John Restakis

John Restakis: Historically, cooperatives have been primarily focused around providing support and service to the members. Cooperatives, which are basically a democratic and collective form of enterprise where members have control rights and democratically direct the operations of the co-op, have been the primary stakeholders in any given co-op – whether it’s a consumer co-op, or a credit union, or a worker co-op. That has been the traditional form of cooperatives for a long time now. Primarily, the co-op is in the service of its immediate members. That has changed over the last 15 years or so, particularly in the field of the provision of social care.

Social co-ops emerged in the late 70s in Italy as a response to a market failure within public services in Italy. Groups of families or users of social services, primarily originally from within a community of people with disabilities, decided to organize cooperatives as a better way of designing and providing services to themselves. This is a very different model from the state-delivered services to these people. What was really fascinating about the social co-ops was that, although they had members, their mission was not only to serve the members but also to provide service to the broader community. And so, they were communitarian, community service organizations that had a membership base of primary users of that service, whether it was healthcare, or help for people with drug addictions, or whatever.

These social co-ops have now exploded in Italy. I think they have taken over, in a sense, the provision of social care services in many communities under contracts to local municipalities. In the city of Bologna, for example, over 87% of the social services provided in that city are provided through contract with social co-ops. These are democratically run organizations, which is a very different model, much more participatory, and a much more engaged model of designing social care than the traditional state delivered services. The idea of co-ops as being primarily of interest in serving their own immediate membership has been expanded to include a mandate for the provision of service to the community as a whole.

This is an expansion of this notion of cooperatives into a more commons-based kind of mission, which overlaps with the philosophy and values of commons movement. The difference, however, is that the structure of social co-ops is still very much around control rights, in other words, members have rights of control and decision-making within how that organization operates. And it is an incorporated legal structure that has formal recognition by the legislation of government of the state, and it has the power, through this incorporated power, to negotiate with and contract with government for the provision of these public services. One of the real strengths of the cooperative form is that it not only provides a democratic structure for the enterprise – be it a commercial or social enterprise – but it also has a legal form that allows it to enter into contract and negotiate legal agreements with the state for the provision of public services. This model of co-op for social care has been growing in Europe. In Québec they’re called Solidarity co-ops, and they are generating an increasing portion of market share for the provision of services like home care and healthcare, and it’s also growing in Europe.

So, the social economy, meaning organizations that have a mutual aim in their purpose, based on the principles of reciprocity, collective benefit, social benefit, is emerging as an important player for the design and delivery of public services. This, too, is in reaction to the failure of the public market for provision of services like affordable housing or health care or education services. This is a crisis in the role of the state as a provider of public services. So the question has emerged: what happens when the state fails to provide or fulfill its mandate as a provider or steward of public goods and services, and what’s the role of civil society and the social economy in response? Social co-ops have been part of this tide of reaction and reinvention, in terms of civic solutions to what were previously state-designed and delivered public goods and services. So I’ll leave it at that for the moment, but it’s just an indicator of the very interesting ways in which the co-op form is being reimagined and reinvented to respond to this crisis of public services and the changing role of the state.

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Photo by OiMax

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Jay Walljasper: Welcome to everyday life in Quebec — Canada’s second largest province with 8.2 million people. Here:

• Business owners gather at an elegant Montreal event center to celebrate the 20th anniversary of a large-scale economic partnership. The former chief of Quebec’s largest bank is the guest of honor.

• Sidewalks bustle with people walking in and out of homes, offices, bank, pharmacy, workout studio, and coffee shop at Montreal’s Technopole Angus — a development that already sports 56 business with 2,500 employees and will eventually encompass a million-square-feet of real estate.

• Morning-shift workers unload barrels of paper onto conveyor belts emptying into giant shredding machines on the shop floor of Recyclage Vanier, a Quebec City firm specializing in secure disposal of confidential documents.

• A line snakes down the street for a matinee at the Cinema Beaubien, an art deco movie house in a quiet Montreal neighborhood. Taxis line up across the street waiting for customers who will soon be getting out of the early show.

• Leonard Cohen’s gravelly voice rings through the taproom at La Barberie Brewery, located near Quebec City’s business district. Their Belgian-style saisons and bestselling blackberry blanc beers are enjoyed throughout the province. A few blocks away, an 18th century monastery inside Quebec City’s historic walls has recently opened its doors as a hotel and spa.

Yet these scenes of economic activity are different in a notable way from similar ones occurring throughout North America.

Each enterprise involves a cooperative or non-profit organization — which together make up 8-10 percent of the province’s GDP. More than 7,000 of these “social economy” enterprises ring up $17 billion in annual sales and hold $40 billion in assets (Canadian dollars). They account for about 215,000 jobs across Quebec.

Quebec’s social economy (also translated as “solidarity economy”) extends far beyond the province’s two major cities, and includes manufacturing, agricultural cooperatives, daycare centers, homecare services, affordable housing, social service initiatives, food co-ops, ecotourism, arts programs, public markets, media, and funeral homes. The capital that fuels all this economic activity comes from union pension funds, nonprofit loan funds, credit unions, government investment, and philanthropy.

Photo by SuperSamPhotography via Foter.com

“We always say the social economy is simply the formalization of the commons,” says Nancy Neamtan, co-founder of Chantier de l’Economie Sociale, a network of social economy organizations whose anniversary banquet is described above. “It’s social ownership, the goal of which is a sustainable, democratic economy with a market — instead of a market economy. Our mission is building a broader vision of what the economy actually is.”

“When Chantier started out, a lot of people said it wouldn’t work. We had unions, women’s organizations, green groups, and many thought it was too diverse,” Neamtan says. “But it does work.” Evidence for her assertion is visible all around — Chantier’s office is tucked into a six-story building that takes up most of a city block, all of which is filled with social economy organizations.

Not all of these social businesses are new — some of the credit unions, cooperatives, and union pension funds go back a hundred years. “But they were largely invisible to many people until the name social economy became popular,” Neamtan adds.

Quebec’s social economy ranges from a video game creator’s cooperative to a social integration program for Haitian immigrants to a co-op grocery in a remote town on the Gaspe peninsula to a network of 8,000 home healthcare workers, half of whom were on welfare before being trained for the field. Here are more examples showing the range of these enterprises:

Groupe Paradoxe

Chantier de l’Economie Sociale’s 20th anniversary celebration was staged in a renovated church run by Groupe Paradoxe, which teaches at-risk young people job skills in the booming audio-visual presentation, events, and meetings industries.

Desjardins Group

The banker honored for his work at Chantier’s banquet was former president of the Desjardins credit union, founded in 1900 and today the province’s largest financial institution.

The Nitaskinam Cooperative

Also on hand at the banquet was Nitaskinam, an Inuit-run cooperative which designs clothing inspired by art of the Atikamekw people, which has doubled from three to six members in its first year.

“The social economy is our traditional economic model and fits with our values,” explains co-founder Karine Awashish, who is also an economic development official of this tribal nation. “I see good opportunities for us to create new social economy jobs in forestry, health services, tourism, arts festivals, and youth projects.”

UTILE Student Housing Cooperative

One of the youngest entrepreneurs at the banquet, Laurent Levesque, helped launch a student housing development organization with other activists involved in the headline-grabbing 2012 Quebec Student Strike, collaborating with Chantier de l’économie Trust.

“Students pay 70-80 percent more in rent on average,” Levesque says, adding that this “creates an inflationary spiral” that hurts not just them, but their low-income neighbors. With start-up capital from the Concordia Student Union and further funding from social economy partners like Desjardins and the province of Quebec, UTILE is set to break ground on apartments for 160 students.

Technopole Angus

It’s no coincidence that that the Desjardins credit union has a branch in the new Technopole Angus sustainable urban village, which brings opportunities to a working class neighborhood that was rocked when the Canadian Pacific Railway shuttered its machine shops in 1992. A number of historic brick structures were repurposed, and new eco-friendly buildings constructed, with more planned for the project’s phase II. The community will eventually include 500 affordable housing units, 450,000 square-feet of office space, 20 local shops, four public squares, a bike-pedestrian main street, and a one-acre urban farm growing organic produce.

Recylage Vanier

A nonprofit organization started 30 years ago by two out-of-work men who realized the recycling industry could benefit the disadvantaged, as well as the earth, Recylage Vanier offers training for people struggling to find work because of low job skills, recent immigration, substance abuse, mental illness, disability, or other challenges. Jobseekers arrive here for a 24-week program that emphasizes work readiness and life skills as well as on-the-job experience. Most are long-term unemployed, who have been sent by the Quebec employment bureau and social service groups.

“They have to get along with a boss, get along with colleagues, master simple tasks and then take on new ones with more responsibility, all the way up to driving a forklift,” says Nicolas Reeves, one of Vanier’s managers. For the final four weeks, they split their time between the recycling plant and job hunting with the help of staff counselors. About 85 percent of graduates find work, and 10 percent seek further education, according to Reeves. Recylage Vanier faces stiff competition from two private companies in the field, so clients who value the organization’s mission are important to their success — including the province of Quebec, which provides about half their business.

Photo by Liboiron via Foter.com

Cinema Beaubien

This is nonprofit neighborhood movie house explicitly proclaims its mission to “defend the primacy of persons and labor over capital in the distribution of its surpluses and incomes.”

The cinema’s importance as a community gathering spot can be witnessed in the long lines at the ticket booth, where patrons merrily chat with one another rather than staring at their phones. Taxis wait across the streets to whisk moviegoers to their next destination, about half of which are from the Taxi Co-op Montreal. (In Quebec City, all taxi drivers belong to a cooperative.)

La Barberie Cooperative Microbrewery

Operating as a worker cooperative for the past 20 years explains the success of this brewery and brewpub, says general manager Jean-Francois Genest, who joined La Barberie three years ago after running his family’s bookstore and later converting another bookstore into a cooperative.

“The co-op is a good plan to keep a place going,” Emilie DuMais, who’s tended bar here for eight years, says. “Sharing the profits means you attract the best workers. For our part, we try to make their jobs as interesting as possible, offer more holidays and higher pay. You have much more ambition working for yourself than working for someone else.”

Le Monastere des Augustines

A convent dating back to 1700s in the heart of Quebec City’s walled city has just opened as an elegantly renovated hotel, spa, museum, and conference center. It is organized as a nonprofit in accordance with the social mission of nuns still living there to promote holistic health and spiritual renewal. Besides tourists, spa patrons, and participants in corporate meetings, guests also include activist groups holding retreats and health care workers seeking a reprieve from the stress of their jobs.

RISQ

In 1997, Chantier created RISQ (Reseau d’Investissement Social du Quebec), which has invested $25 million in technical aid and capital for social economy businesses, resulting in 1,786 new jobs, 5,119 jobs maintained, and job training for 1,527 marginalized workers across Quebec, according to their calculations. RISQ financial analyst Nathalie Villemure, who worked for many years in private banking, notes that they see fewer defaults than commercial lenders: “These people have a cause bigger than themselves, so they work harder and we help them find solutions.”

Fiducie

In 2007, Chantier launched Fiducie, a $50 million “patient capital” (or slow money) fund that provides long-term, non-guaranteed loans of $50,000-1.5 million to promising cooperatives and non-profits with less than 200 employees. “We don’t expect to see anything in repayment for 15 years,” says General Manager Jacques Charest. Thirty million of the investment came from union pension funds with the rest from the federal and provincial governments.

What We Can Learn from Quebec’s Social Economy

While Quebec possesses a distinct culture and history, the emergence of a strong social economy across the province provides practical lessons for other places.

Recognize the Social Economy When You See It

Cooperatives and nonprofit initiatives already exist throughout the U.S. and most other countries, so the first step is seeing, naming, and claiming the social economy as part of the commons we all share.

Look Widely for Inspiration and Ideas

Neamtan points out that the American tradition of community organizing was a big influence on their early work, especially community development corporations (CDCs) that arose to tackle problems of disinvestment in urban neighborhoods.

The Dudley Street Initiative, which transformed a low-income community in the Roxbury district of Boston, was a particular inspiration for her. The proliferation of cooperatives in the Basque and Catalonian regions of Spain provided another model for bottom-up economic development.

Seek Solidarity

Social economy initiatives benefit from the longstanding sense of solidarity in Quebec, where French speakers were discriminated against and their local economy dominated by English-speaking Canadians, Americans, and English. A analogous situation can be found among racial and social minorities, and in rural and deindustrialized regions where economic power is wielded from outside.

Tap the Power of Government

Government agencies have been a partners and funders in many projects through the years. Social economy initiatives often arose even when conservative politicians were slashing government programs to provide a more humane alternative to strictly market-oriented development. Legislation passed by the left-center Parti Quebecois in 1997 gave the social economy movement a big boost by offering local governments more leeway in supporting community and cooperative efforts to create jobs and promote entrepreneurship.

Partner with Unions

“The labor movement boosted the social economy by making the choice in the 1980s not to just negotiate contracts but to create jobs and support civic enterprises,” explains Neamtan, which led to the creation of the landmark Quebec Solidarity Fund, an $11-billion-dollar pension fund, of which 65 percent is invested in small- and medium-sized Quebec-owned businesses.

Partner with Faith Organizations

Historically, the Catholic church controlled many aspects of life in the province, and priests enthusiastically promoted cooperatives and non-profit institutions as models of the church’s social teaching.

By the end of the 20th century when the church’s influence waned in the face of increasing secularization, social economy organizations found numerous opportunities to set up shop in closed churches and convents. The church remains an ally, Neamtan notes, “especially now that Pope Francis talks all the time about the solidarity economy.”

Header photo by szeke via Foter.com 

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“In Quebec cities, the church is the landmark,” historian Paul Mackey says. “In Europe you have castles — here, we’ve built churches.”

From the arrival of the first French settlers in the 1600s to the last half of the 20th century, the Catholic Church and the rest of society in Quebec were tightly intertwined in a way difficult to imagine in the rest of North America. Hospitals and schools were church-run, and priests played a key role in political and family life in the province.

“Since many people finished school in grade nine, the priests, who were more educated, became social and political leaders,” Mackey says.

St.Gabriel’s Church of Scotland in Old Montreal 1889. Photo by Philippe Du Berger via Flickr

A wave of nationalization and secularization in the 1960s, known as the Quiet Revolution, upended that dynamic almost overnight. “This was also the time of the birth control pill and the Second Vatican Council which called for the church to be more open to the world,” Mackey says. “At the same time there was a political transition in Quebec, which put hospitals and schools in the hands of the state, and made higher education available to more people.”

As a result, church attendance plummeted, from more than 80 percent in the mid-1960s to nine percent in 2012, according to a study by University of Ottawa researcher Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme. Data from the Quebec Religious Heritage Council shows that between 2003 and 2016, one in six Quebec churches closed its doors. By the late 20th century, many of the buildings had fallen into abandon and disrepair.

“Two hundred and thirty-three churches still belong to us, but since 1980 we’ve had to sell 42,” says Rémy Gagnon, head of the department of buildings and religious heritage at the Quebec City regional diocese, the second largest in the province. “You can see the rhythm that we’re talking about.”

But now, with the support of municipal governments, residents, and religious leaders, some of these centuries-old churches are in the process of being transformed into community hubs and cultural centers. And it’s not just Catholic churches. Anglican and other Protestant churches are also changing, Mackey says, pointing to St. Michael’s Anglican Church, now a library, and the former Lévis Anglican Church, now a concert hall appropriately baptized L’Anglicane. Mackey has observed several innovative church conversions, often to libraries or concert halls.

“I know of one church in Shawinigan [between Montreal and Quebec City] that was turned into a bar called The Confessional,” he recalls. “Unfortunately, it didn’t last very long.”

Of Quebec City’s four “giant” churches, two — Saint-Jean-Baptiste and Saint-Charles — have closed in the past ten years. A third, the Quebec Basilica, remains open, but a nearby Augustinian convent has become a health resort. The fourth, Saint-Roch, still holds regular masses. However, it has rented out spaces which once held reliquaries, to local fashion designers and to a nonprofit that operates a communal food fridge. Another vast church, Saint-Esprit, which closed in 2000, now houses the Quebec School of Circus Arts.

Citizens Take Charge on Transforming Church Buildings

Conserving the church as a gathering place is a top priority for Edouard Blanchet, coordinator of Espaces d’Initiatives, a citizens’ group working on the transformation of Saint-Charles. That building, in the heart of the working-class neighborhood of Limoilou, has sat empty since its closure in 2012.

Blanchet, 29, talks with overflowing enthusiasm of plans to turn the church into a coworking space with a café, a neighborhood history exhibit, a daycare, and a small public garden with a play area.

“There is a lot of concrete in this neighborhood; it traps heat,” Blanchet says. “The garden will be amazing in the summer.”

Sunset in Limoilou. Photo by Caroline Gagné via Flickr. 

In summer 2016, Blanchet and his colleagues organized a series of concerts and set up a sidewalk café and a small edible herb garden in front of the church, as a precursor to their plans for the interior. Their plans already have the support of the parish priest, who holds the keys.

“We want to make the place profitable, but keep it open for everyone,” he says. “This building was maintained for decades by the nickels and dimes of people’s offerings, and it has to continue to belong to them.”

Blanchet estimates that in two years, the building inspection, the technical plan, and the business plan needed to get the center running will be complete. He hopes the multi-purpose center will be a unifying force for his neighborhood, which is torn between its working-class roots and a wave of recent gentrification.

“We want it to be intercultural, intergenerational, and inter-class,” Blanchet says.

Through his multifaceted business, he wants to maintain the church and create opportunities for neighbors to meet. Blanchet is hoping to receive city funding and crowdfund more extensively once his business plan is complete.

“These buildings have lost their initial purpose, but we can’t lose them,” Blanchet says, adding, “Just doing this is an act of faith — but you’ve got to believe.”

Preserving the space also matters to the Monastère des Augustines in Old Quebec, which was founded in 1639 and housed more than 200 nuns at its peak. As recently as 1958, a new wing wasbuilt onto the vast structure adjacent to the Hôtel-Dieu hospital, the oldest operational hospital in North America. Now, only 11 nuns and a postulant live on the site. Excluding the postulant, only one nun is under 40 and most are over 80. As the world of skilled professions opened up to women, becoming a cloistered nun, once the only way to work as a nurse or teacher, lost its appeal, explains museum guide Amélie Nadeau. “As early as the 1970s, the nuns were contemplating what to do with all this space,” says Nadeau.

The remaining nuns live in one wing of the monastery; the rest was ceded to a trust and now houses two museums, a historic chapel, meeting and concert spaces, a restaurant with an emphasis on local food, and a health retreat. Nuns’ cells have become small but cozy hotel rooms. It opened in 2015 after an investment of $41 million, a combined investment by the Canadian government, Quebec’s provincial government, Quebec City and the Augustine order.

An inside view of Monastère des Augustines. Photo by Museomix Quebec via Flickr. 

“The sisters wanted the monastery to be a public place, to mark their legacy of serving the public, and to have a mission to sustain people’s health, because they were nursing sisters,” says project manager Denis Robitaille.

Guests stay for 3 to 14 days, wandering the vast, serene halls, attending daily yoga sessions, feasting on healthy, local fare, and going to the occasional concerts, which are open to the public.

“For the past 20 or 30 years in Canada, people have been dealing with stress, anxiety, overwork, and over-connection,” says Nadeau. “People come here to learn how to breathe, how to meditate, how to feed themselves. Although we’re not a religious retreat, the chapel is open for people to pray or sit in silence. We want people to slow down, and everyone does that differently.”

From Church to School of Circus Arts

Slowing down, however, is not part of the plan for the Église St-Esprit, now the Quebec School of Circus Arts. The church closed in 2000 and reopened as a circus school in 2003. Several hundred students, from kindergarteners attending after-school programs to professionals in their 20s, learn the finer points of clowning, juggling, dance and trapeze artistry. Half of the older students come from outside Canada. Dozens of schoolchildren attend after-school programs that mix tutoring in school subjects with circus arts. The school’s annual “circus days” festival draws thousands.

Église St-Esprit, which now houses the Quebec School of Circus Arts. Photo by Ruby Irene Pratka/Shareable

“We needed a new building, and the bishop wanted to let this church go,” explains the school’s director, Yves Neveu, whose office is in the former baptistery. “I took a look inside and said, ‘You can’t close this beautiful place.'”

Where the organ once sat, aspiring acrobats stretch on padded mats. A juggling class is underway in the old wedding chapel and trapeze artists fly above the altar. Anyone can come and watch the students practice. “Every now and then, someone will poke their head into the wedding chapel and say, ‘I got married here.'” says Neveu.

Gagnon, the diocese representative, says he’s “very proud” to see the century-old church converted into a school.

“We hired an architect, and worked with the church to remove all the relics and things like that; we installed the supports for the trapezes, but a lot of things have been conserved,” says Neveu, pointing out several frescoes of saints along the walls. “We needed depth in a building, and this gives us that. The walls inspire us, and the fact that it has some history makes the students treat the place with more respect.”

Dominique Drolet wants to use that history to breathe new life into St-Jean-Baptiste Church. The vast grey stone church at the center of the Faubourg-St-Jean-Baptiste neighborhood, to which it gave its name, closed in 2015. Drolet and her neighbors are working on plans to transform the church into a genealogy center.

“Traditionally, the church was the keeper of the archives,” she says. “We won’t have the paper archives here, but we will have the virtual archives. There will be permanent exhibitions and school trips, and a training center for traditional arts as well.”

“The city financed a feasibility study and told us it would be very positive for tourists, not to mention locals,” says Drolet, who gave tours of the church when it was open. “Families from around Quebec and the United States would come here year after year to see the church where their great-grandparents were baptized. They were very disappointed to see it closed.”

Profitability is a major challenge for all of these ventures, especially considering their vast, aging buildings. At its closure, St-Jean-Baptiste was expected to need over $10 million in repairs.

“The church is in good shape now, but we can’t expect it to remain that way for 15 years,” says Drolet. She and her fellow volunteers are raising money through a crowdfunding program and a partnership with a local brewery, which gives the project a percentage of sales.

“Whether you’re a believer or not, the church is still a meeting place,” Drolet says. “It’s the heart of the neighborhood, and we’re going to give it back that role.”

Header image of Église St-Esprit, which now is home to the Quebec School of Circus Arts, by Ruby Irene Pratka/Shareable

Cross-posted from Shareable.

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