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Welcome to Cooperative Developer Stories, a Cooperation Works podcast.
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I'm your host, Tara Williams.
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Can't wait to hear your stories.
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Hey folks, and welcome back to Cooperative Developer Stories, the podcast where we get curious, get honest, and get inspired by the people building the cooperative economy, one community at a time.
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I'm your host, Tara Williams, and joining me again is Alex Stone, Executive Director of Cooperation Works.
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October is Co-op Month, and this year's theme is Built for this Moment.
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Throughout this series, we've been exploring what that means for cooperative developers and the broader movement.
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We started with Dr.
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Jessica Gordon Nembhard, who reminded us of the rich history of cooperation and the lessons we can learn from those who came before us.
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Doug O'Brien helped us look at the larger cooperative ecosystem and the importance of advocacy, partnerships, and building the infrastructure that supports cooperative development.
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And Esteban Kelly challenged us to think about how we turn cooperative values into collective action, build democratic leadership, and grow a movement that reflects the communities it serves.
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Today we're bringing those conversations together and looking ahead.
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Our guest is Tom Webb, a longtime cooperative educator, thinker, and advocate who has spent decades helping people understand the potential of cooperation to transform our economy and our communities.
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If cooperatives are truly built for this moment, what does the future of our movement look like?
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What do we need to do differently?
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And how can cooperative developers help us get there?
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Tom and Alex, welcome to Cooperative Developer Stories.
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Let's get into it.
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Hi, welcome to the podcast.
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Before we get into the hard questions, can you start with an introduction?
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Who are you?
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Where are you joining from?
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How do you support the co-op sector?
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I have, I guess, been working with co-ops since the late '80s, left government.
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And I had worked in the prime minister's office and a couple of cabinet minister's offices as an advisor on regional development.
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And having spent $10 billion, $12 billion over 10 years
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and being able to look at it and say, well, what's the impact on Atlantic Canada?
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Our unemployment rate is slightly higher, not much, but slightly.
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The out migration rate is up.
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Family incomes are up as well, but so very marginally.
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So what do we get for it?
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You know, we were pouring money into subsidizing
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private sector corporations who do what is I remember growing up in Antigonish, which was the home of the Antigonish movement, and Moses Cody and Jimmy Tompkins and the Sisters of St.
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Martha.
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Having grown up in that atmosphere, it seemed to me that we had clearly missed the road.
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So I started doing some consulting work for co-ops because one of the things I realized is that governments don't treat cooperatives as really an economic player.
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They treat them as sort of a social player on the edge.
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Nice, you know, but you don't want to get carried away with this.
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You've got to deal with the real world.
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At any rate, so a lot of my work was trying to helping co-ops get a better deal from governments.
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And then I moved on to Co-op Atlantic, which was very interesting.
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It was a large retail wholesale co-op, agricultural co-op network.
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In fact, it included housing co-ops and a couple of worker co-ops.
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retail grocery.
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So it covered a wide range.
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And but it was interesting that, you know, after a number of years there, it struck me that our biggest problem was management.
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And we we would get one of my favorite stories is going to visit a co-op in in Nova Scotia and
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I was having a meeting with the manager and I, he met me at the door and there were two people with him and they were leaving as I was going in and they didn't look very happy.
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At any rate, I went in and he clocked the door and as we walked down the aisle, he explained, those are two members of my board.
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You think they own the damn place.
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Which I said, I really got bad news for you.
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They do.
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You know, it was clear that as I talked to managers, few of them understood what a co-op was.
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We had hired them from Sobeys and Loblaws and Dominion stores, wherever.
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And their whole understanding of business was a capitalist understanding.
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You know, that's, you know, that's the real world, you see.
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So that's what led me to go off and start the master's program was precisely that over a bottle of scotch with a board member of COB.
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We decided that the best contribution I could possibly make would be if I took Moses Cody's old job and started a master's program for COB managers, which we did.
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Unfortunately, we had a change of presidents at St.
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of X and I ended up, the program ended up going to St.
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Mary's.
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And it, because the new president at St.
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of X, I think one of his favorite lines that he used in the Board of Governors whenever I was present was, well, you know, co-ops were 5% of the solution, if that.
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So it didn't surprise me when our program proposal came back with two courses max.
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And so I sent all the money we had raised back and went to St.
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Mary's where the president of the university was absolutely opposite.
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He was just gung ho.
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He really wanted to have this program.
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He really wanted to work.
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He told me all about growing up, his family growing up in England, and the co-op was their savior.
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And he said, when we had rough times in our mining town, you could still get food at the co-op.
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Couldn't get anywhere else, but you could get it at the co-op.
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And so anyway, it turned out to be a very good home.
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for the program and we got all the money that we had raised back and much more.
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And so that's that's how the program came to be.
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The other interesting thing about it was early on when I was still at kind of X, I had a conversation with an accountant at Co-op Atlantic.
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And he he said, well, Tom, what are you going to do about the accounting?
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And I said, oh, you know, Brian, accounting is accounting.
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And he said, well, if that's all you're going to do, you might as well forget the program.
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And I said, oh, come on.
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And he said, so I arranged to, I met with him for a whole day, and I traveled up to Mount and met with him for a whole day.
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And he was very convincing.
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He reminded me, he said, you were in charge of co-op education here, right?
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Did our accounting system tell you anything about how efficiently you used your money to maximize the level of education for our management and staff?
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I said, no.
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And he said, but it did tell us how efficient we were at increasing the rate of return on our equity.
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Right?
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And I said, yes.
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So that's why we had co-op accounting.
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We're still building it and we have to be careful building it because whatever we do has to be acceptable in the regulators and to the financial community and to the accounting community.
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But we are trying to look at how efficiently do we use our resources to meet member and community need.
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Let's know what we can about that.
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And it's still a bit of an add on to the program.
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And we did everything that way.
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We didn't have human resource management.
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We had a, I don't know what their, I, you know, I haven't.
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I should have looked back to see what the courses were today.
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But the our our course on that of human resource management was leadership and people development, which is a very different take on how do you maximize the use of the people to increase profits, you know.
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So anyway, that was the effort was to produce not an anti MBA, but a pro co-op business program and one that rested on the core values and principles.
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So that's how I get into it.
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So this podcast is about co-op developer stories, but we can't do this work alone.
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Co-op developers are part of a much bigger cooperative ecosystem.
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But before we get into the ecosystem and the future and the gaps that you see in this space, I'd love to start with your why.
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Why are you still connected after so many years and so invested in cooperatives?
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Well, because
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I guess I grew up in a family and in a community where the idea was you used your life to try and build a better world.
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And as I look at the world around me, it's clear that we are not building a better world.
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I am not, you know, my father was able to say to me,
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I'm leaving you a better world than the one I was born into uh he was born during the First World War and so uh he could say that I can't say that to my grandchildren and I have nine of them and I wish I could but I can't lie to them uh this is a more difficult world and it's
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From my perspective, it's largely a more difficult world because the capitalist economy is going off the rails.
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It is incapable.
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And I've just a book out to a couple of publishers focused on this.
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But basically, the book deals with my belief that catastrophe capitalism
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is a lifespan.
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It simply can't go on because it will destroy the society through inequality.
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And that's one of the things it's doing now.
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And it will destroy the environment and render the planet uninhabitable.
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And as part of that environmental destruction, I look around the little town that I live in and we know we're going to get
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three or four hundred millimeter.
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That's how that translates into.
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But that's a big rainstorm, you know, eight, ten inches of rain.
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We know we're going to get storms like that.
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Our storm system is built for a storm like that once a century, not once or twice every ten years.
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And so what's it cost to build an entire new storm system?
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What's it cost, a storm sewer system?
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What's it cost when the housing we have is not capable of standing?
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This is a fairly new house I built back in 2014, but it will become uninsurable because it wasn't built for 200 kilometer an hour wind.
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And that's just the reality.
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Now, I did have the good fortune to build it without a basement.
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But, you know, most of the houses in this community have basements, and they're all going to flood.
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Or not all of them.
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Some of them would be on a hilltop on the water right away.
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But many of them, the last time we had a 100 millimeter rainstorm two years ago,
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It cost the town about $6 million in road repairs, and it flooded over 70 houses.
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So it's just not economically viable.
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And then I guess the other thing is that if I look around, everything's becoming unaffordable.
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And the book looks at that.
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How does capitalism work?
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Well, it works by you shrink the size of a can of beans by 10%, you increase the water percentage of water content in it by 10%, and you up the price by 5%.
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And that gives you more profit, doesn't it?
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Wow.
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How do you treat your staff?
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Well, you get away with the minimum amount of benefits, the minimum amount of salary, the minimum amount of workplace safety, the minimum amount-- if you have a choice between workplace safety and profit, and you can get away with it, you take the profit.
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And the same with the environment.
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a choice between polluting and profit, you pick profit.
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And that's where we're going.
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And I'd like to make a distinction between small businesses.
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I grew up in a small business.
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My father ran a hardware store.
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If you had asked him, what's the purpose of your business, he would never have dreamed of saying it's to maximize the rate of return on my capital.
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It would just not he would have said, well, it's providing a living for my family and a good place to work for the people who work here and to have some place to have a hardware store that's open at 7:30 in the morning when contractors are on their way to work and need something.
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Those were the kinds of things in fact, I have heard him say those kinds of things.
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So that's a very different kind of business and it can be capitalism.
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So what the book basically says is this system can't go on.
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The effects of inequality and the effects of environmental destruction are simply not tenable in the long run.
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And so if that's the case, what's the alternative?
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And for the most part, we get a lot of criticism of business, but not much of capitalism.
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capitalism and democracy go together, don't they?
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Take a look at who was at the inauguration.
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But, and you know, take a look at who Mark Carney talks to.
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It's the same lot.
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He's having a meeting a week or so from now with some of the richest billionaires in the world because he wants them to invest in Canada.
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They're going to save us, you know, to save themselves.
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But anyway, so I, you know, I think that we need to build a different economic system and the most
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wonderful thing that happened to me in my life was the ability to go and visit operatives in places like England and Mondragon and in northern Italy, Emilia Romania, in New Zealand and Australia and India and realize that, well, wait a minute, this works.
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There is an alternative.
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There is a different way of doing this.
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We could have a different economy.
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And so in the book I'm talking about economic democracy.
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And and I include in that I include cooperatives, of course, various kinds of them.
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with my reference being for solidarity co-ops.
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where the the people who are being whose needs are being met have
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Some say, all of them, the workers, the consumers.
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So that's my preference.
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But any kind of cooperation is better than what we have now than the investor-owned model.
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And so I'm also including social enterprise and public ownership.
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But I have to confess, the book is leery about public illusion.
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What happened in Russia and the communist countries wasn't an accident.
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It's very much very similar in many ways to capitalism.
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It concentrated power and wealth in the hands of a few people.
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And we can do that with public enterprise.
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And we can create the same kind of mess.
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But when I look at, for example, in where I live in Mahone Bay, we have a municipal electric.
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And it buys, it has to buy some of its power from a private sector, big private sector power company, Nova Scotia Power and Amira.
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But we also have our utilities part owner of three windmills and a solar garden.
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And we're at somewhere around 70% of our energy is now renewable.
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And we're shooting for 90%.
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The other thing that happens is when the lights go out for Nova Scotia Power customers around us for 10 hours or two days,
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Hours go out for an hour, maybe five minutes, because we maintain the lines.
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Because the purpose of the municipal utility is to provide us with power, not to maximize the rate of return to some absentee shareholders.
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So it's basically where I've gone with the book is
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is to say, you know, we we need to start building this, and I don't.
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Do I think we will do it?
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I don't know.
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It's possible.
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I know we can do it.
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Whether we will do it or not depends on how determined we are.
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It depends on how resourceful we are.
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It depends on whether or not the cooperative movement, you know, and I
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look at what the cooperative movement needs to do and can do and what government could do.
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And you know, so I remember visiting a nursing home in Amelia Romania, nursing home.
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And the manager was new.
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He had only been there for about six months.
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Our students were
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You're very curious, what's the difference between working here and working in the private sector nursing home you came from?
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And he said, well, he said, and his board was elected one third by the workers, one third by the residents, one third by family members of residents.
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And he said, well, I'll tell you one thing here, you don't ******** the board.
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And then he went on to talk about the pain he felt during the pandemic with the hospitals in Italy were overflowing.
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And they offered nursing homes, private sector nursing homes, and cooperative nursing homes 20% more for any beds that they could endemic patients, COVID patients.
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And the private sector nursing home said, wow, this is great.
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But as soon as they put somebody in, they had five more beds free.
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And then after they filled those five beds for 20% more, they got 20 beds free.
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And he said, you know, I watched people I love die.
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And he said, so when this opportunity came,
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to work for the co-op, I grabbed it because the co-ops didn't take any COVID patients.
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They said our purpose is to serve the people who are here, not to kill them.
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So governments can do all kinds of things like saying, well, we'll provide government funding to co-op nursing homes.
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that are structured properly at 20% more than we provide private sector nursing.
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So there's so many things that they can do.
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And the cooperatives have enormous issues to deal with as well.
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Imagine if the co-ops, for example,
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on an annual basis sat back and said, let's look at everything we buy.
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Could we set up a worker co-op to provide that?
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They don't do that now.
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They could.
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One of the things about Mondragon-- so in Mondragon Head, with the CAHA, the most powerful cooperative development organization,
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that you could imagine.
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They were connected to 15 R&D centers.
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They were connected to five or six universities, including their own.
00:25:39.000 --> 00:25:45.000
They had all kinds of analytical ability.
00:25:45.000 --> 00:25:52.000
They had just about a 0% failure rate.
00:25:52.000 --> 00:25:58.000
You know, I remember visiting a Mondragon co-op that was undergoing a modernization.
00:25:58.000 --> 00:26:12.000
And the manager, one of the managers said, when we get in the new machines, it's only going to take two people to run that machine for 24 hours as opposed to eight now.
00:26:12.000 --> 00:26:19.000
And I thought, so what are you going to do with the other six?
00:26:19.000 --> 00:26:24.000
And he said, oh, he said, yeah, yeah, I should have told you that.
00:26:24.000 --> 00:26:29.000
One of the basic policies in the co-op is nobody can lose a job.
00:26:29.000 --> 00:26:31.000
Nobody hits the street here.
00:26:31.000 --> 00:26:38.000
So whatever the modernization plan is, it has to include all of our workers.
00:26:38.000 --> 00:26:47.000
And he said that may involve some of them going out to another co-op, a job they are interested in in another co-op.
00:26:47.000 --> 00:27:17.000
but nobody hits the street I thought different from our system you know so uh we can build development organizations like that uh in in uh in Italy they have what 3% of their annual profits go into the Co-op development fund and and it provides uh a lot of the same services and legal
00:27:17.000 --> 00:27:21.000
Co-op provide additional services.
00:27:21.000 --> 00:27:29.000
So we, you know, we have very little that compares to that.
00:27:29.000 --> 00:27:31.000
We could build a lot more.
00:27:31.000 --> 00:27:34.000
Think that's actually a great segue into our next question.
00:27:34.000 --> 00:27:40.000
So you're already bringing this super unique global view to co-op development and what it can be.
00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:48.000
And I know even between the US and Canada, co-op development looks pretty different and plays a pretty different role.
00:27:48.000 --> 00:27:56.000
But I'm curious with your unique vantage point, what does the co-op development landscape look like from where you sit?
00:27:56.000 --> 00:28:01.000
Are you seeing exciting work happening, especially on this side of the Atlantic?
00:28:01.000 --> 00:28:13.000
the gaps and what communities or sectors or in which communities or sectors do you think there's significant untapped potential?
00:28:13.000 --> 00:28:18.000
I think cooperatives are suitable for any economic activity.
00:28:18.000 --> 00:28:28.000
It's not something that we have generally looked at it and said, well, here's the kind of things co-ops do.
00:28:28.000 --> 00:28:29.000
There isn't anything
00:28:29.000 --> 00:28:36.000
that can't be done cooperatively except perhaps trading on the stock market.
00:28:36.000 --> 00:28:38.000
Maybe.
00:28:38.000 --> 00:28:51.000
You could have a worker co-op doing that or a solidarity co-op doing that, but it's a little bit of a strain.
00:28:51.000 --> 00:29:00.000
So one of the things we need to do is regard our job as building a new economy.
00:29:00.000 --> 00:29:28.000
as the old one collapses because people are going to desperately need all of the things they need now and are going to find them harder and harder and harder to get and and that's you know that's what's happening now uh so I'm I'm involved at the current moment in Co-op housing uh we created something called the home Bay Community Land Co-op which we we didn't create the community home Bay
00:29:28.000 --> 00:29:57.000
housing co-op because what we wanted to do was to create an organization that would hopefully spawn a whole series of housing co-ops and then perhaps branch out into worker co-ops and branch out into different things and where the co-ops would be part owners and you know that process this is on a very small scale
00:29:57.000 --> 00:30:02.000
But it could be we could have a much more powerful system than that.
00:30:02.000 --> 00:30:05.000
And that's one thing that I think we need to do.
00:30:05.000 --> 00:30:11.000
Another is cooperative capital.
00:30:11.000 --> 00:30:17.000
I wrote a paper a long time ago on cooperative capital, and I presented to a conference in Italy.
00:30:17.000 --> 00:30:25.000
And basically, the thrust of it was that cooperative capital is different.
00:30:25.000 --> 00:30:28.000
It doesn't seek an unlimited return.
00:30:28.000 --> 00:30:34.000
And what it and and it should be.
00:30:34.000 --> 00:30:39.000
It should flow from the members and the members of cooperatives.
00:30:39.000 --> 00:30:43.000
So, but we, you know, in Canada we have a cooperative development fund.
00:30:43.000 --> 00:30:46.000
You have the co-op bank.
00:30:46.000 --> 00:30:48.000
but they're relatively small.
00:30:48.000 --> 00:30:49.000
and
00:30:49.000 --> 00:30:52.000
in terms and their economic power.
00:30:52.000 --> 00:31:06.000
I had an opportunity here in Nova Scotia with, I was talking to a small company that has pioneered land based salmon farming.
00:31:06.000 --> 00:31:11.000
And it's so much more environmentally sound.
00:31:11.000 --> 00:31:16.000
They don't use pesticides to kill the sea lice because there's no sea lice.
00:31:16.000 --> 00:31:18.000
They don't use growth hormones.
00:31:18.000 --> 00:31:26.000
They don't use little fish from the coast of Africa to feed the salmon for us rich folk to eat.
00:31:26.000 --> 00:31:29.000
There's just so many things that they're doing right.
00:31:29.000 --> 00:31:47.000
They're building their own supply for-- they're building their own process for raising very young salmon on insects and building their own insect farm.
00:31:47.000 --> 00:31:58.000
And so I wanted to find out, they were interested in starting it as expanding their technology and licensing it to community co-ops.
00:31:58.000 --> 00:32:05.000
But to set up one of those co-ops cost around $75 million.
00:32:05.000 --> 00:32:12.000
And so because, you know, there's the technology and the side and the scale that you need.
00:32:12.000 --> 00:32:14.000
So I went around to the
00:32:14.000 --> 00:32:25.000
cooperative financial institutions in Canada, our co-op capital fund could loan them 1.2 million.
00:32:25.000 --> 00:32:27.000
Oh, great.
00:32:27.000 --> 00:32:33.000
So and Vancity Bank came up with the best.
00:32:33.000 --> 00:32:41.000
They were they said they thought they could manage about 25 million, but you know, again, that's one third.
00:32:41.000 --> 00:32:44.000
And so
00:32:44.000 --> 00:32:49.000
they ended up going to the bank of Nova Scotia.
00:32:49.000 --> 00:33:05.000
And I don't, know where that I will make an assumption that will probably or has the potential to derail a lot of where they wanted to go, which was environmentally and socially responsible.
00:33:05.000 --> 00:33:12.000
So, capital is, there's no reason that I, well, there is a reason.
00:33:12.000 --> 00:33:15.000
the way co-op capital is regulated in Canada.
00:33:15.000 --> 00:33:25.000
I don't know the details in the US, but in Canada it's regulated to behave like capitalist capital.
00:33:25.000 --> 00:33:29.000
That's basically the idea behind the regulation.
00:33:29.000 --> 00:33:41.000
And members of co-ops could not buy bonds in a co-op capital fund here.
00:33:41.000 --> 00:33:46.000
Well, you know, that's just simply a mistake.
00:33:46.000 --> 00:33:56.000
We have, if you think about, we have I think 7 million members of cooperatives in Canada.
00:33:56.000 --> 00:34:00.000
It's a bit of an estimate, but I think it's pretty accurate.
00:34:00.000 --> 00:34:09.000
And if every one of those invested $1,000 in co-op capital,
00:34:09.000 --> 00:34:13.000
That would be a lot of money to start co-ops.
00:34:13.000 --> 00:34:22.000
I would be willing to invest 50,000 in cooperative capital from my retirement funds.
00:34:22.000 --> 00:34:27.000
And you know, so I don't think, I think the potential is there.
00:34:27.000 --> 00:34:38.000
And the other potential that is there now, which I hope co-ops will grab onto is the fact that people know
00:34:38.000 --> 00:34:41.000
that our economy is not working.
00:34:41.000 --> 00:34:42.000
They know that.
00:34:42.000 --> 00:34:43.000
They don't know why.
00:34:43.000 --> 00:34:47.000
They don't understand the why because they're not ever told that.
00:34:47.000 --> 00:34:53.000
It's never explained to them thoroughly.
00:34:53.000 --> 00:34:55.000
But they know it's not working.
00:34:55.000 --> 00:35:08.000
And when I tell people the 50%
00:35:08.000 --> 00:35:24.000
Canadians share 1.2% all the wealth in Canada, but the top 10% or the top 20% share 75% of the wealth in the country.
00:35:24.000 --> 00:35:30.000
And people say, yeah, I know, and that's not right.
00:35:30.000 --> 00:35:37.000
So they know it's not right, but they've been told all their lives that there's no alternative.
00:35:37.000 --> 00:35:48.000
And so the big things that co-ops need to do are develop their organizational development capacity, number one.
00:35:48.000 --> 00:35:57.000
Number two, create sources of cooperative capital on a significant scale.
00:35:57.000 --> 00:36:01.000
And the third is education.
00:36:01.000 --> 00:36:06.000
And that's difficult because, you know, we did a movie,
00:36:06.000 --> 00:36:34.000
colleague in Halifax a year or two ago building a better economy and it got largely a lot of the funding came from the cooperators but the cooperators were very uncomfortable with their critique of capital as they said you know we we we got to work with these people all the time you know we we we got a lot of ties into that into that economy and and so
00:36:34.000 --> 00:37:03.000
I don't know if you can you not say that or can you and we we eventually persuaded them to leave their money in and let us say it anyway but it was there were a tense couple of months and I understood it you know I I know exactly I can understand that so
00:37:03.000 --> 00:37:08.000
Those are the big things I think we need to do.
00:37:08.000 --> 00:37:15.000
And of course, the process of simply saying, what do we buy?
00:37:15.000 --> 00:37:18.000
Can we create a co-op to provide that?
00:37:18.000 --> 00:37:30.000
If we did, you know, if all of the cooperatives in Nova Scotia put together a list of what they buy, I'm sure that we could create
00:37:30.000 --> 00:37:59.000
50 or 60 worker owned cooperatives in five years to do that uh if we you know we've one of the beauties of co-op Atlantic was that in agricultural co-ops and and consumer co-ops in the same room those were the two main shareholders but the gap was we didn't have the workers in the same room
00:37:59.000 --> 00:38:06.000
And when I sat on the board of the Credit Union here we had.
00:38:06.000 --> 00:38:13.000
We had this discussion about creating a workers advisory council to the board.
00:38:13.000 --> 00:38:19.000
so that they, because we can't under our law, you can't have.
00:38:19.000 --> 00:38:21.000
You can't have workers on the Credit Union board.
00:38:21.000 --> 00:38:24.000
That's not allowed.
00:38:24.000 --> 00:38:26.000
Just we're like a bank, right?
00:38:26.000 --> 00:38:31.000
And so
00:38:31.000 --> 00:38:37.000
we were debating that possibility and how to go about it.
00:38:37.000 --> 00:38:47.000
And, you know, people said, well, you know, you can't let the workers have access to everything that goes to the board.
00:38:47.000 --> 00:38:48.000
And I said, well, why?
00:38:48.000 --> 00:38:50.000
They do that and they're gone.
00:38:50.000 --> 00:38:52.000
What's the problem?
00:38:52.000 --> 00:38:57.000
You know, they have the lowest loan failure rate.
00:38:57.000 --> 00:39:00.000
in Europe.
00:39:00.000 --> 00:39:06.000
I don't know if that's still true, but it was certainly true around 2015.
00:39:06.000 --> 00:39:18.000
So if they have the lowest failure rate and they have the workers sitting on the board elected by the workers, what's the problem here?
00:39:18.000 --> 00:39:24.000
And one of the problems with Co-op Atlantic, well, when I sat on my credit union,
00:39:24.000 --> 00:39:37.000
We had 2,700 members, and we had a board of seven.
00:39:37.000 --> 00:39:50.000
Now, with our big merge credit union, we have a board of nine, but they want to reduce it to seven, and they have 65,000 members.
00:39:50.000 --> 00:39:53.000
Well, we're going backwards.
00:39:53.000 --> 00:39:56.000
And they haven't changed their governance system.
00:39:56.000 --> 00:40:00.000
To reflect that different reality.
00:40:00.000 --> 00:40:06.000
But, you know, if our credit union were to go under tomorrow.
00:40:06.000 --> 00:40:14.000
I would, you know, I would move my money as I guaranteed government guarantees on the deposits.
00:40:14.000 --> 00:40:15.000
So I just move it.
00:40:15.000 --> 00:40:19.000
I have to move it to the bank down the street here.
00:40:19.000 --> 00:40:24.000
I wouldn't like it, but I would do it and because I'd have to.
00:40:24.000 --> 00:40:29.000
But the workers would have to uproot their families.
00:40:29.000 --> 00:40:33.000
They would go through hell.
00:40:33.000 --> 00:40:37.000
But for me, it would just be walking down the street with my deposit.
00:40:37.000 --> 00:40:41.000
So why should I be on board and none of the workers?
00:40:41.000 --> 00:40:44.000
Because they have such a big stake in it.
00:40:44.000 --> 00:40:51.000
And so we need to rethink a lot of silly things that we do.
00:40:51.000 --> 00:40:58.000
farm co-ops ought to have the, you know, the dairy workers should be on the board somehow.
00:40:58.000 --> 00:41:02.000
And we can do all those things and they're not going to kill us.
00:41:02.000 --> 00:41:05.000
They're going to strengthen us.
00:41:05.000 --> 00:41:11.000
But so those are some of my thoughts about where we need to go.
00:41:11.000 --> 00:41:15.000
And I'm confident that if we did it,
00:41:15.000 --> 00:41:17.000
We could do it and it would work.
00:41:17.000 --> 00:41:25.000
Start with just the classic ICA principles and ask you, which is your favorite.
00:41:25.000 --> 00:41:30.000
I have to confess that my favorite is the difference in purpose.
00:41:30.000 --> 00:41:39.000
The purpose of a co-op is to meet member and community need as opposed to maximizing the rate of return to already wealthy investors.
00:41:39.000 --> 00:41:43.000
So that's the most defining
00:41:43.000 --> 00:41:51.000
difference between cooperatives and capitalist business in terms of the in terms of the co-op principles.
00:41:51.000 --> 00:41:55.000
Now I didn't I didn't go down the list.
00:41:55.000 --> 00:42:01.000
I think the one that needs the most work is concern for community.
00:42:01.000 --> 00:42:11.000
And perhaps we need an additional principle that says cooperatives believe that the planet should be able to support life.
00:42:11.000 --> 00:42:15.000
You know, and if we
00:42:15.000 --> 00:42:25.000
There's already a fair bit built in on economic equality, but we really haven't come to grips with the environmental impact.
00:42:25.000 --> 00:42:32.000
So that, I think, would be my, it's not my favorite co-op principle, but it could be.
00:42:32.000 --> 00:42:35.000
There's potential there.
00:42:35.000 --> 00:42:38.000
Yeah, there's potential there.
00:42:38.000 --> 00:42:45.000
And of the Madison principles, I liked number five.
00:42:45.000 --> 00:43:00.000
And I liked it for a lot of reasons, but it's to challenge the normalization of economic, social and environmental oppression.
00:43:00.000 --> 00:43:13.000
It seems to me is that's where our future lies is for us to realize that we really do need to build a different economy
00:43:13.000 --> 00:43:15.000
and a better economy.
00:43:15.000 --> 00:43:27.000
I like lines like it underscores the oppression of people and the degradation of the planet stem from shared profit and any cost ideology.
00:43:27.000 --> 00:43:31.000
And I think that's fundamental.
00:43:31.000 --> 00:43:41.000
I like as well, a world in which poverty and inequity are endemic will always be prone to ecological and other crises.
00:43:41.000 --> 00:43:54.000
Sustainable development requires meeting the basic needs of all and extending to all the opportunity to satisfy their aspirations for a better life.
00:43:54.000 --> 00:44:00.000
And naming those things is so important.
00:44:00.000 --> 00:44:10.000
If we try to sort of blend in to the dominant economy,
00:44:10.000 --> 00:44:17.000
without standing out, then I think we will not succeed.
00:44:17.000 --> 00:44:25.000
I think we have to say, you know, look, we have a lot of problems and we can do better.
00:44:25.000 --> 00:44:34.000
And the economic inequality is going to destroy our societies.
00:44:34.000 --> 00:44:42.000
and the environmental destruction is going to destroy the ability of the planet to support life.
00:44:42.000 --> 00:44:50.000
And I think we have to lead with those and say, that's where we gotta go.
00:44:50.000 --> 00:44:51.000
Thanks.
00:44:51.000 --> 00:45:00.000
And just for our listeners at home, CW principle number five, formerly the Madison Principles, is commit to anti-extinction and anti-oppression.
00:45:00.000 --> 00:45:05.000
And yeah, naming everything that you highlighted was definitely a critical piece of the guidance notes for that one.
00:45:05.000 --> 00:45:07.000
So thanks for highlighting that.
00:45:07.000 --> 00:45:08.000
Yeah.
00:45:08.000 --> 00:45:14.000
Well, thank you for-- I had never seen the Madison Principles, so this was a delight.
00:45:14.000 --> 00:45:18.000
It was my pleasure.
00:45:18.000 --> 00:45:23.000
And so co-op month is partly about imagining the future of cooperative movement as a whole.
00:45:23.000 --> 00:45:27.000
You've done a lot of work in this space, a lot of visioning and a lot of building.
00:45:27.000 --> 00:45:28.000
I mean, St.
00:45:28.000 --> 00:45:32.000
Mary's was built for the future, create those future co-op leaders.
00:45:32.000 --> 00:45:42.000
I'm wondering today, what do we need to do to build that next generation of co-op developers and leaders?
00:45:42.000 --> 00:45:47.000
Well, I mean, that's really why I wrote the book, you know.
00:45:47.000 --> 00:45:56.000
is because I think we have to come to grips with the fact that our economy increasingly does not work.
00:45:56.000 --> 00:45:59.000
It's increasingly destructive.
00:45:59.000 --> 00:46:02.000
And we need to come to grips with that.
00:46:02.000 --> 00:46:07.000
To me, that's the biggest thing.
00:46:07.000 --> 00:46:17.000
Once we come to grips with that, then we have to come to grips with the fact, I know that I can't build this new economy, but I can add a little bit.
00:46:17.000 --> 00:46:23.000
And everybody needs to say, OK, what can I do?
00:46:23.000 --> 00:46:26.000
What can I do to make this better?
00:46:26.000 --> 00:46:28.000
What can I do to build that better economy?
00:46:28.000 --> 00:46:32.000
And then just do it.
00:46:32.000 --> 00:46:46.000
So I think that those are the-- that's where I think we really need to focus is on stop pulling our punches, you know?
00:46:46.000 --> 00:47:14.000
we you know we we don't have to be obnoxious I don't rail against billionaires I'm sure some of them are really lovely people I'm sure they love their families and I'm sure that some of them even want a better world although I do have difficulty with the idea that you
00:47:14.000 --> 00:47:29.000
you know as a Canadian that I could have a billion dollars and that I would feel good about that knowing that 26 Indigenous reserves in Canada can't get clean water and it's been like that for 25 years.
00:47:29.000 --> 00:47:43.000
That just seems to me to me hard to swallow you got to bury your head to be able to reconcile those two realities and so
00:47:43.000 --> 00:47:55.000
And I think we need to also recognize the danger, the dangers in the path that we're going.
00:47:55.000 --> 00:48:07.000
I think what's happening in the US now in terms of curtailing democracy could easily happen here.
00:48:07.000 --> 00:48:14.000
And we're kidding ourselves if we don't think that could be the case.
00:48:14.000 --> 00:48:35.000
And so we, you know, one of the things I was really delighted and honored to be inducted into the US Cooperative Hall of Fame because it's the kind of thing that I admire.
00:48:35.000 --> 00:48:41.000
Most of the people whom I know well in the US are either relatives
00:48:41.000 --> 00:48:45.000
or they're in the crop movement.
00:48:45.000 --> 00:48:51.000
And so because that's, you know, those are the people I've talked to over the last 25 years.
00:48:51.000 --> 00:48:59.000
And and I feel a great sense of kinship with them.
00:48:59.000 --> 00:49:10.000
And I and I think that the, you know, the big danger for Canadian people is to think
00:49:10.000 --> 00:49:14.000
that's not going to happen here.
00:49:14.000 --> 00:49:21.000
They haven't listened to some of our billionaires.
00:49:21.000 --> 00:49:23.000
They ought to.
00:49:23.000 --> 00:49:27.000
And they haven't looked at some of our problems.
00:49:27.000 --> 00:49:36.000
It is not an accident in Canada that billionaire wealth during the pandemic increased in two years by 24%.
00:49:36.000 --> 00:49:41.000
That's not an accident.
00:49:41.000 --> 00:49:53.000
And during the same time, you'd be hard pressed to find anybody in the 70% of our population whose wealth increased at all and shrunk.
00:49:53.000 --> 00:50:00.000
And so we just need to realize that this is our reality as well.
00:50:00.000 --> 00:50:07.000
And we, as much as possible, link hands across the border.
00:50:07.000 --> 00:50:09.000
and link hands around the world.
00:50:09.000 --> 00:50:26.000
And you know, I don't know how cooperative they are in detail, but I still buy ocean spray cranberry sauce because it comes from a co-op.
00:50:26.000 --> 00:50:37.000
But I have to confess that there's not a lot of stuff that I'm buying these days that comes across the border because I don't want to feed those billionaires.
00:50:37.000 --> 00:50:40.000
I I have, you know, I don't want to feed ours.
00:50:40.000 --> 00:50:43.000
Don't want to feed yours.
00:50:43.000 --> 00:50:54.000
And and I think that's, you know, I I think the best we can do is hold hands and not feed them.
00:50:54.000 --> 00:50:55.000
Thanks for that.
00:50:55.000 --> 00:50:57.000
It's a good quote.
00:50:57.000 --> 00:51:01.000
So at the beginning, you talked a bit about the St.
00:51:01.000 --> 00:51:07.000
Mary's program, the Masters of Management Cooperatives and Credit Unions, which you founded.
00:51:07.000 --> 00:51:11.000
And it's been around for about a little more than 20 years.
00:51:11.000 --> 00:51:14.000
I know they celebrated 20 years a couple of years ago.
00:51:14.000 --> 00:51:19.000
So many cooperators in the US, in Canada, around the globe have gone through that.
00:51:19.000 --> 00:51:23.000
I know when I did it, it was a very international program.
00:51:23.000 --> 00:51:33.000
What is the biggest impact you've seen this program have on the cooperative landscape in the last 20 years, 20 plus years?
00:51:33.000 --> 00:51:56.000
Well, for the last 10 years since I retired, I haven't had the opportunity to really feel the impact, but I certainly could feel it in the first, you know, the 10 years that I was there, that more than that.
00:51:56.000 --> 00:52:06.000
I could certainly feel the impact and it was just, I felt that people felt freed by the program.
00:52:06.000 --> 00:52:18.000
That people felt that they were finally hearing things that they really needed to hear and they weren't hearing anywhere else.
00:52:18.000 --> 00:52:23.000
You can go through our educational system in Canada
00:52:23.000 --> 00:52:30.000
all the way up, you can go through the school system and the university system without hearing the word co-op.
00:52:30.000 --> 00:52:35.000
Never mind, what does that mean?
00:52:35.000 --> 00:52:42.000
but you can't go through without hearing, well, capitalism and democracy fit.
00:52:42.000 --> 00:52:53.000
So, I think the, for me, the biggest potential is
00:52:53.000 --> 00:53:05.000
that COP managers will start to really think about, how can we build a different economy, a better economy, democratic economy?
00:53:05.000 --> 00:53:06.000
How can we build that?
00:53:06.000 --> 00:53:07.000
What can we do?
00:53:07.000 --> 00:53:13.000
And we'll see.
00:53:13.000 --> 00:53:16.000
Can the program do that?
00:53:16.000 --> 00:53:20.000
Not on its own.
00:53:20.000 --> 00:53:24.000
I can't do it on my own and it can't do it on its own.
00:53:24.000 --> 00:53:48.000
But together, when we have a lot of organizations like yours, like the master's program, like the NCBA, and there's so many cooperative organizations that hopefully will become increasingly
00:53:48.000 --> 00:54:13.000
clear sighted and and uh and open thinking about the magnitude of the of the contribution they can make as opposed to uh the contribution we managed so far and the contribution has been very good it's very important but it's just not enough and we need to.
00:54:13.000 --> 00:54:14.000
All right.
00:54:14.000 --> 00:54:17.000
Are you ready for some rapid fire questions, Dom?
00:54:17.000 --> 00:54:18.000
Could be.
00:54:18.000 --> 00:54:20.000
I'll try for rapid fire answers.
00:54:20.000 --> 00:54:23.000
Cooperative with a hyphen or no hyphen.
00:54:23.000 --> 00:54:30.000
Oh, I always put the hyphen in, but it doesn't matter really.
00:54:30.000 --> 00:54:42.000
If you were stranded on a deserted island with a group of people who wanted to start co-ops, what's one thing you wish you had with you?
00:54:42.000 --> 00:54:51.000
I was going to say a computer, but then I have to put up with Microsoft.
00:54:51.000 --> 00:54:53.000
What's one thing I would like to have with me?
00:54:53.000 --> 00:54:57.000
My wife.
00:54:57.000 --> 00:54:59.000
Oh, there.
00:54:59.000 --> 00:55:02.000
What's your favorite book on cooperatives?
00:55:02.000 --> 00:55:04.000
I thought about that one.
00:55:04.000 --> 00:55:06.000
There's a book by Martin A.
00:55:06.000 --> 00:55:10.000
Nowak called Super Cooperators.
00:55:10.000 --> 00:55:22.000
And I like it because, I think we use it in the program, but I like it because what he basically says is evolution is not about competition.
00:55:22.000 --> 00:55:31.000
It is not about the survival of the fittest and the exploitation of everybody else.
00:55:31.000 --> 00:55:39.000
It's about cooperation and the species that survive are the ones that cooperate the best.
00:55:39.000 --> 00:55:45.000
And cooperation plays a key role in the survival of every species.
00:55:45.000 --> 00:55:50.000
And he just simply goes through and documents that.
00:55:50.000 --> 00:56:05.000
And I think part of the justification for our current economy is that, well, you know, if there's no competition, you won't have anything good.
00:56:05.000 --> 00:56:10.000
No cooperation.
00:56:10.000 --> 00:56:17.000
What's one word to describe your approach to building cooperatives?
00:56:17.000 --> 00:56:22.000
Persistence.
00:56:22.000 --> 00:56:23.000
That's great.
00:56:23.000 --> 00:56:28.000
Is there anything else that you any lasting pieces of wisdom that you'd love to leave in this space?
00:56:28.000 --> 00:56:39.000
I think that the biggest thing is just to understand that people are fundamentally good and that we have a
00:56:39.000 --> 00:56:51.000
We have wounded people and some of them are wounded in, you know, from personal experiences and some of them by our society and the way it operates.
00:56:51.000 --> 00:57:08.000
And the thing we need to learn to do is to love and forgive our wounded people and work as hard as we can try and the world
00:57:08.000 --> 00:57:11.000
better for everyone.
00:57:11.000 --> 00:57:17.000
Tom, thank you so much for joining us and helping us to think about what's possible for the future of cooperation.
00:57:17.000 --> 00:57:22.000
And Alex, thank you so much for joining throughout our co-op month series.
00:57:22.000 --> 00:57:30.000
Over these four conversations, we've had an opportunity to look at the cooperative movements from some pretty different perspectives.
00:57:30.000 --> 00:57:31.000
Dr.
00:57:31.000 --> 00:57:38.000
Jessica Gordon-Emhard reminded us that we're building on generations of cooperative history, knowledge, and experience.
00:57:38.000 --> 00:57:47.000
Doug O'Brien helped us understand the importance of the organizations, relationships, and resources that make cooperative development possible.
00:57:47.000 --> 00:57:56.000
And Esteban Kelly challenged us to think bigger about democratic leadership, collective power, and what it means to build a movement.
00:57:56.000 --> 00:57:58.000
And today
00:57:58.000 --> 00:58:02.000
Tom Webb has helped us turn our attention to the future.
00:58:02.000 --> 00:58:09.000
For me, one of the biggest takeaways from this series is that being built for this moment doesn't mean our work is done.
00:58:09.000 --> 00:58:16.000
It means we have something to build on and a responsibility to keep building together.
00:58:16.000 --> 00:58:20.000
As cooperative developers, we have an important role to play.
00:58:20.000 --> 00:58:29.000
not just in helping individual co-ops succeed, but in connecting people, sharing knowledge, and strengthening the cooperative economy as a whole.
00:58:29.000 --> 00:58:35.000
And that's really what Co-op Developer Stories is all about.
00:58:35.000 --> 00:58:45.000
Thank you to everyone who joined us for our Co-op Month series, and to all the cooperative developers and movement builders doing this work every day.
00:58:45.000 --> 00:58:54.000
If these conversations have inspired you, share them with someone who is curious about cooperatives or working to build a stronger cooperative economy.
00:58:54.000 --> 00:59:00.000
I'm Tara Williams and this has been Co-op Developer Stories, a cooperation podcast.
00:59:00.000 --> 00:59:05.000
Until next time, keep learning, keep connecting, and keep cooperating.
00:00:03.000 --> 00:00:08.000
Welcome to Cooperative Developer Stories, a Cooperation Works podcast.
00:00:08.000 --> 00:00:10.000
I'm your host, Tara Williams.
00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:16.000
Can't wait to hear your stories.
00:00:16.000 --> 00:00:28.000
Hey folks, and welcome back to Cooperative Developer Stories, the podcast where we get curious, get honest, and get inspired by the people building the cooperative economy, one community at a time.
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I'm your host, Tara Williams, and joining me again is Alex Stone, Executive Director of Cooperation Works.
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October is Co-op Month, and this year's theme is Built for this Moment.
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Throughout this series, we've been exploring what that means for cooperative developers and the broader movement.
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We started with Dr.
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Jessica Gordon Nembhard, who reminded us of the rich history of cooperation and the lessons we can learn from those who came before us.
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Doug O'Brien helped us look at the larger cooperative ecosystem and the importance of advocacy, partnerships, and building the infrastructure that supports cooperative development.
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And Esteban Kelly challenged us to think about how we turn cooperative values into collective action, build democratic leadership, and grow a movement that reflects the communities it serves.
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Today we're bringing those conversations together and looking ahead.
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Our guest is Tom Webb, a longtime cooperative educator, thinker, and advocate who has spent decades helping people understand the potential of cooperation to transform our economy and our communities.
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If cooperatives are truly built for this moment, what does the future of our movement look like?
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What do we need to do differently?
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And how can cooperative developers help us get there?
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Tom and Alex, welcome to Cooperative Developer Stories.
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Let's get into it.
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Hi, welcome to the podcast.
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Before we get into the hard questions, can you start with an introduction?
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Who are you?
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Where are you joining from?
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How do you support the co-op sector?
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I have, I guess, been working with co-ops since the late '80s, left government.
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And I had worked in the prime minister's office and a couple of cabinet minister's offices as an advisor on regional development.
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And having spent $10 billion, $12 billion over 10 years
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and being able to look at it and say, well, what's the impact on Atlantic Canada?
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Our unemployment rate is slightly higher, not much, but slightly.
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The out migration rate is up.
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Family incomes are up as well, but so very marginally.
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So what do we get for it?
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You know, we were pouring money into subsidizing
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private sector corporations who do what is I remember growing up in Antigonish, which was the home of the Antigonish movement, and Moses Cody and Jimmy Tompkins and the Sisters of St.
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Martha.
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Having grown up in that atmosphere, it seemed to me that we had clearly missed the road.
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So I started doing some consulting work for co-ops because one of the things I realized is that governments don't treat cooperatives as really an economic player.
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They treat them as sort of a social player on the edge.
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Nice, you know, but you don't want to get carried away with this.
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You've got to deal with the real world.
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At any rate, so a lot of my work was trying to helping co-ops get a better deal from governments.
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And then I moved on to Co-op Atlantic, which was very interesting.
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It was a large retail wholesale co-op, agricultural co-op network.
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In fact, it included housing co-ops and a couple of worker co-ops.
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retail grocery.
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So it covered a wide range.
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And but it was interesting that, you know, after a number of years there, it struck me that our biggest problem was management.
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And we we would get one of my favorite stories is going to visit a co-op in in Nova Scotia and
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I was having a meeting with the manager and I, he met me at the door and there were two people with him and they were leaving as I was going in and they didn't look very happy.
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At any rate, I went in and he clocked the door and as we walked down the aisle, he explained, those are two members of my board.
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You think they own the damn place.
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Which I said, I really got bad news for you.
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They do.
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You know, it was clear that as I talked to managers, few of them understood what a co-op was.
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We had hired them from Sobeys and Loblaws and Dominion stores, wherever.
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And their whole understanding of business was a capitalist understanding.
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You know, that's, you know, that's the real world, you see.
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So that's what led me to go off and start the master's program was precisely that over a bottle of scotch with a board member of COB.
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We decided that the best contribution I could possibly make would be if I took Moses Cody's old job and started a master's program for COB managers, which we did.
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Unfortunately, we had a change of presidents at St.
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of X and I ended up, the program ended up going to St.
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Mary's.
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And it, because the new president at St.
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of X, I think one of his favorite lines that he used in the Board of Governors whenever I was present was, well, you know, co-ops were 5% of the solution, if that.
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So it didn't surprise me when our program proposal came back with two courses max.
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And so I sent all the money we had raised back and went to St.
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Mary's where the president of the university was absolutely opposite.
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He was just gung ho.
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He really wanted to have this program.
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He really wanted to work.
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He told me all about growing up, his family growing up in England, and the co-op was their savior.
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And he said, when we had rough times in our mining town, you could still get food at the co-op.
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Couldn't get anywhere else, but you could get it at the co-op.
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And so anyway, it turned out to be a very good home.
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for the program and we got all the money that we had raised back and much more.
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And so that's that's how the program came to be.
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The other interesting thing about it was early on when I was still at kind of X, I had a conversation with an accountant at Co-op Atlantic.
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And he he said, well, Tom, what are you going to do about the accounting?
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And I said, oh, you know, Brian, accounting is accounting.
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And he said, well, if that's all you're going to do, you might as well forget the program.
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And I said, oh, come on.
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And he said, so I arranged to, I met with him for a whole day, and I traveled up to Mount and met with him for a whole day.
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And he was very convincing.
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He reminded me, he said, you were in charge of co-op education here, right?
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Did our accounting system tell you anything about how efficiently you used your money to maximize the level of education for our management and staff?
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I said, no.
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And he said, but it did tell us how efficient we were at increasing the rate of return on our equity.
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Right?
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And I said, yes.
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So that's why we had co-op accounting.
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We're still building it and we have to be careful building it because whatever we do has to be acceptable in the regulators and to the financial community and to the accounting community.
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But we are trying to look at how efficiently do we use our resources to meet member and community need.
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Let's know what we can about that.
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And it's still a bit of an add on to the program.
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And we did everything that way.
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We didn't have human resource management.
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We had a, I don't know what their, I, you know, I haven't.
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I should have looked back to see what the courses were today.
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But the our our course on that of human resource management was leadership and people development, which is a very different take on how do you maximize the use of the people to increase profits, you know.
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So anyway, that was the effort was to produce not an anti MBA, but a pro co-op business program and one that rested on the core values and principles.
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So that's how I get into it.
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So this podcast is about co-op developer stories, but we can't do this work alone.
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Co-op developers are part of a much bigger cooperative ecosystem.
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But before we get into the ecosystem and the future and the gaps that you see in this space, I'd love to start with your why.
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Why are you still connected after so many years and so invested in cooperatives?
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Well, because
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I guess I grew up in a family and in a community where the idea was you used your life to try and build a better world.
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And as I look at the world around me, it's clear that we are not building a better world.
00:11:48.000 --> 00:11:54.000
I am not, you know, my father was able to say to me,
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I'm leaving you a better world than the one I was born into uh he was born during the First World War and so uh he could say that I can't say that to my grandchildren and I have nine of them and I wish I could but I can't lie to them uh this is a more difficult world and it's
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From my perspective, it's largely a more difficult world because the capitalist economy is going off the rails.
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It is incapable.
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And I've just a book out to a couple of publishers focused on this.
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But basically, the book deals with my belief that catastrophe capitalism
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is a lifespan.
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It simply can't go on because it will destroy the society through inequality.
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And that's one of the things it's doing now.
00:13:03.000 --> 00:13:09.000
And it will destroy the environment and render the planet uninhabitable.
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And as part of that environmental destruction, I look around the little town that I live in and we know we're going to get
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three or four hundred millimeter.
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That's how that translates into.
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But that's a big rainstorm, you know, eight, ten inches of rain.
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We know we're going to get storms like that.
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Our storm system is built for a storm like that once a century, not once or twice every ten years.
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And so what's it cost to build an entire new storm system?
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What's it cost, a storm sewer system?
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What's it cost when the housing we have is not capable of standing?
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This is a fairly new house I built back in 2014, but it will become uninsurable because it wasn't built for 200 kilometer an hour wind.
00:14:16.000 --> 00:14:18.000
And that's just the reality.
00:14:18.000 --> 00:14:23.000
Now, I did have the good fortune to build it without a basement.
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But, you know, most of the houses in this community have basements, and they're all going to flood.
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Or not all of them.
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Some of them would be on a hilltop on the water right away.
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But many of them, the last time we had a 100 millimeter rainstorm two years ago,
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It cost the town about $6 million in road repairs, and it flooded over 70 houses.
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So it's just not economically viable.
00:14:59.000 --> 00:15:08.000
And then I guess the other thing is that if I look around, everything's becoming unaffordable.
00:15:08.000 --> 00:15:10.000
And the book looks at that.
00:15:10.000 --> 00:15:11.000
How does capitalism work?
00:15:11.000 --> 00:15:28.000
Well, it works by you shrink the size of a can of beans by 10%, you increase the water percentage of water content in it by 10%, and you up the price by 5%.
00:15:28.000 --> 00:15:31.000
And that gives you more profit, doesn't it?
00:15:31.000 --> 00:15:35.000
Wow.
00:15:35.000 --> 00:15:37.000
How do you treat your staff?
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Well, you get away with the minimum amount of benefits, the minimum amount of salary, the minimum amount of workplace safety, the minimum amount-- if you have a choice between workplace safety and profit, and you can get away with it, you take the profit.
00:15:54.000 --> 00:15:57.000
And the same with the environment.
00:15:57.000 --> 00:16:01.000
a choice between polluting and profit, you pick profit.
00:16:01.000 --> 00:16:03.000
And that's where we're going.
00:16:03.000 --> 00:16:10.000
And I'd like to make a distinction between small businesses.
00:16:10.000 --> 00:16:11.000
I grew up in a small business.
00:16:11.000 --> 00:16:14.000
My father ran a hardware store.
00:16:14.000 --> 00:16:26.000
If you had asked him, what's the purpose of your business, he would never have dreamed of saying it's to maximize the rate of return on my capital.
00:16:26.000 --> 00:16:48.000
It would just not he would have said, well, it's providing a living for my family and a good place to work for the people who work here and to have some place to have a hardware store that's open at 7:30 in the morning when contractors are on their way to work and need something.
00:16:48.000 --> 00:16:55.000
Those were the kinds of things in fact, I have heard him say those kinds of things.
00:16:55.000 --> 00:17:03.000
So that's a very different kind of business and it can be capitalism.
00:17:03.000 --> 00:17:08.000
So what the book basically says is this system can't go on.
00:17:08.000 --> 00:17:20.000
The effects of inequality and the effects of environmental destruction are simply not tenable in the long run.
00:17:20.000 --> 00:17:23.000
And so if that's the case, what's the alternative?
00:17:23.000 --> 00:17:32.000
And for the most part, we get a lot of criticism of business, but not much of capitalism.
00:17:32.000 --> 00:17:37.000
capitalism and democracy go together, don't they?
00:17:37.000 --> 00:17:44.000
Take a look at who was at the inauguration.
00:17:44.000 --> 00:17:52.000
But, and you know, take a look at who Mark Carney talks to.
00:17:52.000 --> 00:17:53.000
It's the same lot.
00:17:53.000 --> 00:18:04.000
He's having a meeting a week or so from now with some of the richest billionaires in the world because he wants them to invest in Canada.
00:18:04.000 --> 00:18:09.000
They're going to save us, you know, to save themselves.
00:18:09.000 --> 00:18:19.000
But anyway, so I, you know, I think that we need to build a different economic system and the most
00:18:19.000 --> 00:18:43.000
wonderful thing that happened to me in my life was the ability to go and visit operatives in places like England and Mondragon and in northern Italy, Emilia Romania, in New Zealand and Australia and India and realize that, well, wait a minute, this works.
00:18:43.000 --> 00:18:44.000
There is an alternative.
00:18:44.000 --> 00:18:46.000
There is a different way of doing this.
00:18:46.000 --> 00:18:49.000
We could have a different economy.
00:18:49.000 --> 00:18:55.000
And so in the book I'm talking about economic democracy.
00:18:55.000 --> 00:19:04.000
And and I include in that I include cooperatives, of course, various kinds of them.
00:19:04.000 --> 00:19:08.000
with my reference being for solidarity co-ops.
00:19:08.000 --> 00:19:18.000
where the the people who are being whose needs are being met have
00:19:18.000 --> 00:19:23.000
Some say, all of them, the workers, the consumers.
00:19:23.000 --> 00:19:27.000
So that's my preference.
00:19:27.000 --> 00:19:36.000
But any kind of cooperation is better than what we have now than the investor-owned model.
00:19:36.000 --> 00:19:46.000
And so I'm also including social enterprise and public ownership.
00:19:46.000 --> 00:19:55.000
But I have to confess, the book is leery about public illusion.
00:19:55.000 --> 00:20:02.000
What happened in Russia and the communist countries wasn't an accident.
00:20:02.000 --> 00:20:06.000
It's very much very similar in many ways to capitalism.
00:20:06.000 --> 00:20:11.000
It concentrated power and wealth in the hands of a few people.
00:20:11.000 --> 00:20:14.000
And we can do that with public enterprise.
00:20:14.000 --> 00:20:18.000
And we can create the same kind of mess.
00:20:18.000 --> 00:20:27.000
But when I look at, for example, in where I live in Mahone Bay, we have a municipal electric.
00:20:27.000 --> 00:20:39.000
And it buys, it has to buy some of its power from a private sector, big private sector power company, Nova Scotia Power and Amira.
00:20:39.000 --> 00:20:48.000
But we also have our utilities part owner of three windmills and a solar garden.
00:20:48.000 --> 00:20:53.000
And we're at somewhere around 70% of our energy is now renewable.
00:20:53.000 --> 00:20:57.000
And we're shooting for 90%.
00:20:57.000 --> 00:21:09.000
The other thing that happens is when the lights go out for Nova Scotia Power customers around us for 10 hours or two days,
00:21:09.000 --> 00:21:20.000
Hours go out for an hour, maybe five minutes, because we maintain the lines.
00:21:20.000 --> 00:21:29.000
Because the purpose of the municipal utility is to provide us with power, not to maximize the rate of return to some absentee shareholders.
00:21:29.000 --> 00:21:38.000
So it's basically where I've gone with the book is
00:21:38.000 --> 00:21:44.000
is to say, you know, we we need to start building this, and I don't.
00:21:44.000 --> 00:21:47.000
Do I think we will do it?
00:21:47.000 --> 00:21:49.000
I don't know.
00:21:49.000 --> 00:21:50.000
It's possible.
00:21:50.000 --> 00:21:52.000
I know we can do it.
00:21:52.000 --> 00:21:59.000
Whether we will do it or not depends on how determined we are.
00:21:59.000 --> 00:22:02.000
It depends on how resourceful we are.
00:22:02.000 --> 00:22:08.000
It depends on whether or not the cooperative movement, you know, and I
00:22:08.000 --> 00:22:16.000
look at what the cooperative movement needs to do and can do and what government could do.
00:22:16.000 --> 00:22:26.000
And you know, so I remember visiting a nursing home in Amelia Romania, nursing home.
00:22:26.000 --> 00:22:29.000
And the manager was new.
00:22:29.000 --> 00:22:32.000
He had only been there for about six months.
00:22:32.000 --> 00:22:35.000
Our students were
00:22:35.000 --> 00:22:41.000
You're very curious, what's the difference between working here and working in the private sector nursing home you came from?
00:22:41.000 --> 00:22:56.000
And he said, well, he said, and his board was elected one third by the workers, one third by the residents, one third by family members of residents.
00:22:56.000 --> 00:23:04.000
And he said, well, I'll tell you one thing here, you don't ******** the board.
00:23:04.000 --> 00:23:19.000
And then he went on to talk about the pain he felt during the pandemic with the hospitals in Italy were overflowing.
00:23:19.000 --> 00:23:32.000
And they offered nursing homes, private sector nursing homes, and cooperative nursing homes 20% more for any beds that they could endemic patients, COVID patients.
00:23:32.000 --> 00:23:38.000
And the private sector nursing home said, wow, this is great.
00:23:38.000 --> 00:23:43.000
But as soon as they put somebody in, they had five more beds free.
00:23:43.000 --> 00:23:49.000
And then after they filled those five beds for 20% more, they got 20 beds free.
00:23:49.000 --> 00:23:58.000
And he said, you know, I watched people I love die.
00:23:58.000 --> 00:24:02.000
And he said, so when this opportunity came,
00:24:02.000 --> 00:24:11.000
to work for the co-op, I grabbed it because the co-ops didn't take any COVID patients.
00:24:11.000 --> 00:24:18.000
They said our purpose is to serve the people who are here, not to kill them.
00:24:18.000 --> 00:24:32.000
So governments can do all kinds of things like saying, well, we'll provide government funding to co-op nursing homes.
00:24:32.000 --> 00:24:43.000
that are structured properly at 20% more than we provide private sector nursing.
00:24:43.000 --> 00:24:48.000
So there's so many things that they can do.
00:24:48.000 --> 00:24:55.000
And the cooperatives have enormous issues to deal with as well.
00:24:55.000 --> 00:24:58.000
Imagine if the co-ops, for example,
00:24:58.000 --> 00:25:06.000
on an annual basis sat back and said, let's look at everything we buy.
00:25:06.000 --> 00:25:10.000
Could we set up a worker co-op to provide that?
00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:12.000
They don't do that now.
00:25:12.000 --> 00:25:13.000
They could.
00:25:13.000 --> 00:25:27.000
One of the things about Mondragon-- so in Mondragon Head, with the CAHA, the most powerful cooperative development organization,
00:25:27.000 --> 00:25:28.000
that you could imagine.
00:25:28.000 --> 00:25:33.000
They were connected to 15 R&D centers.
00:25:33.000 --> 00:25:39.000
They were connected to five or six universities, including their own.
00:25:39.000 --> 00:25:45.000
They had all kinds of analytical ability.
00:25:45.000 --> 00:25:52.000
They had just about a 0% failure rate.
00:25:52.000 --> 00:25:58.000
You know, I remember visiting a Mondragon co-op that was undergoing a modernization.
00:25:58.000 --> 00:26:12.000
And the manager, one of the managers said, when we get in the new machines, it's only going to take two people to run that machine for 24 hours as opposed to eight now.
00:26:12.000 --> 00:26:19.000
And I thought, so what are you going to do with the other six?
00:26:19.000 --> 00:26:24.000
And he said, oh, he said, yeah, yeah, I should have told you that.
00:26:24.000 --> 00:26:29.000
One of the basic policies in the co-op is nobody can lose a job.
00:26:29.000 --> 00:26:31.000
Nobody hits the street here.
00:26:31.000 --> 00:26:38.000
So whatever the modernization plan is, it has to include all of our workers.
00:26:38.000 --> 00:26:47.000
And he said that may involve some of them going out to another co-op, a job they are interested in in another co-op.
00:26:47.000 --> 00:27:17.000
but nobody hits the street I thought different from our system you know so uh we can build development organizations like that uh in in uh in Italy they have what 3% of their annual profits go into the Co-op development fund and and it provides uh a lot of the same services and legal
00:27:17.000 --> 00:27:21.000
Co-op provide additional services.
00:27:21.000 --> 00:27:29.000
So we, you know, we have very little that compares to that.
00:27:29.000 --> 00:27:31.000
We could build a lot more.
00:27:31.000 --> 00:27:34.000
Think that's actually a great segue into our next question.
00:27:34.000 --> 00:27:40.000
So you're already bringing this super unique global view to co-op development and what it can be.
00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:48.000
And I know even between the US and Canada, co-op development looks pretty different and plays a pretty different role.
00:27:48.000 --> 00:27:56.000
But I'm curious with your unique vantage point, what does the co-op development landscape look like from where you sit?
00:27:56.000 --> 00:28:01.000
Are you seeing exciting work happening, especially on this side of the Atlantic?
00:28:01.000 --> 00:28:13.000
the gaps and what communities or sectors or in which communities or sectors do you think there's significant untapped potential?
00:28:13.000 --> 00:28:18.000
I think cooperatives are suitable for any economic activity.
00:28:18.000 --> 00:28:28.000
It's not something that we have generally looked at it and said, well, here's the kind of things co-ops do.
00:28:28.000 --> 00:28:29.000
There isn't anything
00:28:29.000 --> 00:28:36.000
that can't be done cooperatively except perhaps trading on the stock market.
00:28:36.000 --> 00:28:38.000
Maybe.
00:28:38.000 --> 00:28:51.000
You could have a worker co-op doing that or a solidarity co-op doing that, but it's a little bit of a strain.
00:28:51.000 --> 00:29:00.000
So one of the things we need to do is regard our job as building a new economy.
00:29:00.000 --> 00:29:28.000
as the old one collapses because people are going to desperately need all of the things they need now and are going to find them harder and harder and harder to get and and that's you know that's what's happening now uh so I'm I'm involved at the current moment in Co-op housing uh we created something called the home Bay Community Land Co-op which we we didn't create the community home Bay
00:29:28.000 --> 00:29:57.000
housing co-op because what we wanted to do was to create an organization that would hopefully spawn a whole series of housing co-ops and then perhaps branch out into worker co-ops and branch out into different things and where the co-ops would be part owners and you know that process this is on a very small scale
00:29:57.000 --> 00:30:02.000
But it could be we could have a much more powerful system than that.
00:30:02.000 --> 00:30:05.000
And that's one thing that I think we need to do.
00:30:05.000 --> 00:30:11.000
Another is cooperative capital.
00:30:11.000 --> 00:30:17.000
I wrote a paper a long time ago on cooperative capital, and I presented to a conference in Italy.
00:30:17.000 --> 00:30:25.000
And basically, the thrust of it was that cooperative capital is different.
00:30:25.000 --> 00:30:28.000
It doesn't seek an unlimited return.
00:30:28.000 --> 00:30:34.000
And what it and and it should be.
00:30:34.000 --> 00:30:39.000
It should flow from the members and the members of cooperatives.
00:30:39.000 --> 00:30:43.000
So, but we, you know, in Canada we have a cooperative development fund.
00:30:43.000 --> 00:30:46.000
You have the co-op bank.
00:30:46.000 --> 00:30:48.000
but they're relatively small.
00:30:48.000 --> 00:30:49.000
and
00:30:49.000 --> 00:30:52.000
in terms and their economic power.
00:30:52.000 --> 00:31:06.000
I had an opportunity here in Nova Scotia with, I was talking to a small company that has pioneered land based salmon farming.
00:31:06.000 --> 00:31:11.000
And it's so much more environmentally sound.
00:31:11.000 --> 00:31:16.000
They don't use pesticides to kill the sea lice because there's no sea lice.
00:31:16.000 --> 00:31:18.000
They don't use growth hormones.
00:31:18.000 --> 00:31:26.000
They don't use little fish from the coast of Africa to feed the salmon for us rich folk to eat.
00:31:26.000 --> 00:31:29.000
There's just so many things that they're doing right.
00:31:29.000 --> 00:31:47.000
They're building their own supply for-- they're building their own process for raising very young salmon on insects and building their own insect farm.
00:31:47.000 --> 00:31:58.000
And so I wanted to find out, they were interested in starting it as expanding their technology and licensing it to community co-ops.
00:31:58.000 --> 00:32:05.000
But to set up one of those co-ops cost around $75 million.
00:32:05.000 --> 00:32:12.000
And so because, you know, there's the technology and the side and the scale that you need.
00:32:12.000 --> 00:32:14.000
So I went around to the
00:32:14.000 --> 00:32:25.000
cooperative financial institutions in Canada, our co-op capital fund could loan them 1.2 million.
00:32:25.000 --> 00:32:27.000
Oh, great.
00:32:27.000 --> 00:32:33.000
So and Vancity Bank came up with the best.
00:32:33.000 --> 00:32:41.000
They were they said they thought they could manage about 25 million, but you know, again, that's one third.
00:32:41.000 --> 00:32:44.000
And so
00:32:44.000 --> 00:32:49.000
they ended up going to the bank of Nova Scotia.
00:32:49.000 --> 00:33:05.000
And I don't, know where that I will make an assumption that will probably or has the potential to derail a lot of where they wanted to go, which was environmentally and socially responsible.
00:33:05.000 --> 00:33:12.000
So, capital is, there's no reason that I, well, there is a reason.
00:33:12.000 --> 00:33:15.000
the way co-op capital is regulated in Canada.
00:33:15.000 --> 00:33:25.000
I don't know the details in the US, but in Canada it's regulated to behave like capitalist capital.
00:33:25.000 --> 00:33:29.000
That's basically the idea behind the regulation.
00:33:29.000 --> 00:33:41.000
And members of co-ops could not buy bonds in a co-op capital fund here.
00:33:41.000 --> 00:33:46.000
Well, you know, that's just simply a mistake.
00:33:46.000 --> 00:33:56.000
We have, if you think about, we have I think 7 million members of cooperatives in Canada.
00:33:56.000 --> 00:34:00.000
It's a bit of an estimate, but I think it's pretty accurate.
00:34:00.000 --> 00:34:09.000
And if every one of those invested $1,000 in co-op capital,
00:34:09.000 --> 00:34:13.000
That would be a lot of money to start co-ops.
00:34:13.000 --> 00:34:22.000
I would be willing to invest 50,000 in cooperative capital from my retirement funds.
00:34:22.000 --> 00:34:27.000
And you know, so I don't think, I think the potential is there.
00:34:27.000 --> 00:34:38.000
And the other potential that is there now, which I hope co-ops will grab onto is the fact that people know
00:34:38.000 --> 00:34:41.000
that our economy is not working.
00:34:41.000 --> 00:34:42.000
They know that.
00:34:42.000 --> 00:34:43.000
They don't know why.
00:34:43.000 --> 00:34:47.000
They don't understand the why because they're not ever told that.
00:34:47.000 --> 00:34:53.000
It's never explained to them thoroughly.
00:34:53.000 --> 00:34:55.000
But they know it's not working.
00:34:55.000 --> 00:35:08.000
And when I tell people the 50%
00:35:08.000 --> 00:35:24.000
Canadians share 1.2% all the wealth in Canada, but the top 10% or the top 20% share 75% of the wealth in the country.
00:35:24.000 --> 00:35:30.000
And people say, yeah, I know, and that's not right.
00:35:30.000 --> 00:35:37.000
So they know it's not right, but they've been told all their lives that there's no alternative.
00:35:37.000 --> 00:35:48.000
And so the big things that co-ops need to do are develop their organizational development capacity, number one.
00:35:48.000 --> 00:35:57.000
Number two, create sources of cooperative capital on a significant scale.
00:35:57.000 --> 00:36:01.000
And the third is education.
00:36:01.000 --> 00:36:06.000
And that's difficult because, you know, we did a movie,
00:36:06.000 --> 00:36:34.000
colleague in Halifax a year or two ago building a better economy and it got largely a lot of the funding came from the cooperators but the cooperators were very uncomfortable with their critique of capital as they said you know we we we got to work with these people all the time you know we we we got a lot of ties into that into that economy and and so
00:36:34.000 --> 00:37:03.000
I don't know if you can you not say that or can you and we we eventually persuaded them to leave their money in and let us say it anyway but it was there were a tense couple of months and I understood it you know I I know exactly I can understand that so
00:37:03.000 --> 00:37:08.000
Those are the big things I think we need to do.
00:37:08.000 --> 00:37:15.000
And of course, the process of simply saying, what do we buy?
00:37:15.000 --> 00:37:18.000
Can we create a co-op to provide that?
00:37:18.000 --> 00:37:30.000
If we did, you know, if all of the cooperatives in Nova Scotia put together a list of what they buy, I'm sure that we could create
00:37:30.000 --> 00:37:59.000
50 or 60 worker owned cooperatives in five years to do that uh if we you know we've one of the beauties of co-op Atlantic was that in agricultural co-ops and and consumer co-ops in the same room those were the two main shareholders but the gap was we didn't have the workers in the same room
00:37:59.000 --> 00:38:06.000
And when I sat on the board of the Credit Union here we had.
00:38:06.000 --> 00:38:13.000
We had this discussion about creating a workers advisory council to the board.
00:38:13.000 --> 00:38:19.000
so that they, because we can't under our law, you can't have.
00:38:19.000 --> 00:38:21.000
You can't have workers on the Credit Union board.
00:38:21.000 --> 00:38:24.000
That's not allowed.
00:38:24.000 --> 00:38:26.000
Just we're like a bank, right?
00:38:26.000 --> 00:38:31.000
And so
00:38:31.000 --> 00:38:37.000
we were debating that possibility and how to go about it.
00:38:37.000 --> 00:38:47.000
And, you know, people said, well, you know, you can't let the workers have access to everything that goes to the board.
00:38:47.000 --> 00:38:48.000
And I said, well, why?
00:38:48.000 --> 00:38:50.000
They do that and they're gone.
00:38:50.000 --> 00:38:52.000
What's the problem?
00:38:52.000 --> 00:38:57.000
You know, they have the lowest loan failure rate.
00:38:57.000 --> 00:39:00.000
in Europe.
00:39:00.000 --> 00:39:06.000
I don't know if that's still true, but it was certainly true around 2015.
00:39:06.000 --> 00:39:18.000
So if they have the lowest failure rate and they have the workers sitting on the board elected by the workers, what's the problem here?
00:39:18.000 --> 00:39:24.000
And one of the problems with Co-op Atlantic, well, when I sat on my credit union,
00:39:24.000 --> 00:39:37.000
We had 2,700 members, and we had a board of seven.
00:39:37.000 --> 00:39:50.000
Now, with our big merge credit union, we have a board of nine, but they want to reduce it to seven, and they have 65,000 members.
00:39:50.000 --> 00:39:53.000
Well, we're going backwards.
00:39:53.000 --> 00:39:56.000
And they haven't changed their governance system.
00:39:56.000 --> 00:40:00.000
To reflect that different reality.
00:40:00.000 --> 00:40:06.000
But, you know, if our credit union were to go under tomorrow.
00:40:06.000 --> 00:40:14.000
I would, you know, I would move my money as I guaranteed government guarantees on the deposits.
00:40:14.000 --> 00:40:15.000
So I just move it.
00:40:15.000 --> 00:40:19.000
I have to move it to the bank down the street here.
00:40:19.000 --> 00:40:24.000
I wouldn't like it, but I would do it and because I'd have to.
00:40:24.000 --> 00:40:29.000
But the workers would have to uproot their families.
00:40:29.000 --> 00:40:33.000
They would go through hell.
00:40:33.000 --> 00:40:37.000
But for me, it would just be walking down the street with my deposit.
00:40:37.000 --> 00:40:41.000
So why should I be on board and none of the workers?
00:40:41.000 --> 00:40:44.000
Because they have such a big stake in it.
00:40:44.000 --> 00:40:51.000
And so we need to rethink a lot of silly things that we do.
00:40:51.000 --> 00:40:58.000
farm co-ops ought to have the, you know, the dairy workers should be on the board somehow.
00:40:58.000 --> 00:41:02.000
And we can do all those things and they're not going to kill us.
00:41:02.000 --> 00:41:05.000
They're going to strengthen us.
00:41:05.000 --> 00:41:11.000
But so those are some of my thoughts about where we need to go.
00:41:11.000 --> 00:41:15.000
And I'm confident that if we did it,
00:41:15.000 --> 00:41:17.000
We could do it and it would work.
00:41:17.000 --> 00:41:25.000
Start with just the classic ICA principles and ask you, which is your favorite.
00:41:25.000 --> 00:41:30.000
I have to confess that my favorite is the difference in purpose.
00:41:30.000 --> 00:41:39.000
The purpose of a co-op is to meet member and community need as opposed to maximizing the rate of return to already wealthy investors.
00:41:39.000 --> 00:41:43.000
So that's the most defining
00:41:43.000 --> 00:41:51.000
difference between cooperatives and capitalist business in terms of the in terms of the co-op principles.
00:41:51.000 --> 00:41:55.000
Now I didn't I didn't go down the list.
00:41:55.000 --> 00:42:01.000
I think the one that needs the most work is concern for community.
00:42:01.000 --> 00:42:11.000
And perhaps we need an additional principle that says cooperatives believe that the planet should be able to support life.
00:42:11.000 --> 00:42:15.000
You know, and if we
00:42:15.000 --> 00:42:25.000
There's already a fair bit built in on economic equality, but we really haven't come to grips with the environmental impact.
00:42:25.000 --> 00:42:32.000
So that, I think, would be my, it's not my favorite co-op principle, but it could be.
00:42:32.000 --> 00:42:35.000
There's potential there.
00:42:35.000 --> 00:42:38.000
Yeah, there's potential there.
00:42:38.000 --> 00:42:45.000
And of the Madison principles, I liked number five.
00:42:45.000 --> 00:43:00.000
And I liked it for a lot of reasons, but it's to challenge the normalization of economic, social and environmental oppression.
00:43:00.000 --> 00:43:13.000
It seems to me is that's where our future lies is for us to realize that we really do need to build a different economy
00:43:13.000 --> 00:43:15.000
and a better economy.
00:43:15.000 --> 00:43:27.000
I like lines like it underscores the oppression of people and the degradation of the planet stem from shared profit and any cost ideology.
00:43:27.000 --> 00:43:31.000
And I think that's fundamental.
00:43:31.000 --> 00:43:41.000
I like as well, a world in which poverty and inequity are endemic will always be prone to ecological and other crises.
00:43:41.000 --> 00:43:54.000
Sustainable development requires meeting the basic needs of all and extending to all the opportunity to satisfy their aspirations for a better life.
00:43:54.000 --> 00:44:00.000
And naming those things is so important.
00:44:00.000 --> 00:44:10.000
If we try to sort of blend in to the dominant economy,
00:44:10.000 --> 00:44:17.000
without standing out, then I think we will not succeed.
00:44:17.000 --> 00:44:25.000
I think we have to say, you know, look, we have a lot of problems and we can do better.
00:44:25.000 --> 00:44:34.000
And the economic inequality is going to destroy our societies.
00:44:34.000 --> 00:44:42.000
and the environmental destruction is going to destroy the ability of the planet to support life.
00:44:42.000 --> 00:44:50.000
And I think we have to lead with those and say, that's where we gotta go.
00:44:50.000 --> 00:44:51.000
Thanks.
00:44:51.000 --> 00:45:00.000
And just for our listeners at home, CW principle number five, formerly the Madison Principles, is commit to anti-extinction and anti-oppression.
00:45:00.000 --> 00:45:05.000
And yeah, naming everything that you highlighted was definitely a critical piece of the guidance notes for that one.
00:45:05.000 --> 00:45:07.000
So thanks for highlighting that.
00:45:07.000 --> 00:45:08.000
Yeah.
00:45:08.000 --> 00:45:14.000
Well, thank you for-- I had never seen the Madison Principles, so this was a delight.
00:45:14.000 --> 00:45:18.000
It was my pleasure.
00:45:18.000 --> 00:45:23.000
And so co-op month is partly about imagining the future of cooperative movement as a whole.
00:45:23.000 --> 00:45:27.000
You've done a lot of work in this space, a lot of visioning and a lot of building.
00:45:27.000 --> 00:45:28.000
I mean, St.
00:45:28.000 --> 00:45:32.000
Mary's was built for the future, create those future co-op leaders.
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I'm wondering today, what do we need to do to build that next generation of co-op developers and leaders?
00:45:42.000 --> 00:45:47.000
Well, I mean, that's really why I wrote the book, you know.
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is because I think we have to come to grips with the fact that our economy increasingly does not work.
00:45:56.000 --> 00:45:59.000
It's increasingly destructive.
00:45:59.000 --> 00:46:02.000
And we need to come to grips with that.
00:46:02.000 --> 00:46:07.000
To me, that's the biggest thing.
00:46:07.000 --> 00:46:17.000
Once we come to grips with that, then we have to come to grips with the fact, I know that I can't build this new economy, but I can add a little bit.
00:46:17.000 --> 00:46:23.000
And everybody needs to say, OK, what can I do?
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What can I do to make this better?
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What can I do to build that better economy?
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And then just do it.
00:46:32.000 --> 00:46:46.000
So I think that those are the-- that's where I think we really need to focus is on stop pulling our punches, you know?
00:46:46.000 --> 00:47:14.000
we you know we we don't have to be obnoxious I don't rail against billionaires I'm sure some of them are really lovely people I'm sure they love their families and I'm sure that some of them even want a better world although I do have difficulty with the idea that you
00:47:14.000 --> 00:47:29.000
you know as a Canadian that I could have a billion dollars and that I would feel good about that knowing that 26 Indigenous reserves in Canada can't get clean water and it's been like that for 25 years.
00:47:29.000 --> 00:47:43.000
That just seems to me to me hard to swallow you got to bury your head to be able to reconcile those two realities and so
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And I think we need to also recognize the danger, the dangers in the path that we're going.
00:47:55.000 --> 00:48:07.000
I think what's happening in the US now in terms of curtailing democracy could easily happen here.
00:48:07.000 --> 00:48:14.000
And we're kidding ourselves if we don't think that could be the case.
00:48:14.000 --> 00:48:35.000
And so we, you know, one of the things I was really delighted and honored to be inducted into the US Cooperative Hall of Fame because it's the kind of thing that I admire.
00:48:35.000 --> 00:48:41.000
Most of the people whom I know well in the US are either relatives
00:48:41.000 --> 00:48:45.000
or they're in the crop movement.
00:48:45.000 --> 00:48:51.000
And so because that's, you know, those are the people I've talked to over the last 25 years.
00:48:51.000 --> 00:48:59.000
And and I feel a great sense of kinship with them.
00:48:59.000 --> 00:49:10.000
And I and I think that the, you know, the big danger for Canadian people is to think
00:49:10.000 --> 00:49:14.000
that's not going to happen here.
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They haven't listened to some of our billionaires.
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They ought to.
00:49:23.000 --> 00:49:27.000
And they haven't looked at some of our problems.
00:49:27.000 --> 00:49:36.000
It is not an accident in Canada that billionaire wealth during the pandemic increased in two years by 24%.
00:49:36.000 --> 00:49:41.000
That's not an accident.
00:49:41.000 --> 00:49:53.000
And during the same time, you'd be hard pressed to find anybody in the 70% of our population whose wealth increased at all and shrunk.
00:49:53.000 --> 00:50:00.000
And so we just need to realize that this is our reality as well.
00:50:00.000 --> 00:50:07.000
And we, as much as possible, link hands across the border.
00:50:07.000 --> 00:50:09.000
and link hands around the world.
00:50:09.000 --> 00:50:26.000
And you know, I don't know how cooperative they are in detail, but I still buy ocean spray cranberry sauce because it comes from a co-op.
00:50:26.000 --> 00:50:37.000
But I have to confess that there's not a lot of stuff that I'm buying these days that comes across the border because I don't want to feed those billionaires.
00:50:37.000 --> 00:50:40.000
I I have, you know, I don't want to feed ours.
00:50:40.000 --> 00:50:43.000
Don't want to feed yours.
00:50:43.000 --> 00:50:54.000
And and I think that's, you know, I I think the best we can do is hold hands and not feed them.
00:50:54.000 --> 00:50:55.000
Thanks for that.
00:50:55.000 --> 00:50:57.000
It's a good quote.
00:50:57.000 --> 00:51:01.000
So at the beginning, you talked a bit about the St.
00:51:01.000 --> 00:51:07.000
Mary's program, the Masters of Management Cooperatives and Credit Unions, which you founded.
00:51:07.000 --> 00:51:11.000
And it's been around for about a little more than 20 years.
00:51:11.000 --> 00:51:14.000
I know they celebrated 20 years a couple of years ago.
00:51:14.000 --> 00:51:19.000
So many cooperators in the US, in Canada, around the globe have gone through that.
00:51:19.000 --> 00:51:23.000
I know when I did it, it was a very international program.
00:51:23.000 --> 00:51:33.000
What is the biggest impact you've seen this program have on the cooperative landscape in the last 20 years, 20 plus years?
00:51:33.000 --> 00:51:56.000
Well, for the last 10 years since I retired, I haven't had the opportunity to really feel the impact, but I certainly could feel it in the first, you know, the 10 years that I was there, that more than that.
00:51:56.000 --> 00:52:06.000
I could certainly feel the impact and it was just, I felt that people felt freed by the program.
00:52:06.000 --> 00:52:18.000
That people felt that they were finally hearing things that they really needed to hear and they weren't hearing anywhere else.
00:52:18.000 --> 00:52:23.000
You can go through our educational system in Canada
00:52:23.000 --> 00:52:30.000
all the way up, you can go through the school system and the university system without hearing the word co-op.
00:52:30.000 --> 00:52:35.000
Never mind, what does that mean?
00:52:35.000 --> 00:52:42.000
but you can't go through without hearing, well, capitalism and democracy fit.
00:52:42.000 --> 00:52:53.000
So, I think the, for me, the biggest potential is
00:52:53.000 --> 00:53:05.000
that COP managers will start to really think about, how can we build a different economy, a better economy, democratic economy?
00:53:05.000 --> 00:53:06.000
How can we build that?
00:53:06.000 --> 00:53:07.000
What can we do?
00:53:07.000 --> 00:53:13.000
And we'll see.
00:53:13.000 --> 00:53:16.000
Can the program do that?
00:53:16.000 --> 00:53:20.000
Not on its own.
00:53:20.000 --> 00:53:24.000
I can't do it on my own and it can't do it on its own.
00:53:24.000 --> 00:53:48.000
But together, when we have a lot of organizations like yours, like the master's program, like the NCBA, and there's so many cooperative organizations that hopefully will become increasingly
00:53:48.000 --> 00:54:13.000
clear sighted and and uh and open thinking about the magnitude of the of the contribution they can make as opposed to uh the contribution we managed so far and the contribution has been very good it's very important but it's just not enough and we need to.
00:54:13.000 --> 00:54:14.000
All right.
00:54:14.000 --> 00:54:17.000
Are you ready for some rapid fire questions, Dom?
00:54:17.000 --> 00:54:18.000
Could be.
00:54:18.000 --> 00:54:20.000
I'll try for rapid fire answers.
00:54:20.000 --> 00:54:23.000
Cooperative with a hyphen or no hyphen.
00:54:23.000 --> 00:54:30.000
Oh, I always put the hyphen in, but it doesn't matter really.
00:54:30.000 --> 00:54:42.000
If you were stranded on a deserted island with a group of people who wanted to start co-ops, what's one thing you wish you had with you?
00:54:42.000 --> 00:54:51.000
I was going to say a computer, but then I have to put up with Microsoft.
00:54:51.000 --> 00:54:53.000
What's one thing I would like to have with me?
00:54:53.000 --> 00:54:57.000
My wife.
00:54:57.000 --> 00:54:59.000
Oh, there.
00:54:59.000 --> 00:55:02.000
What's your favorite book on cooperatives?
00:55:02.000 --> 00:55:04.000
I thought about that one.
00:55:04.000 --> 00:55:06.000
There's a book by Martin A.
00:55:06.000 --> 00:55:10.000
Nowak called Super Cooperators.
00:55:10.000 --> 00:55:22.000
And I like it because, I think we use it in the program, but I like it because what he basically says is evolution is not about competition.
00:55:22.000 --> 00:55:31.000
It is not about the survival of the fittest and the exploitation of everybody else.
00:55:31.000 --> 00:55:39.000
It's about cooperation and the species that survive are the ones that cooperate the best.
00:55:39.000 --> 00:55:45.000
And cooperation plays a key role in the survival of every species.
00:55:45.000 --> 00:55:50.000
And he just simply goes through and documents that.
00:55:50.000 --> 00:56:05.000
And I think part of the justification for our current economy is that, well, you know, if there's no competition, you won't have anything good.
00:56:05.000 --> 00:56:10.000
No cooperation.
00:56:10.000 --> 00:56:17.000
What's one word to describe your approach to building cooperatives?
00:56:17.000 --> 00:56:22.000
Persistence.
00:56:22.000 --> 00:56:23.000
That's great.
00:56:23.000 --> 00:56:28.000
Is there anything else that you any lasting pieces of wisdom that you'd love to leave in this space?
00:56:28.000 --> 00:56:39.000
I think that the biggest thing is just to understand that people are fundamentally good and that we have a
00:56:39.000 --> 00:56:51.000
We have wounded people and some of them are wounded in, you know, from personal experiences and some of them by our society and the way it operates.
00:56:51.000 --> 00:57:08.000
And the thing we need to learn to do is to love and forgive our wounded people and work as hard as we can try and the world
00:57:08.000 --> 00:57:11.000
better for everyone.
00:57:11.000 --> 00:57:17.000
Tom, thank you so much for joining us and helping us to think about what's possible for the future of cooperation.
00:57:17.000 --> 00:57:22.000
And Alex, thank you so much for joining throughout our co-op month series.
00:57:22.000 --> 00:57:30.000
Over these four conversations, we've had an opportunity to look at the cooperative movements from some pretty different perspectives.
00:57:30.000 --> 00:57:31.000
Dr.
00:57:31.000 --> 00:57:38.000
Jessica Gordon-Emhard reminded us that we're building on generations of cooperative history, knowledge, and experience.
00:57:38.000 --> 00:57:47.000
Doug O'Brien helped us understand the importance of the organizations, relationships, and resources that make cooperative development possible.
00:57:47.000 --> 00:57:56.000
And Esteban Kelly challenged us to think bigger about democratic leadership, collective power, and what it means to build a movement.
00:57:56.000 --> 00:57:58.000
And today
00:57:58.000 --> 00:58:02.000
Tom Webb has helped us turn our attention to the future.
00:58:02.000 --> 00:58:09.000
For me, one of the biggest takeaways from this series is that being built for this moment doesn't mean our work is done.
00:58:09.000 --> 00:58:16.000
It means we have something to build on and a responsibility to keep building together.
00:58:16.000 --> 00:58:20.000
As cooperative developers, we have an important role to play.
00:58:20.000 --> 00:58:29.000
not just in helping individual co-ops succeed, but in connecting people, sharing knowledge, and strengthening the cooperative economy as a whole.
00:58:29.000 --> 00:58:35.000
And that's really what Co-op Developer Stories is all about.
00:58:35.000 --> 00:58:45.000
Thank you to everyone who joined us for our Co-op Month series, and to all the cooperative developers and movement builders doing this work every day.
00:58:45.000 --> 00:58:54.000
If these conversations have inspired you, share them with someone who is curious about cooperatives or working to build a stronger cooperative economy.
00:58:54.000 --> 00:59:00.000
I'm Tara Williams and this has been Co-op Developer Stories, a cooperation podcast.
00:59:00.000 --> 00:59:05.000
Until next time, keep learning, keep connecting, and keep cooperating.
