Mr. Speaker, I am very please to say a few words about Bill C-5.
It is quite fitting that we were speaking about co-ops. In the spirit of co-operation I express my appreciation to the Reform Party, the Bloc Quebecois and the Liberal Party for allowing me to speak first due to a prior commitment.
I also express my appreciation to the leader of the New Democratic Party for assigning me the critic areas of small business, western economic diversification and co-ops. All these areas are of great interest to me. I have been a business person and a member of the co-op and credit union movement for 27 or 28 years. That is a long time for a young person like me. Of course I joined the credit union and co-operative movement many years ago.
Bill C-5, an act respecting co-operatives, is the reincarnation of Bill C-91, tabled in March this year, which died on the order paper with the dissolution of parliament.
Its reintroduction this fall marks another accomplishment in a very active year for the co-op movement in Canada, one in which we celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Canadian Co-Operative Association founded by the former Co-operative College of Canada, which was very prominent in the province of Saskatchewan, and the Co-operative Union of Canada on September 24, 1987.
Also this spring in the Saskatchewan budget the NDP government of Roy Romanow announced significant new resources and a new focus on co-op economic development after some months of consultation and work with the co-op movement in Saskatchewan.
This summer in Vancouver the World Council of Credit Unions recognized the Canadian Co-operative Association for its outstanding work in assisting in the development of credit unions around the world.
As the minister stated, 14 million Canadians are members of a co-op, a credit union or a caisse populaire. Some 10,000 co-ops in Canada employ about 135,000 workers often in regions of the country or economic sectors that have been ignored by the traditional market economy.
Some producer and marketing co-operatives have been very successful. Some 17 of the top 500 revenue producing companies in Canada are registered as co-ops. In 1995, 617,000 people belonged to agricultural co-ops alone. They are very significant players in the economy.
These 617,000 people in agricultural co-ops generated $16 billion in sales and handled 40% of total farm cash receipts in the areas of grains, oilseeds, dairy products, eggs and poultry, livestock, fruits and vegetables.
Co-ops also make a contribution to their communities inspired by unique needs identified in the far corners of our country. Many members will acknowledge, as we do in Saskatchewan, that the co-op sector is one of the three major engines which drive our economy: the private sector, the public sector and the co-op sector.
We have always used the co-op sector in western Canada and other parts of the country as an instrument to achieve economic objectives where the private and the public sectors have failed or were not interested in pursuing those objectives in those areas.
I am very proud that we are dealing with the issue today and providing the co-ops in many ways with the modern instruments and utensils they require to meet the modern challenges facing us.
I raise some examples of co-ops. The Co-op Radio in Restigouche provides radio service in French for Acadians and local employment for northern New Brunswick. A co-op named Imagine That, an artists' marketing co-op in Duncan, B.C., helps local artisans sell their work to the growing tourist markets on Vancouver Island.
Arctic co-operatives work to meet the challenges of a remote economy and marketplace that exist north of the 60th parallel. The Mountain Equipment Co-op, started by a group of university students, has grown into a successful and popular consumer retail co-op operating in four of the country's largest cities.
Prairie Dog Alternative News in my home town of Regina is providing an alternative voice to the mainstream media. Its ownership is growing more concentrated by the year. We are very pleased to see that alternative prosper in Regina, Saskatchewan.
One of the two provinces where co-ops have been most at home is my home province of Saskatchewan. The other is Quebec. The Saskatchewan Wheat Pool founded by farmers in 1924 has grown into one of the largest grain handlers and agricultural co-ops in the entire world with annual sales in 1996 of $3 billion and gross revenues in the order of $4.24 billion, up from $2.8 billion just two years ago.
The Saskatchewan Wheat Pool is the largest co-op in Canada, followed by Federated Co-ops in Saskatoon. The Saskatchewan Wheat Pool is also the biggest corporation by sales in the province of Saskatchewan and the 35th largest company by revenue in the entire country.
As I said, the extent to which the co-op sector contributes to economic development in our country may be unappreciated by the general population. As one of the three engines it is a very key sector.
The contribution of the co-op sector has always been well understood in my home province of Saskatchewan and has certainly been appreciated by the New Democratic Party and our predecessor, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation.
In particular I extend our congratulations on the occasion of National Co-op Week held just last week and International Credit Union Day held on October 16.
Bill C-5 represents quite an accomplishment for the co-op sector in Canada and puts it on the leading edge internationally. In 1996 the Canadian Co-operative Association, in co-operation with the conseil canadien de la coopération, presented a model bill to the federal government intended to update federal legislation regulating co-ops.
The Canadian Co-operative Associations Act, 1970 is thus receiving its first overhaul in almost 30 years and the resulting statute will in all likelihood serve as a model for coming changes in provincial statutory regimes for the co-op sector in years to come.
The two main thrusts of the bill are to offer some flexible financial alternatives to co-operatives so they can continue to operate successfully in the modern competitive global marketplace and at the same time to provide work to strengthen the cornerstone of the co-op sector's vitality, which of course is the rights of its individual members.
The federal statute applies to non-financial co-ops operating in more than one province. Only 51 of the 7,300 non-financial co-ops in Canada are affected, but some of them are the largest in the country. It modernizes the regulatory framework for incorporation, structure and organization of co-ops and permits co-ops to issue investment equity for the first time in order to tap new resources and new sources of capital. It also incorporates the revamped 1995 International Co-operative Alliance statement of co-operative principles into an updated definition of what makes an organization a co-op under the act.
Finally, a number of requirements have been modified to modernize the corporate statute law for co-operatives that are federally registered, and this complies with the Corporations Act in many respects.
As spokesperson for co-ops in the NDP I met with a number of officials with respect to this issue, Industry Canada, the co-operative secretariat at agriculture Canada. I have had consultations with the Canadian Co-operative Association, with prairie pools, with Federated Co-ops of Saskatchewan, with the president of the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, Leroy Larson, representatives of the Alberta Wheat Pool and the Sherwood Co-op, among many others.
However, some sectors of the co-op movement, in particular in Atlantic Canada and some of the smaller co-ops in Saskatchewan, are not in full support of this bill. The differences exist between the smaller co-ops that support the traditional service to members co-op model and the larger co-ops that support the business model of co-ops.
When the bill is referred to committee, which we support, these issues have to be vetted, discussed and heard by the committee members. The NDP requests of the minister that the committee invite witnesses from both viewpoints so that we can understand more fully the differences they have with respect to this bill. No doubt we will hear more detailed views at that time.
I take this opportunity to acknowledge the vitality and maturity of the co-op sector of our economy and to recognize the active contribution co-op employees and members make to our communities.
On behalf of the New Democratic Party caucus I am pleased to offer support for referring this bill to committee for further review.
