Special Committee on Cooperatives Committee on July 26th, 2012

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

If you have that, certainly it would be appreciated.

[Neil Hastie]

Sure, I'd be happy on a follow-up basis to provide some sources of that data.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

That would be great, and we'll share it with the committee.

I won't just ask for it myself, Mr. Harris.

Mr. McBain, I was listening to you talk about your co-op seeding organizations, and certainly each individual co-op has their own membership. I'm assuming that they're also paying fees into the larger organization. One of my colleagues here was talking about the number of seed-cleaning plants and whether there was a need for that many, and you did indicate that there certainly is a lot more seed cleaning required. One of the things I was thinking about, and maybe you could help us understand that, is in fact are the numbers of these plants partly due to regionalization? Are they required in regions because they may be cleaning different products, or because of distances?

[John McBain]

A lot of it is to do with distances. We have quite a few member plants in northern Alberta, plus the two in the Peace River region of B.C., and they are quite remote, some of our plants. They're in very small communities. With some of the other ones when you get into central Alberta, and some of the ones in southern Alberta, there is a possibility that some of them could be put together into bigger plants and that sort of thing. That may come in the future as things move on. We're really not too sure how that may work out in the future. If these plants can stay viable in the communities they're in, there's no problem with keeping them there and keeping that part of the industry alive in those communities.

[The Chair, Conservative, Blake Richards]

Thank you very much.

We will move now to Mr. Allen for the next five minutes.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I guess I'll make the declaration that I'm not a member. I knew that would break your heart, Pierre. It probably has something to do with the fact I'm a Glaswegian and don't want to pay the extra five bucks, and I believe you are as well. The accent sounded very familiar to one I had when I was a small boy.

Let me talk to you a bit about the governance piece. As my colleague and friend Mr. Harris said, at one point in time you used to notify your members. My credit union notifies. They don't have millions of members, they have 86,000, but their ballots are sent to every single member, along with a bio of all of their board of directors, because they believe the board of directors is extremely important to the organization, and I think you would as well. The difficulty is that when you have as many members as you do, and you rely on sending folks an e-mail, that quite often ends up in the junk mail, quite frankly. They've spammed you out because they don't necessarily want to get it from you, because they've just simply set it up that way. Or in the case of someone like my mother, they don't have one, or it's someone who just doesn't have a computer, or has moved, or has changed their hotmail address or their g-mail is totally different from the one they gave you two years ago. How do they participate?

I don't come to the store, for instance, for a long period of time. I have a vested interest in the sense of I actually want to participate, but the engagement process has now been turned back at me and it's being said to me, if you want to buy this from me you better become a member. So there's a piece of thou must: if you want this, give me the five bucks and you'll be a member. And then you want to have a governance model that says that all folks are engaged, yet you're somewhat disengaged yourself as a corporation away from your members as a co-op. It may be for altruistic measures of greening things up and not having paper, but is there any other way to engage folks that you are thinking about but you're not doing yet beyond the simple e-mail, or if I come into the store I'll see there's a board of directors and you can find out something about it, or visiting your website constantly to find out? Is there a way to do this differently?

[Shona McGlashan]

You touched on an issue that's very dear to my heart, and I'm committed to trying to increase member engagement around the election piece.

One of the things we do need to do is to make sure we have a much better grasp of members' e-mail addresses, to get them that way. We're looking at what other co-ops do. We're looking at what other organizations do that have good uptake. We'll be trying to follow best practices and do whatever we can.

We use Facebook, Twitter. We're active in social media. It's not a panacea, as we all know. We're trying our best to engage people. I'm convinced there is more we can do and more we will do.

The truth is that engagement in election processes across the board is not as high as anybody would like it. That's the case for federal elections, as well as the elections at Mountain Equipment Co-op.

We're all working toward the same goal. I absolutely agree with you that we can do better, and we will do better.

In the meantime, I would encourage our members that if they give us their e-mail addresses then they can get their share redemption cheques. There's also a bit of a carrot involved.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

I'm sure that if I had become a member and paid the five bucks, I'd make sure I got my share redemption cheque—

[Shona McGlashan]

You still can join. It's a lifetime membership.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

—and I would have to vote.

I'll leave that comment about the great outdoors somewhere else.

One of the things you talked about was this sense that seems to inculcate the whole co-op movement. The term that's used is “risk averse”, which gives two connotations. To those of us who are familiar with, engaged, and are members of cooperatives—wherever they happen to be, credit unions, etc., and have been in them for, in my case, most of my life—understand that when one says “risk-averse”, we take that to be prudent, versus to business folks it sounds like you're afraid.

Can you help me? Am I right on this? When cooperatives say they're risk-averse, do they really mean prudent versus afraid, or am I stuck in 1962?

[Margie Parikh]

Speaking for the Mountain Equipment Co-op, we mean “prudent”. It is our members' equity we work with. We are a retailer. We want to be innovative and creative. We are low-geared, meaning we are low-leveraged. But it is because we are prudent with our funds, with your funds, with other people's funds, and hopefully yours soon.

[The Chair, Conservative, Blake Richards]

Thank you very much. We appreciate that.

Next will be Mr. Preston. You have the floor for the next five minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you all for coming today.

First of all, I was discussing our panel today with the staff in my office, and JoAnna says you rock.

I'm not a member of MEC either. I spend time outdoors; I just have not visited one of your stores.

[Dan Harris, NDP, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

It's your loss.

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

Yes. I'm now going to have to hunt one down, I think.

[Brad Butt, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Here's the five bucks.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

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

Five bucks. Thanks. It's good that I'm getting a contribution from my friend.

This is great. I'm going to have to tell the Ethics Commissioner about this.

We've had many cooperatives here over the last couple of days. We discussed it yesterday, and I thought I'd come to the magic solution of why cooperatives are successful.

I'll use Mr. McBain's group as an example. They discover that there's a need in a local community and they fill it. Because it's owned by members, they're very motivated to be heavily involved, and it works really well.

MEC, you've stepped outside of my model now. Although I'm certain there's a need out there for the goods you sell, there are others already fulfilling that need. How are you still successful?

[Shona McGlashan]

Ultimately, people don't buy our products because we're a co-op. Being a co-op is like a value-add, together with our sustainability, environmental programs, and other values that may be dear to our members.

We're not going to succeed as an enterprise unless the products and the services we offer are great, we do what members need, and at a price they want. We need to have all of those.

Being a co-op is a great value-add, but it's not the thing that drives people to buy goods at our store.

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

Yes. That's the opposite of some of the other co-ops. They talked about filling a need in a community because the need had gone away. A grocery store went away, so something went in and filled the need. Maybe even regardless of price, they supported it because it was fulfilling a need in their community.

You've gone a different route, so it's a unique thing.

[Margie Parikh]

Yes, and I would say we didn't start out that way. When we started out back in the van, that was fulfilling a need.

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

There was nobody doing what you were doing, or selling the goods you were selling?

[Dan Harris, NDP, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

You'd have to go across the border to get it.

[Margie Parikh]

The founding members were driving across to the States and sort of smuggling the stuff back in, initially.

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

Somebody write that down.