Credit Union Central of Canada

Credit Union Central of Canada was a financial intermediary and national trade association for credit unions in Canada outside Quebec that operated from 1953 to 2015.

Created as the Canadian Co-operative Credit Society (CCCS) to serve as a “central of centrals” in support a growing credit union system in the 1950s, it was renamed Credit Union Central of Canada in 1993 to better reflect its relationship to its provincial member Centrals.

Credit Union Central of Canada was wound-up in 2015 and replaced by the Canadian Credit Union Association (www.ccua.com).

The history of Credit Union Central of Canada traces the development of two different but related types of organizations: a national trade association to be a convening body and voice for the system, and a national finance facility to provide liquidity to support the credit union system.

For most of the first half of the 1900s, the credit union system developed at the provincial level, with neither a national finance facility or a national trade association supporting its growth. However, by the early-1950s active members of the credit union movement succeeded in creating both a national liquidity fund and a distinctly Canadian credit union organization.

Beginning in 1908 and accelerating in the 1930s, credit unions were incorporated provincially in small communities and rural areas of the Maritimes, Ontario, the Prairies and British Columbia, while in Quebec, a federated caisse populaire network developed very differently from the rest of the country.

The first attempt to create a national association of credit unions took place at the Quebec Congress of the Co-operative Union of Canada in 1943. While these talks failed to make progress, efforts two years later proved more successful. The Canadian Federation of Credit Unions was created in 1945 to “compile statistics on Canadian credit unions; to assist in lobbying for more effective credit union legislation; to assist in education programs on behalf of credit unions; [and] to encourage [provincial credit union] Leagues to affiliate with provincial sections of the Co-operative Union of Canada.”

A short time later, the Canadian Federation of Credit Unions became the Canadian Section of the US-based Credit Union National Association (CUNA), continuing to serve the purpose of providing a discussion forum and lobby group for the credit union system at a national level. In the years that followed, this organization, which had evolved out of the cross-border collaboration that had developed the credit union movement in English-speaking North America, competed for trade association functions with the National Association of Canadian Credit Unions which was founded in 1958.

...
Wikipedia