Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members. My name is Dianne Kelderman. I am the president and CEO of the Nova Scotia Co-operative Council. I thank you for the opportunity to come before this very important committee during this historic year, the International Year of Coopera

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Thank you. Yes, I agree that support for new start-ups, for growing cooperatives, is important. We're asking for the same kind of support and treatment, respect, and understanding as the other economic players in the country. That's simply what we're asking for.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Terrific. Thank you. I'm very happy to do that. HealthConnex—Connecting People for Health Cooperative is our business name—is a cooperative owned by cooperatives and credit unions in Nova Scotia. We're owned by the people of Nova Scotia, and we are, as I indicated in my presenta

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  ACOA is no different from many of the other federal programs. If you look at the definitions, the components, the boxes of the programs—which we have—you will very rarely, if ever, see a reference to a cooperative. When a cooperative walks into an ACOA office or another federal p

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Do you mean staff exchange?

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Staff exchange, no, but we a few years ago actually very deliberately took a couple of ACOA executives to Quebec with us to look at the Quebec model and meet with the Quebec government and other successful cooperatives in Quebec. That was our initiative to get them to understan

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  I'm happy to answer that. There are a couple of reasons. I think they're rooted in reality. I think they're rooted in communities. And I think the people who are member-owners of cooperatives are passionate about the business, passionate about the cause of the business, and the

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  They gave up. We don't give up.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Thank you. That's a terrific question, and I'm very happy to answer it. We are on the doorsteps, literally, of ACOA and other federal agencies all the time, raising the flag for cooperatives--not in a confrontational way, but simply asking why we are not included and why this p

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  2011.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  I suspect it had something to do with the economy and the crisis we were in, because cooperative businesses tend to do really well during times that are tough, for the reasons I gave when I responded to Mr. Preston. We tend to be rooted, we tend to look for solutions, we tend to

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  There were certainly a lot of groups in Nova Scotia that were contemplating cooperative business enterprises, solutions to community challenges or community opportunities, and did choose the co-op route and were able to move that forward based on the CDI. So absolutely, I think t

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  The decision around the CDI was a very interesting one. As we understand it, the reason for the CDI's being cancelled was because it was successful, because it was doing well. That's contrary to what normally happens inside of government, and inside of the private sector, really.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  I'm not here, obviously, to speak on behalf of the housing sector, because the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada has made a presentation and is well equipped to do that and to answer those questions. I can tell you that the housing cooperatives are members of our organi

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  I'm happy to respond to that, as well. Our members, the co-ops and credit unions, generally have three pieces they look at. When we're fortunate to have a surplus or profit in our business entities, we look at three things. First, and most important, we look at re-investment. Ho