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 actually the owners, and they all collaborate on doing something. Cooperatives have historically arisen in places where there's a need—for example, a social need. That's why oftentimes in Canada you'll see a lot of the co-ops were in rural areas, because a lot of the major institutions at that time were not prepared to provide support in those areas, so they were basically locally controlled.
I always compare it to a barn-building. To me, a co-op is like that. If someone's barn burns down and everyone in the community agrees that they will go and re-establish that barn...that's really the essence of a co-op. It's an autonomous group of people who get together for a common purpose, and it tends to be social.
I was reading an article, actually, on the plane about social trust, and it's interesting. I never thought of this concept before, but the nature of co-ops is such that they basically embed within themselves social trust. If you think about it yourself, which institutions do you really feel close to? Oftentimes, it's your day care; it's your local credit union. It's something that's very close to you in the community that you actually control. That's why cooperatives create long-term sustainable jobs in local communities.
When the banks shut their branches in western Canada, it was the credit unions that basically picked those up and said, look, we will do this business because it's in the local community. It's also why the risks have been less risky for them, because they're close to the risks, they understand the risks, and they understand the underlying obligations that are being put against the risk. That's why generally in the U.S. the only examples of organizations in the credit union movement that went for bailouts were ones that had become very large credit unions that started to emulate the banks. But among those who stayed true to the roots, there were no failures, no bailouts.