Agropur has not always been in such a good financial position as it is now. We exercised great discipline over the past few years. In order to be able to pay dividends to our members and in order for them to be in a position to give part to the cooperative, the company first has to make money. That is the first criterion. The company therefore has to be competitive and present in the markets and we must meet the needs of our customers and consumers. As with any company, that is the first step.
I cannot speak for other cooperatives because I am not familiar with their situations, but in our case, most of our surplus earnings are given to our members. In return, the members leave part in the cooperative to be used as working capital. There is also a general reserve. We therefore combine the two. The cooperative can use some of the surplus earnings and the capital held by the members to help it to grow.
That is why we included in our brief examples of support for cooperatives when the phenomenon you just spoke about occurs. We would therefore like to see the renewal of the measure that allows deferred taxes to be paid when the capital is redeemed or when the members receive it, rather than when it is issued. This would make it possible to better capitalize cooperatives and such a measure would not cost the government very much money. It is inexpensive assistance that would help cooperatives generate revenue and develop more quickly. This is one of our requests and, in our opinion, it makes sense for both the company and the government.