Government Operations committee  I have to close on that, because I do want to recognize that our relationship with the FCC is much better than it used to be.

Government Operations committee  Of course, in theory, that would make sense. We see that there are opportunities. There are credit unions that are interested in those kinds of models. I have to put a little history around what I'm saying. You're saying there's nobody who's going to think that Canada Post shoul

Government Operations committee  It took a good long six or seven years of dialogue with them to get into a better space, with the backing of minister Ritz.

Government Operations committee  It's possible, but we want to be certain that if we go into this, it's done in a way that's open to all parties to participate in and it's not done on an exclusive basis with, say, one or two large banks that they white label.

Government Operations committee  Yes, I would. We have been predominant west of the Ontario border historically, especially in B.C., Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. We've been growing in Alberta but we do face ATB there. In Ontario, if you live in Toronto or if you live in Ottawa, you might be misled even in ter

Government Operations committee  In general, individual credit unions would have their own individual financial literacy programs, in the past. Now what's happened is that Vancity has elaborated a very sophisticated financial literacy program, called Each One, Teach One. They have just given that to the system g

Government Operations committee  The short answer is yes. We have heard from some of our credit unions already that there is some interest in partnering, though we have some concerns. Historically, many crowns seek out partners through a tender process and it often goes to the largest and highest bidder. That wo

Government Operations committee  Yes, we do.

Government Operations committee  We're spending a lot. I don't have an exact figure, but it's quite expensive. One issue we face is that our members want us to be available in branch; they want us to be available by telephone, by Internet, all kinds of different...and the number of channels requested seems to pr

Government Operations committee  It depends on the area. I would say that overall, just in terms of assets, we're steady. We are growing in the small to medium-sized enterprise market. We're almost as big as BMO right now in terms of what we do as a collective of individual credit unions. In ag we've grown. Prob

Government Operations committee  I think we might look at it the other way, that in some regions, in terms of the attactiveness of banking institutions, the credit unions would have some attractiveness, say, if you were living in northern Alberta and you know Servus Credit Union. If there were a joint branding e

Government Operations committee  It's probably closer to 10.

Government Operations committee  Good afternoon. My name is Rob Martin, and I'm a senior policy adviser at the Canadian Credit Union Association. Looking around the table, I think that some of you know who we are. The Canadian Credit Union Association is the national trade association for credit unions outside

Finance committee  I just want to finish up the answer in relation to securitization. Credit unions have been traditionally institutions that take deposits and make loans and we earn money off of a margin on loans, and retained earnings are of course important to our growth. In recent years, more c