Government Relations Update - March 2023

Just over a year ago ACCA established an in-house Government Relations team. Since then, we’ve made progress to advance the interests of members and advocate for the sector as whole.

In early 2022, over thirty one-on-one meetings with MLAs were arranged to raise the awareness of co-operatives. This effort bore fruit as twice representatives from the government reached out to us for input into their future plans. In the Spring and again in the Fall members and elected officials were invited to meet and network. Both events were well attended, with the Deputy Premier attending the latter reception.

We continue to work with the Alberta Securities Commission to reduce the regulations affecting co-operatives through a pilot project. This is a huge step forward in advocating for reduced regulations, something that has been in the works for over a decade.

For the first time, ACCA put forward a budget submission for the 2023 Alberta budget. Unfortunately, we were not successful in our particular ask for project-specific funding, based on the BC model, to benefit the sector and the community. However, many of the things we did ask for are available for co-operatives to apply for individually such as affordable housing, rural economic development, and green energy projects. We will continue to advocate for a more co-operative focused investment in the future budgets as we learn how to navigate this process.

Coming up in May is the ACCA’s annual general meeting where members can submit policies for the government relations team to focus on. If you have a policy idea that you think would benefit co-operatives, please reach out to our team and we can help you submit the policy at the AGM. Policy submissions are open to everyone!

For more information, you can reach out to our team at governmentrelations@acca.coop.