Putting Your Money Where Your Nation Is: Building Cooperative Futures

1
Putting Your Money Where Your Nation Is
Building Co-operative Futures

• Isobel M. Findlay
• College of Commerce/Centre for the Study of
  Co-operatives, U of Saskatchewan

2
Presentation Overview

• Defining the co-operative alternative
• Current opportunities and challenges
• Co-operatives in Aboriginal communities in Canada
• Success stories
• Co-operative Futures

3
Co-operative Resources

• Hammond Ketilson, Lou and Ian MacPherson, A
  Report on Aboriginal Co-operatives in Canada
  Current Situation and Potential for Growth
  (Centre for the Study of Co-operatives, U of
  Saskatchewan 2001)
• Publications and web sites of centres at
  Saskatchewan, British Columbia Canadian
  Co-operative Association, International
  Co-operative Alliance, Co-operatives Secretariat,
  Government of Canada sectoral federations
  (Credit Union Central, for example)

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Industrialization and Colonization

• Hidden hand of the self-regulating market the
  laws of economy dictating social and cultural
  imperatives
• Hidden fist depending on external and domestic
  axes of colonization creating inequalities
• breeding resistances, creating new
  communications, communities, identities
• blurring the boundaries co-operatives from 1830s

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The Co-operative Alternative

• schools of the social sympathies and the
  practical intelligenceJohn Stuart Mill
• Grassroots initiative and innovation control,
  capacity, and community knowledge
• Instrument of community economic development
  empowering communities and asserting/fulfilling
  human needs a social economy enacting peoples
  values
• members would use what they produced and produce
  what they used, making capital into a hired
  servant of theirs rather than their continuing as
  hired servants of capitalStephen Yeo, 1988

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Rochdale Principles of Co-operation

• Open and voluntary membership--No artificial
  restriction or any social, political, religious
  or racial discrimination available to all
  willing to accept responsibilities of membership
• Democratic Controlelected and appointed by
  members to whom accountable one member, one vote
• Limited Interest on Share Capital
• Return of Surplus to Membersno member gaining at
  the expense of others patronage or
  participation, not capital
• Co-operative Educationeconomic and democratic
  (Rochdale 2 of expenditure on education)
• Co-operation among Co-operativeslocal, national,
  and international

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Co-operative Facts and Figures

• over 700 million members in more than 100
  countries
• 15 million memberships in Canada 169 billion
  in assets communities large and small, urban and
  rural public and private sectors
• Sectors include consumer, wholesale/retail,
  agricultural, energy, forestry, fishing and fish
  processing, financial services, marketing,
  training and tourism, arts and crafts, health
  care, home care, housing, child care, student,
  worker

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Co-operative Facts and Figures

• 21,000 non-profit housing co-operatives house
  250,000 people in 90,000 households in Canada.
• In 900 communities credit unions offer the only
  financial services.
• VanCity is the largest credit union in Canada
  with 271,000 members and 7 billion in assets.
• Credit unions are leaders in online banking the
  1st ATM at a Saskatchewan credit union.
• Mountain Equipment Co-op has more than one
  million members and commits .4 of sales annually
  to environmental projects.

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Globalization Now

• justificatory myth acting as the main weapon
  in the battles against the gains of the welfare
  state and neo-liberalisms very smart and very
  modern repackaging of the oldest ideas of the
  oldest capitalists while dismissing progressive
  thought and action as archaicBourdieu, 1998
• Dangers of becoming another name for aggravated
  inequality--Paul Martin
• Obliterating the public in the public good
• new individualism Bill Turner, 2002

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On Impossibilities and Inevitabilities

• Our current ideologies . . . use expert argument
  to turn almost any form of injustice into an
  inevitability.John Ralston Saul, 1994
• The Cult of Impotence Selling the Myth of
  Powerlessness in the Global Economy.Linda
  McQuaig,1998
• The Cult of Efficiency.-- Janice Gross Stein,
  2001

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On Re-imagining Possibilities

• Current era as a site of rupture of old
  discursive regimes and hence a site of
  possibilitiesMartin Nakata, 2000
• Fences and virtual fences Have always been part
  of capitalism windows of dissent mean activists
  take down the first fenceson the streets and in
  their mindsKlein, 2002

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Values Added

• Ethical, environmental values around food
  security, fair trade, balancing work and family,
  community investment, environmental
  sustainability
• From ethics or profits to ethics as/and profits
• Corporate Social Responsibility
• Canada has 2nd highest expectation (of 23
  countries) for corporate behaviour (1999
  Environics Millennium Poll)

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Pierre Bourdieu, 1998

• winning back democracy from technocracy by
  unpacking economic and other necessities and
  hence neutralizing the effects of forbidding
  fatalism.
• a new and critical internationalism and an
  economics of happiness to counter cruder
  cost-benefit analyses.
• Cooperatives as institutions capable of
  obstructing the logic of the pure market.

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African American Co-operation

• It is now our business to give the world an
  example of intelligent cooperation. . . . If
  leading the way as intelligent cooperating
  consumers, we rid ourselves of the ideas of a
  price system and become pioneer servants of the
  common good, we can enter the new city as men and
  not mules.W.E. B. Du Bois, 1933

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Maori Experience

• Challenging New Right economic thinking that
  puts emphasis on competition rather than on
  cooperation, on the individual rather than on the
  collective, on regulations rather than on
  responsibility.Graham Hingangaroa Smith

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Power of Education/Communication

• Education is our buffaloElders
• Power of co-operative intellectuals

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Power of Education/Communication

• communications building community cohesiveness
  within Aboriginal nations and fostering
  relationships between cultures. . . . much more
  than a cultural glue . . . . We actually
  construct who we are (RCAP 3 620-21)

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David Newhouse, 2002

• Deconstruct the view that everything modern -
  capitalism, markets, individuals as free and
  equal consumers - will always and everywhere
  bring progress while everything traditional
  brings backwardness.
• Build on Aboriginal understandings of progress,
  society, the economy, and the relationship of the
  individual to the collective.

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Wanda Wuttunee, 2002

• Think about the costs of relying on mainstream
  business only.
• Think of the children when making economic
  decisions.
• Understand our history, embrace all of our
  strengths, move to stronger relationships with
  our neighbours.

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James (Sakej) Youngblood Henderson, 2002

• Restructure and rethink Canada and reinvent the
  constitution
• Rediscover and unleash economic potential of
  treaty economy
• Build Aboriginal think tanks

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Marie Battiste, 2002

• We are all marinated in Eurocentrism
• Education is foundation of transforming agenda
• The postcolonial is an act of hope
• rethink boundaries and retell stories
• Aboriginal regulatory frameworks and respectful
  dialogue are critical
• Imagine, dream, create, celebrate together

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Council for the Advancement of Native Development
Officers (CANDO)

• Education programming
• Annual conferences
• Member Newsletter, N-SIDE News
• Journal of Aboriginal Economic Development
• Recognizing and critiquing mainstream economics
  and development theory

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Co-operative Facts and Figures

• 3 of Canadas top 100 employers in 2003 are
  Saskatchewan-based co-operatives 20 of the top
  100 businesses in SK are co-operatives
• 133 co-operatives in Canada are substantially
  Aboriginal owned and controlled
• 250 million in services and products
• 190 million in assets
• Member equity of 90 million
• Net savings of 7 million generated and spent in
  community
• Other economic and community activities, building
  personal, social, and physical infrastructure

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Co-operative Facts and Figures

• Co-operatives last longer than traditional
  businesses, employ more people and more
  full-time, pay better on average, retain
  employees through hard times, educate and train
• More than 50 of members of the Nunavut
  Legislature started public service and received
  training on their local co-operative boards

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Co-operative Facts and Figures

• Five Aboriginal co-operatives have more than
  24,000 members (and members often whole families)
• Two of the largest co-operative federations in
  Canada are Aboriginal owned and controlledboth
  would make the top 500 publicly traded Canadian
  companies

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Success Stories

• Arctic Co-ops Ltd. (ACL) and Fédération des
  coopératives du Nouveau Québec (FCNQ) are
  Aboriginal owned and controlled, serve 50,000 in
  48 communities, employ 1200 Aboriginal people,
  and earn an annual 26 million spent in the
  community
• ACL and FCNQ businesses have assets of a quarter
  of a billion dollars and return 7 million
  annually to members

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Success Stories

• Holman Eskimo Co-operative since 1961
• We did it ourselves from print making to gift
  shop, hotel, retail store, post office, cable TV,
  fuel delivery service
• expression of the social and cultural life of
  the community as much as of its economic
  security (DIAND profile)
• if you shop locally, the money you are spending
  goes right back into the community again in the
  form of wages or commissions or further services
  (William Duke, manager)

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Success Stories

• Anishinabek Nation Credit Union (owned and
  operated by 43 communities and one-third of
  Ontario First Nations),
• Grand Council Chief Vernon Roote claimed, Today
  we have marked an important milestone on the road
  to self-government.
• This initiative to put your money where your
  nation is, was a critical step to building the
  capacity of . . . First Nation communities and
  positioning his people and communities to be
  more effective partners in the economy.

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Success Stories

• Torengatt fish producers co-operative has
  two-thirds Inuit members and serves five Inuit
  communities in Labrador
• Formed after collapse of groundfish strategy, it
  generated 100, 000 net profit for 650 members in
  2000despite remote location, weak economic base,
  and limited human capital

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Successes in the Making

• Giigooghkea Fish Co-op--Saugeen and Nawash First
  Nations, Bruce Peninsula, working with Ontario
  Co-operative Association and Ontario Workers
  Co-op Federation
• Minister Andy Mitchell, Secretary of State for
  Co-operatives, helped secure 65,000 DIAND equity
  matching grant from Aboriginal Resource
  Acquisition Initiative.
• Full-time jobs and 3.4 million a year for local
  economy
• Poplar River First Nation, Lake Winnipeg,
  establishing a co-op store with CCA and Arctic
  Co-ops Ltd., band council and community
  collaborating.

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Co-operative Futures Goals

• Building on Arctic Co-op and other examples
• Building sustainable alternatives
• Rebuilding co-operative versions of belonging and
  social capital
• Redressing democratic and discursive deficits
• Restating common economic, social, and cultural
  needs and aspirations (ICA)
• Promoting education and equity
• Sharing responsibility

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Co-operative Futures Strategies

• Revisiting co-operative identity
• Enriching discourses/meaningful terms
• Rethinking co-operative education
• Identifying barriers to participation
• Designing new models of democratic governance
• Developing strategic alliances
• Ensuring public space for debate
• --Co-operators evaluations of Membership and
  Globalization conference, 25 Oct 02

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Co-operative Development Initiative, 2003

• 5-year 15 million federal initiative
• Advisory Services providing communities with
  support to develop co-operatives
• Innovation and Research component

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Co-operative Alternative The Future

• regaining control, ensuring transparency, and
  achieving autonomy
• sharing risks and rewards, thinking holistically,
  respecting diversity, and building trust
• turning community assets into active capital
  putting your money where your nation is
• building institutions for equitable and ethical
  development

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Co-operative Alternative The Future

• For more information, please contact Isobel
  Findlay at findlay_at_commerce.usask.ca
• Or access the web site of the Centre for the
  Study of Co-operatives at
• http//coop-studies.usask.ca/
• Or Canadian Co-operative Association at
  http//www.coopcca.com/