman | Jul 6, 2022
Being responsible pays off in B.C. With rebates for your next vehicle being of the electric variety, it’s a good time for enterprises to plug in and put the pedal to the metal.
To that end, commercial EV developer 7 Generation Capital just closed $8 million in Series A funding led by Quebec venture capital firm Fonds de solidarité FTQ and multinational tech firm Siemens Financial Services.
The startup—which has its roots in Vancouver and 18 team members across Montreal and Toronto—guides medium and heavy duty fleet operators through the process of electrifying some (or all) of their vehicles in a bid to meet net-zero goals. It’s been helping fleets with installation, operation, maintenance and leasing for electric vehicles and chargers since 2020, according to 7Gen CEO and co-founder Frans Tjallingii:
I was actually a Vancouver-based operator of tourism buses that wanted to electrify their fleet. By working with fleets, we're looking at fleet renewal. If you have 10 vehicles, you might be replacing one every year, or if you have 100 you might be replacing 10. Does it make more sense for you to go electric? I would say for fleets that do up to 200-300km a day, who have some time to charge overnight, in B.C. and Quebec primarily, it makes a lot of sense to electrify.
With up to $3,000 incentives to go electric in B.C., there’s little reason for businesses to hold back. The proof is in the pudding as startups like 7Gen start to scale fast with support from big corporations in putting more electric vehicles and chargers on the road.
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The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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