The resentment fuelling this campaign, for which nobody took responsibility, was widely shared. In the midst of a cost-of-living crisis, as post-pandemic food price inflation peaked, the three grocery conglomerates that control the majority of the food retail market in Canada – Loblaw, Empire (owner of Sobeys) and Metro – were turning record profits, as their executives pocketed bonuses in the millions. All that in the wake of revelations that they had been colluding to fix the price of bread over a 14-year period. 

Today, as the ongoing trade war with the United States drives food prices up even further, many Canadians approach the grocery store with some combination of anxiety, dread and rage. But a small subset feels quite differently. 

“Spending money on food feels like an investment to me,” says Jon Steinman, a resident of Nelson, B.C., and author of the 2019 book Grocery Story: The Promise of Food Co-ops in the Age of Grocery Giants. 

Steinman is an enthusiastic participant in the cooperative food economy, which accounts for some 4% of Canada’s total grocery market, according to the Retail Council of Canada. And he believes that now, as Canadians express their patriotism in the grocery aisles, seeing their consumer habits as political choices, the food co-op’s moment may have truly come. “Many Canadians talk about the need for greater food sovereignty or security,” Steinman says, “without realizing that they could actually have ownership of the system.” 

Born and raised in Toronto, Steinman was oblivious to the co-op concept – which was not even mentioned in the bachelor of commerce degree he did at the University of Guelph – until he moved to British Columbia in the early 2000s to work in the wine industry. On a stop in Nelson, a former mining town in the Selkirk Mountains, he found himself listening with interest to the local radio station. When he learned that it was run as a co-op, he began volunteering. Soon he was hosting the morning news show. Then he discovered that his favourite grocery store in town was also member-owned; he paid his $50 and joined the Kootenay Co-op. Before long, Steinman had dropped his wine plans and committed himself to Nelson’s vibrant cooperative economy.

Read more from our collective economy series

What appealed to Steinman about the Kootenay Co-op is the most distinctive feature of co-ops generally: their ability to reflect the needs and priorities of their customers, who are also their owners. If affordability is an issue, a co-op may vote – and many do – to apply all profits above a certain threshold to lowering prices. If business is booming and demand growing, it may opt to expand. If national sovereignty is under threat, it may elect to reconsider its suppliers. 

So why have food co-ops not made bigger inroads into the Canadian food economy? Many living in central Canada barely have access to them (Toronto, for instance, has only two), while Western Canadians may take them for granted, forgetting that the iconic red Co-op brand in fact belongs to Federated Co-operatives Limited, the largest non-financial co-op in Canada, which operates gas stations, car washes and liquor, food and convenience stores. And misconceptions about co-ops abound. For many, the term suggests added expense and effort, or a sense that they are buying into something ideological, less profit-driven and therefore inefficient. 

But consider the Swiss example. In the business-friendly banking capital of the world, 80% of the grocery market is controlled by two co-ops: Coop and Migros, respectively the 34th and 41st largest retailers in the world, according to Deloitte’s most recent ranking. Both have more than two million members – membership is free to all Swiss citizens – and play a significant and progressive role in Swiss life. It was thanks in large part to Migros that Swiss women earned the right to vote federally in 1971 – the co-op was the campaign’s largest corporate backer, advertising its support on its shopping bags – and it has, since 1957, contributed 1% of its turnover to cultural and social projects. Both Migros and Coop have been pioneers in launching organic product lines and discontinuing the use of plastic bags. 

Now everyone is talking about buying Canadian, but we’ve been having that conversation for eons.

— Daniel Brunette, director of external affairs, Co-operatives and Mutuals Canada

As in Switzerland, the majority of Canada’s food co-ops grew out of agricultural co-ops: established by dairy producers in the late 19th century and Western grain farmers in the early 20th century. Then there was the more recent wave, inspired by the “Small is beautiful” economic and natural food movements of the 1970s, to which the Kootenay Co-op belongs. Frustrated by the high prices and limited selection of corporate chains, a small group of Nelson locals formed a buyers’ club, purchasing bulk staples with an emphasis on local and unprocessed foods. Today, the Kootenay Co-op, which operates out of a building on Nelson’s main drag, has more than 16,000 members and does roughly $28 million in sales annually, making it Canada’s largest independent natural foods co-op. 

Beyond providing a grocery supply aligned with its membership’s values – fair labour practices, organic, Canadian – Steinman says the co-op has served as an incubator for the local food system. The soft winter wheat used in the pumpkin butter tarts he just baked, he tells me, came from the nearby Creston Valley; the grain farmers in that region had been growing for export and the mass market until the co-op approached them and offered a local customer base. Likewise, the co-op provides grants and donations to local producers and supports local cultural initiatives; overall, Steinman says, it strengthens the local economy in a way that outlives electoral cycles. 

In a time of exceptional geopolitical and economic volatility, the timing does seem ripe. “Now everyone is talking about buying Canadian,” says Daniel Brunette, director of external affairs for Co-operatives and Mutuals Canada, “but we’ve been having that conversation for eons. The biggest hurdle to co-ops is the perception that they’re some kind of marginal alternative. They’re not. They’re a very well-established practice in this country. They happen whenever people come together around a common need.”

Naomi Buck is a Toronto-based writer.

The post Has the food co-op’s moment finally arrived? appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Rather than throw in the towel, they pooled their resources, bought the leftover workout machines, rented a cheaper building on the edge of town, and opened the Kincardine Ladies Fitness Co-operative. It’s still going strong today.

Throughout history, co-ops have filled such voids: picking up where governments or companies or services have left off. But there’s a growing sense that, at this moment, co-ops could and should be playing a much more active role in the global economy. The United Nations declared 2025 the International Year of Cooperatives, highlighting the potential of cooperatives to help deliver on its largely unfulfilled Sustainable Development Goals as the clock ticks down to 2030. 

Some 12% of humanity today belongs to a co-op and the numbers are growing, according to the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA), the Brussels-based body established in 1895 to represent cooperatives the world over. In an era of rising wealth disparity, autocracy and geopolitical instability, the values at the root of the cooperative model – democratic, community-based, fundamentally decent – would seem to be in short supply and high demand.

Democratizing prosperity

The cooperative movement traces its roots to the northern English town of Rochdale where, in 1844, a group of weavers who had been marginalized by the industrial revolution banded together to establish a shop that sold basic foodstuffs at affordable prices. Customers were also part owners; they had a say in the shop’s management and shared in the profits that eventually flowed. 

At roughly the same time, Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen, the mayor of a small town in the German Rheinland, set up what would become the world’s first credit union – a financial cooperative – to offer indebted farmers reasonable loans. The rejection of self-interested, far-away market forces, investment in community and insistence on democratic decision-making remain at the core of the cooperative identity. 

Today, co-ops are often hidden in plain sight; the Associated Press, Best Western Hotels and Ocean Spray are all cooperative fixtures in their respective industries. And contrary to common conception, they often operate for profit: 42% of Canadian co-ops fall into this category. The model has leant stability to many agricultural sectors, from French wine to Italian parmesan to Canadian dairy, and has long protected the interests of certain worker groups, from seafood producers in Alaska to construction workers in Kerala, India. But it is the role cooperatives are playing in innovating and expanding vital sectors like affordable housing and renewable energy that has sparked renewed interest. 

Cooperatives emerged during the golden age of traditional capitalism. What we’re seeing now feels like the end stage of capitalism. And I think co-ops may be the next big story.

— Jeroen Douglas, director general, International Cooperative Alliance 

Last year, Keir Starmer’s Labour government in Britain announced plans to double the size of the country’s cooperative economy, in large part to stimulate growth in community-owned renewable-energy projects and to help the country reach its goal of a clean power grid by 2030. Decentralized technologies like wind and solar photovoltaic power are ideal vehicles for community ownership, allowing citizens to literally buy in to clean energy production. In 2000, when Denmark launched what was, at the time, the world’s largest offshore wind farm project, the government invited Danish citizens to participate; the Middelgrunden Wind Turbine Cooperative raised half of the project’s construction costs and continues to own half of the project. Wind energy in Denmark – now the source of most of the country’s electricity – has been built on the cooperative model; since 2009, Danish law has mandated that 20% of all new projects be community-owned. 

Read more about the collective economy

Has the food co-op’s moment finally arrived?

Cooperative housing is making a comeback

What Canada can learn from co-op power in the rural United States

How credit unions are pushing a just energy transition

“The beauty of renewable energy is that you can make your own,” says Chris Caners, general manager of SolarShare, which owns and operates more than 50 solar installations across Ontario. “It’s the democratization of energy, and it goes hand in hand with the democratization of business.” Since its founding in 2010, SolarShare has grown to more than 2,000 members, who have collectively invested some $80 million through solar bonds; by installed capacity, it is now Canada’s largest renewable-energy co-op. 

Co-ops will also be part of the solution to the affordable housing crisis. Across major Canadian cities, rents in cooperative housing are on average 33% lower than private-sector market units. The Canadian government recently announced a $1.5-billion Cooperative Housing Development Program, which is providing loans and contributions to new and existing housing co-ops (see “Housing” story, page 33). 

A new era for the co-op economy

Despite such advances, cooperative advocates lament an ongoing lack of support for the model. Daniel Brunette, director of external affairs for Co-operatives and Mutuals Canada, says this is a matter of political will. He cites Quebec, home of Canada’s largest cooperative financial services group, Desjardins, as one of the world’s most favourable jurisdictions for co-ops, where financing and insurance are readily available and cooperative associations receive consistent government support.

“In the 1970s, the provincial government really wanted to empower communities and the social economy generally,” Brunette says on the phone from Gatineau. It is no coincidence that 45% of Canada’s co-ops are located in Quebec – nor that several of the world’s most established cooperative cultures are to be found in similarly distinct societies, like Mondragon in the Basque Country of Spain and Italy’s Emilia-Romagna.

Many consider the untapped potential of the cooperative as a function of its image problem. “The Eastern Bloc regimes really soiled the concept of collective enterprise,” Brunette says, referring to a sense that co-ops are inefficient, slow-moving and ideologically encumbered. “When you say ‘co-op,’ many Canadians think of the three Hs: hay, housing and health food.” The attitude is not limited to Canada. At a recent conference in Britain, cooperative business adviser Alex Bird said he’s constantly fighting the perception that “co-ops are for people with stripy jumpers and sandals, not for normal people.”

Many consider the untapped potential of the cooperative as a function of its image problem. But those who harbour such attitudes may be left in the dust.

But those who harbour such attitudes may be left in the dust. In 2022, the United Arab Emirates passed a law designed to promote growth of the cooperative economy from 1% to 5% of its national non-oil gross domestic product, encouraging its expansion into non-traditional sectors including healthcare, education and the digital economy. Authority over cooperative regulation passed from the ministry of social affairs to the ministry of the economy in a bid to stimulate a more commercial approach: among other provisions, the law allows cooperatives to list and trade their shares on the country’s financial markets. Since its passing, the country’s cooperative sector has seen 8% growth. 

Meanwhile on the global stage, the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) has convened a group of executives representing the world’s 50 largest cooperatives – the CM50 – which will attend the UN World Summit for Social Development this November in Doha. “We will present ourselves as the obvious partner to the UN,” ICA director general Jeroen Douglas says, noting that only 17% of the targets of the Sustainable Development Goals have been met.

“Cooperatives emerged during the golden age of traditional capitalism,” Douglas says on the phone from his garden cottage in the Dutch city of Nijmegen. “What we’re seeing now feels like the end stage of capitalism. And I think co-ops may be the next big story.” 

Naomi Buck is a Toronto-based writer.

The post The return of the collective economy appeared first on Corporate Knights.