Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  I think this is a very important thing, this whole idea of cooperative development and how you make it happen, especially given the fact that the model is not well understood in business schools and by economists. If we look at Canadian history, we see there are two really good examples.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  I have to say that I'm not sure. I'd love to talk to the person you talked to. First of all, taxes are different across the country. You have federal and provincial taxes. I don't know what the tax advantages for that particular business might have been. There may have been one in that particular area, but generally speaking, there are no huge tax advantages for cooperatives.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Let me start at the end of the question. One of the models we should be looking at very carefully is the one in Italy, where cooperatives are taxed at a different rate. They're taxed at a different rate in recognition that the objective of the business is not to maximize return to shareholders, but to meet community and member need.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Yes, I agree.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  No. I think they do lend far more easily to other cooperatives. You do have a regulatory problem. In Spain, for example, the Bank of Spain moved in to tell the Caja Laboral Popular Coop de Crédito, which is a very strong and very highly rated financial institution, that they felt they had too much of their money invested in co-ops, and that they really shouldn't be investing in co-ops nearly so much.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Let me respond briefly to that. The biggest part of the challenge is that many people in financial institutions do not understand what a cooperative is or how it operates or how it could be successful, because it doesn't fit the business model with which they are familiar. So you have that lack of understanding.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  It would be very interesting for the federal government to look at how cooperatives are treated in other countries where they're much more successful than in Canada. Our cooperatives are successful, but not to the degree they are in, for example, northern Italy and in the Basque Country in Spain.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  The two main cuts are to the CDI, which I think is just a tremendous loss. We were seeing the start-up of lots of new co-ops through the CDI initiative. I think it was solid cooperative development and job creation. With regard to the other cuts to the co-op secretariat, it will take some time to see whether we will be able to have access to the kind of information about cooperatives that we have had in the past.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Basically, we take into the program managers who are already working in cooperatives. It's very useful to do that, first of all, because most of them have come through standard business schools, where for the most part we don't even teach cooperatives as a business model. In business schools in Canada it's absent, and only 30% of the text books used in business schools talk about cooperatives as a form of business.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  That's right, but I think it's equally difficult for both of them. I'd like to just clarify one thing. I realize the government is not in the business of purchasing land mines, and that's not what I was trying to suggest. What I was trying to suggest is that I can invest with my self-directed RRSPs in land mines but I cannot invest in co-ops nearly as easily, and that's really the problem.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  I chair the board of a start-up co-op called Knowledge Atlas—

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Sure. I sit on the board of a start-up co-op. It is called a “solidarity co-op”, where there are investor members, individual members, worker members, consumer members. It's a very interesting co-op. It's very high tech, and I can't invest in it because of the rule that you referred to.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Have a number of members of Parliament come and attend the Imagine 2012 conference and have an opportunity to look at the economy from a different perspective, from the perspective of meeting human need. Certainly, we would be delighted to see them there. What will the cooperatives get and what do cooperatives hope for?

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Sure. Let me just wrap up by saying that having another look at the economy for co-ops will give a different perspective on the enormous value of what it is they're doing to the global economy, and what it is they're doing to the Canadian economy and the Nova Scotian economy.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  I think there are a number of ways. The one that is an obvious good starting point would be capital formation. Cooperatives need capital in order to survive and to do well. But in a cooperative business, the capital is not rewarded in the same way. It is not “capital take all”, in terms of the profits or the output of the business.