I don't have the silver bullet. I will say that on the provincial level, in Ontario, even though we're a federally regulated institution, we're very active in the communities. That includes the head office of our life company in Regina. Basically, we're out there trying to be in the community.
In Ontario we were advocating for the creation, interestingly, of a cooperative secretariat modelled on the federal cooperative secretariat, the reason being the success of the federal cooperative secretariat in bringing a level of awareness, within government particularly, of co-ops and their nature.
I think over a period of three years I met, with the CCA or with On Co-op—their version in Ontario—something like 35 to 50 MPPs, and maybe one or two of them had any idea of what a co-op was. Most of our time was spent bringing awareness.
The co-op secretariat, in my view, was a great institution in the federal government. I know it's going to continue to exist in a lower form. But it's that type of thing—just bringing awareness.
In Ontario, there are these enterprise centres. If you went to an enterprise centre in Ontario and asked about the formation of business, they would never tell you there's a cooperative form. They'd tell you about a stock company. They'd tell you about sole proprietorship. They'd tell you about a partnership. But they would not tell you about a cooperative. Now, they do.
It's that type of thing. It's the little nicks, the little changes, getting people who face the public in places to actually talk about co-ops. We're making some strides, though not as many as we would like.