Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for inviting Canada's credit unions to be part of the annual pre-budget consultations. We've appeared before this committee in the past and appreciate the continuing excellent relationship we have with committee members and indeed with all parliamentarians.
We are especially pleased that your invitation was scheduled on an auspicious day on our calendars, because today, the third Thursday of October, happens to be International Credit Union Day, a day when we celebrate the continuing achievements of credit unions across Canada. Indeed, this week, the third week of October, is Co-op Week across Canada. As a result, the Prime Minister released a statement that co-ops are a model of excellence. He said:
Canada's credit unions play an important role in our nation's economic prosperity.... The health of our financial institutions, including our credit unions, has been a critical factor in helping Canada weather the global economic crisis and emerge relatively unscathed.... I commend the Canadian credit union movement for its commitment to advancing the financial well-being of its members while giving back to the community.
Last week, in Quebec City, I attended the International Summit of Cooperatives, which was attended by 2,800 people from 91 countries around the world. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It was a rather inspirational gathering that illustrated the size and the enormous economic importance of co-op enterprise in the world economy. For example, we learned that co-ops employ 100 million people around the world. If you aggregate the revenues of the top 300 co-ops in the world, the result is $1.6 trillion, and that figure is equivalent to the ninth largest economy in the world.
The Quebec City summit arose from the United Nations designation of 2012 as International Year of Cooperatives. Enough of the commercial.
Today, I will be speaking from the perspectives of Canada's credit unions, full-service financial institutions that are cooperatively owned and democratically controlled by their individual and business members.
Canada's credit union system continues to be a keen competitor in the financial services industry. I work for Credit Union Central of Canada, or Canadian Central as it's known, and we are the national trade association for our member organizations and, through them, 359 credit unions.
Canada's credit unions operate a branch network with more than 1,700 locations, and these branches serve more than five million members and employ almost 26,000 people. Almost one-quarter of credit union branches serve small communities where they are the only financial institution in town.
I just want to pause there and emphasize those last two numbers: they employ 26,000 people, and in fully 400 communities they are the only financial institution.
As member-owned financial cooperatives, our focus is unlike the profit motivation of the banks. Maximization of net income or share price is not the driving motivation, rather service and sustainability continue to be our motivations. It is not surprising that, for the seventh consecutive year, Canadians ranked credit unions first in overall customer service excellence among all financial institutions. We're very proud of that recognition.
Financial performance continued to be strong even during the recent economic crisis. Canada's credit unions ended 2011 having increased their assets by 10% while generating record profitability. Our asset size then would be roughly comparable to that of the National Bank of Canada. Our co-op model is a key reason for our solid financial performance: direct accountability to our members, each of whom has an equal say in our operations. With 5.2 million Canadians belonging to a credit union, our growth has been roughly comparable to the population growth in the country.
The focus of my remarks today is the regulatory burden on small financial institutions and the connection it has with the government's red tape reduction action plan. Despite our growth and successes, credit unions remain small businesses in the financial services industry. The median asset size of our 359 credit unions is $79 million. That means that half of our credit unions, or 182, operate as very small financial institutions with less than $75 million of assets. Indeed, 337 of the 359 credit unions have assets less than $1 billion.
A strong regulatory framework, of course, protects the savings and the security of Canadians. We recognize and support that. We really rely on that. However, we share the concerns of members of Parliament that regulations are being applied in the same manner to businesses with 2,000 employees as they are to those with a dozen or fewer employees, resulting in high relative compliance costs.
In the final report, the government's red tape reduction commission emphasized that a one-size-fits-all approach to regulation tends to disproportionately burden small organizations like credit unions. We—