Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Thanks, Shona. What are those areas that are important to our members? Sustainability is critical in terms of facilities and green buildings but also in terms of our products and our supply chain. We are continually working to reduce our environmental footprint. Operating accor

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  We have many, many co-ops, and they are varied in size, structure, and mission. It is challenging to speak on behalf of all cooperatives, but certainly what I've been hearing through the Canadian Co-operative Association is that access to capital, in some cases, is a challenge, e

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  In terms of what we need from the government or what the government's role is, I would go back to the Canadian Co-operative Association, which has a much better handle on the varied needs. Again, there's no one prescription. I think there are probably structural as well as fina

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Well, it depends. First of all, within each community where we operate, we support organizations locally. We're serving our members locally. There are national organizations, such as CPAWS, which we partner with and support. Some of the organizations are national and some are loc

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  We aren't the experts in that, so we rely on third parties. We don't do our own monitoring; we rely on third parties who specialize in monitoring to audit our factories and report back to us. We operate within a policy that says what's allowable and when there is an infraction fo

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Right now our scope is with the products we produce, so we work to improve the conditions in the factories where we produce our products.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  In fact Ottawa is undergoing renovation at the moment, and if you come into the store as our renovation wraps up you will see examples of that. We just opened a few weeks ago a new store in North Vancouver. It's beautiful. It's in an area where we've rehabilitated the land coming

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Of members?

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  We're here to serve our members. So if we have more members, we will endeavour to serve them. And if you're not a member, we encourage the rest of you to come on in and check out our nice products.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  There are a couple of things. One is that we did have help. We didn't have government help back then, but we had help from REI, in the States, which I believe provided products to us at wholesale prices so we could then offer them to Canadians.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Exactly. Another thing is that the world was different in 1971. We have more challenges today. We have more competition today. When we move into an area, our goal is not to wipe out the competition. Our goal is to inspire and enable everyone to live active outdoor lifestyles.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Yes. We are not profit-driven, but we aim to create a surplus. That surplus goes back to the members in terms of a patronage return, and we use some of that capital to grow: provide more member services, purchase our products, do our Ottawa renovation. Beyond what we need to gro

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  It is the model that many cooperatives use.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  I don't know that I can answer that definitively. I would say that because we're looking at the federal co-op act, we're talking about the federal level. Tying that into an earlier question, start-ups, whether they're co-ops or not, may require funding. But if you combine that w

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  I wouldn't trade off health care.