Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  I don't have the silver bullet. I will say that on the provincial level, in Ontario, even though we're a federally regulated institution, we're very active in the communities. That includes the head office of our life company in Regina. Basically, we're out there trying to be in

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Can I just add one little thing to that comment? Certainly when I'm speaking about cooperatives, I'm speaking about other democratic organizations as well, such as mutuals, fraternal benefits, and reciprocal exchanges. It's really elemental democratic ownership by the people who

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  I'm not sure that this specific issue applies to The Co-operators. We're an entity that has about $10 billion in assets. We have about $3 billion in annual revenue. We're a relatively large institution. Our cooperative is not a regulated financial entity for the purposes of feder

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  No, we can't. I might say it personally, but as an organization we cannot. So we are subject to exactly the same prudential standards. Having said that, we do actually do things to support the cooperative sector. Co-operative Housing is a member of The Co-operators. We do actual

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  No. Registering a cooperative is basically like registering a company. The federal government keeps a registry. The only problem with the cooperative registry federally is that even if you look at the registry, there are many co-ops on there that no longer exist. It's not reall

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Could I respond to that?

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  That's a separate issue, and it's back to Mr. Lemieux's opening comments. I would agree with him. Obviously I wouldn't be here talking about co-ops in a positive way if I didn't think they were robust and institutions that we should be promoting. But I would say—and I agree wit

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  The cooperative form is a form of enterprise, so it's not housing, it's not insurance, it's not...whatever else. It's a form of enterprise. The nature of the form of enterprise is that it's democratically organized. Basically, in a worker co-op, for example, the workers are actua

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Yes, I can, and I would say it's already evident. If you look at renewable energy, there's a big windmill in Toronto that's actually a small co-op called TREC, Toronto Renewable Energy Co-op. Co-operators, out of our development fund, gave them $10,000 or $15,000 for the original

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Yes.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  I agree with your comments. The only other comment and observation I'd make is that for us in The Co-operators, time is a long thing. There will be another committee. There will be another time. We will do our best to present what we can to this committee, and we hope it goes for

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Do you mean the economic crisis from 2008 to date?

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Of course, like any other insurance company, our group is made up of a large P and C organization, a smaller life company, and a number of other financial services enterprises. As you will know, with continuing low interest rates, most life products that were sold were sold on as

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  I think cooperatives, mutuals, credit unions, and fraternal benefits—all these organizations—are not well understood by people generally. Because there's sort of a low level of understanding of these organizations, we've definitely expressed our view that more study should be don

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Are you speaking about purchasing shares in us or are you speaking about the investments we hold?