Board Opportunities with Crown Corporations: A Game of Three-Dimensional Chess

If there were a measure of governance complexity, Crown corporations would almost certainly rank at or near the top. Crown corporations in Canada are organizations owned either by the federal government or a provincial or territorial government. They are involved in everything from distribution of goods and services to energy development, resource extraction, public transportation, cultural promotion and property management. Often, their operations look and feel like those of a private-sector company. What compounds their complexity, however, is that each Crown must deliver a broad public policy mandate, and is ultimately overseen by elected representatives who are subject to public scrutiny, criticism and electoral defeat. These two factors bring constraint and uncertainty, like taking a twodimensional game of chess and making it three.

Linda Hohol and Bill Sheffield have substantial experience serving on private-sector, not-for-profit and Crown boards. Examples of Hohol’s Crown governance experience include Export Development Canada and the Canada Foundation for Innovation; Bill serves on the boards of Canada Post and Ontario Power Generation. In this article, Sheffield and Hohol share their insights about the governance of Crown corporations.

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