News

News - Desjardins Group has now revealed the 2012 recipients of the Desjardins Entrepreneur Awards and Fonds coopératif d’aide à la relève agricole grants. The awards, presented yesterday at the annual gala, recognize entrepreneurial excellence as well as outstanding contributions to economic development by ten companies, two figures from the business world and three young farmers.

News - SIRIUS Conseils, a company with a high level of expertise in project management and business analysis, confirms that it has secured a majority interest in Abak Software, an internationally-known provider of software to help professional service firms manage time sheets, invoicing, expense reports and project budgets. With this transaction, SIRIUS Conseils has added a new, complementary product to its current offer and consolidates its objective, initiated earlier this year with the strategic partnership signed with VGaPP, of adding business products to the mix. This transaction also confirms the company's presence in Quebec City and will create opportunities for new markets in Canada, the United States, Europe and Asia, where the Abak software is already widely distributed.

News - Industrial Alliance Insurance and Financial Services is pleased to announce that Clément Gignac has joined its management team as Senior Vice-President and Chief Economist, effective December 3, 2012. Mr. Gignac, who holds a master’s degree in economics from Laval University, is a seasoned financial strategist and communicator with 30 years experience in both the private and public sectors. He spent the majority of his career at the National Bank, rising to the position of Vice-President and Chief Economist. In 2009, he took up public service and most recently was Minister of Natural Resources for the province of Québec.

News - A survey to be released Monday has found that the most entrepreneurial cities are overwhelmingly found in Saskatchewan and Alberta. The survey, titled Communities in Boom, was researched and compiled by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business for the Financial Post. It looked at 103 cities across Canada, ranking which ones showed the strongest signs of entrepreneurial activity. Of the Top 10 cities, nine were located in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

News - The international co-operative movement is seeking a greater voice on the international stage and more political influence as it strives for recognition as “a social, human and economic global powerhouse” in a rapidly changing economic environment. In a joint declaration approved by nearly 3,000 representatives from 91 countries at the first International Summit of Co-operatives in Quebec City, the movement on Thursday announced its plan to become a global player on the world economic stage.

News - H2O Innovation announced that it was recently awarded $6.5 million in new contracts. These new contracts will see H2O Innovation provide custom-built water treatment systems to industrial and municipal end-users in the United States and Canada. These contracts were awarded to H2O Innovation before the end of its first quarter of fiscal 2013, ended September 30, 2012. They bring H2O Innovation’s order backlog for water treatment systems to $20.4 million as of September 30, 2012. H2O Innovation continues to develop steadily in its three main growth vectors: municipal, energy and natural resources.

News - Robert Lepage sits sipping coffee in a vast wicker chair at an old coking plant in Germany's Rhineland, looking impish. Meeting him here feels a bit like finding him on the set of one of his own productions: typically otherworldly and full of surreal encounters.

News - Before 2,800 leaders from the most important cooperatives around the world, renowned economist, philosopher and prolific author Jacques Attali argued that cooperatives can provide solutions to the major challenges facing the world. "We now live in a global market economy, but rule of law is still national. This globalization without rule of law is the root cause of all the crises we are experiencing - financial, environmental and so on. The cooperative model is the model of the future, because it can reconcile the market economy with democracy. And it creates these compatibility conditions within the market economy itself," Mr. Attali began.

News - The Québec City Convention Centre will expand thanks to a $36 M investment of the Government of Québec. This expansion will allow the Convention Centre to increase the number of events held simultaneously and therefore position itself as a prime Canadian meeting destination.

News - The founding partners of The Electric Circuit—Les Rôtisseries St-Hubert, RONA, METRO, the Agence métropolitaine de transport (AMT) and Hydro-Québec—are pleased to announce the signing of a partnership agreement with the Société des établissements de plein air du Québec (Sépaq) to install seven public charging stations for electric vehicles over the next few weeks. Two will be installed at the Parc de la Chute-Montmorency, one at the Aquarium du Québec, another at the Station touristique Duchesnay, and one each at Mont-Saint-Bruno, Îles-de-Boucherville and Oka national parks.