Background
Louis Jacques Filion
Director of the Maclean Hunter chair d'entrepreneurship, HEC
The following is a brief overview of the CCSBE/CCPME from a speech given by Louis Jacques Filion (pictured left), a former president of CCSBE/CCPME, at the 20th Anniversary Conference in Banff, Alberta:
REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS 20TH ANNIVERSARY OF CCSBE/CCPME
My first contact with what was known at the time as ICSB-Canada was at the Windsor conference in 1989, where Alfie Morgan gave us a great reception. Don Rumball launched his first book there, and Minister Tom Hawkins gave a vibrant speech full of promises for things the federal government would be doing for small business. At the conference, Doug Lajeunesse, the Québec vice-president, asked me if I would replace him on the board, because he was retiring from academia. I asked him what it involved, and he told me I'd have to attend one meeting a year, at the annual conference. And that was how I came to ICSB-Canada - firmly convinced that all I would have to do would be to meet a few people at conference cocktails.
At the Windsor conference, I presented a text on the definition of small business. I'd written it very quickly one weekend, two weeks after the deadline for submitting papers, on a subject on the very fringes of my research interests. You know - you've all done the same. You want to go to a conference, but you haven't any material ready. It was one of those papers you realize a week later you should never have written! Anyway, to cut a long story short, it ended up being published in the conference proceedings and also, thanks to Ray Kao, in the Journal of Small Business and Entrepreneurship. As I hung my head in shame, Minister Tom Hawkins latched onto it and created a task force on the definition of small business. The civil servant in charge of the group came to see me several times at Trois-Rivières, but when the Conservative party was defeated at the next general election, I never heard any more either from the task force or from the civil servant, who I believe gratefully accepted a position in another government department, far removed from anything to do with small business.
My interest in the council was renewed at the next conference, in Regina in 1990. I came to realize that the conferences were great opportunities for renegades like me to meet and talk about weird and archaic things like economic development and self-fulfilment through entrepreneurship. As I had done absolutely nothing in my first year on the board, someone proposed that I become President-Elect. And not long afterwards, John Chamard, who was President at the time, called to ask me to organize the 1991 conference in Trois-Rivières. So much for the once-a year cocktail theory!
It was during my year as President that the organization changed its name from ICSB-Canada to CCSBE/CCPME. But even that was not without its difficulties. The main snag was that we couldn't find the original letters patent. After a frantic search, Ray Kao finally uncovered them at the back of a filing cabinet. We discovered that the organization had been created in 1979. The incorporation forms had been signed by Robert Bilodeau, at that time an executive with the BDC and still one of the main supporters of entrepreneurship in Québec today, together with Randy Vandermark from Vancouver and Ray Kao. This was done at the 1979 ICSB World Conference in Québec City, organized by Yvon Gasse - who, by the way, is still the only person ever to have organized two ICSB World Conferences, since he was also responsible for the 1989 event.
I have some wonderful memories of our conferences over the years, and especially the hospitality of hosts like Walter Good in Winnipeg, and Roger Bourque and Lois Stevenson in Moncton, where thanks mainly to the valiant efforts of Lloyd Fernald we were able to ingest a large part of the New Brunswick lobster harvest during our three-day stay.
During all those years, the survival of the council was due mainly to the heroic roles played by a handful of people such as Rob Dainow and Dina Lavoie. Dina was also the Chair of the 1996 conference in Montreal, where we paid tribute to her for her overall contribution to entrepreneurship.
Over the years, we have gradually become better organized. The Atlantic Provinces have been especially dynamic, thanks in large part to the work of ACOA. ICSB affiliates have been created in Europe and throughout the world. Other organizations have also started to organize conferences, including Babson College, the Academy of Management, ASAC, and in the French-speaking world, the International Association for Research into Small and Medium-Sized Businesses, the Academy of Entrepreneurship, the annual entrepreneurship and education conference at Rennes, in France, and the AIMS conference (the French-speaking International Association of Strategic Management) which has a separate entrepreneurship section. As well as this, there are five or six conferences every year in Québec, on different aspects of entrepreneurship, including self-employment, cooperative entrepreneurship and venture creation support. The most popular is the conference of the Foundation of Entrepreneurship, which attracts over 1000 people.
Regardless of this - or perhaps because of it - our council still has an important role to play in Canada. What would entrepreneurship in Canada be if the CCSBE/CCPME were not present? What would happen to our field of study? What would happen to entrepreneurship support? There is still a lot we can do. For example, there is a need for a bilingual, international calibre journal published a few times a year, financial support for emerging researchers and to attract researchers from other fields, and recognition for the people who have made an outstanding contribution to the field, modeled on the lines of the ICSB Wilford White Fellow.
I'm sorry not to be with you today to share in the celebrations marking the 20th anniversary of the Council. However, let me just say a special thank you to all the other past presidents and board members for their contributions. Thanks, too, to everyone who has joined the Council or attended its conferences over the years, for helping keep our association alive.
Louis Jacques Filion
Banff
November 1999
