Do co-operative corporations in Ontario have to be incorporated under a different statute than regular corporations?

Yes. Ontario co-operatives are incorporated and governed under their own dedicated statute, the Co-operative Corporations Act, rather than the Business Corporations Act that governs regular Ontario business corporations. This isn't just a naming difference — the Co-operative Corporations Act builds in the structural features that make a co-operative what it is, including the one-member-one-vote principle and rules around patronage returns, which don't exist in the regular corporate statute.

Because the two statutes serve different purposes, you can't simply incorporate a "co-operative" under the Business Corporations Act and expect it to carry the legal features of a true co-operative, and you can't treat a Co-operative Corporations Act entity as though ordinary business-corporation rules apply to its governance. Filings, ongoing compliance, and some of the exit and conversion rules also run through different processes under each statute. If you're deciding between the two structures for a new venture, the choice should be driven by whether member control and patronage-based distribution are actually what you want, not just by which statute is more familiar.