Stop the protesting- start a co-op

[Diogenes]

 as "new"as the time it was presented

kip the protesting, and start a co-op
Governments withdrawing services leaves the window wide open for citizens to serve themselves

by Karin Litzcke
The Republic
fun co-op
Is it time for co-ops to step in where governments will not?

A recent caller to David Berner's talk show on CKNW voiced the question that is preoccupying most BC minds these days: "How can we influence the government?"

The answer, of course, is that sometimes you just can't. In a democracy, we don't elect government to do what people want, as that creates a condition where differing factions are perpetually trying to out-influence each other. It makes for a noisy, angry, polarized, and unstable governing environment. Sound familiar?

A government is supposed to do not what some people want but what is best for all people. Sadly, human nature makes this difficult. Not only are peoples' needs dramatically different and sometimes opposed, but the humans who govern us all are equally human. They too are subject to biases, ideologies, and connections that mislead them from truly serving the common good.

When we cannot influence the government, we have two choices. We can either try harder by being noisier and more forceful, or we can work to meet our needs ourselves. A mechanism exists already that makes this latter option—doing for ourselves what the government will not do for us—much more accessible than most of us think.

The mechanism is called a co-operative. Co-operatives are already a familiar feature of the British Columbia landscape. We know producer co-ops like Sun-Rype, and consumer co-ops like credit unions or Mountain Equipment Co-op. There are also myriad worker co-ops among us.

In Canada, the potential of the co-operative model has mostly been exercised to provide private-sector-type services, particularly in rural areas where private companies would find the provision of services to small scattered communities to be less than cost effective. In more populated areas, consumer co-operatives are often a way to secure services to a market niche that existing companies do not consider viable, such as the natural foods niche in the 1960s.

Internationally, co-operatives more often provide collective services of a public nature. In the developing world, co-ops have provided irrigation to farmers, for example, or skills development programs for the poor. In the part of the world usually considered more developed, most notably in Europe, co-operatives are increasingly being used as an alternative system of delivering care and support services.

The current political landscape in British Columbia, and indeed across Canada, is ideal for the "discovery" of the co-operative as a viable method of public service delivery. In Europe the emergence of the co-operative as a viable alternative form of public service delivery and self-service has also been tied to government restructuring of social programs. We are currently seeing seniors' care homes being closed, groups of increasingly indigent welfare recipients, abandoned courthouses, prisons, and hospitals, and a government inclined to divest itself of operational involvement in these enterprises.

A window of considerable magnitude thus currently exists for citizen take-over in co-operative form. A senior care home is an obvious example. Such a facility could be owned and governed collectively by the residents and families who need it, both now and in the future. Alternatively, it could be owned collectively by its staff.

Other outstanding opportunities include BC Hydro, now on the chopping block for devolution into private hands. It would be an ideal candidate for co-operative ownership by municipalities, for example.

Three elements need to converge for co-operatives to meet the opportunities that currently exist in BC's service delivery landscape. First, and most importantly, individual initiative must be taken by service users and/or service providers. These can be individuals, as in the case of senior care homes, or organizations, or even different levels of government. They can be unions, in a case where members of several different unions work together.

The second of the three key elements is a source of capital. There are many different sources of capital that could be focused in the direction of facilitating co-operative development. A simple pooling of meager resources can often result in the accumulation of surprising amounts of money. But many organizations whose members would benefit from the co-operative model hold enormous resources in trust for their members, for example, native bands, and trade unions.

If trade unions were to divert the capital they are currently pouring into PR campaigns against the government, they could probably issue start-up loans and grants to several employee groups to buy small hospitals or care homes outright.

Co-operatives and trade unions are very closely related organizations. Indeed, the co-operative may be the logical evolutionary outcome of trade unionism: empowering workers to the point where they outgrow their need for union support and can collectively take full control of their own destiny. It is perhaps no accident that the International Labour Organization actively encourages co-operative development.

The third, but perhaps least important, of the key elements is government policy. The countries currently using co-ops for social service delivery have taken different legislative approaches to enabling co-operative service delivery to work. In Spain, the country's constitution requires public authorities to promote co-operatives, for example. In Sweden, co-operatives have tax advantages. In Italy, government assistance is available to support the creation of new co-operatives in disadvantaged areas. But given the variety of legislation that exists, and the fact that co-operatives thrive with or without favorable legislation, the government need not be a co-operator for co-operatives to work.

The diversity of needs served by co-operatives around the world is nothing short of astonishing. An excellent documentation of the co-operative model's use in the United States is provided by E.G. Nadeau and David J. Thompson in their book "Cooperation Works!" (Lone Oak Press, 1996). They tell of co-operatively owned professional sports teams, rural electric co-operatives, and other types that are also common in Canada: co-operative housing, consumer co-operatives, credit unions, worker co-operatives of disabled (and abled) workers, and agricultural co-operatives.

Some co-operative ventures may be unique to Canada: there is a co-operatively-owned funeral service in Manitoba, where a co-operatively-owned newspaper, the Winnipeg Citizen, once also arose. Indeed, the prairies have been a hotbed of co-operativism throughout Canada' s history, and it is not at all surprising that a political party called the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation came into existence there. Ironic, then, that the CCF could be held responsible for favouring crown corporations over co-operatives, perhaps charting an unfortunate detour for us all.

A 2001 book from the Institute of Public Administration of Canada, "The Co-op Alternative: Civil Society and the Future of Public Services," edited by John Restakis and Evert A. Lindquist, provides ample documentation of the history of co-ops in Canada and describes their potential here as being explored through the Co-operative Alternatives for Public Services project. Co-ops have a venerable history and a vibrant present. Millions of people in this and previous generations have proven that a little personal initiative can go a long, long way toward enabling us to meet the needs we have when we have them. They have created a living legacy on which we can build and rebuild our communities with confidence.

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