So What?

By Volodymyr Kish

There have been two seminal events in the past several months that have given me renewed hope that the future of the Ukrainian community in Canada is on a definite upswing.

The first of these was the completion of the merger of Toronto-based Ukrainian Credit Union (UCU) with So-Use Credit Union.  No doubt some of you may well ask, as did one of my sceptical colleagues – “So what?”

Well, the end result is a very big “what!”, and to understand why, you need to know that some thirty years ago, there were forty one Ukrainian credit unions in Canada.  Today, with this latest merger there are only seven, three in Ontario (UCU, Buduchnist and United Ukrainian), two in Manitoba (Carpathia an North Winnipeg), one in Quebec (Caisse populaire Desjardins Ukrainienne) and one in Saskatchewan (New Community).  The remainder have not really disappeared; so much as they have been either absorbed or merged into one of the remaining credit unions.  The two largest credit unions, Ukrainian Credit Union and Buduchnist, have grown in size to the point where they each now have some half a billion dollars in assets, while the combined total of all Ukrainian credit unions is now over $1.5 Billion in assets.

No doubt some of you will wonder whether this is a good thing; after all, wouldn’t having more choice and competition benefit the Ukrainian financial consumer?  Sadly, in today’s financial marketplace, the answer is an unequivocal “no”.  You should realize that the major competitors for Ukrainian credit unions are not other Ukrainian credit unions, but the immensely large and powerful institutional Canadian banks.  To compete with them, credit unions must offer competitive rates, services and access that today is dependent largely on computer systems, digital technology and communication networks.  To be able to afford that technology requires a certain minimum critical mass of revenue, customers and assets.  Small credit unions cannot afford to make the investments in this area that they need to survive. 

So – the merger of UCU and So-Use is a significant and positive step in terms of ensuring the future of Ukrainian credit unions in Ontario and Canada.  As to why it is important for Ukrainian credit unions to survive, as I have written in previous articles, were it not for the financial support and donations provided by those credit unions, most Ukrainian organizations as well as the majority of Ukrainian cultural, social and educational events would disappear. 

As many of the established large Ukrainian organizations that used to provide the financial underpinnings for the various aspects of the Ukrainian community fade into the proverbial sunset, more and more of the burden is shifting to credit unions and to the small number of affluent private benefactors within the Ukrainian community.  The future of organized Ukrainian community life in Canada is inextricably tied to the continued existence and success of Ukrainian credit unions.

The other positive harbinger for the Ukrainian community’s future came to light at the XXIII Triennial Congress of Ukrainian Canadians a couple of weeks ago in Edmonton.   For the first time, probably since it was founded some seventy years ago, I think it would be safe to say that the Congress and its leadership actually represent the desires, values and hope of the vast majority of the Ukrainian community in Canada.  In the past, the Congress, though theoretically an umbrella organization representing all Ukrainian Canadians, was internally divided into many political, religious, generational and geographic factions.  For a large part of its history, the Congress was more a forum for political infighting than a force for unity and the development of the Ukrainian community in Canada.

At this most recent congress, there was little sign of ideological differences. The focus was on a constructive analysis of the problems that face the Ukrainian Canadian community today, and a genuine desire to cooperate and find ways of dealing with them.  There were dynamic workshops that dealt with the issues of language, Ukrainian language education, engaging the younger generations, developing pragmatic policies on how to deal with Ukraine, working with the Fourth Wave of immigrants from Ukraine, leveraging of government resources and funding at all levels, and most importantly, how to bring all those assimilated Ukrainians back into our community.

Much as credit unions are consolidating to form a critical mass so as to increase their leverage and ability to deal with financial challenges, so it seems that Ukrainian organizations are also finally virtually consolidating under the UCC umbrella to be better able to focus their resources and potential towards insuring not only the survival but also the future growth and development of the Ukrainian “hromada” in Canada.