Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Thank you very much. I'll take over here. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and committee members. First, I'd like to thank the Special Committee on Cooperatives for inviting the Assiniboine Credit Union to participate in this very important study into the status of cooperatives in Canada a

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Okay. Thank you very much. The one point maybe I would finish on is that one of the areas we think would be important for the government to support cooperatives in accessing financing has to do with section 95 co-ops. These are co-ops, particularly in the social housing area, wh

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  It's really this—

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Thank you. On the first question, around the grants and capacity-building, one of the things we've observed in financing co-ops is this imbalance, if you will, between some of the senior leaders within the co-ops tending to have more of a focus on the cooperative values and prin

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  I'm going to have to trust those numbers. I don't have the financials in front of me. My apologies.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Yes, that is correct.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  I can't think of that offhand in terms of federal funding to support our assets or growth. What I can say is that we have had support from the federal government related to specific programs and partnerships that we deliver. For example, the asset building program that I mentione

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Yes, yes.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Yes.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Actually, we have not. One of the things I can say is this: our standard to provide financing for small business really would be to those businesses that have a hard time getting conventional financing. So the financing that we deliver to our small business members quite often wo

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Yes, and I'd like Dale to step in here as well from a more provincial perspective. But what I can say from what we've seen in terms of financing small business, certainly the demand for small business, whether it's home-based or otherwise, has been growing, so we have been having

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  The answer is yes. We continue to use the small business financing program as one of the tools, one of those loan guarantee programs, to be able to provide access to financing. So that program certainly, I would say, has been important, together with the formerly mentioned Wester

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Yes, I would agree with that argument for sure. The other advantage, if I can say, in terms of the wider co-op development impact, is that many of these housing co-ops probably.... Certainly in Winnipeg the Assiniboine Credit Union has been the first choice for these co-ops to l

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  I have to say that I'm not familiar with our credit union accessing or taking advantage of that. I'm not able to respond.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Again, I'm sorry, but I'm not familiar with the level of our access and utilization of those funds you referenced.