Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  It's hundreds of millions of dollars, definitely, over a 15-year period in Owen Sound alone. It's not something we've done personally.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  We've just facilitated that happening.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  In our case, you heard me speak about old-fashioned bankers, and I gave up on that route, with all due respect.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Oh, oh! That's right. So I did, after five years, come up with a couple of fellows, one of whom has bought and sold 27 manufacturing facilities. You buy ones that are in trouble, make the adjustments to make them successful, and then sell them. I coupled him together with a youn

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Yes, it arose out of a need, first of all, in Owen Sound when the one plant closed down. I was fortunate at that time. It was a small community and I had about a 10-year history with these companies when I was working for the college system and had developed a relationship with e

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  The primary way we get them working together is to get into a community, a geographic grouping of manufacturers, and we invite them, in a facilitated way, to help each other out. That's the primary methodology we use. After we do that to them two or three times in the community o

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Can I throw a bit of a curve at you? I grew up in the bank and the last thing I did in the bank system was create the first commercial banking centre for any chartered bank in Canada. That centre was made up of lenders who understood manufacturing. They had dirt underneath their

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  That's correct.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  No. In EMC, our organization, we've licensed our name to give it the strength, so we've got two shares, if you will. That's just to keep the spirit and ensure that it follows the model we've established over the last 15 years, in terms of how the relationships work between the m

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  It goes back to the members. The cooperatives are facilitated by a third party. Actually this one is facilitated by people who came out of the Home Hardware cooperative—a very sophisticated group. A lot of the money in the early stages is going to be to insure the receivables,

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  We are going out in the fall to do a kind of look-see, if you will. In our first one week out there we looked up in Fort McMurray, Grande Prairie, and the Saskatchewan border in the north, and then Edmonton and Calgary. Our understanding is that they're going to want us in Lethbr

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  I don't know what else I could do in four or five. I think, really, we're about creating excellence, awareness, and innovation. That's really what we're about. The excellence is created by getting people like yourselves together, helping you to share and borrow ideas and thoughts

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Thank you very much. Good afternoon. We're not a cooperative. The Excellence in Manufacturing Consortium is a membership organization and the consortium is a registered, federally chartered, not-for-profit organization. We're not a cooperative, so I'm still trying to figure out