The Common Share

This year at Co-operatives First we’re focused on helping groups start childcare co-operatives to help meet the need for childcare across the western provinces. 

To help us guide this initiative, we are privileged to have an advisory committee that consists of today’s guests: Sue Delanoy and Dr. Susan Prentice. These two brilliant experts have studied and advocated for the childcare field for many years, and we had an engaging conversation about what the childcare landscape looks like in Canada, the most recent government policies that intend to address the childcare shortage, the vision they have for what the childcare system should look like in Canada, and how co-operatives can help. 

This is a fascinating and engaging conversation about childcare in Canada that helps us understand how things stand, and what can be done to make it better for everyone. 

In this episode, Trista speaks to Lea Zeise and Jen Falck of Ohe·láku, a nonprofit co-op in Wisconsin. The co-op's members are Oneida families relearning how to grow traditional White Corn together and sharing the lessons they learn. 

This is a lovely conversation about using a co-operative to grow food for the community while embracing tradition and ceremony.

In this episode, Kyle spoke to Courtney Berner, Executive Director of the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives. They talked about the co-op landscape in Wisconsin and how it compares to Canada, why Wisconsin is such an incubator for innovative co-operative development, and what we can learn from each other by looking across the border. 

Matt Enright is the general manager of the Battle River Railway Cooperative based in Forestburg, Alberta. A local grain farmer, Matt has served as GM since 2015. This new generation co-operative was formed in 2010 when area producers and residents bought the 52-mile stretch of rail from CN.  

In this episode, Kyle and Aasa talk to Matt about the impact the co-op has had on the region, and some of the lessons they’ve learned along the way. 

This summer, Aasa attended the "Scaling up the impact of renewable energy co-operatives in Canada" conference in Ottawa, where  Renewable Energy Co-op (REC) leaders met to discuss how they could collaborate to grow their impacts. While there, she spoke to Johan Hamels of the Ottawa Renewable Energy Co-operative about what RECs are and why they're important for communities. 
 
 Since the conference, the leaders who attended have been working towards a co-operative of RECs called Community Energy Co-operative Canada that creates a way for these co-ops to work together. With this entity quickly coming to fruition, please enjoy this conversation about the exciting impacts of renewable energy co-ops!

In this episode, Kyle speaks to James Grieve, Certified Management Consultant, about his approach to creating a business plan, including how to know when you need one, understanding the why of your business, and recognizing the value of experts and resources in this process.

In this episode, our Director of Indigenous Relations, Trista Pewapisconias, spoke to Michael Rice – a founder and past manager of the Caisse Populaire Kahnawake, a hugely successful Indigenous credit union which has been around since 1987. He tells the story of how the credit union was started, the impact it’s had on its community, and benefits of Indigenous people having control over their own financial institutions. 

In this episode, Director of Education Kyle White had a great conversation with Federated Co-operatives Limited's General Counsel and Corporate Secretary (and Co-operatives First board chair) Sheldon Stener. Sheldon is an expert in governance with important insights for members of co-op boards, and gives an excellent primer for things for co-op directors to consider in their role. 

After six years of leading the Good Governance Matters course, our Director of Education Kyle White has heard a lot from co-op leaders. In this episode, we talked about the themes and lessons that have emerged from the conversations had during the course — the result is insights that can help any co-op board and a glimpse into the debates being had around board tables of co-ops of all kinds.

Co-operatives are a way for people to work together to better their community and reach their common economic, social, and cultural goals.  Indigenous people have practiced this community approach to economic development from time immemorial.  But colonialization has impacted every aspect of Indigenous society, including historic economic development practices. Although the value of working co-operatively has not been lost, supports to create co-operative businesses aren’t readily available.  

To remedy this, a team came together in 2022 to start the Native Communities Cooperative Development training project (NCCD). The project supports the growth of co-operatives and their ability to add value, create markets, facilitate food security, and build prosperity in Indigenous communities. 

Our Director of Indigenous Relations, Trista Pewapisconias, was a member of this team, and travelled to Minnesota earlier this year to meet with the project's participants and organizers. In this episode, she has a roundtable discussion with project leaders Pamela Standing of the Minnesota Indigenous Business Alliance, Bijiibah Begaye of The Cooperative Catalyst of New Mexico, and Karri-lynn Paul of the Coady Institute at St. Francis Xavier University.