As part of its large research program, the Social Economy and Sustainability Research Network decided in 2006 to prepare and conduct a survey of co-operatives and credit unions in all four provinces of Atlantic Canada. It was the felt that coherent and up-to-date information on the co-operative sector in the region was lacking and that such a project would make a significant and timely contribution to the “mapping” or “profiling” of the social economy.
Dr. Luc Thériault from the University of New Brunswick took the lead of this project with the help of other member of the research network and the technical assistance of survey research consultants from York University in Toronto. The survey was administered between April and October 2007 and yielded 296 usable responses from co-operatives and credit unions from across the region. This preliminary research report offers a first look at the information obtained by analyzing it overall and by breaking it down by language, provincial, and type of co-operatives. Other analyses on the data are possible, of course, and may be the subject of future publications.
