Industry committee  I'd like to add something as well. One could argue that the cooperatives will be more sheltered in a recession because we invest internally, not on the stock markets, so we're not as interconnected globally. We're very much a local investment business enterprise model. During the Asian crisis, actually, credit unions in Asia were less impacted during that implosion because they were not as large as some of the large banks and they were very much locally invested.

Industry committee  Could I just add a supplementary comment? There's clearly a range of opinion on foreign ownership, on the delivery of private or public services, but we would argue from the cooperative sector that there needs to be at least a dialogue in Canada that engages the input of citizens, not just the business community, on the role of foreign ownership in different sectors such as health care, education, or communications.

Industry committee  Yes, we've had many discussions with all the different parties, and we've been advised that the renewal will be under the agricultural policy framework, which, as we know, is being extended for one year until there is a consensus of all the provincial ministers to make it a multi-year renewal.

Industry committee  I would add to the point about the role of companies and making labour in communities.... The aboriginal population is our fastest growing population here in Canada. I would cite the example of Arctic co-ops in the north. Many of the leaders in the Nunavut government got their first experience in skills training and in democratic decision-making in their local co-op in a local, remote community.

Industry committee  First of all, I would like to thank you very much for this opportunity to present before the committee. The Canadian Co-operative Association is one of two umbrella or apex organizations that represent cooperatives and credit unions across Canada. Our sister francophone organization is the Conseil Canadien de la Coopération, which is presenting here today.

Agriculture committee  The example was that under the current co-op developments initiative, with only $1 million per year for advisory services spread out across the country, only $60,000 is available in Alberta.

Agriculture committee  They're very profound, because the $30 million is still a very limited amount of money for advisory services. The consequences would be that producers, as well as other people wanting to start cooperatives, would not have access to the specialized advisory services they need. The membership structure is different and the capital structure is different, so they need access to those specialized services in the communities.

Agriculture committee  I don't believe so.

Agriculture committee  Yes, we do, and we do it through a large Canadian network of provincial co-op associations. We have about 19 partners that talk to producers, such as the Ontario Co-operative Association. They're on the ground, right at the community level. We provide those advisory services through the current program known as the cooperative development initiative and the Ag-CDI, the agricultural co-op development initiative.

Agriculture committee  Certainly. Consumer research from Ipsos Reid does demonstrate that consumers do want to know where the products come from that they're eating. So the demand among consumers for local products has been demonstrated. We are certainly in agriculture seeing a renaissance of small niche market agricultural cooperatives, not the large multinational businesses.

Agriculture committee  There is that resistance there because they have to pay for shelf space, but we do know that with one of our members, Federated Co-operatives, which owns 300 retails across the west, their first policy is to buy Canadian. If they can't get it in Canada, then they try to buy it from a cooperative, and the third one is source it elsewhere, if they can't get it from Canada.

Agriculture committee  That's a different fund in Quebec. The CIP is a co-op investment plan through which a producer would get a tax credit for investing in the cooperative and it's targeted to agricultural and worker co-ops. The venture capital fund is a different fund. It's not just agricultural and producer co-ops.

Agriculture committee  The average investment for cooperatives, actually with the Quebec model, was $182,000. That was raised with the Quebec model and the average investment that each producer made was only about $3,400. But with that modest amount of income, it was able to leverage significant moneys.

Agriculture committee  We're coming.

Agriculture committee  Well, all of them, actually, except credit unions. All the non-financial cooperatives are housed under a responsibility with Minister Ritz. That could be retail cooperatives, worker co-ops, funeral cooperatives for the service sector--everything but credit unions, which are with the Department of Finance.