By Hazel Corcoran
- Conference/ Board Nominations, and Award Announcement
- Ablaze Services strategic plan revision
- Capital Gains tax exemption for business sales to worker co-ops
- Upcoming What Is a Worker Co-op? sessions
As we head into the fall, CWCF is busy preparing for our 2025 Conference in Edmonton, November 18-20. We are excited to have confirmed most of our program and presenters and will have the remainder finalized soon. In the meantime, we are still accepting nominations for the board, in the Atlantic and Prairies regions. We are thrilled to annouce the winner of the Worker Co-op Best Practices Award: the Multicultural Health Brokers Co-op of Edmonton. Congratulations to this Co-op for this well-deserved honour! We look forward to celebrating with them and learning from them at the Conference.
In other exciting news, we recently chose Ablaze Services of New Westminster, BC to oversee the revision of our strategic plan. We look forward to engaging staff, board members, members, and allies in an innovative and stimulating process that will create clear priorities to guide CWCF to support the worker co-operative movement, with a focus on increasing revenues and highlighting support for the plan’s implementation. Watch for more details in the near future.
We are very pleased to share that the federal Finance Department has announced the intention to introduce legislation to apply a capital gains tax exemption, of up to $10 million, for business sales to worker co-operatives. The same announcement was made previously, but Parliament was prorogued before proposing the legislation. This exemption would encourage retiring / departing business owners to sell their enterprises to their workers, as the selling owner would not need to pay tax on the gain up to the $10 million limit. This is comparable to the provisions provided to Employee Ownership Trusts last year. Unfortunately, the years in which the provisions would apply to worker co-operatives are stated to be 2024, 2025, and 2026 – although at best, this will only be enacted in late 2025. CWCF is encouraging the Finance Department to make the exemption permanent, and appreciates the submission in support of ours by Co-operatives and Mutuals Canada.
Finally, CWCF will resume our monthly What Is a Worker Co-op? webinar series this month, on September 23rd, presented by one of our Board Equity Advisors, Juliet ‘Kego Ume-Onyido. These webinars offer a great overview of the different types of co-ops and the details of belonging to a worker co-op, and we highly recommend attending one to both prospective co-op members and those who may simply be curious.