Thank you for having us here.
My name is Patrick Duguay, and I am the director general of the Coopérative de développement régional Outaouais-Laurentides. My office is just on the other side of the river. I did not have to travel far. In fact, I was dropped off by Taxi Co-op.
The United Nations declared 2012 the International Year of Co-operatives. Last week, 2,600 co-operators from around the world met in Quebec City for the first international summit, at the invitation of Monique Leroux, the president of Desjardins Group.
I am from the Social Economy Working Group, a smaller organization that was created in 1996 at the invitation of the Quebec government at the time. That government had chosen to promote collective entrepreneurship and the meaning of entrepreneurship, to use it for the benefit of communities. So, the Social Economy Working Group is an organization that promotes the development of social economy and brings together major company networks, networks of organizations that support development, social movements and university networks. After all these years, the Social Economy Working Group has its own financial tools to support new projects, strategies to promote the social economy labour force, and research and transfer tools.
With respect to non-profit organizations in Quebec, there are approximately 7,000 collective enterprises, including 3,300 co-operatives, and close to $5 billion in sales, or $30 billion if you include the entire sector and Desjardins Group. The social economy represents 8% of the gross domestic product in Quebec, and that is just to start.
The co-operative and mutual aid movement has deep roots in Canada. Public policies in favour of co-operatives have been adopted in most Canadian provinces. A very sizeable association movement, which is seen mainly in the volunteer sector, is present in all communities in Canada.
Increasingly, collective entrepreneurship is being rediscovered, with its objectives of meeting new needs or needs that had not been properly addressed until now. Social economy enterprises invest in all economic activity sectors, be it transport, forestry or others. In all these sectors, there are enterprises that have chosen to operate under different rules.
Briefly, I would like to present a few approaches, expectations or hopes so that the Canadian government can perhaps better recognize the International Year of Co-operatives. The last thing that was done this year was do away with the only program to support the development of new co-operative initiatives. It was the co-operative development initiative, and came under Agriculture Canada. Its staff went from 94 to 6 employees.
The most important thing for us is to guarantee that all social economy enterprises have fair and adapted access to the SME support programs. Even if the goal of the social economy enterprises is not individual enrichment, but community enrichment, they are still enterprises. Access to development capital would be important. In his last budget speech, Minister Flaherty referred to the
report of the Task Force on Social Finance,
which our organization signed.