Canadian cooperative sector part of voluntary sector-government accord

In early December an Accord was signed between the Canadian Voluntary Sector and the Canadian government. The agreement was three years in the making and was one of the products of the Canadian government's ground breaking Voluntary Sector Initiative (VSI), itself a response to the formation of the Voluntary Sector Roundtable and the influential Broadbent Inquiry into Canada's voluntary sector which the Roundtable commissioned. The Accord is influenced by the Compact between the Blair government and the English voluntary sector signed several years earlier. The Canadian cooperative movement was not originally involved in the Roundtable but became engaged with other parts of the voluntary sector following the government's VSI. As part of the VSI, a number of joint tables with government/voluntary sector membership were established, including one charged with drawing up an accord or agreement or treaty between government and the voluntary sector. Lynne Toupin, CEO of the Canadian Co-operative Association, co-chaired this important Table on behalf of the voluntary sector.

There has been intermittent talk in Australia over the past four years about an Australian Compact between government and nonprofit sector, though usually what is envisioned is a parody of the English (and now the Canadian ) model - merely an agreement between the community sector and the relevent government community services department.

For the Canadian Accord see www.vsi-isbc.ca/eng/index.cfr.

For a paper by ACCORD Co-director Mark Lyons charting the English and Canadian progress to May 2001 and assesing the possibility of similar developments in Australia, see www.communitybuilders.nsw.gov.au/building_stronger/enterprise/compacts.html.