On Tuesday, November 7, the Pôle d'économie sociale Vallée-du-Haut-Saint-Laurent organized a regional forum at the Manoir d'Youville in Châteauguay, focusing on the challenges and opportunities for development of the social economy in the Montérégie-Ouest region.

The event brought together some forty participants, including representatives of the region's various social economy enterprises, committed citizens, collaborators and ecosystem partners.

The Chantier de l'économie sociale was also in the region for the occasion, to meet and hear the concerns of local players.

This visit by the Chantier de l'économie sociale team was part of the process leading up to the Sommet provincial de l'économie sociale en 2025.

Forum results

This regional Forum, whose last similar exercise was in 2017, aimed to identify and prioritize territorial issues and opportunities for the development of the social economy, as well as identify and prioritize regional and cross-cutting issues in the social economy ecosystem.

To this end, participants exchanged and discussed ideas with a view to developing and prioritizing recommendations that will be forwarded to the Chantier de l'économie sociale, as well as to all partners in the region.

"This event enabled us to take stock of the health of the social economy throughout Montérégie-Ouest. The Forum also provided an opportunity to harness collective intelligence to address local issues, by inviting participants to put forward innovative ideas and suggestions based on the unique social economy business model," says Olivier Doyle, General Manager of the Pôle d'économie sociale Vallée-du-Haut-Saint-Laurent.

In the end, all participants prioritized five major opportunities that could contribute to improving the region's quality of life and economic resilience:

- Pooling: support the pooling of human resources, technical resources and knowledge, as a tool for strengthening business ties and opportunities to better serve the region's communities;

- Collective real estate: support the purchase, acquisition or conversion of institutional buildings that can be used to address housing issues;

- Infrastructure sharing: buildings, land, sports facilities or any other infrastructure whose use could be maximized for other, complementary objectives;

- Regulatory flexibility and creativity: explore regulatory adaptation of existing uses and capital assets, based on existing legal possibilities, to encourage the implementation of social economy initiatives;

- Innovation through the social economy: to support and sustain innovations at the heart of our territories, and to encourage their sustainability through the social economy model.

These territorial development opportunities will be taken into account in the next regional action plan of the Pôle d'économie sociale Vallée-du-Haut-Saint-Laurent. They will also be forwarded as a contribution to the Chantier de l'économie sociale's reflections in preparation for the Sommet québécois de l'économie sociale en 2025.