Earlier this year, Eric Saumure received a potentially life-changing opportunity: to handle the finances for Mark Carney’s federal election campaign. Despite the potential upsides, Saumure turned it down.
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Earlier this year, Eric Saumure received a potentially life-changing opportunity: to handle the finances for Mark Carney’s federal election campaign. Despite the potential upsides, Saumure turned it down.
“Looking back, saying no to that campaign was the hardest but also the best decision I’ve made,” Saumure told OBJ on Tuesday.
Saumure is co-founder of Ottawa-based digital accounting firm Zenbooks, which launched in 2017. Its clients are primarily small business owners and it leans away from what Saumure calls the “traditional firm” model to tech-powered, virtual accounting.
Also a chartered professional accountant (CPA), Saumure said that when the opportunity to join the Carney camp arose, it wasn’t easy to turn down.
The CFO role for Carney’s federal election campaign was originally set to be filled by Doug McLarty, who’d served other political hopefuls in past elections. But as the campaign prepared to launch, Saumure said McLarty decided to step back.
McLarty had tapped Saumure as a senior helper on the finance team assembled around Carney. Without McLarty in the picture, the offer to take over as CFO came Saumure’s way.
“He had positioned me to take over,” said Saumure. “At the time, I kind of debated it and thought about it. I was thinking, this would be huge, right? There’s prestige involved.”
It felt like a potentially career-defining, life-changing opportunity, he said. But he also had other priorities to consider.
For one, Zenbooks is on the rise.
In 2024, the firm was recognized by OBJ as one of Ottawa’s fastest-growing companies, scaling from a team of two in 2017 to 20 full-time staff seven years later.
Now, the company is partnering with a Toronto-based firm to build an AI-powered software platform for accountants, which is preparing to launch by the end of 2025.
And Saumure himself is raising his own profile on a national stage.
During the pandemic, he organized a petition to the CRA, pushing it to accept electronic signatures from small businesses in the wake of pandemic challenges. It garnered 30,000 signatures.
More recently, he’s pushed for national reforms on other issues. He said he and Zenbooks have launched an advocacy campaign related to open banking, which is a framework that allows consumers and small businesses to securely access and share their financial data with third-party providers of their choice, according to the Government of Canada website.
Canada is the last G7 country without open banking, he said.
“It’s been interesting for me to be able to take a national position, go to conferences and speak on that topic, because it’s something close to my heart,” said Saumure. “I’ve loved using my platform and the position I’ve had to advocate for what’s best for business owners. To me, it’s all about using your platform to push forward change that’s good.”
But it wasn’t just professional obligations that Saumure said he had to consider when weighing the offer to join the Carney campaign.
At home, he said he had people relying on him, including his infant son, and his wife, who has cystic fibrosis.
“I wanted to be there for my son. I wanted to be there for my clients. I wanted to be there for the business. I wanted to be there for my wife,” he said. “I think anyone who is considering being involved in a campaign needs to look at what’s actually going on in your personal life. You might get really excited about the campaign, but you work an enormous amount of time and hours and energy. That takes away from other things going on in your life.”
Saumure is not new to the world of politics.
In 2022, he said yes to a similar opportunity on a mayoral campaign.
“Mark Sutcliffe was a client of mine and he was also my business coach,” said Saumure. “When he announced to me that he was going to run for mayor, I basically told him, hey, I can help out if you want.”
He said it was an eye-opening experience, and one that highlighted the differences between the worlds of business and politics.
During the campaign, he dealt not with revenue but contributions from donors instead of clients. And the consequences of a mistake were much higher.
“There’s less guidance on how to handle things, so that certainly elevates a little bit of stress. And if you make a mistake, the candidate could get disqualified from their position,” he said.
“I kind of compare it to starting a business and spending all that money in four months. In Sutcliffe’s case, in a four-month period, he raised and spent half a million dollars. It’s like a business where you’ve got to set up all your processes, make a bunch of money, spend it and then hopefully win.”
In Sutcliffe's case, it paid off. He was elected as Ottawa’s mayor with more than 50 per cent of the vote in October 2022.
Though Saumure said he found a good balance between his professional obligations and his role on that campaign — meeting with the campaign team once a week — he knew the Carney campaign would require another level of commitment.
“These things take an enormous amount of energy and time,” he said. “The Carney campaign, we had no idea how it was going to go. But turns out, it raised four and a half million dollars in two months … When you get to that level, you’re multiplying not just the budget but the volunteers, the impact of everything that’s happening. Every social media post will have even more visibility and reaction. Those are some major considerations.”
While joining a federal campaign could have been a career-defining moment, Saumure said he has no regrets about the decision he made, and has been able to focus on his other priorities instead: caring for his family and advocating for small businesses.
“At the end of the day, I didn’t want to drop my existing priorities just for the prestige,” he said. “I’ve been on the board for Cystic Fibrosis Canada. I’m involved with the Montfort Hospital, as well. (Zenbooks) has done raw studies around technology and accounting, and we’ve done awards to reward local business owners doing cool things in Ottawa.
“At the end of the day, it’s not about business development. It’s about making change that’s going to outlast me. It’s been a really cool thing to be part of that growth.”
