In reality, the ―co-operative boom‖ was a deeply uneven and contradictory period of volatility, transition, and innovation. Job growth from 2002 to 2006 still varied widely from sector to sector. At the bottom of the rung is the once-explosive worker co-operative sector. Decimated by the forestry crisis and ―diluted‖ by worker shareholder and
solidarity co-operative incorporations, it posted a net loss of one percent. In the mid-range, at 16-17 percent, were the producer and consumer co-operative sectors. Leading the field in this period were the solidarity co-operatives, with a dramatic 21 percent jump, and the worker shareholder co-operatives, with a 25 percent gain in jobs created
(Clement, 2009). Through these ups and downs over the last three decades, the very structure of co-operation in Québec has been transformed. Rather than treat this as a boom period for co-operation, it makes more sense to understand this as a series of sector-specific booms, fuelled by frenetic activity in research, innovation, and
organization. It was centred on the worker co-operative, worker-shareholder co-operative, and solidarity co-operative sectors—in that order, although with considerable overlap.
These growth poles of the renewed co-operative movement were driven by systematic innovation dissemination mechanisms such as the CDR network. The roll out of these models was also strategic. The systematic conversion of ambulance services to worker operatives was union-led. The ambulance sector, which didn‘t feature a single
operative at the outset of this period, included 700 unionized employees in five co-operatives by 1999. They held the dominant market position in seven administrative regions (Girard, 1999). Home-care services were targeted for delivery by solidarity co-operatives. Like funeral co-operatives, launched to counter multinational incursion into the Québec market, home care was also rolled out as part of a concerted sector
development strategy. These three target sectors alone account for a considerable share of new co-operative development activity in this period. Their rapid rise to dominant market positions had powerful promotion effects for co-operative innovation in Québec. Indeed, the tone of discussions with interview subjects in Québec was underwritten by a
consistently striking tone of pride and confidence in the movement‘s momentum.
5.5.2 Renewal
The Québec co-operative ―boom‖ was more than a simple, quantitative growth spurt which made the already existing co-operative sector larger. It also represented the regeneration of the co-operative movement within a transformed co-operative field. This renewal process led to entirely new sectors, and co-operative models. It also forced a radical reappraisal of attitudes toward the importance of sector, state, and civil society involvements in development activity. Through this field transformation, the previously dominated ―new co-ops‖ of the third wave gained the necessary traction to take off as engines of job growth, regional development, and the delivery of key proximity services.
Far from the governing disinterest in development characteristic of the CCQ ―old guard‖
that dominated in the seventies (Lévesque, 1990), development now emerged as a legitimate, and leading, concern of the reconstituted new co-operative movement. The CCQ even assumed management of the province‘s major development infrastructure, the network of eleven CDRs. This shift from rejecting the role of initiating or promoting new co-operatives to aggressively embracing a lead role was a fundamental shift in identity and priorities. It was a major victory for the new co-ops, their social movement allies, and the ―partnership state.‖ The CCQ had moved a long distance in a very short period.
Under the statist regime of economic nationalism in the late seventies, it had been a traditional lobby group and a reluctant development partner. By the nineties, it was an
increasingly reflexive, modernizing, and developmental movement. It had become a full partner in what Vaillancourt (2009) has described as the ―co-construction of public policy‖ within the span of two decades. The eighties was the turn-around decade.
Something very fundamental had changed about co-operative development in Québec during this period. The Québec development system is today the envy of co-operators across North America.
What are the foundations and dynamics of this rapid and dramatic period of social innovation? On the one hand, the Old Social Economy co-operatives were organized hierarchically, under the umbrella of the CCQ and sectoral federations, a template drawn from the industrial, Fordist model of organization. New co-ops were marginalized within this fraternity, ―old co-ops‖ dominated,47 and clear boundaries were established between co-operatives and other social movements or non-profit organizations (NPOs). They might share values and objectives but did not use the co-operative legal model and were therefore ―outsiders‖ to leaders of the co-operative establishment. On the other hand, the New Social Economy, which began to emerge in the eighties, was characterized by a post-Fordist network model in which ―new co-ops,‖ new constituencies, and new alliances were part of a wider associative dynamic and innovation system that actively supported the development of new co-operatives. In this alliance, supportive social movements and NPOs that shared the values of the ―social economy‖ were embraced in an effort to build a wider, stronger, and development-focused movement for democratic economic action. This split was an evolution of the seventies conflict between the fraternity of ―old co-ops‖ and the insurgency of the ―new co-ops.‖ By the late nineties, it would evolve into a rivalry for leadership of the co-operative movement—between the limited aims of the co-operative sector‘s CQCM (formerly the CCQ) and the Chantier de l’économie sociale, which also included non-profits and social movement organizations in a wider network with a much bolder developmental mission. This was largely a battle between the agrarian-financial, anti-statist, and conservative Old Social Economy and the
47 As Lévesque (1990) documents, ―in 1983, the 15-member administrative council (of the CCQ) included seven representatives from the insurance sector and four from the savings and credit sector, ‗comprising a 74 percent representation coming from the financial sector‘‖ (p. 120).
more urban, activist, and left-leaning ranks of the New Social Economy. But the new regime of democratic partnership was fundamental to co-operative regeneration in this period.