Mr. Speaker, I met with the executive of the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool on a number of occasions. It has a number of subsidiary companies, one which is referred to as AgPro which has a number of retail enterprises developed into its whole co-operative structure.
This is exactly what I spoke about, allowing co-operatives to compete in the global economy and in the economy that we have developed today in this great country of ours. The Saskatchewan Wheat Pool has gone public. It has sold shares. They are non-voting shares. It is allowed.
I talked about dissenting rights. They have in the province of Saskatchewan dissenting rights. Those members of the co-operative who do not wish to be part of that co-operative based on a share structure can with their equity get out of that particular corporation.
That did not happen, quite frankly, because the members of that co-operative found that the direction they were heading in with the share offering they made was quite successful. The dollars generated from that share offering were used to capitalize the co-operative to compete further against other member co-operatives, the Manitoba and Alberta pools, as well as the private sector. They were able to put up sufficient assets to compete with the private sector. So it has been very positive for them.
This legislation will allow the same thing to happen with any co-operative if it wishes to take that step.