Mr. Speaker, I thank the parliamentary secretary for his question.
In my view the bill does not really affect the principles of co-ops, the principle of open membership or the principle of one member one vote. Members of the co-op will still control the direction of their particular co-op, even though they may take advantage of these economic utensils.
The principle of doing collectively what cannot be done individually will always be around in a co-op. The bill will assist co-ops on the larger scale in dealing with competition from international corporations and in expanding their co-ops in a vertically integrated way as other multinationals have done in the past.