How is control exercised in an Ontario co-operative when every member gets one vote regardless of shares held?

Ontario co-operatives operate on the principle of one-member-one-vote, meaning that at a members' meeting each member generally gets a single vote on co-operative matters and the election of directors, no matter how many membership or investment shares they hold. This is the defining structural difference from a regular business corporation, where voting power is generally tied directly to how many shares an investor owns.

In practice, this means control of an Ontario co-operative flows from membership itself, not from capital contribution — a member who invests more money in investment shares doesn't get more votes because of it. Day-to-day management is still typically delegated to an elected board of directors and, in larger co-operatives, officers or staff, similar to a regular corporation's governance structure; the one-member-one-vote rule mainly shapes who elects that board and who approves major decisions at the membership level, rather than eliminating the need for a board entirely. Because this principle is central to what makes a co-operative a co-operative, structures that try to weight votes by investment generally undermine the model rather than simply customizing it.