In the early 2000s, Sylvie Trottier found herself trying to convince her father that climate change was real and dangerous.
As an environmental studies student at McGill University at a time when the climate crisis was far from a household name, she knew much more about it than her father, Lorne Trottier. The difference between him and the next skeptical early-aughts dad, though, was that he had the means to do something about it.
Lorne Trottier is a co-founder of Matrox Electronic Systems Ltd., a Montreal-based tech company that in 2022 sold its imaging unit for $875 million. Founded in 1976, Matrox was successful enough by the year 2000 that Trottier and his wife, Louise Rousselle Trottier, created a family foundation to share their wealth. For several years, the foundation focused primarily on big gifts to hospitals and universities.
Fast forward to now, and Sylvie Trottier sits on the board, her husband, Éric St-Pierre, is executive director, and under their leadership, the foundation committed in 2020 to giving $8 million a year to support climate action. Earlier this year, Trottier formed a family office, a type of private-wealth-management firm often established by high-net-worth families, and plans to apply an environmental, social and governance (ESG) lens to her family’s private investments.
But the seed was planted back when Trottier managed to convince her dad to take the climate crisis seriously. She’s humble about it – “The science was there; it wasn’t just me,” she says with a laugh – but it’s an example of the ways in which scions of the wealthiest families in North America are reshaping the corporate philanthropic landscape. And it comes at a critical juncture, where the passing of the guard intersects with a major existential planetary crisis.
Toronto-based research firm Strategic Insight estimates that a trillion Canadian dollars will have been passed from Canadian baby boomers to their descendants by 2026, and Boston-based research firm Cerulli estimates that by 2045, a whopping US$72.6 trillion will transfer between American generations. Unlike the existential dread that plays out in the hit HBO show Succession, experts say this great transfer represents an opportunity for family wealth to be stewarded and redistributed in ways that make a dent in the most daunting threat the world faces: climate change.
And many heirs are seizing that opportunity – from William Peterffy successfully pitching his American billionaire father to become Interactive Brokers Group’s first director of ESG affairs, to textiles heiress Veronica Chou using her portion of her family’s US$2.7 billion to build an environmentally friendly clothing label. Even fossil fuel heirs are joining the fight: Aileen Getty, the granddaughter of a major American oil-marketing company, has channelled her wealth into climate philanthropy and supporting climate protests. North of the border, major oil executive Kevin Krausert left his family’s Alberta-based Beaver Drilling Ltd. to co-found a venture capital fund that backs technologies transitioning the energy industry away from oil and gas.
“We need more giving and less hoarding,” says Carolynn Beaty, another successor of a family foundation, the Sitka Foundation. She left her job as a teacher in 2018 to work full-time as its executive director. Beaty’s father, Ross Beaty, founded and ran Pan American Silver Corp., the second-largest silver-mining company in the world, before pivoting to launch renewable-energy company Alterra Power Corp. in 2008. That year, Beaty and his wife, Trisha Beaty, launched the Sitka Foundation, which has focused from its inception on funding projects that protect biodiversity.
We sometimes save money for rainy days, but it’s raining. We need to address our problems because it’s pouring outside.
—Carolynn Beaty, Sitka Foundation
On giving and hoarding, Carolynn Beaty is speaking specifically to the world of philanthropy, where many charitable foundations dole out grant money at a pace that doesn’t deplete their endowments so they can continue to exist for years to come – for family foundations, this perpetuity can be tied up with notions of legacy. On the other hand, there’s a growing movement of private foundations choosing to “spend down,” or grant out all their money within a short period of time, many prompted by the urgency of climate change.
“We sometimes save money for a rainy day, but it’s raining,” Beaty says. “We need to address our problems, because it’s pouring outside.” The Sitka Foundation isn’t planning to spend down, but Beaty is clear: she wants her family’s legacy to be one of wealth redistribution. She’s vocal in encouraging other wealthy families to adopt this mindset, too.
Trottier is a member of a global group called Millionaires for Humanity, which advocates for a global wealth tax of 1% on multimillionaires. Other Millionaires for Humanity include Walt Disney heiress Abigail Disney and Austrian chemical and pharmaceutical heiress Marlene Engelhorn, who makes headlines regularly for her wealth-redistribution advocacy. Trottier says philanthropy isn’t enough, that structural changes like taxation are required to meaningfully address social and economic inequality.
Some critics argue that family philanthropy can serve to reinforce systemic inequality. In a 2020 paper, U.K.-based philanthropy researchers Jessica Sklair and Luna Glucksberg write that wealth managers promote family philanthropy “as a ‘succession planning strategy’” – since younger generations can be more attracted to the idea of using the family business for the common good – and in doing so, “attempt to legitimise the extreme accumulation of wealth among the super-rich.” It’s a process that the researchers conclude serves to “obscure the ways in which growing wealth accumulation drives the widening chasm of economic inequality seen around the globe.”
For many business-owning families, the urge to hold on to their wealth can be strong, says Olivier de Richoufftz, general secretary of Family Enterprise Foundation (FEF), a charity focused on research and education around family enterprises in Canada. “And protection [of wealth] is not the driver that the family enterprise needs in order to help society as a whole.” That can mean holding on to extractive and destructive business practices to continue maximizing profit, never mind giving away that profit to charity.
According to FEF, more than 60% of the country’s family businesses (which together generate almost half of Canadian private-sector real GDP) are expected to change ownership within the next decade. Interestingly, more than 80% of business family members aged 18 to 24 say keeping ownership in the family is either extremely important or very important to them – compared to around 70% of those over the age of 44.
“There’s much at stake about . . . the family reputation, the legacy, the harmony of the family, but also the responsibility that those businesses have toward society,” de Richoufftz says.
Of course, there’s plenty of research showing that millennials and Gen Zs are more worried about climate change than baby boomers, so regardless of whether businesses remain family-owned, there could be a shift in practices toward environmental sustainability as a new generation of workers moves into leadership. But some say family enterprises present a unique opportunity for impact. “Most family businesses . . . are more values-driven than publicly traded companies,” says Matt Knight, the executive director of the Alberta Business Family Institute.
There’s much at stake about . . . the family reputation, the legacy, the harmony of the family, but also the responsibility that those businesses have toward society.
– Olivier de Richoufftz, general secretary of Family Enterprise Foundation
The problem is they can also be less structured, especially if they’re still run by first-generation founders. Most family businesses, despite saying they’re driven by social values, don’t have clearly defined ESG statements, Knight says. A succession or a younger family member joining the leadership team is often a prompt for a family enterprise to “professionalize.” Knight says family businesses should focus on the “G” in ESG before they can meaningfully implement the “E.”
On the family philanthropy side, too, this rings true for the Trottier Foundation. When the foundation hired Sylvie Trottier’s husband, St-Pierre, in 2016, it was the first time they had paid staff.
That was around the time the foundation started pivoting toward funding the climate fight, too. St-Pierre says there’s space for many more family foundations to start funding climate action.
“The reality is a lot of the wealthier families are often approached by very well-paid fundraisers from hospitals and universities, so they get all of their attention . . . and then they want their name up on a wall,” he says. “There’s a lot of work to be done to [help] those families realize, actually, there’s stuff you can fund on climate that’s equally as important and extremely urgent.”
Kylie Adair is a Montreal-based journalist.
