First of all, I would like to thank you very much for this opportunity to present before the committee.
The Canadian Co-operative Association is one of two umbrella or apex organizations that represent cooperatives and credit unions across Canada. Our sister francophone organization is the Conseil Canadien de la Coopération, which is presenting here today.
The cooperative sector in Canada today is made up of over 9,000 cooperatives, both financial and non-financial. It employs over 170,000 people and has assets of over $260 billion. The sector has some $18 million individual memberships, representing at least $13 million Canadians. This means that four in ten Canadians are members of a cooperative.
The cooperative model is one of economic democracy. Each co-op is owned by its members and is governed by the principle of one member, one vote. The Canadian Co-operative Association represents 34 member organizations, including the provincial credit union centrals, the cooperative insurance sector, the consumer cooperative sector, as well as the agricultural, housing, health, and worker cooperative sectors. In 2009, we will be celebrating our 100th anniversary.
It is particularly appropriate that we are here today as most of the more than 9 million cooperative memberships that CCA represents are found in the service sector. While there are some 10.8 million credit union memberships across Canada, over 5 million are part of the credit union network represented by provincial credit union centrals and the Credit Union Central of Canada. The assets of these credit unions have risen 10.8%, year over year, to reach $102.4 billion as at the third quarter of 2007. Another of our members, the Co-operators Group, is the largest multi-product, Canadian-owned insurance company, with assets of over $7 billion and over 4,100 employees.
We have several members in the consumer cooperative sector, including Co-op Atlantic, the United Farmers of Alberta, and GROWMARK. Our largest member, Federated Co-operatives Limited, is owned by 275 individual cooperatives and had sales in the order of $5.8 billion in 2007. Mountain Equipment Co-op, with some 2.7 million members, is now the fourth largest polity democratic voting entity in the country after Canada, Ontario, and Quebec.
The Canadian housing cooperative federation represents some 2,200 housing co-ops and some 250,000 people who live in cooperative housing across Canada. There are more than 500 co-op child care centres run by some 35,000 parents. In Saskatchewan, cooperative community health clinics have existed since the 1960s, and they provide a community-run alternative to medical services delivered by the state or the private sector.
In the service sector, the cooperative model already provides opportunities in terms of jobs and business solutions to many Canadian communities. We believe that starting and encouraging new cooperatives to deal with many of our most important economic and social issues is a policy tool that is underused by the federal government and by many provincial governments.
In our campaign to renew our major partnership program with the federal government, the cooperative development initiative, we have outlined eight possible areas where the cooperative model could help the federal government deal with policy issues, from economic development in challenged communities to the integration of immigrants in Canadian society. We also believe, as we have indicated in two presentations last year to the Senate committees on urban and rural poverty, that the cooperative model is an excellent tool in helping us to make poverty history in our very rich country.
Over the last years we have had a spate of major foreign takeovers of national economic icons. Cooperatives have a major positive advantage in dealing with this issue because they are directly owned by the residents of these communities. In many inner cities, and also in rural communities, cooperative stores still remain while other supermarket stores have left. Credit unions are now the only financial institution in some 900 communities in Canada.
Cooperative ownership assures that the profits are transferred right back to the members in the form of patronage dividends. This year alone, federated cooperatives will be returning over $450 million in patronage dividends to local member retail cooperatives.
As part of the co-op principles, concern for community means that co-ops also contribute back to their communities in other investments. Credit unions gave back some $34.7 million in 2006 in the form of donations and contributions to community economic development; the Co-operators Group allocated $3.5 million in 2006 into community projects; and Mountain Equipment Co-op put 1% of its sales, or $2.4 million, into climate change projects in Canada.
A study by the Quebec government showed that cooperative businesses tend to last longer than other businesses in the private sector. More than six out of ten cooperatives survive more than five years compared with almost four businesses out of ten for the private sector. Close to 100,000 individuals volunteer their time in helping manage the co-ops by sitting on boards and committees.
In closing, there are two areas in which cooperatives particularly need government assistance. The first one is assistance in getting started. Once they are up and running, co-ops can fend for themselves and do not require ongoing regular government support. Small help, in the form of renewing and expanding the cooperative development initiative, which we have mentioned and which is a five-year program that ends March 31, 2008, is one important way.
The second need is for capital. As cooperatives often have more difficulty raising capital in their initial development phases compared with investor-owned businesses, we would like the federal government to bring in a cooperative investment plan, such as exists in Quebec, which gives tax credits to members who invest in agricultural or worker co-ops.
Both of these programs can help the co-op model play an even larger and more important role in delivering services to Canadian people.
Thank you very much.