I'd be glad to.
A credit union or a caisse populaire is a cooperative financial institution. It is owned and governed by its members, and it provides a range of financial services.
A typical credit union provides a subset of the financial services that a large bank would, so deposit and savings accounts, loans to consumers, mortgages, personal loans. A number of them are active in commercial lending or in agricultural lending as well, but it varies. All of the existing credit unions and caisses populaires that directly serve the public are incorporated under provincial statutes and regulated by provincial bodies.
That said, as we were just discussing, two years ago we created a legislative framework for cooperative financial institutions to be established under the federal jurisdiction and to be able then to be active across the country—for example, to have branches in more than one province.