Human Resources committee  Federated itself is a federation, so its members are other co-ops. I think there are 260-member co-ops that form the federation. But there is no difference except it's large, it's big. Last year, they brought in revenues of $10 billion. It still has the cooperative structure; it

Human Resources committee  Again, it's up to each individual cooperative how it wants to structure its voting system. I believe with federated co-ops, the way they work is that the 260 members each have one vote around the table at the federation. But those individual co-ops have their owning voting system

Human Resources committee  Currently, there's CHF in Canada, the Canadian Housing Federation, who have done a ton of work on housing co-ops. I think it's not one or the other. I think it's using a mixture of what we've heard from Tim and, in my view, co-ops incorporating more cooperative housing. Again,

Human Resources committee  Yes, definitely. Where we're seeing the difficulty with the data is across the board at the federal level especially. As you're well aware, most cooperatives are incorporated at the provincial level. There are only about 80 or 90 co-ops that fall under the federal act; everythin

Human Resources committee  Co-ops are definitely an interesting beast because you have very socially minded cooperatives, such as health care cooperatives. The name itself tells you what it's doing in focusing on health care needs for a particular community or region. Then on the other side, you have extre

Human Resources committee  Officials within government don't understand the cooperative model. Increasingly, we are seeing examples of cooperatives that require government assistance. The government tries to lump cooperatives together with traditional business or non-profit organizations. We are in the mid

Human Resources committee  That's the case. What's very good about the cooperative model is that each cooperative can be managed this way. It's the members who decide how they want to manage things. If there is a surplus, it's up to the cooperative to decide how the surplus will be used. The priority is k

Human Resources committee  Thank you for your question. I fully agree. We don't think that social finance is the only option. You had some government witnesses at the start of your meetings. They said they had a number of tools they wanted to use for social finance to provide services to Canadians. The c

Human Resources committee  Yes.

Human Resources committee  Yes, certainly.

Human Resources committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to be here today. I will be speaking today on behalf of Co-operatives and Mutuals Canada, or CMC. CMC is the national body for co-ops and mutuals from across Canada. Our members are located in every province and serve urban and

Human Resources committee  Sure.

Human Resources committee  Let me share with you an example of one of these funds. The Arctic Co-operative Development Fund was established in 1986 to provide financial services to cooperatives across Canada's Arctic. This is a self-managed fund of pooled financial resources, owned and controlled by the co