Case Study: Gay Lea Foods achieves rapid director onboarding and continuous governance learning with D2L Brightspace

Building a Competitive Co-operative

Gay Lea Foods is a leading Canadian dairy co-operative—100% Canadian‑owned with members on more than 1,400 farms and over 4,300 producer and investor shareholders—tasked with coordinating a large network of farmers, staff and elected representatives. The co‑op needed a faster, more consistent way to develop newly elected Directors and delegates so they could contribute sooner and support continuous learning across the organization, replacing a system that could take up to a year of in‑person training.

Working with D2L, Gay Lea built an online Knowledge Hub of eight interactive courses using gamification, intelligent agents and quizzes to make training accessible, engaging and trackable. The program delivered quick skill development (about a 90% pass rate on pretest quizzes), higher member interest in governance roles, improved organizational agility and helped reinforce Gay Lea’s leadership—contributing to industry recognition such as Co‑operative of the Year.

The Gay Lea Foods

Quintin Fox

Director of Training Development & Capacity Resourcing