Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  I'm not a strong expert on this, and I really can't speak to the specifics of the act, but I do believe there's an opportunity to look at the act to modernize it and to enhance it with the understanding of what needs to be done on the capitalization, understanding that the curric

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  I think if a cooperative has a surplus, and they issue the surplus as member shares, and the member shares stay in the cooperative, then at that particular time, they don't pay tax on their member shares, because they haven't actually taken the cash out. It could be that. But as

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  I guess it's not about explaining it specifically to him. It would be about explaining it to a group of blueberry farmers in northwest Nova Scotia who do not have a way to market their products, because they decided that the big guy didn't want to take their blueberry products th

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  When we look at our cooperative members—and when I say “members”, I mean we're a second-tier cooperative, a wholesale cooperative, so our members are actually cooperatives as well, farm co-ops, supply co-ops, grain co-ops, grocery co-ops—we're finding we're not getting new member

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  In our existing models, yes. In the model we're developing now and the new model coming down the pipe, the answer is yes as well. What is happening is that we have, for example, ten elderly couples who want to get together. They have money. They've retired back to the communities

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  We only have this one model. There's only one happening right now. This is the model we believe has growth opportunity. So no, at this point, there is not.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Jeff is right on. In my experience, when the co-op boards are educated and they understand their cooperative strategic plan.... There are a hundred co-ops that are member-owners of Co-op Atlantic, and almost all of them have strategic plans that are very focused on the future,

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Yes. I believe now is a great time to enhance, to modernize. There is nothing wrong with the program ending. We have this happen all the time. The federal government has had lots of subagreements over the years that have evolved, right? I think we should learn from the past. We

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  The opportunity is to allow programs to help capitalize cooperatives in rural communities. We're seeing a lot of people who want to go back to the land. We can see the local food movement, and we can see it's not just farming. People who are retiring in rural communities want acc

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Yes. Our program has been diluted significantly compared to back when we really had a strong relationship with them. We have done some fabulous projects with them over the last probably 30 or 40 years, but those programs have pretty well dried up.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Yes. It's mostly the financial side and the capitalization side of the funding of co-ops. And it is in the credit unions as well as on the traditional banking side. To give Farm Credit their due, Farm Credit is probably one of the stronger ones. Certainly in Atlantic Canada, in

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Well, I'm very excited about this. Again, it's something we don't talk a lot about. It's something we started back in the seventies when one of our senior management went over to Europe and brought back the fact that we should develop co-op seniors homes. Working with CMHC back a

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Co-op Atlantic is successful. We've been around for 85 years. I've been working there for more than 25 now, dealing a lot with agriculture and development. I've dealt a lot with agricultural producer cooperatives. It's not the big ones that are the concern, although they do have

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  On the going-forward projects, there are a number of what I call subagreements—I don't think they're called that anymore—where they encourage investment in new technology in agriculture. They encourage moving-forward modernizations, and we could not get any support.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  I'd be happy to do that.