Finance committee  Thank you for inviting us to appear before you. Just very quickly, there are about 350 worker co-ops across Canada, and about two-thirds of those are in Quebec. Our organization, the Canadian Worker Co-operative Federation, is a national association. It started about 20 years ag

Finance committee  Sure, I will. The federal co-op development initiative is a program that was renewed in 2009. It needs to be expanded from its current $4 million per year and made permanent. There's much more demand for the program than can be met. In terms of the third point, which is the new

Finance committee  It is their retirement, but this is the problem. It's the same force that puts a person into the position of putting off making their will. It's the same thing that has them putting off putting their succession plan in place for their business. It's an emotional thing, because th

Finance committee  Absolutely, yes.

Finance committee  Basically, what we are proposing is a plan that will enable that reflection to happen. First of all, the Canadian cooperative sector is substantial in size. Something like a third of the Canadian population are members of a cooperative. They have over $300 billion in assets, 150,

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  I'll start. We will both present, though.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Thank you very much for inviting us to appear before the Special Committee on Co-ops to represent the worker cooperative movement. Thank you for inviting us to appear before this committee. And that's the last French I'll speak. My name is Hazel Corcoran, and I am executive

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Thank you. Unfortunately, there's been one recent change that has hurt the capacity of worker co-ops to capitalize themselves through member investment. The measures regarding self-directed RSPs in the 2011 budget have rendered co-op shares ineligible for RSPs for members who ho

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Thank you very much.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Yes, we have a lot of literature. In fact, we've been involved in a research project that addresses your prior question because it was focused on official language minority communities and using business succession in those communities. But we also have access to other things goi

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Okay.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Are you talking about starting up a new cooperative?

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Okay. Well, I would say just a couple of things. The vast majority of the worker co-ops in Canada are not unionized. But where there's a conversion to an existing entity, most of the time, whatever it was before, it is later. So if it was a unionized entity before, typically it s

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  I would like to respond. One of the things that goes on as well is that certain provinces—Quebec being by far the strongest, but Manitoba as well and Nova Scotia—are actually doing quite a bit to support co-op development. So if you see the co-op emerging sectors doing well, a v

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  The biggest impediment has been capital. We've been involved in a few cases of attempted buyouts of sawmills by the workers and find that the legislative environment is actually reasonable. I would say that some 20 or more years ago it wasn't, but that's one area where we have do