Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to stand and speak to the motion that the government look into how co-ops have been developed and how they are developing and set some goals for developing co-ops for the future.
In my community of Neerlandia, Alberta, there has been a co-op for 95 years. It started out purely as a grocery store and has grown to be a $50-million-a-year business today. It sells everything from fertilizers to groceries. It has a liquor store, a lumberyard, a hardware store. It sells seeds, fertilizer, grain augers, grain bins, and all those kinds of things. It is a very large part of our community. In fact, it is the only commercial interest in the town centre of our community. There is a restaurant as part of the co-op as well. It has been a source of pride for our community and a great source of employment as well. I have several family members who work there. My Uncle Jan works in the hardware department, and I have several cousins who work there as well.
Without the co-op, it would be a significantly different community. When people drive into Neerlandia, they are struck by the sheer size of our co-op. The hamlet of Neerlandia, the community that I claim to be from, has 30 houses. It is not a very large community. There are two large churches and the co-op. The co-op is probably the first thing people notice as they drive down the highway. I am from Alberta, which is a reasonably flat place. From a long distance people can see a church steeple and they can see the elevator leg on the side of the co-op's fertilizer building. People can also see the red lights of the giant co-op sign on the front of the co-op. That can probably be seen for 10 miles before arriving in Neerlandia. There is no doubt that our co-op is the identifying feature of our community.
The co-op, as I said, is 95 years old. My ancestors who came from the Netherlands were dirt poor. They were 150 kilometres from Edmonton, and 25 miles from the nearest town, and it was always labourious to get basic supplies. They thought that rather than compete against one another for the very basic things they needed such as feed for their animals, groceries, basic clothing, and some farm equipment, they would get together and build a co-op so they would have the buying power to bring those things in. They hired an employee and they built a small shop. That is how it started in 1922. From there, we are where we are today, but it took some vision from my ancestors to bring it to fruition.
I am proud to say that I am a member of the co-op. In my community, if individuals are not a member of the co-op, people will take their temperature and say, “What's wrong? There must be something wrong with you. Why aren't you participating in our co-op?” People get dividends, after all, at the end of the year. It is a great way to participate in a community, but they also get back some dividends from it at the end of the year. In addition, members gain equity in the co-op and when members turn 65, the co-op pays out their equity. For a small fry like me, that probably will not amount to $25,000, and will probably be less than that, but for some farmers who spend nearly $1 million every year at the co-op, when they decide to retire, there might be a nice cheque for their retirement. We are all participating in this venture and it has been very successful to this point.
The same community that started that initiative also started a funeral initiative. I think that when one of the first deaths occurred in our community, people said they needed a graveyard so they took a plot of land and made it into a graveyard. Then they wondered how they would manage the graveyard.
What they put in place was a co-op. The Neerlandia Funeral Association is what it is called. Being a member of that co-op provides the privilege of paying for the upkeep of the graveyard, but what also ends up happening is that when there is a death of a member of the co-op, the costs of the funeral expenses, the plot, and those kinds of things are shared among all of the members. I think it costs about $110 for each member. Believe me, we are continuing to sign up more people all the time so that our membership does not continue to dwindle, as anyone could imagine would be the case.
We have a thriving, young community. In fact, the Alberta government just built a brand new school there to accommodate the growth of the community. We outgrew our old school and saw that we needed a new school. After the recent census, we saw that the population growth in the area was going to demand a new school, and one was built.
The co-op is very much one of the pillars of the community, so I would like to take a moment to recognize some of the guys who work very hard in my community keeping the large commercial interest called the co-op running.
Mr. Richard Krikke is the president of the co-op in Neerlandia. I have met him on several occasions. I know Mr. Bruce Wieringa as well. He is one of the board members. I rode the school bus with his kids and went to church with him. Mr. Wayne Visser has also done an incredible amount of work in my community. These guys are also supporters of mine, for which I am truly grateful. I know Mr. Wes Nanninga well. He is a great advocate for the community and works very hard keeping the co-op operating.
These people have shown immense vision in taking the co-op in new directions with the new cardlock. I know the member for Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies knows very much about co-op cardlocks, as all of northern B.C. is covered by co-op cardlocks. I know that the co-op is branching out into other communities with the co-op cardlock for sure. I know that Wes Nanninga has been working hard on that as well.
Seth Olthuis is another one of the board members. I think I rode the school bus with back in the day. The board members all work hard all the time, making sure that the co-op continues to flourish. I would also like to recognize Mr. Jim Greilach. I drive by his place all the time and wave when I go by, and that is very much another feature of my community. If people do not wave when they pass others on the highway, they will get phone calls fairly quickly, asking what is wrong and what they did because they were not waved at. That's the way it is in small-town Alberta, for sure.
There is also Mr. Craig Tiemstra, who is actually my neighbour. He farms the land all around my house. He has done amazing work. He was the past president of the co-op as well. I would like to thank these guys for their work in my local co-op. I know that they will be very appreciative of this motion that recognizes the strong work that co-ops do in our communities all across the country. There is no doubt about that.
I will address one more thing. In my riding, there are six Hutterite communities, and they are co-operative communities. I had the privilege of touring a couple of them last week with my colleague from Mégantic—L'Érable. These are thriving communities and economic powerhouses in our region. They own thousands and thousands of acres of land. They buy the latest equipment to farm this land. They are really an icon on our landscape for sure.
I want to talk about REAs, rural electrification associations, that we have in northern Alberta, but it looks like my time will be taken away.
I would say one more thing. The Co-op brand has a big refinery in Alberta and Saskatchewan. I know they do great work there as well.
Let us support—