Special Committee on Cooperatives Committee on July 24th, 2012

[Pamela Folkins]

Certainly.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

And the other reports we can access.

[A voice]

Absolutely.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Thanks.

Can you tell me if you've had difficulties dealing with ACOA?

[Dave Whiting]

I can tell you that I've had some conversations with them that have not led to anything substantial. I think they're going through some changes right now that have created some internal problems for them.

We wanted to get a project going with our Chinese immigrant community, a newspaper that started up in Charlottetown that's distributed to them and to China. There's quite a significant community of immigrants from China.

There's growing agricultural nutritional product types of stuff we've been working on. UPEI has developed an extraction process and we're moving ahead like that.

We run the community economic initiative funds and we wanted to promote that through the Chinese community. We didn't get a response back from ACOA on that.

The other one is that we've started up a cooperative movement in the high school, much like Junior Achievement, only it's on a co-op basis. We've had one successful pilot program and we're going to be approaching ACOA on that.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

I'm sorry to cut you off. I want to give some time to the others.

[Dianne Kelderman]

ACOA is no different from many of the other federal programs. If you look at the definitions, the components, the boxes of the programs—which we have—you will very rarely, if ever, see a reference to a cooperative. When a cooperative walks into an ACOA office or another federal program office, generally the first response is, “You don't quite fit the box.” We have to go back to demonstrate why we fit the box.

It's not very often that you see “cooperative” language, “cooperative” understanding, in government programs, including ACOA.

[Pamela Folkins]

We've had limited experience with ACOA. We like to be fairly self-sufficient.

However, our co-op has been able to obtain moneys over the years. Most recently, a couple of years ago, it was for forest management program assistance. In the last year it was turned down. With the downturn in the forest industry and it being a rural economic impact, we were quite disappointed. There was really no reason given, other than “got no money”.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

The federal government runs an executive exchange or interchange program where people from the private sector come to work in the federal government, and vice versa. Would you know if anybody has ever come from the co-op milieu to participate in this executive interchange program?

[Dave Whiting]

I have no knowledge.

[Dianne Kelderman]

Do you mean staff exchange?

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Yes.

[Dianne Kelderman]

Staff exchange, no, but we a few years ago actually very deliberately took a couple of ACOA executives to Quebec with us to look at the Quebec model and meet with the Quebec government and other successful cooperatives in Quebec.

That was our initiative to get them to understand that we actually exist and we're a part of the economic environment. It was not from an executive internship perspective.

[The Chair, Conservative, Blake Richards]

Thank you.

Time has expired on that round. We'll move to the second round of questioning now—

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Can I get a response from New Brunswick?

[The Chair, Conservative, Blake Richards]

Okay, I'll allow it, but very, very briefly—

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

You've done it for everyone else.

[The Chair, Conservative, Blake Richards]

—if the witness has a response to that question.

[Pamela Folkins]

We did not have any participation in that, and I'm not aware of it, so....

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Thanks.

[The Chair, Conservative, Blake Richards]

Thank you.

We'll move to the second round of questioning now.

First, Mr. Preston, you have five minutes.

[Joe Preston, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Thank you very much.

Thank you all for being here, and thank you for sharing some of the great stories.

Mr. Whiting, I think you had a great way of putting it about how things were, and then co-ops developed, and how things have worked out or have gotten better because of it.

You each shared little bits of how successful people working together with each other, and with each other's success in mind, perhaps, other than their own, have made co-ops and credit unions and mutual insurance companies and the like all more successful from a statistical point of view in that they're more likely to succeed over a period of time when private business may have failed. Co-ops tend to succeed at a rate of almost two to one. Certainly we're seeing now, across Canada, 100-year anniversaries on many things, such as mutual insurances and credit unions and stuff that has been around.

Can you tell me what you think the answer is for that? Why are co-ops more successful? Give me a very short answer, if you could, because I'd like to get a couple more questions in. As well, what causes a cooperative enterprise to be more successful on that scale than a private enterprise?

Go ahead, Ms. Kelderman.

[Dianne Kelderman]

I'm happy to answer that.

There are a couple of reasons. I think they're rooted in reality. I think they're rooted in communities. And I think the people who are member-owners of cooperatives are passionate about the business, passionate about the cause of the business, and they are not willing to let it fail no matter what.

[Joe Preston, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

I think that's exactly the answer I had hoped I'd hear. It's what I hear when I go out and talk to people in credit unions and cooperatives about why they are members and why they think the success is there. In some cases they probably, if they were private enterprise, should have failed at some point along the way, and just chose not to.

[Dianne Kelderman]

They gave up. We don't give up.