Below the Radar Transcript
Episode 79: Cooperative Economics — with Elvy Del Bianco
Speakers: Melissa Roach, Am Johal, Elvy Del Bianco
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Melissa Roach 0:06
Hello listeners. I'm Melissa Roach with Below the Radar, a knowledge democracy podcast. Below the Radar is created by SFU's Vancity Office of Community Engagement and is recorded on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. On this episode of Below the Radar, we talk cooperative economics with Elvy Del Bianco of Vancity Credit Union. Our host Am Johal asks Elvy about what opportunities coops present for BC and Vancouver as an economic model rooted in solidarity and serving members. Enjoy the episode.
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Am Johal 0:45
Welcome to Below the Radar. We're here with Elvy Del Bianco this week to talk about coops welcome Elvy.
Elvy Del Bianco 0:51
Hi Am. Nice to be here.
Am Johal 0:53
Elvy, you've been working at Vancity for a number of years and out in the community on cooperatives, cooperative development with the BC CoOp Association and others but I met you during a time when I actually had a chance to go to the Bologna program that Vancity has been involved in with courses at the University of Bologna and also site visits at a number of coops, wondering if you can maybe just begin by sharing your involvement with the Bologna program that Vancity has been involved in for a number of years.
Elvy Del Bianco 1:25
Yeah, I'm happy to talk about that. The Vancity Emilia Romagna cooperative study tour, better known as the Bologna program, for the capital of Emilia Romagna, dates back to 2002. When then former board member of Vancity, Bob Williams, was working on what was the conception for Vancity Capital Corporation, which was originally viewed, he saw it as a regional development bank. And colleagues were saying, Well, if you're going to do, if you're thinking about it, that kind of level, if you're thinking about this kind of broader kind of regional kind of focus, you should really look at what they're doing in Emilia Romagna, in terms of local economic development through cooperatives. And so was nosing around, and found that John Restakis, who was then the executive director of the BC Cooperative Association was doing the same. And they hit upon this idea of creating this study tour, to look at what they're doing in Emilia Romagna, to expose British Columbians and others to that, and then to try and bring that learning back here and to try and implement it here. Why Emilia Romagna? It's probably the most significant cooperative economy on Earth. I mean, some people will argue that Mondragon is the more pure kind of expression of a model and that might be true. Emilia Romagna is different, and is very decentralized. It's part of a pluralistic economy. It's not strictly cooperatives, there are also corporate entities and you know, not for profit societies, of course. Cooperatives in fact, only make up a relatively small portion of the number of businesses there. But they employ 15% of the population and account for something like 20 to 25% of the GDP. The incidence of relative poverty is amongst the lowest in Italy. Economic participation by men and women is amongst the highest in Italy. The distribution of income is amongst the flattest, if you're looking at the curve in Italy. Political participation is amongst the highest. And sociologists like Putnam and Granovetter had looked at, looking at the Italian context, say that social capital is the highest in Emilia Romagna, or precisely second highest. The two regions in Italy that have the highest levels of social capital are Emilia Romagna and Trento Trentino Alto Adige, which are both the big cooperative Heartlands, and I don't think this is a mistake. This is a society where people have an opportunity to actively participate in a democracy in the marketplace. And it has all these kinds of spillover benefits in terms of the way people are engaged, and feel that they have an influence over what's happening in their communities. And the way that resources come to them, so they have higher levels of income and higher levels of democracy and participation. That's what we want. And that's what Bob wanted and John wanted for British Columbia. And so the program was started in 2002, in order for people to participate and experience that. The program went through all kinds of changes, it was generally open to the public. That changed in 2009, when it became focused on Vancity staff. And I think that that's had a transformative impact on our organization, because previously, people would come back, people like yourself would come back from Italy and get all jazzed up and then sort of go off and do your own thing. And now we came back and we're all within the same organization. And I think it really helped us and continues to help us to understand our role as a cooperative, our identity as a cooperative as a member serving organization that goes to market with goods and services that are reflective of our members needs. And given our scale and impact, this is an opportunity for us to have an impact in our own local cooperative economy.
Am Johal 5:22
I know when I went in 2007, at that time there was a week at SFU that happened and I had a chance to take classes with academics and intellectuals around the cooperative economy, including Stefanos, the MOG, me, Pierluigi Sacco. And then to the University of Bologna and to do the site visits as well. And to me, it was it was incredibly transformative to see these ideas put into practice and what was, you know, a really relevant point that was made by those teaching in the in the class and also, in seeing the site visits as well, was that what made the region of Bologna more interesting, as an example, to be seized and say, state led experiments and socialist economy, like Cuba, or Venezuela or Bolivia, was that it, in a granular way, could be much more possible and that the relationship between cooperative or more socialist aspects of attempting to have that type of a social economy had to interact with the market economy. And so the parts of innovation continue to exist within those economies. And that was a point that was debated back and forth within the classroom, but seeing people on the ground doing that work, and the way that it affected the actual culture of the city and the region itself. You know, here, maybe there'd be parts of Quebec or something like that, that would have some similarities that are built around the Québécois nation and those types of things that have, you know, there's a, there's a backside to that, that can actually obviously have a critique to it as well. But in terms of the work that you guys have done, what for you, as someone who's been on that trip as a translator and working through it for well over a decade, what have you seen besides the transformation inside Vancity, but in terms of how you look at the economy of Vancouver and British Columbia, in terms of what changes can happen here?
Elvy Del Bianco 7:23
Right about Quebec, first, if I might, I agree in Quebec, there's some 9000 cooperatives in Canada, but a third of those are in Quebec, Quebec is Canada's Emilia Romagna, in many respects, and they they've applied many of the same kinds of supports in order to realize that, to realize a stronger cooperative economy in that context. In terms of, you know, what, what's the possible application here in BC in Vancouver? What's really powerful about and what, sorry, I need to step back, there's a whole bunch, there's a whole bunch of stuff in your statement in your question. And it's Stefano who talks about the production of goods, right? The market economy is an excellent place for the production of private goods, consumable goods. There's a role for the public authority in producing public goods, goods that from which everybody can benefit. roads, parks, community centers, these sorts of things. What I think is a key role for the cooperative economy is the production of civic goods, or social goods, where communities of interest come together and create opportunities through these legal entities to produce the things that they need as, as specific groups of people. And this is what makes me think, that model is really kind of interesting, it's a self help model. Groups of people come together and communities of interest come together, they have a common need and the co op becomes a way of articulating that need. It could lean much more economic, it could lean a little bit more social, but there's generally a blended kind of return on these kinds of things. In a BC context, I mean, I think in general in North America, we, you know, we look at, you know, there's the market, and its production of goods in the public and its production of goods. And these two things are in battle with each other and generally, in the, in more recent years, it's the market that's kind of winning out and providing goods even beyond that, right now, we're relying more and more on the market to provide public goods, which I think is really kind of problematic. The opportunity for a civil society to respond and to sort of meet its needs is a model in order to do that and it's one that I think we need to strengthen in the BC context. So what could that look like? We're an economy of small and medium sized enterprises, right? Just like they are in Emilia Romagna. Right. And small is good. Small is you know, nimble, small is flexible, quick to respond to changes in the economy. But also small means you don't have access to the kind of infrastructure you need to achieve to reach a bigger market to market your goods and do these kinds of things. Cooperatives of small businesses, or consortia, as they would call them in Italy is a real interesting opportunity for small businesses to retain their kind of individual ownership and their flexibility but to be working in concert with others in order to achieve common goals. Right. An example of that, in East Vancouver, not far from where I live, there are a whole bunch of small craft breweries, well not small, some of them are quite large. Craft breweries and distilleries. They formed the cooperative in order to be able to market themselves as a group. So the East Van Brewery District cooperative has nothing to do that, right? There's also possibilities around worker coops succession of existing businesses, right, there's the silver tsunami of baby boomers who are going to retire now. And the small businesses that they've created and serve them very well, they may not have somebody to sell that business to, they may not have a child to give that business to. And we're running the risk of losing all those employment opportunities. I think we think there's good opportunities to turn those into, to sell the business to the employees and to turn those into worker cooperatives, right. The delivery of health and social services. This is something that is done quite extensively in Emilia Romagna through social cooperatives. We've not even come anywhere near to touching to what those kinds of possibilities could be right?Daycare services, medical clinics, clinics of health care, simple, complimentary professionals like massage and physiotherapy and all these there's there's a tremendous range of opportunities for delivering these kinds of things and doing it in a way that eliminates the profit motivation and allows those businesses to be competitive within the marketplace.
Am Johal 12:04
Now, you know, similarly in Argentina, when they had an economic crisis, there were a lot of opportunities for worker-run co-ops that came into place, and partly it had to do with succession, partly had to do with absentee ownership. And although it didn't sort of overtake the economy, overall, there's probably 200, 300, 400 examples of that, where it did work out everything from doggie biscuit bakeries to other types of things, shoe manufacturers, those types of things. I've had an opportunity to visit a couple in the suburbs of Buenos Aires. I'm just wondering, in the process of cooperatives forming, there's clearly a regulatory environment that functions at the federal and provincial government. And even in city policies, for example, and I'm wondering, through the BC Co Op Association, others, you know, what are the kind of regulatory hiccups that get in the way of cooperative development? Because it still, you know, functions as under an act and a legal entity that's created that's not a nonprofit or a business. But are there improvements to the regulatory environment that you guys have been advocating for that would actually enhance or incentivize this form of entity that has a clear, you know, relationship to solidarity and equity that other forms of organization don't?
Elvy Del Bianco 13:28
This is a great question. First and foremost, and I mentioned this earlier, that this is a self help model, right? This is about groups of people coming together and doing it for themselves. And that's, that will always remain, I think, at the heart of what this model is about, irrespective of, you know, support or challenges from the regulatory environment. But there's a lot that could be put in place in order to support in Italy. Most of what happens in terms of the cooperative sector is managed by the co-op sector itself. But they do have some advantages that we don't have, first of all, cooperation is embedded in their constitution. Right. It's a recognition that this is a unique model that provides social and economic benefits, right? We don't have anything like that. They also have a 3% of all net profits of coops go into a fund to support new Co Op creation. That is a legal requirement in Italy. Right? And that's created vast sums of capital that are being used to further grow the cooperative sector, right. In British Columbia, most coops fall under the Cooperatives Associations Act, which is actually a pretty good piece of legislation. It's much more flexible than what we see in other provinces. In BC, you can have a co-op of individuals or you can have a co-op of legal persons. So you can have a co-op. They can be for profit or not for profit, which is what we call a community service designation. Right. And that's good, it's a good place to start. But a particular challenge that we have. And we articulated this, we being a number of us in the cooperative movement, including representatives, the BC Cooperative Association, and Vancity. And a number of the large and small Co Ops is a change to the Securities Act more than the cooperative associations Act, there is a provision allowing for investment chairs, for people to invest outside, non members of a cooperative to invest in a cooperative, that is really tightly regulated, if that share for unaccredited investors goes above $5,000, you trigger all kinds of securities regulations. This is really I mean, it's a really interesting kind of instrument that could be used by co-ops that have mass capital. But the securities regulations are so tight that it's really difficult to do that. And so although a number of community investment cooperatives have been created, and these are vehicles, to serve as an alternative to mutual funds, where you invest your retirement or savings into this fund, and it goes, who knows where it goes, right? There, people have been working on these community investment coops in order to keep some of that investment, local, right, RSP, RSP eligible and all that kind of stuff, so long as it sticks within this tight framework. So we've argued that that needs to be loosened up a little bit, there has not been a single case that we know of fraud involving a cooperative in these kinds of investment vehicles in North America for forever. So that's the kind of thing probably we would like to see kind of loosened up to allow communities to sort of benefit from these kinds of activities. Other than that, I think it's probably more regulatory that we need or just some basic support to sort of help us help ourselves. We're not entirely sure exactly how many coops are in British Columbia, getting access to the data has been limited. I believe that's changing now. So that would be a good thing to sort of allow us to sort of get a better picture of where coops are and what kind of work they're doing, what kind of contributions that they're making to the local economy. And to see what kind of struggles they have. And this would allow us to sort of be clear about requesting the kinds of changes that we need in order to support those kinds of organizations.
Am Johal 17:22
Now in the kind of precarious nature of work that we have today in terms of automation, in terms of, of, you know, app based type forms of labor, be it, you know, Uber or Foodora, food delivery, like all of these types of things, that have essentially made things perhaps more convenient from a consumer point of view, but have created this string of incredibly precarious low wage jobs. Where people are in vulnerable situations from an employment point of view, what are the opportunities for co ops to kind of intervene in in these types of, you know, mass changes that are happening, which are resulting in job displacement for a certain group of people in creating a kind of employment class where people are on the peripheries and margins?
Elvy Del Bianco 18:15
Yeah. What those kinds of responses look like in the co-op world will vary depending on the kind of people that are involved. At the level of what we call the solopreneur, the Independent Consultant or business person, right? We see coops forming to support that group, a particularly significant one in Europe is called smart, smart EU, where you're operating as an independent consultant or business person, but your membership in the co-op gives you access to that collection. Right. So you don't have to go after your clients that are not, you know, are a little slow to pay up. Extended medical benefits, a capital pool that you can access in order to even out your revenue generation over the course of the year. These sorts of things. We've been seeing that happening locally, too. There's a number of people that are choosing amongst those that are choosing to work as independents are looking at forming coops now because while being independent, allows you to set your own hours and you know, to have you know, the flexibility that you might need. There are all kinds of downsides to that. Including never, ever being able to take a holiday because if your clients are relying on you, right, so some people now are and I'm working with a group that is doing exactly this. They're independent consultants, but they want to form a cooperative in order to build up some redundancy within that system. So there are more fingerprints on files, allowing people to have a better quality of life, but don't have to answer to somebody else other than themselves. Right. So the best of all possible worlds. At the level of, you know, greater precarity in terms of gig economy stuff, right, the Ubers and Lyfts. I think there's tremendous kinds of opportunities that way. And by the time this goes to air, do we say air in the podcast world?
Am Johal 20:19
Yeah.
Elvy Del Bianco 20:19
Okay, but as time goes to air, we hope to see a cooperative response to the introduction of Uber and Lyft in British Columbia. And a cooperative of women driving services, ride hailing services for other women, and seniors. So where the profit, the cooperative would be a cooperative of the drivers or a workers cooperative, the profit motivation from this exercise has been eliminated, which allows for better payment for the drivers for the services that they provide, and to be doing so in a safe environment. And we've all heard the stories about, you know, the terrible assaults, sexual and otherwise that are happening through Uber and Lyft. Right. So to be able to address that, this is applying that model, but in a way that better serves the needs of the people participating in that exercise. Right.
Am Johal 21:21
And as you see the sort of federal government and provincial government and environment here, where do you see the opportunities here in BC to grow the sector right now?
Elvy Del Bianco 21:35
What do you got? We Vancity and the BC Cooperative Association run a co-op, business model bootcamp, we do this twice a year. We take about 18 people, we encourage people to come in teams. So these are people that are actively working in the co ops, that are exploring the co op business model. And it's really phenomenal to see the kinds of people that come out to these, come out to this boot camp. Agriculture. I'm just thinking of the last one, agriculture, web development, computer animation, consulting services, these kinds of professional business services, on and on and on. Food retail, right. And this has been the history in British Columbia, right? I mean, if you look at the prairies, in Saskatchewan, naturally a lot of agricultural coops, right. But in BC, I mean, we really are a province of regions, right, with very distinct kinds of much more distinct kinds of communities and needs. And so what we see is everything, everything and frankly, in this province, I think we have a need for just about everything in terms of access to better you know, to affordable and good quality food that pays a decent wage. And so I think everything is possible here. I mean, and the need because we have so many needs, there's so many different ways of sort of articulating that as a co-op.
Am Johal 22:59
Elvy, thank you so much for joining us on Below the Radar.
Elvy Del Bianco 23:03
My pleasure. Nice to talk to you.
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Melissa Roach 23:09
Thanks for tuning in to hear from our guest Elvy Del Bianco. Head to the show notes to learn more about his work with Vancity to grow BC's Co Op sector. And keep up with us on Facebook at Below the Radar Pod and on Twitter at BTR_Pod. We'll see you next time on Below the Radar. Thanks
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