The Modern Co-Op Movement: An Interview With Peter Cameron, Part Two

The last post on this subject serves as a bit of an introduction to the subject of Co-ops. In this one I wanted to do a little more research to explain the wider context of the co-op movement and why it has been more important to the country than I suspect most people realize. To that end, I've repeated much of what Peter said in the interview, but in the process put in some pictures and added links that will help interested people follow up whatever piques their interest.

Cloudwalking Owl · Historical Importance Of Co Ops

Maurice Duplessis,Wiki Commons

 

For those readers who know very little about Quebec history, it's important to understand that the province had been dominated by Anglo elites based in Montreal pretty much since Wolf's conquest up until the 1970s. In addition, the rural areas of Quebec tended to be very conservative, very French, and, very Catholic. A provincial party called the "Union Nationale" held sway---on and off---under it's founder, Maurice Duplessis, from 1936 to 1959. This totalled about 17 years. It also formed a government from 1966 to 1970. (After that it was overtaken by the Parti Quebecois and faded into obscurity.)

The important issue to understand is that Duplessis was very much what we would now call a "social conservative" as well as being something of a Quebec Nationalist. He favoured the Catholic church, which totally dominated education in the province. He was also a rigid anti-"communist", which meant that he persecuted labour unions, and any other progressive organizations such as newspapers, etc. (Incidentally, he also had a strangely particular dislike of the Jehovah's Witnesses.)  He used a bizarre provincial statute called "the Padlock Law" to persecute progressive groups. In a nutshell, it allowed prosecutors to lock up the premises of any group it described as "red" and keep anyone from entering the premise for up to a year. Since this would be catastrophic to anything like a newspaper or any organization that might already have a hard time renting a meeting hall, it effectively kept people from organizing the sort of progressive institutions that make up "civil society".

Jean Lesage, patrimoine culturel

The "quiet revolution" was a "change in tack" by Quebec society away from an emphasis on conservative rural values, towards secularism, and, taking back the economy from the Anglo elite. The first official stage of this change was the election of a Liberal government under Jean Lesage. One of the most important things he did was create the "Quebec Deposit and Investment Fund" (Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec), which was an institution that specifically set-out to use Quebecker pension and insurance funds to take back the provincial economy from non-francophones.

4.1. The mission of the Fund is to receive moneys on deposit as provided by law and manage them with a view to achieving optimal return on capital within the framework of depositors’ investment policies while at the same time contributing to Québec’s economic development. (Act respecting the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec)

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Alphonse Desjardins, Wiki Commons

I tried to be as brief as possible in the above, but I thought it important to mention the economic and political context of the province before I brought up an important movement that preceded all of this. It turns out that the very first successful credit unions in North America were started in Quebec. The man who got the ball rolling was a journalist by the name of Alphonse Desjardins who was appalled by the enormous rates of interest (as high as 3,000%) that he found poor and working class people were getting charged for personal loans. This came about because at this time the big banks simply didn't see it as being worth their while to service people who had such extremely small amounts of money.   

He researched the subject and found that there were "cutting edge" movements to create co-operative banking systems for working people in Great Britain and Europe. He corresponded with the people leading these institutions and synthesized what he considered the best ideas of each. He created the first one in 1900 and through the existing demand plus savvy marketing, there were 220 (180 in Quebec, 24 in Ontario, and, 9 in the USA) "caisse populairs" in existence by the time of his death in 1920. Then he was working on a plan to amalgamate all these individuals into a federation, which exists now as the "Desjardins Group", which is the largest credit union association in North America---with more than 7 million clients and members, mostly in Quebec and Ontario.

The dean of community organizers, Saul Alinsky, used to say something to the effect that "every community is already organized---the question is whether it is to exploit or to benefit the people who live there". Desjardins was able to see that the financial system of Quebec was designed to squeeze working people of their hard-won cash. That was the need. He also realized that at that time Quebec was organized around the Roman Catholic church and it's parish system. That meant that if he was going to build up his credit unions he needed to get the church on his side. He was able to do this, and with the local parish priests encouraging people to join, it helped him build his institution into a powerhouse. 

Another lesson I've learned is that no effort to organize a community ever goes to waste. The work that Alphonse put into his community to help them save their pennies instead of handing them over to loan sharks, had to have been a part of the framework that helped later reformers like Jean Lesage, Pierre Trudeau, Rene Levesque, and others help Quebeckers become "masters of their own house". 

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In the Western provinces early on farmers found themselves at the mercy of grain traders who played them off each other to pay the lowest prices for wheat. In response, farmers formed "wheat pools" that allowed them to market their crops to the outside world---cutting out the middlemen and increasing their profits while cutting their liability. At their height, there were three different pools that controlled most of the Western Canada production. Unfortunately, during the depression the catastrophic collapse of the market destroyed these independent co-ops and they were replaced by a government agency, the Canadian Wheat Board in 1935. 

In addition, co-operative wheat pools replaced independent companies as the owners of grain storage facilities in almost all rural communities by the 1950s. (These have since been privatized and are now mostly owned by a private company.)

In addition, the largest consumer co-operative in the country---the Federated Co-operatives Limited---is based in the Western provinces. In 2010 it earned revenues of almost half a billion dollars and returned a little over $350 million in profits to its members. 

The Federated Co-operatives Limited logo, which I suspect we've all seen.

CCF Premier, Tommy Douglas

I mention the above because this tendency by prairie farmers to organize co-operatives led to the creation of a political party which eventually became the NDP, or, New Democratic Party. Some, historically-minded, people know it as the "CCF", but even fewer people realize that the letters stood for the official title of "The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation". This title wasn't taken on for trivial reasons, because one of the key community organizing processes that allowed the new party to survive and thrive, was the development of a very strong co-op movement. 

It was the CCF which was able to bring in the first single-payer, publicly-insured, universal healthcare insurance system in North America. (In Saskatchewan during a CCF provincial government under then premier Tommy Douglas---the Liberals copied it federally.) In effect, a significant part of the reason why Canada doesn't suffer the same healthcare mess that exists South of the border is because of the co-op movement. 

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I galloped a lot in this post, but I thought it important to expose readers---many of whom I suspect know nothing at all about the above---to a taste of a lot of important history. Not a single progressive thing we enjoy in our society "just came about". They all came from a lot of work by invisible, unknown people who tirelessly worked for decades convincing people to join and build new institutions to benefit society. People learned through participating in co-ops that they could do just about anything that big business could do, and they almost always did it better. That's a revolutionary idea, and at one time lots and lots of people understood it. But recent generations of Canadians often don't seem to know this fact. And a big part of the reason is because people are profoundly ignorant about their history. To some extent that is why I write this blog, so new generations of people can learn and become involved like many people in their grand-parents generation.

Anyway, that's enough for one week. There's still lots to discuss about cooperatives in future posts.

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with.