TORONTO \u2013 Yesterday marked the inaugural meeting of the first All-Party Co-operative Caucus at Queen\u2019s Park. Legislators from all political parties were invited to attend.<\/p>\n
The Ontario Co-co-operative Association (On Co-op) and the Conseil de la coop\u00e9ration de l\u2019Ontario (CCO) co-hosted this event with the three co-chairs: Ernie Hardeman (PC, Oxford) Percy Hatfield (NDP, Windsor\u2014Tecumseh) and Marie-France Lalonde (Lib, Ottawa\u2014Orl\u00e9ans).<\/p>\n
The purpose of the All-Party Co-operative Caucus is to discuss and support policies directly affecting co-operative enterprises. The objectives of the All-Party Caucus are to promote the co-operative movement, to contribute to its development and to facilitate exchange and dialogue between representatives at Queen\u2019s Park and co-operative sector stakeholders.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a clear need for a non-partisan co-operative caucus in the Ontario Legislature to help raise awareness of this thriving sector\u201d said Mark Hamel, Chair, On Co-op.<\/p>\n
On Co-op and CCO have offered to resource this caucus and it will work closely with the All-Party Caucus to represent the provincial co-operative movement.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis first meeting has generated a great deal of interest among MPPs from all parties\u201d, added Lucie Moncion, President, Conseil de la coop\u00e9ration de l\u2019Ontario. \u201cThe Ontario co-operative sector continues to play a major role in the provinces economy and social fabric and we hope that this caucus will help to promote the co-op advantage.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Caucus hopes to hold monthly meetings beginning with one in November.<\/p>\n
About the Ontario Co-operative Movement<\/strong><\/p>\n On Co-op and CCO represent more the 1.4 million members from 1,300 independent organizations. These co-ops operate in more than 1,900 locations in over 400 communities across the province.<\/span><\/p>\n Co-ops provide goods and services in more than 25 key sectors of the Ontario economy including transportation, local food, communication, social services, financial services, housing, childcare, agriculture and arts & culture. The Ontario co-operative sector accounts for almost $6 billion of the province\u2019s GDP, 57,000 jobs (full time equivalent), $3.3 billion in employment income, and $1.3 billion in taxes to all levels of government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" TORONTO \u2013 Yesterday marked the inaugural meeting of the first All-Party Co-operative Caucus at Queen\u2019s Park. Legislators from all political parties were invited to attend. The Ontario Co-co-operative Association (On Co-op) and the Conseil de la coop\u00e9ration de l\u2019Ontario (CCO) co-hosted this event with the three co-chairs: Ernie Hardeman (PC, Oxford) Percy Hatfield (NDP, Windsor\u2014Tecumseh) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":235592,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[155],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-238085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada.coop\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada.coop\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada.coop\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada.coop\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada.coop\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238085"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canada.coop\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238085\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":238433,"href":"https:\/\/canada.coop\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238085\/revisions\/238433"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada.coop\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada.coop\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada.coop\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada.coop\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}