Dominic Blais

Dominic Blais is a long-tenured investment professional at the Canadian Medical Protective Association (CMPA), the Ottawa-based mutual-defence organization that provides medico-legal protection to the large majority of Canadian physicians and manages one of the country's larger institutional investment pools (roughly $7.0 billion at fair value as of 2024). He joined the CMPA in 2004 and has spent his career there working across most aspects of the portfolio, including internal management, research, quantitative modelling, and preparing recommendations to the Investment Committee.

Over more than two decades he has moved through several roles. He served as Senior Portfolio Manager, Public Assets, where he led external manager selection and oversight, and he has managed an active currency overlay program that produced positive results over a seven-year span. He is now the CMPA's Senior Risk Manager, where he leads performance-measurement and risk-management functions, oversees internal trading activity, and directs the organization's internal systems development and support efforts. He describes more than 15 years of investing experience across public markets.

Blais holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from Bishop's University (Sherbrooke, Quebec) and carries three professional designations: the CFA charter, the CAIA (Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst) charter, and a CPA/CMA (Certified Management Accountant) designation. He has appeared as a speaker on institutional/alternative-investing panels, including the CAiP Quebec & Atlantic conference (2019).

A note on positioning: the stub data labels the stage as "Seed Round," but nothing in public sources supports Blais or the CMPA writing direct seed cheques into startups. The CMPA is an institutional asset owner that gains private-market exposure primarily as a limited partner in funds (e.g., private equity and real-asset managers). Blais's own remit centres on public assets, manager oversight, and enterprise risk rather than venture-stage deal-making. Founders should treat the "seed investor" framing with skepticism.

• Operates as part of a total-portfolio / absolute-return oriented institution: the CMPA's asset mix is designed to maximize absolute returns without taking on undue risk, matched against very long-dated medico-legal liabilities.
• Multi-asset allocator, not a single-stage venture investor: the CMPA portfolio spans public equities, fixed income, private equity (~17% of assets), real assets/real estate, and hedge funds (~20%).
• Fund/LP-driven private-markets access — confirmed exposures include limited-partnership interests in managers such as Actis and 17Capital, plus positions like abrdn Property Income Trust and a long-held shipping-container investment; the CMPA also directly owns its Ottawa headquarters.
• Blais's personal focus areas are public-market portfolio management, external manager selection and oversight, currency overlay, performance measurement, and risk management — i.e., he is a gatekeeper/allocator and risk officer rather than an early-stage cheque-writer.