Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to present our recommendations today. I'm joined by Stacia Kean, a member of our board of directors from PARO Enterprise Centre in Thunder Bay, as well as Lynne Markell from the Canadian Co-operative Association, a member of our policy council.
Founded in 1999, the Canadian Community Economic Development Network is a national association of local organizations working on integrated approaches to economic and social development in their communities. We have several hundred members in every province and territory across the country, a membership representing an approach to development that integrates economic activities--the provision of needed goods and services--with social and environmental goals at the organizational and community levels. This is a movement for social innovation that has been growing both in Canada and internationally in recent years and is successful in large part because it inspires Canadians to take action on the challenges facing their communities.
The 2010 National Summit on a People-Centred Economy, held this past June here in Ottawa, brought together the leading national organizations and the community economic development cooperative and social economy sectors to produce joint recommendations on how to scale up the capacity for social innovation through community enterprise.
The recommendations outlined in our brief are, first of all, to create new investment and capital sources for community enterprises; to incorporate community enterprises into federal policies and programs and procurement; to provide stable, flexible support for community development organizations; to extend business development programs to community enterprises; to include community enterprises in the federal plan for poverty reduction, which the House is currently looking at; and to support community enterprises in international development.
Community enterprises have an important contribution to make to a stable and equitable recovery from the economic downturn. Canada has a valuable opportunity to adapt and implement policies and programs that have proven successful both internationally and in various provinces here at home. These recommendations are practical steps that will allow communities greater flexibility to innovatively design local solutions to complex challenges of poverty, shrinking labour markets, and fiscal constraints.
I'll now allow my colleague Stacia to illustrate some of the potential of these recommendations.