In the tradition of their founders, co-operative members believe in the ethical values of honesty, openness, social responsibility and caring for others.

Co-operative principle 7 - Co-operatives work for the sustainable development of their communities through policies approved by their members.

MacPherson

In Port Clements we have the public library (which is a shared space with our Elementary school), a senior’s room, a community kitchen, Municipal Offices and Council Chambers, a community gym and a Daycare center as well as the Elementary school under one roof.

Mushynsky

Culture is what will really govern the success of your spaces but process must be there to back it up.

Fulcher

When you consider that around 11% of Americans are on anti-depressants, you know the struggle to maintain the illusion of mental health is gigantic. Interesting poetic irony on this topic: Prozac dumped in the water supply is increasing the risk of extinction for freshwater mussels.

Foon

Soft skills are becoming increasingly important...being able to adapt, be flexible, work with a range of people in a range of settings...whether physical or virtual.

Bennell

Mental health is inextricably linked with the land, and with being on the land. The land is not only the foundation of mental health, but also a great healer and rejuvenator.

This understanding that mental health is not only about ourselves, but about our larger environments and how we are embedded within them, is something that has been lost in much of 'Western' approaches.

Allison

Increased waste diversion is reducing municipalities’ abilities to cover the debt servicing costs on their landfills, turning these landfills into stranded assets, that is, assets that will have to be left in the ground as we move to decarbonize our economy.

How can we use this opportunity to change the values around what constitutes ‘waste’?

McKenna

Finally, from the worms in our basement to the beehives on our roof, we try as much as possible to take an integrated and holistic approach. Our aim is to be a learning and demonstration site for what is possible in an urban environment.

Lubelsky

One of the most critical factors in the success of Drake Landing was to introduce the discussion of implementing energy efficiency and renewable energy at the very earliest stage of conception.

Singlehurst

Vancity exists for the service of our community. While that service is to enable wealth, we now define wealth as wellbeing --healthy communities & as part of that, healthy environment.

Cureton

New York City has negotiated community development funds with communities living in the Catskill Mountains in exchange for the stewardship of the water. Similar agreements can also be found in the Alberta Hub located around Edmonton and the Miramichi Valley.

Reimer

Some features of a sustainable food system:

• Reliant on alternative production methods (organic, biodynamic, permaculture, IPM, etc.)

• Local resilience, regional specialization, and ethical global trade

• Integrative social justice issues

• Supportive of alternative models of organization

Ballamingie

Rural communities provide timber, food, minerals, and energy that aid in urban growth, and they are stewards of critical ecological services such as water to urban centres.

In return, urban Canada provides the markets for rural goods and employment, technology, financial capital, consumer goods, and much of its media- based culture.

Reimer

I was recently at the Trudeau Conference on climate change in Toronto, and some panelists talked about stranded assets, that is, assets that will have to be left in the ground as we move to decarbonize our economy. I wonder if there is a better term, should we rebrand 'waste' to something else? Whatever happened to waste not, want not?

Dale

We don't waste what we value, and we don't value what we waste. In nature there are producers, consumers, and decomposers, and waste is an undesirable entity only from the point of view of consumers since waste is food to a decomposer. We humans tend to act as consumers, but we need to think and plan our systems in terms all three.

Salter

Critical to any successful sustainable energy system development is early engagement of all the players at the table prior to the completion of the plan. Our experience is that many communities create a sustainable community plan without first engaging with their local or regional energy utility providers.

Leach

Peggy has been writing about messiness -- we need to work towards fostering environments and dialogues where we learn the skills to become comfortable with this messiness, where we can find ways to support ourselves and others through these processes and moments.

Cunsolo Willox

Granville Island has had a very positive impact on its context which has brought about the regeneration of other buildings off the island which either trade on the name...Granville Island this, that or the other or mimics what goes on there.

Hiscox

Which is more essentially human---the urban environment or the rural environment?

Herbert

On the ground, farmers from Canada to sub-Saharan Africa are realizing the importance of indigenous crops and resilient agriculture systems that incorporate agroforestry methods, intercropping, etc. Indigenous and native crops are typically resistant to pests and disease and can withstand flooding or drought or high temperatures.

Farmers in Western Africa are also coming up with natural ways of fertilizing their crops with leguminous trees and green manure because they can't afford fertilizer out of a bag.

Nierenberg

What skills will young people need?

• Ability to work both independently (with limited supervision) and collaboratively (in teams)

• A high degree of adaptability - applying skills in creative ways, not being hung up on official job titles

• A capacity to live with uncertainty - no clear career path, no fixed retirement date and no pension

Frojmovic

One of the many things that is inspiring about Mondragon is the tight model of inter co-operation between 120 coops, plus having a credit union and social welfare system embedded in the model. This gives Mondragon an incredible and diverse network helping to foster resilience and support - giving them capacity to be flexible and adapt to the unforeseen.

Foon

In Norway the average work week is 33 hours and in the Netherlands employees also have the option in most cases of a 4 day work week. It has been very successful and people are generally happy with this.

van Bers

Multifunctional spaces provide opportunities for reducing costs through shared financial responsibility of the buildings operations. These spaces also benefit from the synergies of the different groups sharing these spaces. From the use a of community kitchen to provide snacks for a senior’s movie night to increased exposure for a youth art show.

Mushynsky

So, really, mental health becomes part of the field of urban planners, and the language around mental wellbeing needs to be integrated into urban planning. Is this feasible considering our silo approaches?

Newell

There is a growing if poorly integrated interest within the academy in co-operative subjects. The interface between the academy and the movement has some positive features but it is still awkward and less collaborative than it ought to be. Teaching about co-operatives in the educational system is about as common as teaching about Australian reptiles.

MacPherson

As academics, I think we have 'heard' loud and clear about the mismatch between post-secondary education and the new skill sets that are required…Seems to me we all have a long way to go; however, perhaps offer a self-designed and organized practicum placement, either internationally or domestically, for which they have to find their own funding. If they can't, then write about what worked and didn't work.

Dale

Our experience to date shows that there is a huge potential for the mobilizing of community (social) capital into sustainable energy projects owned by the community. OREC plans to expand its scope beyond electricity to raise social capital for other community owned renewable energy projects and to improve the energy efficiency of housing, businesses, and community infrastructure in Ottawa.

Peters

Drake Landing Solar Community (DLSC)

The project reached its goal of 90% by 2011 and in the winter of 2012 achieved a solar fraction of 95%.

The project also achieved its main intent of significantly reducing GHG emissions. In Okotoks, a typical home constructed in 2007 produced approx. 6.4 tonnes of GHG/year where a DLSC home only produces 0.75 tonnes/year. The 52 solar homes have the same impact as 6.5 baseline homes of the same size and age.

Smith

The way we build our urban landscape, how we develop our commuting habits, where we protect our natural spaces, where we create greenspace and public space, food security, walkability, diversity, social capital, income, community resilience is all deeply tied to mental and physical health. If anything, this illustrates the need to think about mental and physical health in a holistic, integrative way.

Foon

Agriculture alone cannot revitalize rural communities. They must also pursue non-farm strategies – especially small business development. Agriculture and non-farm rural development should be integrated with rural communities looking at the needs of urban centers

Reimer

For the people who started what we call credit unions, sustainability meant ensuring that “ordinary” people could control financial institutions that would give them and their communities the capacity to control their own lives. The assumption was that the democratic control of the financial system would ultimately create more sustainable household and build more sustainable communities.

MacPherson

There are 9 million Millennials (ages 15 to 30) in Canada - many of whom are digital natives. It’s predicted that by 2020, Millennials will make up 50% of the workforce globally. I see young people having the flexibility of different work models (like collective workspaces, digital nomadism, remote work, and the like) as well as new tools and motivations to engage in the workplace.

Mingarelli

I can't speak for large urban areas but in small communities the financial logic of multi-purpose buildings is so overwhelming that I find it hard to wrap my mind around people getting hung up on competition issues. The activities that take place in a multiplex are all going to happen in the community anyway - how can one logically argue that they are somehow going to be damaged by occupying one space where every tenant realizes financial gain by shared janitorial, shared washrooms, shared electrical...

Mushynsky

"Table scraps are the fertilizer you've already paid for.”

It's an anonymous quote I came across in a soils textbook but I think it speaks to the strange dichotomy of how we think about waste such as food scraps, paying one hand to take them away, only to buy it back as soil amendment for our gardens.

Smith

A more sustainable food system would require all of us to eat much less meat, if at all, and humanely raised at that! Just think how significant an effect we could have if we shifted our consumption along the continuum towards eating less meat!

Balamingie

Another, more recent development that deserves recognition is the role co-ops have played within local food production. This is a classic role, echoing what was done over the years to encourage “buying locally” but it has taken on new life.

The problem is that it brings up the issue of proto-co-ops, always a problem if one is trying to make the case for co-ops.

MacPherson

Our educational institutions need to think about how we can change the way we educate students to allow them to develop core skills around leadership, independence, confidence, and risk taking. These institutions also need to be able to evolve faster as the addition of technology is changing the workplace at an exponential rate.

Bunnell

I think one of the challenges is that public investment often has a totally different focus than private investment which tends to be more profit oriented. I think that although multipurpose buildings do have a good financial argument for their existence we are still battling the fact that much of the good is "soft" and hard to quantify in dollars so it is harder to sell to the private investment sector.

Mushynsky

It’s painful at how obvious the connections are but how disconnected planning is. Right now the most significant focus is on walkability to target diabetes, heart disease and others. The main indicator I have seen for mental health is access to green space and in the same way some planners are thinking about food deserts, there are also green space deserts in areas dominated by an impermeable layer of concrete, asphalt, and buildings.

Herbert

One of the things that has always struck me driving through poorer neighbourhoods and the Downtown Eastside in particular, is the lack of greenery, although SOLE Foods is a brilliant innovation, because by introducing gardens into the neighbourhood, you also bring in connection to place and beauty? So, what about excess produce and plants, what about spatial justice and more equitable distribution?

Dale

Western societies are largely based on "straight pipes" for energy, water, and materials where we “take-use-toss”. This is in contrast to nature's closed cycles, straight pipes create impacts upstream where "resources" are taken, and also downstream where waste is dumped.

Researchers have to do a lot more to reveal the co- benefits of how doing one thing leads to other benefits, many of which cannot be anticipated, making this a sociological and cultural matter as well as that of industrial process.

Salter

I think the opportunities in the north extend beyond just the large communities. Almost all rural, remote and northern communities (including mining communities) rely on trucked or flown in diesel, the economics are significantly in favor of moving to renewables, combined heat and power and other innovations.

The main barriers to change happening in the north is the lack of metrics and reporting and the complexity of the current financial support mechanisms in place today.

Leach

East Coast Organic Milk is a cooperative of farms and financed using the Community Economic Development Incentive (CEDIF) in Nova Scotia. These are a special mechanism unique to Nova Scotia that allows local people to invest in an initiative in exchange for significant tax breaks. So, lots of people invested in their operation.

Herbert

This concept of "Turf Wars" was the main argument that the Centre for Social Innovation also experienced. There was such an overriding agreement from the financial institutions that were approached that ‘not for profits’ in a single space would compete not collaborate that the Executive Director had to convince a bank to open an account for us even though they had deposit cheques from 14 organizations. Banks were so sure the business model was not sound they refused to take the risk... that was 9 years and 3 locations ago.

Fulcher

How is it we understand that the mind and body are intimately linked, yet we won't let this fully translate into how we approach human and societal well-being.

Newell

We have some group buying deals and have 'wine and window' parties and 'sealing socials' etc.: Obviously, we came up with many of these things over several glasses of wine ;) If it isn't fun...no one comes back.

Stafford

Waste is a human concept, and the word “waste” was originally used to describe land not used by humans. Wasted resources are those we're not yet including in closed, natural cycles. It's interesting that the word "Resource" means "to rise again". Changing technologies, commodity prices, cultural values, and so on all shift the definition of waste.

I think we'd be better off talking about "wasted resources" than waste.

Salter

We start with having an energy audit on each home (we have a group deal on them so that save money and the neighbourhood leader schedules everyone's times: as many as 59 houses in a neighbourhood) then the fire departments in each city/district come in and do thermal imaging so the homeowners can see the energy leakage in from their homes - that makes a huge difference - being able to see it.

Stafford

I wonder if any of us are tracking the reductions in GHG emissions we save by working from home?

Dale

The Japanese use their community alumni as "intelligence gathering agents" and rural residents contact them if the community business people wish to evaluate potential markets. This continued relationship allows the community to expand its information networks beyond its boundaries.

Looker

It is difficult to make the case quickly and easily, but one can go back into the rural co-op circles of even a hundred years ago and find examples of thinking very much in line with contemporary concerns about sustainability in the broader sense.

MacPherson

Rural communities provide timber, food, minerals, and energy that aid in urban growth, and they are stewards of critical ecological services that urban centers rely on, such as water. In return, urban Canada provides the markets for rural goods and employment, technology, financial capital, consumer goods, and much of its media- based culture.

Reimer

True waste may be considered a material with no true residual value or a material with no potential for use as a cheaper input to another process or as a waste derived product.

McKenna

Cool Neighbourhoods address the barriers that stop individuals from doing things that they actually want to do but oftentimes find boring, time consuming, intimidating or costly barriers. We make sure it is none of those things by basing the program in 'parties with a purpose' thrown by neighbourhood leaders.

Stafford

From a community development stand point we are generating more momentum around activities such as Neigbhours Day. One day a year that is recognized for people to close off their streets, have a BBQ with all the neigbhours - connect and have fun, play street hockey - learn how to support each other.

Mucha

There are polar opposite forces at work - the highly collectivist/structured 4 or 5 day work-week with 6 weeks of guaranteed holiday enjoyed by all citizens concurrently, and the extreme-flex environment of working wherever and whenever you want, as long as the job gets done. It would be ideal to have both from which to choose.

Frojmovic

Why can't a scheme be set up with a cooperative such as VanCity, in which independent entrepreneurs, practitioners, artists could pay into, and have the security of collective investments which spread the risk. Wynne in Ontario is proposing such a scheme, because of the lack of federal movement on creating a national scheme. Why should some have access and not everyone?

Dale

We recently held an all island youth art show in the Multi-plex and we experienced more traffic for the art show than if it was held in a separate building. All the school kids attended, all library goers walked past it, anyone with Municipal business viewed it, everyone stopped and looked at it.

Mushynsky

It is critical to have the ability to see beyond each individual situation to work collectively and to build social movements in some form to reclaim the way in which markets and societies allocate work. Otherwise even those who are successful in the workplace are at threat from destabilised societies in which there is work available, but it is marginal and insecure.

Hebert

Mental health needs to be connected within larger contexts of environment, family, history, place, connectedness, etc., as well as linking to the many socio-cultural determinants of health: employment, income, housing, family support, education, geographic location, sense of connectedness, food security, gender, age, cultural identity, etc.

Cunsolo Willox

Another great innovation is the CSA food baskets, where you are given a basket, often with vegetables that are new, but recipes for those new foods. How do we diffuse this system to poorer communities and people, is it about equitable access?

Dale

I think towns that truly want to attract urbanites would have to publicly embrace a social covenant to welcome all religions, sexualities, political views, and ways of thought.

Somehow the small has to embrace the diverse.

Newman

The people who are able to work at the HIVE enjoy the exposure to new people, the opportunity to brainstorm new ideas with people in totally different sectors and the ability to get almost any business development and support service you need in-house.

Murphy

I think we also need to be cognizant when attempting to design a 'sustainable' product that could potentially do more harm than good; for example, the myriad of so-called compostable and biodegradable plastics that have saturated the market. Most materials do not break down efficiently in industrial composting facilities, and may contribute to soil contamination in the long run.

Smith

Food waste is low hanging fruit on so many levels and the impacts can be immediate and very impactful, which we don't see often with other innovations.

The solutions can often be simple and inexpensive, such as solar powered dehydrators in The Gambia and India. Or cutting the tops off sweet potatoes to prevent them rotting in Western Africa. Or, drying grains on jute mats before they're stored in silos, etc. etc.

Nierenberg

We need small garden scale projects, which make up most of what people are now calling urban agriculture. But, we also need production scale projects. Natural systems agriculture on scale, when done well requires a broad range of skills that take years to develop. The work is physically demanding, and good results require training, observation, and slow development.

This is a slow patient art trying to insert itself into a society that values speed, technology, and instant results.

Ableman

Millennials often look for immediate feedback and approval in the work they're doing - so it's good to create positive feedback loops, whether that be in person or virtual.

Mingarelli

The 1990s were a difficult time for co-ops. The apparent triumph of capitalist/free market ideologies meant (for many) that the reputed slow and stodgy methods of co-operatives were ridiculed.

The 2008 depression has changed that judgement and helped to raise the question of what is real value, as opposed to glitz and make rich quick schemes.

MacPherson

Much of the large-scale organic producers soil fertility programs (the blood meal, meat meal, and manures) is based on the by-products of the animal concentration camps like Harris ranch. If we are going to eat organic carrots or anything else from other places, we may still be participating in meat production, and sometimes at its worst.

Better to support integrated farming systems in our regions that incorporate animals in an intelligent and considerate manner.

Abelman

Strategic partnerships, peer group support, discussion, early engagement of all players, parties with a purpose (social capital), integration of energy across land use, buildings, transportation, water, waste and related infrastructure. Our MC3 research project also revealed how critically important integration across those sectors is for the implementation of climate change adaptation and mitigation.

Dale

Food Sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems. (La Via Campesina)

Herbert

Shinrinyoky is a term used in Japan that translates into ‘bathing in the atmosphere of the forest’. A stressed worker goes to the doctor and receives a green prescription to visit one of the five nationally recognised forests used for mental health purposes. The amazing thing about this is that it is paid for by the health care insurance companies!

Allison

There is one model of health that focuses on autonomy. It is about the ability of people to be autonomously motivated, they experience volition. In contrast, those that are unhealthy, behave as a function of external rewards and punishment, energized by an approval motive, avoidance of shame, ego, etc. I think this is an interesting concept to apply to mental health.

Herbert

I think it's about learning the process that was followed and knowing that the same process might lead to different outcomes in different places. And in fact, probably should. The challenge with scale is that you risk losing diversity and diversity is essential to a healthy food system.

So we need to learn how to work better together, not learn how to do the same things as each other.

Lubelsky

In general, knowledge based organisations, like many of ours around the table, are in a better position to institute flexible hours and flexible locations. And it is often the smaller organisations that are more flexible.

The university in which my office is now located is not so flexible. It is funded by the state and therefore has to abide by its rules. So it is basically about getting around those rules.

van Bers

There is definitely a need for policy change and regulatory modernization in multiple sectors, such as re-thinking expiration dates of food and the aesthetic demands from supermarkets.

Reduce or eliminate packaging is another initiative with a great example of this being an ‘unpackaged’ German grocery store.

Smith

I also wonder if we will see the decline of the 'expert' as people will be required to shift one short term position to another in a particular field, building a diverse perspective, inhibiting stagnation and resulting in a more profound level of expertise

Or will some jobs, with expertise that society values, for example in medicine, be ring-fenced as stable life time work in which people can collect knowledge and experience over their lifetime?

Both have value, it seems.

Herbert

There's some unique parts of the new sharing movement that deal with making interactions "fair". From my experience with the Vancouver Tool Library, we've seen a really low rate of theft or delinquency. I think if co-ownership is built into the model, it has a lot to do with why people care about what they're sharing.

Diplock

What I currently see is three types of young people (20-30 year olds).

• Those that have sensed how to be ahead of the curve and spend time with entrepreneurial ventures (their own or others)

• Those that believe they will apply for jobs in their field and sooner or later be successful

• Those that are aware or becoming aware of point 1, yet are not entirely sure how to position themselves.

Kuhn

I heard on CBC radio the other day that green jobs now outnumber jobs in the oil and gas sector, not by much, but by a few hundreds, believe it was on The Current. And we researchers have to do a lot more to reveal the co-benefits of doing one thing leads to other benefits, many of which cannot be anticipated.

Dale

It is critical for communities to build a culture of food. Developing an earth to table connection at an early age is vital. Not being able to identify the origins of our own food can have dramatic consequences in terms of communities developing as self-sustaining and resilient.

Newell

I wonder if reframing the issue as wellbeing - our minds our bodies and beginning early in schools. Just as we should also include nutritional literacy, learning how to read labels in elementary schools?

Newell

Understanding how to make the business case for alternative innovative technologies is critical. In our experience, service providers who try to incorporate one technology into traditional planning routinely discover that the business case isn’t there.

Taking an integrated approach works financially, it drives economic development and as a by-product community GHG goals (or provincial targets) are reached.

Leach

Having a life-cycle waste reduction and management/resource recovery plan at the beginning of any new building project or considered in official community plans can definitely reduce environmental impact on landfills, drive economic value and the reuse and recycling of building materials.

Smith

Cities cannot feed themselves entirely from within. A more appropriate conversation is what is appropriate to be growing in our cities and what should be left to rural and peri-urban growers?

What are the appropriate relationships between urban, peri-urban, and rural food production and how do we integrate them better?

Ableman

Co-operatives provide the ability to retain and redistribute wealth within the community with benefits returned directly to members and the communities they serve. This makes a thriving co-op sector a valuable component of a resilient local economy.

Anderson

If we can’t look at ourselves, what happened to us as children and confront our past traumas we are forced to create a mythologized version of ourselves and our history.

This form of denial or blindness is a coping mechanism to deal with stuff that’s just too painful or overwhelming to address. A mechanism that is perfectly echoed by much of society’s inability to rationally deal with issues like poverty and the environment.

Foon

I see young people having the flexibility of different work models (like collective workspaces, digital nomadism, remote work, and the like) as well as new tools and motivations to engage in the workplace.

Mingarelli

Okay, what are the new structures that are needed? What about a new system of collective pensions among young entrepreneurs. How can we convince employers about the benefits, especially with respect to reduced commuting times and GHG reductions?

Dale

Increasingly new and innovative financing mechanisms are coming to the forefront such as Local Improvement Charges or property based liens, but there is still an increasing need for innovative financing mechanisms to be developed to support energy innovation implementation.

Leach

Our thoughts on Hornby Island around Waste to Energy (WTE) are quite simple. For the WTE plant to operate it needs HUGE amounts of waste. Exactly what we are trying to reduce. A WTE solution means an increase in waste production and a decrease in recycling as the WTE plants need recyclables to convert into energy.

From Hornby's standpoint recyclables are too valuable of a commodity to convert into energy.

Veselinovic

Our current city government has been critical to our project, creating a progressive lease model for our land access, some innovations in growing systems that allow us to grow on contaminated and paved land, and applying a farmer’s skill set / instincts to the urban scene.

Ableman

If we look at success factors there is a lot to learn about what is going on in Vancouver: Ripe policy environment, relevant stakeholders and activists networked, resources available, municipal vision (greenest city, number of food assets, etc) allowance for things to not work out as expected, etc.

Lubelsky

In Kristianstad, Sweden, food waste and agricultural waste are digested to produce compost and biomethane.

The compost is returned to farmer’s fields, and the bio-methane is used to run transit buses, municipal trucks, and citizen's vehicles. It's sound ecologically, and the savings + revenues create non-tax revenues for the municipality.

Salter

The fear of the unknown is a definite barrier in the implementation of many innovations for many different types of community systems. I believe that networks and knowledge sharing can shed potential light on these unknowns...making the innovations seem more possible.

In fact, part of the idea of these Solutions Agenda dialogues is to shed light on the 'unknowns'.

Newell