Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair and members, for inviting Vancity to be part of this important study into the opportunities and challenges facing the cooperative sector in Canada. My name is Rob Malli, and I am the chief financial officer and current acting CEO of Vancity, based in Vancou

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Very much so, in a few different ways. One way Vancity has grown has been through a number of combinations with credit unions. We've grown through mergers and acquisitions. Over our 65-year history, I believe we've had a combination of 52 mergers and acquisitions. Some of those h

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  —Canadian Asset-Liability Management Committee. The purpose is to get practices. I try to emphasize that. We've got great advantage by our bank being regulated by OSFI, in terms of understanding practices. We bring those to the system. That's another way we support the system.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  What I'm saying is that right now we do have the powers, by owning a bank as well as a credit union and other entities, to operate across Canada, and we do use it. We use it in commercial lending, in the VISA business, and the foreign exchange business. We've learned through ex

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Right, yes.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Right. Yes, we will be responding formally to those, but I've highlighted a couple of areas in here and in my presentation. One would be the issue around demutualization, which we think is a big concern. The other one is around ensuring that the regulations truly are enforcing a

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  I don't recall.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Right. I believe it is longer.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Okay, we'll definitely look at that.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  I believe it is the situation today that credit unions do operate across Canada and are accessible to Canadians. I don't think all credit unions operate the same way, so there are uniquenesses and there are more successes in certain regions than others. I believe it's truly a dec

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Right—these were practices that were always established at Vancity and were entrenched in the way we do business because it's the right way to do business long term. Even with CMHC rules around securitization, just to give you some information, Vancity has participated in securi

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Yes.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Yes. We help them with a number of issues. Because of aboriginal land and the issue of entitlement and getting mortgages, etc., we've created structures to allow people to get mortgages on aboriginal land, paved the way for that, because that was an obstacle in terms of some of t

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Yes. I think what's important, and my advice to this committee and the government, is to look at other models that are operating effectively in terms of promoting, especially in the promotion of cooperative models. That's why I've pointed to Emilia Romagna in Italy, to France, a

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Sir, you're referring to housing co-ops, those types of things?