Canada – Worker Cooperatives in the Americas

Quebec’s Paramedic Cooperatives

Quebec’s ambulance sector in the 1980s was a tangle of government contracted private companies, with low job quality and service, causing hospital congestion. Workers organized, regulation increased, and many company owners decided to sell rather than face the new reality. The Confédération des Syndicats Nationaux saw an opportunity and between 1988 and 1990 organized six unionized worker cooperatives to buy the companies, with support from the government. The largest has more than 500 workers. Several more were organized in the 2000s. Most are members of the Fédération des Coopératives des Paramédics du Québec.

Coopérative de solidarité de Pikogan

The Coopérative de solidarité de Pikogan, founded in 2009, is worker-owned cooperative in Abitibi-Témiscamingue, in the northwest of Quebec. The cooperative has around 90 workers and is affiliated with the Abitibiwinni First Nation, which has a population of around 1,000.

The cooperative’s origin is intertwined with other community ownership efforts. In the 1970s a union-led effort to save a shuttered paper mill launched Tembec, a partnership of workers, government, and entrepreneurs. In 2003 Tembec asked two forestry cooperatives – the Coopérative forestière du Nord-Ouest (CFNO) and the Coopérative de travailleurs sylvicoles Abifor – to form a partnership to provide them with timber. Two years later the Abitibiwinni First Nation joined as a thirds partnership, and when CFNO exited in 2009 the tribe formed Coopérative de solidarité de Pikogan to replace them.

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Coopérative forestière de la Gaspésie

The Coopérative forestière de la Gaspésie was formed in 2013, as the merger of three smaller forestry cooperatives. The merger came in response to a new regulatory regime and allowed the local companies to reach a scale to compete for contracts with outside firms. In 2020 there were around 140 workers, more than 100 of them members.

The smaller cooperatives that merged included

Coopérative forestière New Richmond Saint-Alphonse, which itself had been created in the 1960s as the merger of three 1940s-era cooperatives: New Richmond, Saint-Alphonse, and Saint-Edgar
Coopérative d’aménagement de la Baie-des-Chaleurs, which was formed in 1984 and had 154 workers in 2010.
Coopérative de travail en aménagement forestier des MRC Côte-de-Gaspé et Rocher-Percé

The cooperative is also a member of the Association coopérative forestière régionale de la Gaspésie, an affiliated group of eight worker- and solidarity- cooperatives

From the cooperative

Facebook – Coopérative forestière de la Gaspésie

Articles

Video

Coopératives d’ici : Notre empreinte sur le monde | Coopérative forestière de la Gaspésie (2017)

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Coopérative forestière Ferland-Boilleau

The Coopérative forestière de Ferland-Boilleau in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region of Quebec was founded in 1963 as the Syndicat Forestier Ferland-Boilleau, after 30 families lost their logging concession to a large company. The group changed their name from syndicat to chantier in the 1970s, and then to cooperative in the 1980s. The cooperative has around 120 workers, 90 of which are members.

Starting in the 80s the group diversified their activities. They produced saplings for reforestation – and even experimented with growing tomatoes for a few years. They have made investments in several regional partners and subsidiaries, investing in the Lignarex mill in La Baie in 2012 and then acquiring 75% of the Lignarex Group in 2018. In 2013 they launched a distillery to make essential oils from wood products, as well as supplying dried plants for a KM12 gin. In 2015 they formed a partnership with another company to produce wood pellets, and in 2024 the cooperative bought a sawmill in Lac-Saint-Jean.

From the cooperative

Studies

Filion – La Coopérative forestière de Ferland-Boilleau à l’aube du troisième millénaire (2004)

Articles

Video

Boisaco

Boisaco is a partnership owned by two worker cooperatives – the forestry co-op COFOR, and a sawmill co-op UNIASCO – and a solidarity cooperative made of community shareholders. The partnership formed in 1985 in the small town of Sacré-Cœur in the Upper North Coast of the St. Lawrence, after the local mill went through several cycles of investment and bankruptcy, working against Canada / U.S. trade disputes and forest fires. The mortgage-holding bank, wanting to exit, sold the mill to the partnership for pennies on the dollar.

The timing was fortunate as the market rebounded shortly after the sale, and the group has since started several subsidiary businesses selling value added wood products, often as joint ventures with a large company that can bring the product to market. Among them were Sacopan in 1999 in partnership with Masonite to produce door panels; Ripco in 2001 with Royal Wood Shavings to make equestrial bedding,and Granulco in 2009 with the Innue Essipit First Nation converting sawdust to energy. Workers at two other subsidiaries formed their own worker co-op, Valiasco. In 2024 the group included 600 employees, 300 of which were worker-owners, and 800 community investors.

From the company

Studies

Video

La résilience des entreprises d’économie sociale – Boisaco: Témoignage d’une entreprise qui traverse le temps (2020)

Articles

In English

Coopérative forestière St-Dominique

The Coopérative forestière St-Dominique in the Abitibi-Témiscamingue region of Quebec was founded in 1945, originally as a labor union, the Syndicat de travail de St-Dominique du Rosaire, which shared machinery for the clearing of land, and began to focus on logging. In 2004 it acquired a subsidiary in silviculture, Verendrye, as it diversified to offer forest management services. It employs around 70 people of which around 50 are members.