Finance committee  Certainly. Your first question had to do with agricultural cooperatives, also known as work cooperatives and farm cooperatives. Why is that? Because cooperative members, the workers and the producers themselves, can actually invest in the cooperatives. In Quebec, farmers, workers and cooperative members have invested $200 million to provide enough capital to allow for the growth and sustained development of the cooperative system.

Finance committee  The social economy program was launched in 2004. It enables social economy enterprises, cooperatives as well as non-profit organizations, to acquire capital. At this stage, the focus of our concern is capitalization. We're proposing that this initiative be reintroduced. In all, there are four social economy agencies located in Quebec, Ontario, Western Canada and Atlantic Canada.

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Conseil canadien de la coopération represents a network of francophone cooperatives across Canada and more than 8 million francophone cooperative members in over 3,300 cooperatives, whose consolidated assets now exceed $125 billion. As part of these pre-budget consultations, Mr.