As part of our coverage of the federal election, Investment Executive profiles candidates who are working or who have worked in the financial services industry.

Here we look at Claude Moreau, Conservative candidate in the Quebec riding of Marc-Aurèle Fortin.

Claude Moreau has spent the last three years helping small- and medium-sized businesses connect with financing from well-heeled immigrants. If he becomes the new Conservative MP on Feb. 23 for the booming riding of Marc-Aurèle Fortin, just north of Montreal, Moreau says would use that experience to assist entrepreneurs.

With more than 20 years in the investment business, Moreau says he wants to focus on economic development. He believes Tory proposals to offer tax breaks for small business will help his region and the country as a whole.

The Conservatives “are proposing concrete measures for small business that are in line with my way of thinking,” says Moreau, 44, whose riding straddles a piece of Laval and fast-growing bedroom communities to the north. “This is where I want to make a contribution.”

The Tories propose increasing the income threshold to qualify for the small business tax rate to $400,000 from $300,000. The party is also offering to reduce the small business tax rate to 11% from 12% over five years.

This not easy fight for Moreau — high-profile Bloc Québécois incumbent Serge Ménard won the riding easily in 2004 with a 16,000-vote margin over a Liberal second-place finisher.

Moreau began a long and varied career in the financial industry in the mid-1980s as a forest-products analyst at brokerage firm Walwyn Stodgell Cochran Murray Ltd. in Montreal. He came to the investment industry after picking up a finance degree at Université de Sherbrooke and an economics degree from York University in Toronto. While at Walwyn Stodgell, he completed his certified financial analyst designation.

In 1990, Moreau joined Banque Nationale de Paris in Montreal in the dual role of participating in the risk-management team on the banking side and acting as chief financial officer in the bank’s security arm. He later transferred to BNP’s Vancouver office where he worked on commercial accounts including in the forest-products industry.

Upon returning to Montreal in 1995, he moved into corporate finance, first at forest products giant Donohue Inc., where he was director of finance, then in mergers and acquisitions with National Bank Financial and Yorkton Securities Inc.

Three years ago, Moreau joined Renaissance Capital Inc., Canada’s largest immigrant-investor brokerage firm. The federal and Quebec government offer similar programs that allow well-off foreigners the opportunity to gain immigration status in exchange for making investments in the Canadian economy.

Moreau worked mostly with the Quebec program under which a qualified investor’s deposit of $400,000 is pooled with others, and the investment income earned by the pooled funds is distributed to small- and medium-sized businesses to subsidize capital investments. After five years, investors are refunded their principal.

Moreau’s main responsibility at Renaissance was to find SMEs that met the criteria to receive financing from the program. In 2005, he organized more than 100 financings. That put him in contact with many small businesses and recently he left Renaissance to start his own consulting business, Drexel Financial Inc., to advise entrepreneurs on obtaining financing.

Moreau said he has long thought about entering politics and has been interested in the Conservative Party.

“I’ve always said that one of my goals in life is to leave a better situation for the next generation,” he said. “Last election, I refused (an offer to become a candidate). But this time, the timing and situation is right.”

Moreau said he’s interested in bolstering investor protection in the wake of the scandal at mutual fund manager Norbourg Asset Management Inc. Regulators shut down the Montreal-based group in August, alleging fraud and embezzlement from mutual funds.

“We have to work to make sure that this kind of a scandal doesn’t happen again,” Moreau said. “It has been very frustrating for the entire financial-services industry.”

While acknowledging that securities regulation is a provincial responsibility, he said: “The issue (of fraud) was important in 2005 for the financial-services industry and I believe we can do a better job of regulating.”