Big Brothers and Sisters Association of Winnipeg and president of both the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra and the Linden Woods Community Association. He has also been involved with the United Way of Winnipeg, serving on the United Way Cabinet from 1994 until 1999 as Chair of the Major Corporate Division and Deputy Chair of Business. He is a founding Director of the Business Council of Manitoba. There were rumours that Loewen would run for Mayor of Winnipeg in 1998, but he declined. Until 2012 John Loewen was the President of Telpay, an electronic payments company which was originally started as a research and development project by Comcheq. Telpay is the largest independent payment processing company in Canada having processed over 23 million payments worth over $14 billion in 2009. Provincial politics Loewen entered political life in Manitoba's 1999 provincial election, winning election for the newly created south Winnipeg constituency of Fort Whyte. Running as a Progressive Conservative, he defeated New Democrat Bidhu Jha by 3,665 votes. The New Democratic Party won the election, and Loewen became a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) in the Official Opposition. He was appointed as his party's critic for Intergovernmental Affairs, and was later promoted to Finance Critic. Considered a rising star in his party, there was some speculation that he would run to succeed Gary Filmon as party leader in 2000. He decided against this when the party establishment united behind Stuart Murray. He was a moderate in the Manitoba Progressive Conservative Party, and supported the centre-right Progressive Conservative Party of Canada rather than the right-wing Canadian Alliance at the federal level, even though many of his colleagues backed the Alliance. In 2001, Loewen was the only member of the provincial PC caucus to attend a Winnipeg fundraiser for federal PC leader Joe Clark. In the same year, he criticized the provincial New Democratic government of Gary Doer for not going far enough in extending rights to same-sex couples. Loewen became involved a serious controversy in early 2002, after issuing a media notice that was strongly critical of Manitoba's Crocus investment portfolio. He wrote that the company held investments "in a number of Manitoba companies" that were "in financial difficulty", and requested that the government ask the Auditor General to review the valuation of the fund. His statement was met with strong opposition from Crocus, which threatened legal action. Loewen was subsequently demoted from