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Did anything good come out of the G20 meetings? Apart from a luke-warm pledge on maternal health (which is unclear on abortion), and which might turn out like many G8-G20 “pledges” (remember aid to Africa?), was there a benefit?

Torontonians were unified in their assessment that the summits were a negative experience. Even if they support the idea of world leaders meeting at such summits, they agreed that the protests, police activity, and closing of much of downtown were not something worth repeating.

In the days and weeks following the event, there has been much in the press documenting the negative reaction. And some civil society groups like the Canadian Civil Liberties Association have focused on the abuse of Canadians’ Charter rights.

The G20 weekend will go down as a lost week for merchants with no business and too much property damage, for many citizens who were detained for peaceful protests, and for Canadians who were required to pick up a price tag of well over $1 billion, mostly for security. And Toronto tax payers will likely have other bills to pay from city coffers.

The question is, did anything good come out of it?

Perhaps the one good thing is that such a large expenditure from the federal government put to rest their argument that government can’t act because there is no money. No money for kids who go to school hungry, no money for disabled people who need some living supports, no money for energy innovation, no money for aged Canadians to live out their lives in dignity.

For years federal governments of both Conservative and Liberal stripes have argued that there was not enough money to deal with critical needs. Even when they established important programs like the Child Tax Benefit and the Working Income Tax Benefit, they underfunded them. It was as if they were comfortable with a little less poverty rather than wanting to take a dramatic step to lift people out of poverty.

And the excuse was that there was not enough money.

The G20 expenditures exposed the government. Not enough money, when police officers were shipped in to Toronto from around the country with daily meal allowances of over $100 per day, with no obligation to provide receipts? Not enough money when they were building a fake lake within view of a Great Lake? Not enough money when they were uprooting then replanting saplings for a week lest they be used as weapons? Not enough money when new policing vehicles, shields and batons were being unloaded daily, including the infamous but idle noise cannons?

Civil society leaders should have a new confidence in pressing the federal government for funding for Canada’s social needs, now that we know the cupboard is not so bare. The extravagance of the G20 showed us that the money is there. The only thing that needs to be confronted is the government’s lack of will in helping vulnerable Canadians live productive and dignified lives. Surely they can’t argue that they’re against that.

The theme of this year’s Maytree leadership conference is The City, and our intention is to look at how we can build both prosperity and equity. It is timely that across the Toronto region we are in the middle of some of the most interesting municipal elections we’ve seen. The Toronto mayoral election is getting a lot of attention, but there are interesting situations in the other regional cities at the mayoral and council levels, and also in the school trustee elections. One of the great features is the number of new faces running for seats, which indicates to me that our democracy is alive.

Cities in Canada are often the invisible level of government. Our media tends to devote the front page or top of the newscast to Prime Ministers and Premiers, and their federal and provincial government colleagues. Most Canadians don’t know much about their city governments, especially what their powers and abilities are. But, because those governments are the closest to hand, they get blamed for a lot that goes wrong.

For instance, when we get concerned about the homeless on the streets, we blame the city for not doing something, but seldom blame the provinces or federal government for the absence of a comprehensive housing program. We complain that the bus doesn’t come, but don’t focus on our lack of a national transit policy.

As you know, Canada was formed by an act of Confederation, with provinces agreeing to form the nation. Our fundamental arrangement is a set of accommodations between the national and the provincial governments. In the British North America Act, the responsibility for cities is assigned to the provinces, which have complete control over what cities can do. They can dictate obligations and responsibilities, and can even dismiss elected mayors and councils. They limit the sources of revenues for cities to property taxes and fees, but prohibit them collecting the big, growth related income and sales taxes.

Our cities are trying to succeed with one hand tied behind their back. This lack of powers and financial clout is a real problem.

This might have made some sense in 1867 at the time of Confederation, when only about 20% of Canadians lived in cities. But now, when 80% do, and cities have become the principal centres of economic growth, and social and cultural generation, this makes less sense. But nothing can change in a formal way without the federal and provincial governments agreeing, and that doesn’t look likely at this time.

So in a sense we’ve become used to our cities trying to succeed with one arm tied behind their back. We’ve become used to settling for second choices in transit, and to a lack of supported housing for our fellow citizens with disabilities or dysfunction. We’ve become used to not having low-income housing in good neighbourhoods close to jobs and the amenities of community life. We’ve become used to limiting our vision to fit the facts that our most potent revenue sources are kept by other levels of government as their sovereign preserve, while they lecture us on “living within our means”.

Let’s be clear: our means are great, and they fuel the national and provincial economies. We are simply being denied access to them. If we actually lived within our means, we would be able to build housing and transit, build parks and pools, reduce inequality, and support our artists. But our means are sucked away by governmental arrangements which are blind to our cities.

I have a lot of sympathy for our mayors and city councillors who are often doing the best they can within the limits imposed on them by our history and our practice of government in Canada.

But we cannot keep waiting for something to happen.

We’re at a time in the Toronto region where people are tired of sitting around and waiting for governments to act. We have had in the last few years many examples of people working together to take back their communities. You in this room have likely been part of one or more of them.

• Better Ballots, working to reform the way we elect our representatives
• People Plan Toronto, making the voices of community part of the planning process
• Jane’s Walk, connecting people to making their community function better by walking and observing together
• The Tower Renewal Project, a citizen initiated project to transform some of our high-rise residential communities into vital, functioning neighbourhoods
• The Toronto City Summit Alliance in its various projects
• And organizations like Maytree, the Metcalf Foundation, the Atkinson Foundation, the Wellesley Institute, and the Laidlaw Foundation which support equity and prosperity across the region

Add to those all of the work you do in your organizations, and you have a tremendous source of vision, innovation, creativity, and energy which can inform the future of this city and the cities in the region.

But we need to voice that vision, to give actual form to what we want to see. This is in many ways a gift we can give to our politicians, a clear idea of the communities we wish to inhabit, some idea of how to achieve it, and our support in assembling the components needed. They will no longer have to wonder what we want them to do. We can help them catch up to the communities they serve.

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On July 11, 1982, Italy defeated West Germany 3-1 to win the World Cup in Spain. St. Clair Avenue erupted into a sea of celebration. For twelve city blocks all you could see was a mass of people celebrating, dancing in the street, wearing the blue colours of Italy. Every Torontonian became an Italian that day.

Fast forward to 2002. Korea advanced to the quarter finals, and Little Korea, the strip between Palmerston Avenue and Christie on Bloor Street saw another throng of people, celebrating, dancing, and then very civilly picking up the garbage on the street. And Toronto again took pride and celebrated with Korea in its accomplishment.

Toronto has danced with Brazil, cheered for the Portuguese, filled the streets for the French, doffed its hat to the Dutch, and madly celebrated when the Iranians beat the US in its group match in 1998.

In Toronto, you find supporters for every team that qualifies. Because Toronto is home to the world’s largest multicultural population, every qualifying team has a home field advantage. John Doyle, Globe and Mail TV critic, and author of The World Is a Ball: The Joy, Madness and Meaning of Soccer, writes that Toronto is probably the best place to experience the World Cup if you cannot be in the host country.

Soccer is a defining feature of Toronto’s landscape in other ways too. Soccer helps many immigrants integrate. Recent immigrants search out soccer fields to meet new people. It’s a place where their struggle in a new land can be forgotten for a while, where it does not matter whether they have Canadian work experience, or whether their English is heavily accented. The soccer field becomes the place for new beginnings.

Soccer is an easy game to play. You only need one ball, a couple of shirts for goal posts, and a few players willing to run up and down a field. Watch some people playing a game of pick-up soccer and you’re sure to be invited to join in. It doesn’t matter what country you’re from, what language you speak, what job you have (if you have a job at all, or if you’re a doctor driving a taxi). All you need is love for the beautiful game.

Every four years Toronto turns into a one-month carnival. People dress up, wear funny hats, put little flags on their cars, paint their faces, high five perfect strangers, feel their hearts pound, scream at TV screens, laugh, and cry.

And if your country hasn’t qualified, you just adopt another. Or you are adopted by another – just visit its headquarters, be it Chez La Belle Africaine for Cameroon, the Prague Deli for Slovakia or Teranga for Ivory Coast. If your team fails to make it to the next round, you just adopt another. And so, only in Toronto, Germans get together with the Dutch at the Madison to marvel at Klose’s extraordinary header (you would never see that in Europe), the Swiss Consulate invites representatives from Chile to join the Swiss at the Foxes Den when they play each other and turn the game into a fundraiser for the earthquake victims, and everyone dances with the Brazilians long after the final whistle has blown.

While we may not share the same mother tongue and cheer for different countries during the World Cup, we all come together to share this moment and to celebrate the first World Cup on African soil. And almost 30 years after I arrived, I won’t be surprised anymore by the passion, noise and celebrations. Soccer is very much part of the Canadian identity. It brings us together every four years in a wonderful one-month celebration – and in the end, where you came from really doesn’t matter all that much anymore.

Imagine, the 2018 World Cup hosted in Toronto. That would be worth cheering for.

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In the last few years the Ontario government has made strong commitments to making Ontario a more welcoming place for skilled immigrants, in particular by investing resources in bridging programs, establishing a Fairness Commission and negotiating a better deal with the federal government for immigrants to Ontario – all promising signs.

But while these commitments receive public attention and approval, this same government passes legislation that re-enacts old barriers, dating back to before the last World War. On May 13, 2010, Bill 158 – an Act to review and update the statutes governing the accounting professions in Ontario – passed third reading. In essence, the Bill was an opportunity to modernize the profession. Sadly, the opportunity was lost and instead restrictions on how international accounting credentials can be used were re-enacted. Only the fine was updated to modern times, creating a $10,000 fine for anyone using any portion of the initials CA (chartered accountant), CMA (certified management accountant) or CGA (certified general accountant).

Does the right hand know what the left is doing? It seems it does not.

While Bill 158 was intended to increase transparency and accountability for the profession, it effectively re-affirms the barrier to internationally trained accountants, and prevents them from listing their professional credentials. In practical terms, it means that if the Finance Director from the Bank of England were to come to Ontario to work, he would not be permitted to show the letters CA after his name to show that he was a chartered accountant. He could only do so after completing the various requirements in Ontario. Perhaps he could just go back to school and start over, so that there would be no confusion?

Internationally-trained CGAs, CAs and CMAs are all affected by what is essentially a cartel. Although the Act does not prevent them from practicing their profession, they are unable to market themselves to employers or as entrepreneurs. Their hands are tied, and their opportunities limited.

There is a reasonable compromise. The Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council (TRIEC) put forward an effective option to the Justice Committee. It suggested the Act allow the use of international designations under any circumstance, provided that the issuing jurisdiction is clearly indicated in brackets following the designation, e.g., ACMA (UK), ACCA (UK) or ACA (India). This option would enable consumers and businesses to identify the international skills and experience that may be needed to reach new markets, and build Ontario’s prosperity. Unfortunately this suggestion was not heard.

It seems clear that the Ontario Government must amend or withdraw Bill 158, or risk losing credibility on their platform commitment to including immigrants in the Ontario economy, as well as their ambitions of an Open Ontario. It is time to have the right hand and the left hand working together.

By Alan Broadbent

The recent round of provincial budgets and the federal budget have proven that those levels of government have neither the resources nor the inclination to finance the big-ticket items cities need, such as transit and low-income housing. They are mired in their own deficits and their own priorities.

Cities have inadequate revenue sources to pay for expensive things and are overly reliant on property taxes to cover current spending. They need new ways to raise money. A city sales tax would be a big help.

Not every city would need or want to charge this tax, but the cities with the greatest need – typically big cities that require transit and housing – could pursue the option. For those cities with real infrastructure gaps, it could be a blessing. Municipal leaders would have to make a case to their citizens, risking electoral defeat if they failed to be persuasive or to provide the promised benefits.

All three levels of government would need to be on side. Permission to levy a sales tax would have to come from the provinces, preferably leaving the cities to set the rate. Permission to use the existing collection and distribution mechanisms would have to come from Ottawa

Granting such permissions would be wise, for it would reduce pressure on provincial budgets and enable cities to prosper to the ultimate benefit of the provinces and the country.

Originally published in The Mark

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Federal immigration minister Jason Kenney has tabled long awaited and sensible reforms to the refugee system.

The reforms are a realistic response to the problems that have existed for some years. Under the proposed reforms, claimants will receive a full hearing from public servant decision-makers assigned to the Immigration and Refugee Board, with an appeals process for some, though not all refused claimants. They promise speed and efficiency and they address the long time frames between the arrival of a refugee and the final disposition of their claim.

The reforms mirror some of the ideas proposed by Peter Showler, the head of the Refugee Forum at the University of Ottawa and the former chair of the Immigrant and Refugee Board. In September 2009, Showler released Fast Fair and Final which said a reformed system needs to be based on the following three pillars: a good first decision; a reliable appeal; and the prompt removal of failed claimants.

The Minister’s reforms are responsive to that mandate. Like all potentially good reforms, the devil will be in the details. One such detail is the so-called “safe country list” or the Safe Country of Origin list.

In the proposed system, a claimant who is refused will be able to appeal their first decision to the new Refugee Appeal Division of the Immigration and Refugee Board. However, claimants from those countries which are on the list will not be able to appeal.

Contrary to what some would expect, there is no mention of the word “safe” in the legislation. It is also not a list of all possible countries we imagine to be safe. Instead, it will be a short list of countries from where there is a “significant and sudden refugee flow to Canada.” And Canada will be called on to decide whether claims from such source countries should have access to an appeal or not. This decision will have life-altering consequences for claimants.

Some believe that any country with democratic elections should qualify for the list. Others, particularly those with state security perspectives, believe the primary disqualifier should be the threat of state sanctioned or tolerated torture for returnees. And still others believe the primary criterion should be whether the state has the capacity to protect its citizens.

We are in this latter camp. We believe that many countries which have elections and apparently operating democratic systems are unable to protect citizens who are at risk of being persecuted by drug cartels or criminal gangs, by homophobes or political factions, or by other extremist elements in society. The key criterion for being on the list should be the ability of the state to protect its citizens, the first role of the state.

It has been proposed that the Minister will make a decision on which countries are safe or not based on the recommendations he receives from an advisory committee. Like Peter Showler, we believe its members should include people outside of government with human rights expertise. The government so far has said that this committee will consist only of CIC public servants and a UNHCR representative.

Refugees have made great contributions to Canada. The vast majority of them bring enormous drive, energy, intelligence and ability to this country. A reformed system should make it faster for qualified refugees to be accepted, and easier to remove those with inadequate or fraudulent claims. The Minister’s reforms seem to meet those objectives and could be strengthened by proper transparency and oversight in the designation of the Safe Country of Origin list.

For more details on the refugee reforms, visit Introduction of Refugee Reforms.

Much of this criticism is based on a lack of understanding of what the Senate does, exacerbated by the media’s almost complete neglect of the Senate until something egregious surfaces, like the absentee record of Senator Andrew Thompson who was living in Mexico.

It also ignores the virtual abolition of the House of Commons by successive prime ministers, who have so concentrated power in the Prime Minister’s Office and the Privy Council Office that the House has become staged theatre. Every vote and debate in the House is so highly controlled and so forcefully whipped that individual members of parliament have been silenced, or scripted, and the House has lost its ability to function effectively for Canadians.

This begs the question: Why abolish one chamber of Parliament when the other has virtually abolished itself?

Which leads us to examine what the Senate actually does, to see if it is providing value to Canadians. An excellent book by Senator Serge Joyal, Protecting Canadian Democracy, contains a chapter by Queen’s professor emeritus C.E.S. Franks which illuminates the real work of the Senate.

In comparing members of the House and Senate, he finds that Senators have better life experience and qualifications, and are more diverse (for example over 1/3 of the Senate is women as opposed to 1/5 of the House). They come from a wide range of backgrounds, usually after a career of significance. There are professionals from law, accountancy, and medicine; social workers; journalists; athletes; and business people. They are not people who might have run for public office, but are willing to serve. Many have served the political process by supporting the apparatus of democracy in political parties. Some have held public office as MPs, provincial legislators, or mayors.

Contrary to the popular view of overpaid fat cats, Senators make less than judges, senior civil servants, high school principals, and stockbrokers. Their tenure in Parliament is much longer than members of the House who, with an average parliamentary career of just over four years, have much shorter political lifespans than in other parliaments around the globe and the U.S. Congress. The longer tenure, coupled with the relative absence of enforced party discipline, allows focus on key issues of public concern, and the building of cross-party relationships that contribute to productive investigations. As Franks says, “members of both sides work together to unravel knotty problems of public concern….” By contrast, many members of the House are still finding their way around when their terms are up, and at any rate have little encouragement to become expert or focused in policy areas.

The Senate record of useful investigations is impressive. Senator David Croll chaired two critical investigations, on Aging in 1966 and on Poverty in Canada in 1971. The Poverty report became a signal document internationally. In 1970, Senator Keith Davey chaired an investigation on concentration in the media, which has been revisited by the Senate several times since. The Standing Committee on Banking, Trade, and Commerce has studied Canada’s financial institutions regularly since the 1980s, contributing much to the stability of our banking system, which has stood out in the last two years.

The Senate has done useful work on euthanasia and assisted suicide, on health care for veterans, on foreign affairs including signal reports on Canada-U.S. relations and on NATO, regular reports on the state of the fishery, and a wide range of other issues that proved too controversial for the House of Commons or had too long a time frame for the shorter term focus of the House.

Almost all of these reports have been of high quality, and their recommendations have often created key building blocks for Canada. In this regard, the Senate has completely outperformed the House of Commons for decades.

The most controversial activities of the Senate have been their approvals or rejections of legislation that the House has passed, the so-called “sober second thought.” This has frustrated the prime minister of the day, no one more so than Brian Mulroney when both his GST and Free Trade bills were submitted to investigation, with the threat of defeat in the Senate. In fact, in almost every case the Senate approves the legislation, but makes sure that it has been aired publicly, even if the media is usually an unsuspecting agent in the process, more consumed with outrage than insight. In fact, both the GST and Free Trade were critical changes by a majority government, and without Senate delay would have not been so thoroughly debated.

In many other cases, the Senate has played a critical role in improving legislation, although this is less the case now than formerly when the House didn’t have as good drafting capabilities. Prior to recent decades, House-approved legislation often had either internal conflicts or clashed with other legislation that weakened it, but drafting has improved. The higher quality drafting of legislation, which is now the Canadian norm, has obviated the necessity for such detailed Senate scrutiny.

The Senate’s role of providing high quality investigations into issues of importance to Canada, and even its periodic imposition of sober second thought, provide great value to Canadians. In an era where governments have severely weakened the House of Commons, this is no time to consider abolishing the one chamber of Parliament that functions well in the interests of Canadians.

Originally published in The Mark

A Conservative prime minister from Calgary with a reputation as a cold-hearted tactician who has trouble delegating authority to his cabinet and wants to micromanage everything, governing after the worst economic downturn in decades, reviled for failing to do enough, seemingly out of touch with the suffering of many Canadians, seeking some secure foothold in a volatile world which puts Canada and its future at risk.

Stephen Harper? Perhaps.

But more certainly Richard Bedford Bennett, Canada’s Conservative prime minister from 1930-35. Bennett took office after the great stock market collapse of 1929. His first years in office were focused on international trade and economic stabilization. Like today, Canada’s banks had survived the Depression relatively well, unlike most U.S. banks, which had closed. But the economic downturn was exacerbated by prairie drought, and many Canadians were dislocated and destitute.

He enacted a number of measures to deal with the symptoms: support to enable farmers to remain on their farms, as well as technical assistance to rehabilitate parched land; a marketing board to help obtain the best possible crop prices; and funding for building and construction to create employment.

In 1934 and 1935, Bennett became familiar with U.S. president Franklin Roosevelt’s developing New Deal legislation, through his brother-in-law William Herridge, Canada’s minister to Washington. As a result, they developed legislation that introduced the progressive income tax, bolstered pensions for seniors, established unemployment insurance, and introduced the eight-hour work day and the 48-hour work week. Some of these programs were challenged in the courts as lying properly in provincial jurisdictions under the British North America Act, but eventually resurfaced to become critical pieces of the Canadian legislative landscape.

Bennett’s most enduring creations though were the creation of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1932, based on his conviction that Canada needed a radio service that provided education, not just entertainment; the Bank of Canada in 1935, to further stabilize the banking system; and the Canadian Wheat Board in 1935.

In five years R.B. Bennett put in place a vast range of essential building blocks of modern Canada. He helped build the social country, which was substantially completed by Lester Pearson 35 years later. He built the 20th-century equivalent of the CPR, the CBC, to engender a sense of nationhood. And he secured key economic foundations in the Bank of Canada and the Wheat Board.

Bennett was not afraid to be a nation builder. He put himself at the service of his country, and put his government to work assembling the key building blocks not only to deal with the Great Depression, but to secure the future. He did it through innovation, inspiration, and with great personal courage, good lessons for our leaders today.

Originally published in The Mark

The House of Commons is the most visible chamber of Canada’s Parliament, and most Canadians would conclude that it is a house in disarray.

Prorogation, absence, obfuscation, and nastiness seem to be its truck and trade today. If one merely went by accounts in the media, it seems dominated by opposition games of “gotcha” and government games of “keep away.”

Stephen Harper, who brought national attention to the House with two rounds of prorogation, clearly sought to avoid difficult situations for his minority government. It seemed okay with him, and probably many Canadians, for the House not to meet, perhaps a trick he learned from Ralph Klein in Alberta who had the legislature meet as little as possible. Clearly Canadians don’t see Parliament as a necessity.

There are problems with the way the House functions. There is very little vibrant debate, although it is possible to tune in and hear some interesting speeches in the wee hours, when the chamber is virtually vacant. There are, in those nether hours, MPs who have bothered to become knowledgeable about a matter of public concern, and who are contributing to the national discussion. Only watchers of the parliamentary channel (I confess) or readers of Hansard would know about them.

Instead of debate, we get question period, the staged performance of outrage and umbrage where even important questions like the fate of Afghan detainees are reduced to political fodder. Opposition parties cull the list of issues to find the most sordid, salacious, or scandalous, and then work them like rented mules until they die of servitude and overuse.

Every vote in the House is “whipped,” subjected to party discipline, so that individual members have no choice but to vote with their party. The recent straying by some Liberal MPs was an exception, and revealed dysfunction in the Liberal exercise of party discipline. Penalties can be severe, including expulsion and the resulting disconnection from the party teat. Even in committees members are scripted and disciplined, particularly recently, which puts a severe crimp in the discussions which in the past have produced some of the best work of Parliament.

Power is clearly centred in the Prime Minister’s Office and flows from there to Cabinet and then to caucus. The system is so leader-oriented that a senior advisor to a prime minister has more power than a senior cabinet minister, without any public accountability.

In our House today politics trumps policy, and the short-term (defined by the daily news cycle) trumps the long-term. In effect, it is now OK to leave a mess for someone else to clean up.

Somehow, our 308 Members of Parliament have ceded power to fewer than 20 of their colleagues. Most of the 20 are members of the government, the prime minister and the senior cabinet ministers, and the others are the opposition party leaders and a few of their senior colleagues.

You can blame the prime minister and party leaders for this. But you should also blame those other almost 300 MPs who have let this happen with barely a squeak. They’ve allowed this truck to run them over, and most of them have barely tried to jump to the side of the road. They haven’t defended the most important element of our democracy for fear they damage their career. Is this acceptable behaviour in defence of the very democracy people have died for over the centuries?

One of the problems our MPs have with being braver is the fact that their careers aren’t very long anyway. Canadian MPs spend less than five years in the House on average, either being defeated or deciding not to run again. This is far less than in other parliaments around the world. Canada has a relatively large number of ridings that swing between parties, perhaps 25 per cent, so many members are just getting their feet under them when it is time to leave. This doesn’t allow them to master either the parliamentary process or the substance of a key public issue before they go back to private life.

One solution that has been suggested over the years is to increase the size of the House of Commons, perhaps even doubling it. This would allow a riding like Toronto Centre, which is likely NDP in the south end and Conservative in the north end, but elects either Liberals or left-leaning Progressive Conservatives (in the old days), to return one NDP and perhaps one Conservative member who might have considerable longevity.

The bias of this argument, of course, is that longevity is good, which runs counter to the current affection for term limits and hair shirts for politicians. In other parliaments with longer average tenures, MPs tend to become experts. One U.K. MP I knew was an expert in rail transport and played a strong role in the creation of transportation policy whether his party was in power or not. He was in parliament for three decades.

In order to make longevity a virtue, it would help to change some other current conventions of the House. Fewer whipped votes would help, which could be achieved by having confidence votes only on fiscal bills or matters of national security, not merely political disagreement. Parliament could agree to do this now. How hard parties whip votes is their choice, a matter of the convention they choose.

Strengthening the role of the Speaker with stronger censure powers, as Peter McLeod has suggested here in The Mark, would help. This could be enabled by making the Speaker less prone to replacement by requiring large supermajorities for removal.

It might also serve us well to have minimum sitting days per year, as well as minimum attendance requirements for the party leaders to be in the House together. These minimums should be set at high levels to make sure that more debate occurs in the House, rather than on what now seems to be a never-ending stump.

The House was never perfect. From its early days it was a lively political arena with such sharp wits as MacDonald, Diefenbaker, and Mulroney cutting up their opponents. During such high times as the Pacific Scandal, the House seemed to fall apart in disarray, but it always returned to deal with the issues of the day. It likely will again.

But Canada cannot afford to have the House diminished. We need a central place where the discussion of the national project returns, back from the stump or the news clip, back from the private mansions or the barricades. We need those 308 Members to reclaim the House for Canadians and to rebuild our democracy by reclaiming the national discourse.

Originally published in The Mark

(What follows is the text of Sherri Torjman’s speech delivered at the Canada@150 Conference held in Montreal on March 26-28, 2010.)

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Thank you for the opportunity to participate in this important national conversation on Canada at 150.

Before I turn to the future, I would like to look back briefly to the past. It’s instructive to recall two other landmark years in our history: Canada at 75 and Canada at 100.

At 75, Canada had just introduced the Unemployment Insurance Act. While initial coverage was modest, the program was intended as an essential safeguard for workers. It conveyed a powerful message: Never again. Never again would Canadians have to experience the financial and social ravages of widespread unemployment.

Canada at 100 was also extraordinary, introducing within a year of Centennial the Canada Pension Plan, Canada Assistance Plan and Medical Care Act, precursor to the Canada Health Act. Again, the signal was as important as substance.

These building blocks were based on the conviction that government has a vital role to play in altering the unequal distribution of income, goods and services. The social agenda was not seen as a trade-off with the economic agenda. Social measures help build the foundation for a healthy and productive society.

I hope that these ideals from the past will help shape our ideas for the future.

From a social perspective, we face three main challenges at 150: Canada as productive society, Canada as caring society and Canada as aging society. These formidable challenges are intrinsically linked.

I will also consider the financial challenges of paying for this agenda – to assure those of you who are thinking about nothing but that while I am speaking.

Canada as productive society

Creating a productive society requires a strong learning agenda at all stages of life: early childhood development, high school completion, literacy and numeracy upgrading, access to post-secondary education and training in market-relevant skills.

High school completion rates have been going up on average but need to be improved – especially for aboriginal students. Overall literacy scores could read far better. The OECD recently identified reading proficiency at age 15 as the bellwether indicator for future economic success. Too many low-income students face barriers to advanced education. A fully productive society is not possible when so many are left out of the opportunity equation.

The problem is especially acute for new Canadians who come with knowledge and skills that we fail to recognize. Even 10 years ago, the Conference Board estimated that Canada would gain an annual $4 to $6 billion by eliminating the “learning recognition gap.” There is a significant wage gap as a result.

While education and training are pathways to success, they don’t guarantee freedom from poverty. Close to half of low-income Canadians are employed. One in four workers earns $10 an hour or less.

As a result, poverty remains high. One child in ten still lives in poverty – despite a 1989 House of Commons resolution to move toward the eradication of child poverty by 2000.

Inequality has widened, with a growing gap between rich and poor. Over the past quarter-century, average incomes of the wealthy increased by 16 percent, while those of the poor dropped by 21 percent. Rising tides in pre-recession Canada did not lift all boats – just yachts.

A productivity agenda requires both springboard and safety net measures. Springboard measures relate to all forms of learning. They help create success over the longer term. Safety net measures offset the immediate impact of poverty.

The Canada Child Tax Benefit and Working Income Tax Benefit are crucial federal levers to bolster low income and low earnings, respectively. These powerful tools must be sharpened and honed. But for Canadians who are unemployed, the entire machinery needs an overhaul.

Workers who lose jobs through no fault of their own can qualify, in theory, for Employment Insurance. But changes introduced in the 1990s have drastically reduced eligibility. Not even five in ten unemployed now qualify.

Canada requires strong leadership that joins Ottawa with the provinces and territories to build a new income security architecture for working age adults.

Employment Insurance should be strengthened to restore its rightful place as the first line of earnings replacement for the unemployed. A new temporary income program would help jobless Canadians in financial need who don’t qualify for EI, preventing them from falling behind the welfare wall.

Some half-million persons with severe disabilities now rely on welfare, which never was intended as an adequate lifetime guarantee. A better bet would be a new federal program for persons with severe disabilities modelled on the Guaranteed Income Supplement for low-income seniors. Under a negotiated accord, provinces and territories would reinvest their sizeable welfare savings in supports for independent living. The disability tax credit can be made refundable to help low-income persons with severe disabilities.

The challenge lies not so much in finding ways to tackle poverty but in overcoming indifference to the problem. Widespread and persistent poverty is a symptom of a deeper malaise – a poverty of interest around this concern. This poverty of compassion relates to our second social challenge at 150: Canada as caring society. How do we care? Do we care?

Canada as caring society

The need for care is present at all stages of life – starting in the early years. While parents are the primary caregivers, we know from a burgeoning international evidence base that early childhood development and high-quality child care are crucial supports for families.

The OECD recognizes early childhood development as the foundation for a learning and productive society. But among 25 OECD countries surveyed recently, Canada tied an embarrassing last – along with Ireland – for investment in this crucial area.

The sad note is that we did have a set of federal-provincial/territorial agreements on early childhood development and child care that had been painstakingly negotiated and signed in 2000 and 2003, respectively. Both had associated arrangements for First Nations children.

In 2006, these agreements were dismantled and replaced by a universal child benefit and a non-refundable child tax credit, together worth $3.5 billion in 2009. Lots of money for precious few quality spaces. At least Québec has a coherent early learning and child care system. Ontario, Manitoba and other provinces are moving in that direction. Federal leadership could significantly advance this agenda throughout the country.

The demands on many families move beyond child care. The four million family caregivers of ailing parents and relatives with severe disabilities provide more than 80 percent of care in this country. Most are women – and we face unique pressures.

Caregivers often pay for basics for care receivers, many of whom live in poverty. Caregivers typically pay for disability supports not covered by medicare or private insurance. Their employment status may be jeopardized by caregiving responsibilities.

At 150, there should be improved employment and income measures to assist caregivers. Expand Compassionate Care Leave under Employment Insurance. Extend child care drop-out provisions under the Canada Pension Plan to include care for an ailing or disabled relative. Introduce a modest caregiver allowance, like Australia and the UK. We already have a Child Disability Benefit that could be applied to adults with disabilities.

It would be easy to be tempted by “low-hanging fruit” – just increase the caregiver and infirm dependent tax credits already in place. But these provisions offer no assistance to Canadians too poor to pay income tax. Turning them into refundable credits would at least provide some help to the poorest households.

Support for caregivers links clearly to the provision of health care, more generally. Health care costs are the most rapidly rising component of government budgets.

Taming these costs and ensuring quality care will require multiple, linked strategies: Shift funds from institutions to home care – in recognition of family caregivers who are the backbone of Canada’s health care system. Increase the responsibilities of nurse practitioners. Redirect funds toward factors that contribute to good health, like decent affordable housing and poverty reduction – the so-called “social determinants of health.” Prevent chronic disease from creating huge blockages in the nation’s financial arteries.

Canada as aging society

The actions we take to create a productive society and caring society will set the stage for how well we manage the third social challenge: an aging society.

Labour market demands will encourage continued employment for some older Canadians and allow them to save a bit more for the future. We also need to bolster a retirement income security system that is all too frail these days.

Forty-four percent of working Canadians have no private pension or RRSP. Only one in five workers belongs to an employer-sponsored pension plan. Just one-third of households have enough savings to cover basic expenses in retirement.

Insecure defined contribution plans are eclipsing secure defined benefit plans. Shaky equities hardly bode well as future income security for Canada at 150. A financial expert recently provided these words of wisdom for a secure retirement: Make sure you have a child (preferably a daughter) to take care of you in old age.

An aging society must also ensure accessible housing, transportation and public spaces. The World Health Organization sponsors an initiative called Age-Friendly Cities in recognition of these goals.

We can’t afford to sideline more than 25 percent of the population in future. We need seniors as workers, mentors, volunteers and fully participating citizens.

Financing

The social agenda is a big one. Bolster learning throughout life. Tackle poverty through measures such as the Canada Child Tax Benefit and Working Income Tax Benefit. Recognize foreign credentials. Reconfigure the income security and employment architecture for the unemployed and retired. Reinstate the early childhood development and child care agreements. Ease caregiving pressures through extended leave, enhanced home care and caregiver allowance. Create accessible and inclusive communities.

The list is long and more easily said than done. For some, the words “social agenda” ring alarm bells – or at least cash registers. And we certainly face a tough fiscal future that will last beyond the recession.

But I would argue that it’s not good enough just to say: “Vital social goals should be put on hold because there’s no money.” It is essential to explore not just the destination at 150 but also the route to get there.

There are steps we can take by challenging current expenditures. Tax reform is one area that requires review. We spend a fortune on the fortunate.

For example, Ottawa could reconsider boutique tax breaks for the affluent and withdraw outdated tax incentives for certain business sectors. The GST could be raised to recoup the $12 billion a year in lost revenue from its two-percentage point cut, with an associated increase in the GST credit for lower-income households.

Then there’s the spending already under way – billions on after-the-fact interventions. After the crisis, the stroke, the depression, the arrest, the fire. We pay so much attention to putting out the forest fire that we have lost sight of the forest.

A US report estimated that child poverty in that country costs $500 billion a year – or four percent of GDP – in increased crime, reduced productivity and poor health. A similar study in Britain put its price tag at an annual £25 billion or 2 percent of GDP.

Here at home, the cost of poverty has been pegged at $10 to $13 billion per year for the federal and Ontario governments alone. This huge sum clearly would be better spent reducing and preventing poverty than compensating for its devastating effects.

Every dollar spent on prisons, for example, is a dollar not spent on key factors linked to crime, such as severe dyslexia and fetal alcohol syndrome disorder.

The evidence base on health determinants tells us that every dollar spent on poverty reduction and affordable housing is a dollar that leads to better health outcomes.

We need to move from end-of-pipe wastage to upstream investments that help prevent costly problems in the first place. After-the-fact measures will not get us where we want to be at 150. Those working on environmental issues face the very same challenge.

Then there are the markets that we have not yet tapped.

A Business of Aging summit hosted by the MaRS Innovation Centre in Toronto highlighted a market worth $20 billion by 2020 from products and services to promote a healthy and engaged population in later life. These include technologies related to health diagnostics, transportation and communication. There’s apparently lots of gold in all that gray.

Another world of opportunity lies in what is termed the ‘social economy’ in Québec and community economic development in the rest of Canada. Social enterprises seek to achieve both profit and social purpose. For example, Inner City Renovation – just one of hundreds of local efforts – builds affordable housing in inner-city Winnipeg and employs aboriginal youth.

In Québec alone, l’économie sociale generates an annual $17 billion, or 6 percent of the provincial economy.

Despite its rich heritage in Atlantic Canada and the Prairies, the sector struggles for recognition outside Québec. Social enterprises and voluntary organizations, more generally, are also trapped by antiquated charity laws that make it difficult to operate outside traditional charitable bounds.

One bright light was the federal social economy initiative introduced in 2004 – subsequently withdrawn shortly after. Both the US and UK play actively in this new social and economic space. The US recognizes this economic sphere as a ‘new market’ and offers a tax credit by that name.

But fiscal challenges go beyond the availability of funds. The distribution of funds – once we find them – needs a major overhaul to correct the fiscal imbalance among governments. The deficit burden in future will be borne increasingly by provinces that have primary responsibility for health care and education.

Municipalities are also playing a vital social role. Montréal was first in the country to bring in a Charter of Rights and Responsibilities in recognition of this role, including recreation and culture. Red Deer, Calgary and Edmonton have introduced 10-year homelessness strategies. These efforts are crucial, given that decent affordable housing has become a policy orphan in Canada.

But municipalities lack the revenue capacity to match their growing social role and changing demographics, with new Canadians settling in larger centres and young aboriginals moving to urban areas.

The federal Gas Tax Fund made permanent in Budget 2008, which delivers $2 billion a year to cities and communities, is a good start. It needs an escalator clause and a plan for long-term responsiveness to municipal challenges.

A final note. We often talk as though government is the only player on the social stage. But the voluntary and private sectors have taken the lead on thousands of remarkable efforts. The economic and social inclusion strategy to combat poverty, recently adopted in New Brunswick, is a shining example of this essential collaboration.

Vibrant Communities joins together 12 communities in a national learning partnership on local solutions to reduce poverty. The Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council, led by the Maytree Foundation, Toronto City Summit Alliance and Manulife, to name just one private sector partner, successfully links new Canadians to mentors and jobs.

These are just a few examples of the rich tapestry of local action. Despite differences, they all face a common challenge. There is no supportive machinery to harvest good practice. There is no ready mechanism for scaling success. We need to enable the application of social innovation much like the commercialization of economic innovation.

The challenges related to a productive society, caring society and aging society are not for government alone.

But there can be no social agenda without government. It’s not just a service delivery agent. Government is a convener of national conversations, like the ones we are having today. It is a champion of shared values. It should be a leader in both ideas – and ideals.

I hope that our work together to shape Canada at 150 will rekindle the vision and values that guided our nation so powerfully at 75 and 100.

I hope that our work together will help Canada take its place on the world stage as a nation that cares deeply about the well-being of its citizens.

I hope that our work together is an opportunity to reclaim our humanity.

Thank you.

Published by:

Caledon Institute of Social Policy
1390 Prince of Wales Drive, Suite 401
Ottawa, ON K2C 3N6
CANADA
Tel/Fax: (613) 729-3340

E-mail: caledon@caledoninst.org
Website: www.caledoninst.org

By Alan Broadbent

Bill Murdoch, Progressive Conservative MPP for Bruce-Grey-Owen-Sound, thinks Toronto should be made a separate province in order to break the city’s hold on the Ontario legislative agenda.

This brings to mind a comment former Toronto mayor Mel Lastman made a decade ago while attending a meeting of U.S. mayors in Miami. Looking at the relatively ample assistance U.S. cities got from the federal and state governments, he said maybe Toronto should separate from Canada in order to get a better deal.

People at the time dismissed it as part of Mel’s craziness, and people will likely say the same thing about Murdoch’s musing.

But maybe it isn’t so crazy.

In my book Urban Nation (2008), I wrote that Canada’s cities were the orphans of Confederation, creatures of the provinces locked in constitutional arrangements that are almost a century and a half out of date. Our large urban regions are now the economic, social, and cultural engines of the country. They compete with other large urban regions around the world to create prosperity and well-being.

In Canada, these regions create the wealth that gets shared with the rest of the country through our redistribution and transfer arrangements. It is in our cities that the capital pools are assembled to take the oil, gas, and minerals out of the ground, where the factories and laboratories are built, and where much of our modern industries of information and design are based.

But our cities are not in control of their own destiny. Like Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire, they are very much reliant on the kindness of strangers. They have few residual powers and limited revenue tools, being overly reliant on property taxes and barred from levying income or sales taxes, the big revenue generators. They are closely controlled by provincial governments and generally ignored by Ottawa. Their role in Confederation is to send money and keep quiet.

And they are under-represented in our federal and provincial parliaments. At the federal level, the average rural riding has 75,000 residents, the average urban riding 120,000. Rural topics tend to get more floor time in Parliament – much more talk about hoof and mouth disease than HIV-Aids, about grain rail rates than urban transit.

The big cities might benefit from being cut free. Toronto might enjoy having the powers of a province. It could certainly use the revenue that comes from income and sales taxes. That money could result in better transit, more low income and supportive housing, better immigrant integration services, a renewed lakefront, and a myriad of other benefits.

In fact, it might be so much better that the neighbouring municipalities might want in on the deal. Bill Murdoch thinks just the City of Toronto should go, the so-called 416, but the Toronto region, now called the Greater Golden Horseshoe, shares a common profile of urbanization and has a strong fabric of dynamic threads. The entire area might decide to leave Ontario together.

Of course, being Canadian, the newly autonomous province would want to continue supporting the less wealthy parts of Canada. It might not want to continue exporting all of the estimated $20 billion that currently leaves the region for other parts of the country, but it would certainly be prepared to contribute a fair chunk of it.

Bill Murdoch’s comments reflect a view that is common in Canada. Very few people feel our constitutional arrangements are working for them and people in their area. Too much of government seems remote, too many policies and programs ill-tailored, too many politicians unaware.

New provinces are an unlikely solution, given our unhappy history with constitutional change. But empowering local governments to do more, equipping them with revenue tools, and looking for local solutions to local problems might make more people feel like their governments understand and are working for them.

Originally published in The Mark.

PDF Version

It is budget season in Canada, as the federal, provincial and municipal governments table their estimates of revenues and expenditures for the coming year. Budget time focuses our attention on how governments plan on using our tax dollars, and periodic auditor general reports shine a light on how governments actually spend money.

Budgets and audits tend to focus on the big expenditures of governments, the so-called “material” items which often are valued in the billions of dollars. Most people and community organizations, though, have financial arrangements with governments that fall well below the billions, and even below the millions. Instead, they receive amounts in the hundreds and thousands, amounts which allow them to work with the government with their personal set of financial tools and assumptions.

Canadians generally are not very well schooled in financial matters. There is little in our school lessons that teach us much more than the difference between a nickel, dime or quarter, and caution us to always count our change. When we get into the financial realm of compound interest or discounted cash flow, we embark on a whole new learning curve. Much of our education comes from the financial institutions of which we are clients. We learn to manage our bank accounts, we learn how a mortgage works, and we learn how credit and debit cards work.

One of the chief lessons we learn about financial responsibility is that we have to pay our bills. And if we don’t pay our bills on time, that is our problem and we have to pay a penalty. So, if we’re smart and responsible, we pay on time.

This is not a lesson that many governments have learned. In fact, a number of government funding or granting practices actually give themselves permission not to pay their bills on time. Some arrangements feature a “holdback”, which lets them keep the last installment of funding until they satisfy themselves that the money has been spent properly. Other arrangements hold back funding until a final report on a project is filed and approved. Often that approval to release the funds gets delayed because the government has failed to make the necessary review. (It must be said that some other funders, like foundations, employ similar tactics.)

Holding back funds may also result from changes in the administration of the government in question. The Queen’s University Centre for Democracy recently reported that frequent systematic shuffling of personnel in the federal government was leading to significant process gaps in getting government work done, not to mention creating a deficit in institutional knowledge. And often the delays turn out to be that it just took longer than people thought to get a required signature, or to get the document to the top of a pile on someone’s desk.

Governments can make an argument that in the expenditure of public funds it is good to ensure that there is a high degree of accountability, even if that takes some time and causes some inconvenience.

The problem for the community sector is that the inconvenience is shifted to them. The sector is thinly financed and managed, and does not have surpluses or contingencies to see them through interruptions or delays in cash flow. Much of the funding flows to salaries, mostly to middle and low income positions. There is little fat in the system. There is little capacity in the workforce to absorb gaps in income, particularly when rent has to be paid, kids clothed, and food put on the table.

In effect, government concern with accountability and process has shifted the onus onto those with the least capacity to absorb it. Rather than creating funding processes which recognize the fragile financial realities of the community sector, they have exacerbated them.

It is time for governments, as they contemplate the new fiscal realities during the budget season, to revise the funding procedures to make sure that the weakest financial links in the system don’t bear the greatest pressure. One way to start is by deciding to pay their bills on time.

PDF VERSION

Canada’s federal government is expected to have a deficit of over $50 billion this year. The Ontario government deficit will be over $14 billion. Neither of these governments expects to balance their budget before 2015, and most experts think it will take much longer. Even Alberta and B.C. will have deficits of $4 and $2 billion respectively.

The world financial collapse has hit Canada and its provinces hard, as their revenues have been sharply curtailed. Add to that Ottawa’s self-inflicted wound of cutting the GST by two points, against the advice of almost all economists, and governments find themselves back in the fiscal bog of high deficits and rising debt.

We’ve been here before. From 1970 to 1995 Canada’s deficit and debt grew, about half of it during 16 years of Liberal governments and half during 9 years of Conservative governments. Canadian governments weren’t alone, as the US, UK, France, and most other countries did the same thing. But by the mid-nineties, alarm bells were sounding, and governments began to rein in their fiscal adventuring, aided in no small part by robust economies and rising government revenues.

In Canada, the discipline started with the federal government. It had a number of tactics, one of the most successful being “downloading”. Downloading is a simple strategy of ceasing activities that cost money while keeping the money that was meant to pay for them. In the years after 1995 the federal government reduced program spending by 10%, in good part by reducing transfers to the provinces. This left the burden to cover those costs on provincial budgets which were also under stress. The federal budget did end up in balance, but so did the budgets of other western countries which had not made such program cuts, due to the rising world economy.

The provinces viewed the federal downloading trick with dismay on one hand and a grudging admiration for such fiscal alchemy on the other. They decided to try the trick themselves and began to download to their municipalities. Thus the costs of roads, social housing, and many other things suddenly became municipal responsibilities. What has resulted is a decade of deficits for city governments, particularly the larger cities with expensive infrastructure like transit systems. These deficits for the most part are not the result of wasteful city governments but of structural gaps between their limited sources of revenue and their increased responsibilities. (Cities cannot charge income and sales taxes, the two largest revenue producers, and are limited largely to property tax.)

One of the reasons this worked so well for the federal and provincial governments was that it was done before many people noticed, and certainly before the impacts began to be felt. Big gaps in building transit, growing lists of people waiting for affordable or supportive housing, increasing use of food banks, traffic tying up commerce and commuters, all grew as our deficits in providing solutions became bigger. Even now, many people don’t realize that a lot of the problems they face day-to-day are in fact created by a fundamental structural problem created when the downloading began fifteen years ago.

There are solutions. One is for Canadians to get over the unreasonable notion that the public goods they want come free or on the cheap. “Taxes are the price we pay for civilization,” Oliver Wendell Holmes said. Of course tax money must be well spent, but doing without it in modern Canada is an unrealistic option.

A second solution is to let cities have more revenue tools so that they can bear the brunt of the downloaded obligations. If cities had access to income and sales tax instruments which could pay for their obligations, then there might be a useful choice for citizens to make about which level of government deserved their taxes more, based on which services they valued more. People might be quite happy to pay for more frequent transit service, better snow clearing, or more frequent garbage pick-up, but less happy to pay for a foreign war or hinterland highway, and might let the relevant government know by either email or ballot. As many people have pointed out, there is only one tax dollar, and maybe governments should compete on a level playing field for it.

And the final solution is our watchfulness. Canadians would be well advised to watch for a new cascade of downloading, cloaked by federal government rhetoric about “fiscal responsibility”, provincial promises of “sharing responsibilities”, and general advice about getting houses in order. While governments get their houses in order, we might be crushed by the downloading avalanche.

David was the pivotal figure in the establishment of the Toronto City Summit Alliance, which he built into a dynamic civic presence which brought together leaders from business, civil society, government, labour, and academia. Using David’s preferred method of establishing a common fact base, he worked with a variety of coalitions to create solutions to persistent poverty, immigrant access to the labour market, diversifying the leadership in the city, environmental degradation, and connecting our regional research capability.

David brought a strong suite of personal abilities to the Alliance work. He had enormous energy, high intelligence with a keenly honed analytical ability, boldness, and a knack for finding the appropriate tactics. He assembled a small but strong Alliance team, headed by the irrepressible Julia Deans.

Maytree partnered with the Alliance in the creation of the Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council, which focuses on strengthening immigrants getting into the Canadian labour market. Previous efforts had generally focused on making the immigrant fit for work in Canada, but TRIEC recognized that both employers and employees needed to get fit. David was invaluable in bringing the employer community to the table in a dedicated and powerful way. It has made all the difference. More than 5000 skilled immigrants today have work in Toronto. The model is being adapted in Vancouver, Montreal, Ottawa, Halifax, Edmonton and as far away as Auckland, NZ.

Maytree partnered again with David and The Toronto City Summit Alliance when we created “DiverseCity” a courageous look at how far diversity has permeated the structures of power and privilege in the city.

Through “DiverseCity”, slowly but surely we are seeing new faces around the board rooms, in the media, on election ballots, and the power plays in the city.

David also had a strong sense of how to shine the public light on important issues, to encourage the press to pay attention, and to create enthusiasm for shared participation in implementing solutions. His smart scheduling of events and meetings always helped to keep shoulders to the wheel and, where it was necessary, feet to the fire.

David was a great colleague for us at Maytree, and a great citizen of our city, province and country. He had that rare gift to leave things better than he found them. We will miss him.

Alan Broadbent, Chairman  |  Ratna Omidvar, President

On January 4 most Canadians went back to work, some albeit reluctantly. Not so our parliamentarians in Ottawa, who were given an extended prorogated break.

Governments, regardless of which level or which party, are the servants of the people. We elect them, pay for them, work with them in the belief that they will go about the business of governing in an efficient, effective and accountable manner.

From this point of view, the last parliamentary session in Ottawa was in effect a total write-off. More than 30 bills died on the floor. Each of these was the result of significant efforts and expense on behalf of government, both for the public service and for parliamentarians. Further, in most instances, these legislative actions also represented major efforts on the part of industry, citizen-led groups, and communities. All for nought, as it turns out.

As we go into what promises to be a most challenging year for Canada, we need to remind our elected officials at all levels of government that once elected, they work for us, not for themselves. And they work to provide good government to Canadians, not simply vie with each other for political advantage.

Like other Canadians, they should put their shoulder to the wheel as we begin the New Year.

To our readers, a happy, productive, work-filled 2010!

Alan Broadbent, Chairman  |  Ratna Omidvar, President

Speech at the Third Canadian Conference on Social Enterprise (Thursday, November 19, 2009)

My wife Judy and I started Maytree almost thirty years ago with some serious ambitions but not very much capital. As a businessman, I figured out pretty quickly that we better interest ourselves in leverage if we wanted to have any success achieving our ambitions.

While over the ensuing years we have managed to build our assets with infusions from business profits, we have never had enough money to solve all the social problems before us. In fact, we all share that. I would argue that even the biggest foundations, NGO’s, or social enterprises in the world, if they aim their ambitions at the big issues, don’t have enough money to fix things. At best, they might be able to make a big dent.

It has been our conclusion that the best way to overcome the big issues and problems is to change the way society thinks and acts. It is by tapping into the power of our collective will, and attendant large public budgets, that we can take the great strides forward. The greatest advances in the wellbeing of populations have always come from public measures: public sanitation systems ended the plagues; public education systems have carried nations into prosperity; vaccination programs virtually wiped out polio and tuberculosis; seat-belt laws have reduced road carnage; and anti-smoking ordinances have reduced lung cancers.

So Maytree has focused on public policy as the biggest lever available to us in building stronger and more equitable societies. It is our view that without a public policy lens on our work, we are just engaging in a plethora of pilot projects which miss that chance to be transformative for more than a relative handful of people.  And while I would never scoff at helping a handful of people, it seems more responsible to our public obligations to seek the leverage that could scale up and multiply the positive impact of our work. In our view, that comes from affecting the way we act together.

I hope you’ll forgive me for having begun by talking about my organization, but it is what I know best. Through Maytree and our related organizations like The Caledon Institute or The Tamarack Institute, The Refugee Law Centre or UBC law professor Ben Perrin’s work on modern day slavery, we have developed a belief in the power of a policy perspective.

I’ve talked specifically about public policy and what we do collectively, but there are other large scale policies which can have a broad affect, mostly in corporate policy. One of the areas we’re active in at Maytree is corporate employment policy, in which we’ve engaged through the work of the Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council. TRIEC has been working with employers to change their human resource policy and practices to dismantle barriers to immigrant employment, at the same time we work with immigrants to make their adjustments so they can succeed in the labour market.

The leverage of government and big corporations is too powerful to ignore. If we want to change the uptake of immigrants in the labour force, we need to change the behaviour of employers. If we want to improve the lot of poor children, we need to get governments to adopt the Child Tax Benefit, one of Caledon’s signal achievements. We get them to do so by coming up with a persuasive policy instrument that is ready to use.

Being “Policy Ready”

So an important question is, “how can we think about our work in terms of policy initiatives and instruments that will pull the big levers of power”? Once we accept the efficacy of a policy approach, then we need to know what to do.

It is easy to have a two day event like this where everyone states what their idea of a perfect world would be. We can voice noble thoughts, grand ideals, and paradigms of perfect behaviour.           It is a lot harder, though, to think about the distance between that idealized world, and where we are now, and then to begin to construct the real bridges about how we can get there from here.

It is also easy to simply become part of what I call the Culture of Complaint, where we describe, in increasingly exquisite detail, what is wrong and who is to blame. It is, of course, important to know what the problem is, and to be able to describe it. But that is just the first step toward designing and implementing solutions. We often engage in the problem description, and then wait for someone else to fix it.

When Ken Battle and I founded The Caledon Institute of Social Policy, we agreed that we didn’t want to be part of the culture of complaint, but wanted to recommend solutions. We wanted to focus on how to fix things, and thus have been very focused on public policy. People say that Caledon produces work that is “policy ready”. That is, policy makers can take our work and see immediately how it fits into existing policy frameworks, and how it can be done.

Former Alberta treasurer Jim Dinning used to ask of groups appealing to government that they “bring me something I can say yes to”. What he meant was that he did not want to have to take a germ of an idea and do all the work, both substantive and political, to make it happen. He asked that proponents of an idea spend at least part of their time putting themselves in his shoes, seeing what the obstacles might be for him in doing what they wanted him to do.

The other thing that is really useful, I think, in talking about problems, is getting practical and realistic. Malcolm Gladwell wrote an article called “Million Dollar Murray” in The New Yorker about what he called power numbers. He began by tracing the costs to the system of a down and out Las Vegas alcoholic named Murray, a nice and harmless fellow who periodically, four or five times a year, binged so badly that he ended up requiring massive medical intervention, to the cost of about a half million dollars a year. Gladwell commented that it would be better for Murray, and cheaper for the state, if they rented him an apartment and a personal nurse.

Similarly, in New Zealand, the activist Vivian Hutchinson looked at the high unemployment rate, and some related spurt of petty criminality which had risen at the same time, and wondered what could be done about the idle young men who were both unemployed and involved in the antisocial behaviour. He talked to some old mates who were in politics, and the result was The Mayors’ Task Force for Jobs. Eventually 85 of New Zealand’s 88 mayors came on board, and they began to count heads.

For example, in the town of Greymouth, they counted eight unemployed young men between 17 and 25 years old. In Kaikohe, it might have been 14. And the mayors convened the local employers and said, “in Greymouth, we need eight jobs”. So the guy who owned the lumberyard came up with one, so did the grocer, so did the local government fisheries office, and so did the nursing home. And they began to pick away at the problem bit by bit, through local initiative. And it all starts with the practical approach of knowing how many jobs you are talking about, getting to the data before resorting to the theory of unemployment.

The theorist would say for high unemployment, you need to cut business taxes. The pragmatist would ask, how many jobs do we need? And then would get the employers in a room.

Orthodoxy and dissent

I want to talk about Orthodoxy and Dissent. All of us, particularly if we identify with a group or point of view, have some version of orthodoxy. We have a way of organizing our thoughts and views that involves some shortcuts and code, and that we take for granted, especially when we are talking to those in our group. It is actually very good that we do this. It saves a lot of time, and it bonds us to others in a way that can have great utility in the public arena.

But sometimes that orthodoxy can get in the way of our moving forward. It can become an anchor that keeps us in one place when we want to be making progress.

The left had for years an orthodoxy about the venality and corruption of the business community. The business community has had an orthodoxy about the waste and lack of innovation in the third sector. The right has an orthodoxy about lower taxes as a panacea for all that ails us.

It is easier to see the constraining quality of orthodoxy in others than to see it in ourselves, but it is easier for us to change it in ourselves than to change it in others. We probably all have orthodoxy, and it is worth reassessing our basic beliefs and ideas from time to time. In the fluid world in which we live, some old ideas hold, and some hold us back.

And if the group won’t change, even when we think it should, we need to think about dissent. Can we dissent without our colleagues excommunicating us? Is your company, organization, or group open to dissent? Do they embrace it, tolerate it, or ban it? It would be good to know, wouldn’t it?

Most of the brave ideas have come because someone dissented against their own group. It wasn’t always the outsider busting in, but often the insider busting out. Often that is the braver course, but the less popular one.

In social enterprise, as we move from one financing or revenue paradigm to another, we may be so locked into our story and our way of doing things that we can’t re-engineer to meet the new model. The combining of the “social” with the “enterprise” may require us to revisit all we do and leave some of it behind, because it is unsupportable. And what we have to leave behind might be our favourite things.

Of course, we have to keep the things that are most important to our enterprise, the things that our clients or customers value the most, and the things that produce the greatest positive change. These are what in business we call the key business drivers. But orthodoxy has a funny way of unbalancing the equations by which we calculate these things.

Instruments for Success

Finally, I want to say how important I think it is that you are all here, being a part of this exploration for a new way of looking at working in our communities. You are doing it at a difficult time, when governments and businesses are under enormous revenue pressures. Governments in particular are reluctant to visit innovation that has any impact on their revenue, so that some of the traditional measures of support for enterprise, particularly the use of the tax system, aren’t readily on offer.

As you know, this movement will founder if it is based on notions of a new alchemy. Social enterprise must be based on enterprise. Multiple bottom lines which aren’t sustainable financially only work when people are prepared to be paid on the same multiple basis.

In the meantime, we have important work to do in finding those effective new instruments for the support of social enterprises. It is critical, of course, to move beyond the aspirational stage where we identify ends but wait for others to develop the means. It is important to develop the means that are practical and ready to be implemented.

So it is important that we move belong the language of consider, seek, learn, and explore in which we advise others to come up with solutions. We have to develop instruments, test how they work, model their collateral impact on such things as government revenues, investment returns, risk, and volatility. Then we can take workable instruments to the people we want to adopt them, and we can give them something they can say yes to.

If we are able to do this, and to do it at scale, we will have made a giant step forward for social enterprise.

By Alan Broadbent

Toronto Mayor David Miller made things even more interesting than usual when he announced he would not seek a third term. A simmering speculation about who might run against him was transformed into a stampede of potential candidates from all quarters, ranging from press favourites John Tory and George Smitherman, to councillors Stintz, Thompson, and Giambrone, and interesting outsiders like Rocco Rossi.

Much less was written or said about what platform the next mayor should run on. At this point, “who” seems more important than either “what” or “why”. What should the next mayor do, and why does that person want to be mayor?

These are not just questions to be asked in Toronto. Every community in Ontario and across the rest of Canada should ask candidates these questions. The pursuit of public office for its own sake is not good enough, and Canada suffers frequently from politicians who merely want to hold high office for the sake of being there, not from a desire to achieve something.

“What” is an important question, and articulating it during an election campaign is important to our democracy. Former Prime Minister Kim Campbell might have been practical when she observed that a campaign was no time to talk about the issues, but she was wrong. Without articulating a platform, candidates are asking voters to buy a pig in a poke.

At Maytree, we want candidates to focus on city building issues, particularly those issues of importance to low income and immigrant citizens because these issues matter to all residents of the city. Here are some issues:

HOUSING: the federal and provincial governments, uniquely among governments in the developed world, have lacked adequate housing policy and programs for over two decades, and the market has abandoned the lower end. (There used to be two families chasing each unit of low income housing, and now there are seven.) It is in the cities that this lack is felt most strongly, but cities lack the fiscal resources to rectify the situation. Candidates for mayor should have a commitment to finding practical solutions to the provision of low income housing, either by acquiring new revenue tools or by removing many of the non-construction costs that comprise about half of new unit construction. They should also embrace a plan for the provision of mortgage or mortgage guarantees for immigrant families to help them buy homes, the second most important factor in successful immigrant integration (after finding the right job for which the immigrant has training and experience).

TRANSIT: a comprehensive public transit system is not just an infrastructure matter, but it is a critical economic factor. It is through effective public transit that people connect to their work, school, shopping, leisure, and other economic goods. It is a critical social good as well, as it permits people to connect to their place of worship, playing field, concert or gallery, building social cohesion and community engagement. Toronto, with limited funding, has good plans in Transit City, and the next mayor should embrace and expand on this vision.

IMMIGRANT SETTLEMENT AND INTEGRATION: immigration is important to Toronto. Much of our current strength as a city region comes from the contributions of immigrants. The City can play an important role as an employer and in appointments to its agencies, boards and commissions (ABC’s). The next mayor needs to make a strong commitment to continuing and enhancing Toronto’s diversifying of its workforce, and in accelerating the appointment of diverse candidates to its ABC’s.

ALL TORONTONIANS VOTE: the municipal vote should be extended to all residents, whether they are Canadian citizens or not. Giving people a say over who governs the policy and programs they consume is not just the right thing to do, it is an obligation of civil liberties and rights. Candidates for mayor should be very clear on their position on this important issue.

CITY BRANDING: positioning Toronto to the world is a vital job of the mayor and the city government. Toronto’s current motto Diversity Is Our Strength could become Toronto: For The World, a bold statement that looks outward in invitation to the people of the planet, and inwards as a vision of equity to every citizen of the city. As Toronto raises its face to the world through Invest Toronto and other development initiatives, a new mayor should articulate a vision of welcome and inclusion.

What is good for immigrants and low income people is good for all Torontonians. We need a mayor and councillors who not only accept that notion of equity, but who have ideas and plans to make it happen. The only way we’ll know if they do is if they tell us so during an election campaign. David Miller, in our view, has been a good mayor for Toronto in good part because he had ideas which he talked about, and which he implemented on most of the matters listed above. The next mayor should build and expand the platform David Miller has built, and should tell us about it as soon as his or her candidacy is declared.

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Part 2

Part 3

Keynote address at the 2009 ALLIES Learning Exchange: Leading with Ideas (Friday, June 12).

Difficult economic times create an imperative to maintain a high level of commitment to the successful integration of immigrants. As a leader in business and philanthropy, Alan discusses the importance and timelineness of the work of ALLIES communities.

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