Mr. Philip Hosford:

First, we are totally in favour of social finance.

Regulation and democratic control, from our point of view, are two very different things. There has been a slight backlash in that there is a lot more regulation of the credit unions now. We welcome regulation, as long as it is proportionate and does not become excessive. There has been much talk about democratic control. To give the committee some context here, we have 16,000 members but only 160 turned up to our annual general meeting last year. In essence, only 1% of our membership turned up to vote. We are struggling with democratic control ourselves. There is no question that the draft Bill before us takes away democratic control because directors can remain in place for nine years. Even after that, they can still be involved in the credit union in other roles, even if they are not elected members of the board.

On the issue of restructuring, the reason the credit unions have survived so well in recent years is that we are all independent, limited companies. That is what has saved us. It would be ironic then, if the number of companies was to be reduced to a very small few because that would, inherently, increase the risk for those companies. However, restructuring is required. Our view is that disorderly restructuring could cause difficulties. The Credit Union Restructuring Board, ReBo, and the provisions being set up there will facilitate orderly restructuring, which will provide the mechanisms for the credit union movement to be more sustainable into the future.