Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  I think I may have given a slightly misleading impression that I wanted the federal government to write a 200-page contract in six-point type, specifying the purpose of every dollar that was contributed. That's not quite my meaning. What I think I would like to see is a broad m

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  We do try.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Yes. We work very closely with CHF Canada, our national federation, and they're kind of the meeting point for all of those discussions. You mentioned things getting complicated with the provinces, and I couldn't agree more, because the provincial legislation differs every time

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  What mainly happens in most co-ops is that a monthly subsidy comes to the co-op. It's based on the mortgage rate, and it's probably too complicated to explain right now.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Yes. This is what we're talking about when we talk about the problem of the end of the operating agreement, because that monthly subsidy comes in, the co-op gets it, and uses it to offset the difference between what its low-income members can afford to pay and what it costs to

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  No, I think I've got it.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  I'm not sure I have much advice for Minister Finley, other than perhaps to remember that it's the federal government's money. I just know that when I'm in negotiations with things and I'm being asked to put something in in the way of resources or money, I typically regard that as

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  In the day-to-day operations and just the way they go about their business, there's not a whole lot of difference between a strata corporation and a co-op. Both have an elected board of directors that takes care of the day-to-day running of the co-op. It typically has a finance c

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  There are very few provincial co-ops. My own co-op is actually a provincial co-op, but there are 15 or 16 of them, or something like that.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  I can only really speak for B.C. There's a great deal of need. More money always helps. What can I say? The more money you have, the more projects you can do and the more units you can build. I understand that there are limits to the amount of money that can be brought to the tab

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  The closest would be about 15 years out.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Yes, we're having conversations with the city, because if we need a 25-year mortgage term we can't do that on a 15-year lease. We've already extended a few that were suffering from the same syndrome as the leaky condos did. They needed an extension, so the city has already done

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Yes.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  I think so. In high-value markets like Vancouver, where so many people are priced out of the market, it may be possible to do forms of limited-equity co-op specifically for models where perhaps you limit the resale value. So if you bought in at 80% of the market, you would have t

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  That's right. We would see it as something of a niche market, something of an entry-level market for people who can't jump the full step all the way up to the increasingly expensive condos. It's something we're looking at actively now and hope to pursue in the near future.