Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
First I would like to thank you for being here to basically get our committee started. I must say that, just from our initial meetings, I think all MPs are very interested in informing themselves on cooperatives—their presence in Canada, their strength in Canada, the successes they have encountered, and some of the challenges—so I think it's good that we are taking this opportunity to meet.
I will also say that the summer is bit of a funny time to meet, but what's nice about it is that we don't have all of our other parliamentary duties conflicting with what work we're trying to accomplish as a committee. It allows us to focus on the matter at hand, which is definitely a plus.
Certainly in my riding of Glengarry—Prescott—Russell there's a good number of cooperatives. It is a very rural riding. It's right beside Ottawa, between Ottawa and the Quebec border. From the work I've been doing with cooperatives in my riding, my sense is that cooperatives are healthy. They're robust. They have a good, strong presence within the riding. They contribute economically to the riding.
I wanted to get a feeling from you, Mr. Carrière, and perhaps the other witnesses, on co-ops in Canada. When we look at a cross-Canada snapshot, would your assessment be that they are on good, solid footing, that they do contribute to the Canadian economy, that...?
How would you define their strategic role within Canada, and then, how are they actually fulfilling that role on the ground?