By Alan Broadbent

Many of us have a sense that the world is changing, and particularly that our former consensus that government was there to protect us is eroding. As we operate our community organizations in the face of government retreat, we wonder how we must change. How do we find the sustainable platform on which the future can be built? How do we manage in hard times? How might we thrive in hard times?

We know that the demand for our services will not diminish. We know that many of the problems we deal with are a continuing struggle to help people simply to live their lives with some dignity and security. We know that there will always be the great and noble work of helping our vulnerable neighbours.

So here are three thoughts about how we can make our organizations strong to thrive in hard times.

First, the Quality of our work is important. Whether we provide goods or services, or perform analysis or commentary, we should strive to do so at a high level of quality. And we should talk about it truthfully.

The Caledon Institute of Social Policy, which Maytree cofounded with Ken Battle, researches and comments on social policy, in particular income security. Ken’s work is high quality. People might disagree with his recommendations, but they cannot fault the quality of his research or his analysis. Ken makes a point of starting with data and looking to it for patterns and information, and he derives his conclusions from the data.

Too many others who comment in the public arena start with their conclusions, or points of view, and merely look for the data to back them up. The problem with this approach is that once someone finds a flaw in your data, it is enough to cast doubt on your whole argument, and even your whole enterprise.

The best weapon you have against the people who don’t really want to do what you want them to do is the quality of your work. I am not talking about perfection, or some magical notion of quality. A rhetorical commitment to “the best” or “the highest” can often lead to a foolish and expensive pursuit of the unnecessary. But within the realistic parameters of your work and ambitions, striving for quality is important.

Second, it is important to be Solutions oriented. I know this sounds obvious, but too often we become captive to what I call The Culture of Complaint. We get very good at describing problems and assigning blame. At Maytree, we see a lot of applications for funding, and a lot of arguments for change. I would say that a typical document I’m asked to read spends about 80% describing a problem and assigning blame, and 20% saying that somebody should do something about it.

Former Alberta treasurer Jim Dinning put it best when he advised groups to “bring me something I can say yes to.” This is excellent advice.

It is important to describe problems, so we know what we’re facing. But it is also important to craft solutions that are realistic, that will work in the real-world political and fiscal environment. That is the way forward.

And third, creating a strong Narrative for your work is important. This is one of the great failings of the community sector. We’re not very good at telling our story. I think as a sector, we fail at creating a persuasive narrative of the work we do, either as a sector or as organizations. And it is the latter, our organizational narratives, that I think are the most important.

We do much good work, often in very difficult circumstance, especially those who deal with the hardest problems in the toughest places. And we are so thinly managed and resourced that creating a narrative is always the job we’ll get to later, when the real work is done. And often the people good at doing the hard work aren’t the ones who are good at talking about it.

The problem with not doing it is that we are vulnerable to those who will, perhaps hysterical and sloppy press reports, perhaps politicians who can ride resentment and distrust to power, perhaps ideologues who want a different world.

When I talk about narrative, I’m not talking about an occasional press release about some report you’ve released, or a grant you got. I’m talking about your mission, and why it’s important, and what you’re doing to fulfill it, and how it is making lives and communities better.

Frank Sharry of America’s Voice talks about creating a narrative for change. Frank says the key to creating an effective narrative is “volume and velocity.” By volume he means both amount and loudness. He means that we have to keep our story coming at people so quickly, so regularly, and so audibly that they can’t miss it.

And if they can’t miss it, it is hard for them to distort it.

Obviously we don’t all own our own newspaper or television or radio station. And I think if we had a consensus it would be that the corporate press has not served us well. In fact, they have put some of our best work at risk from time to time. So, despite the presence of some real progressive advocates in the media, relying on the press to tell our story isn’t a very good idea.

Fortunately the new media can help. Sites like The Mark, The Tyee and The Huffington Post are more open to submissions from unusual suspects than the traditional commercial press. Getting a story on The Tyee then allows you to do an aggressive social media distribution linking to the story. We often find that when we have a story published in such sites, which we then link through our e-communications and social media, we get much more feedback and higher readership than an op-ed piece in the newspaper.

E-letters like Tamarack’s Engage have a wide distribution, and are open to linking to great community stories. Our Maytree e-newsletter and bulletins often link to community stories and events. And you can develop your own lists which target the audience you want to reach.

But it is time as a sector that we realized that not doing it leaves us vulnerable. It is not enough just to do good work, unfortunately. We have to be seen to be doing good work, and we have to create a continuing positive narrative that can protect us against these hysterical attacks.

For too long we’ve seen creating such positive narratives as the job we’ll get to next, as a frill, or as unseemly boasting. We need to get over that, or we’ll continue to pay the price of being misrepresented, under-valued, and maligned. Like anything that is important to our organizations, we have to plan for it, budget for it, staff it, and execute. If it isn’t in your budget, it won’t get done.

What can we do to thrive in hard times? Focus on quality, be solutions oriented, and create strong narratives.

So, What’s Your Story? It’s time to tell your story.

(This Maytree Opinion is an excerpt of a speech given on April 25 at the 2012 Connections conference, Calgary Chamber of Voluntary Organizations.)

The Canadian immigration landscape is shifting beneath our feet. When the dust settles, where will Canada be?

Some of the proposed changes, such as dealing with the backlog, are long overdue. Other changes may also be necessary. They will nevertheless have a series of unintended consequences for the makeup of Canada’s immigrant population and its ethnic diversity. It is these consequences that we should be concerned about.

Recently, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration has spoken highly of the Australian immigration model with its strict language requirements. High levels of language proficiency are a requirement in our labour market. But raising the bar on language competency may trigger an increase in immigration from English-speaking countries – Britain, the United States, Australia and New Zealand – at the cost of immigrants from emerging economic superpowers such as China, India, Russia and Brazil.

Add to this administrative changes such as the closing of visa offices in Bangladesh, Iran and elsewhere and we will begin to see a shift in source countries. Recent media reports show that the numbers of immigrants applying for permanent residence from China, India, the Philippines and Pakistan fell drastically in 2011 – perhaps in response to changes made to our immigrant selection system in the last year.

What implications will these changes have for Canada’s future? One unintended consequence relates to the success of second-generation immigrants. Research shows that the children of immigrants have higher rates of postsecondary education than those of non-immigrant Canadians. What’s more, those born to parents from Africa, China and other Asian countries attend university and college at far higher rates than both non-immigrant Canadians and those born to immigrants from anglosphere countries.

The changes are coming at a furious pace on an almost daily basis. By seeking to eliminate the backlog by expunging those waiting in the queue, we choose efficiency over fairness. By moving to “super visas” and away from permanent residence for our immigrants’ parents and grandparents, we choose transience over inclusion. When employers select workers who will become future citizens with little guidance, we choose head-hunting over nation-building. When we raise the bar on language, we choose homogeneity over diversity. By streamlining the refugee adjudication process, we may well be choosing efficiency over human rights. Finally, when we say to employers, “Pay temporary foreign workers less than you might pay Canadians,” we choose exploitation over fairness.

And yet, no one has asked us what we think about these changes.

Immigration policy touches almost every aspect of Canadian life and is too important to be made in a piecemeal manner. It determines who our neighbours are, who we sit with on the bus and who our children go to school with. It goes to the very heart of our imagination of ourselves as a people.

To simply maintain our population and keep our standard of living, we will need to welcome hundreds of thousands of immigrants each year. To compete with global cities such as New York, London and Hong Kong, our cities must grow substantially and sustainably. Immigration can never be the only solution, but we ignore immigration and its accompanying diversity, including their knock-on effects on issues such as international relations, trade and innovation, at our peril. We need to bear in mind that Canada’s success as a multicultural society is an essential and defining part of our international brand.

It’s important that The Globe and Mail brings focus, debate and discussion to these issues, but this debate cannot take place only through the news media. We need to include all Canadians in this discussion – in Parliament, in committee rooms, at the chambers of commerce and industry associations, labour unions, resident associations, local and provincial governments, not-for-profits and civil society organizations, faith groups, think tanks, academics and in our communities. Together we must answer the questions:

• Why do we have immigration?
• How should we do it?
• How do we achieve our short- and long-term goals?

Let’s have this discussion. Our future prosperity depends on it.

Originally published on March 9, 2012, as an op-ed in the Globe and Mail.

This op-ed is part of The Immigrant Answer –The Globe’s series on the future of immigration in Canada.

By Ratna Omidvar

What a whirlwind!

Language testing for new citizens, a new visa program for entrepreneurs, a skilled trade stream, an expression of interest system for skilled worker applicants, “Un”-devolving settlement funding in B.C. and Manitoba…

We are living in an era of immigration policy which is shifting almost every day. Some call it a renaissance, others call it chaos. It can be overwhelming and confusing, but one thing is clear: The choices we are making in an incremental manner are reshaping not only our idea of the right new Canadian, but also the right way to do immigration in Canada.

Some of the ideas are driven by solid research. For example, changing the point system to bring to Canada younger immigrants makes sense because immigrants who arrive younger do better economically than those who arrive at an older age. It also means that these immigrants will contribute longer to the labour market.

On the other hand, the occupation list, which limits how many skilled worker applications the government will accept, has been criticized by experts. Getting reliable labour market information in Canada is difficult, and the immigration system moves too slowly to respond. Before the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) in 2002, Canada gave extra points to individuals based on an occupational model, but evaluations of the skilled worker program found that those selected by a pure human capital model have higher incomes.

It’s clear that the changes are creating new tensions in our immigration system, between short-term economic integration and long-term earnings, between temporary and permanent residence, and between a centralized immigration system with a strong federal presence and one with provincial variations and a large employer role.

What’s also clear is that the language used to describe immigrants is increasingly polarizing. While the government continues to, appropriately, highlight the benefits of immigration to Canada, it also raises its concerns about “queue jumpers,” “fraudulent marriages,” and “birth tourism.” As with refugees, the government tries hard to paint some immigrants as “bad” and not worthy of entering Canada.

What is missing is any type of public discourse and debate. While newspapers have been writing about the proposed changes on an almost daily basis, there is no meaningful discussion about the impact that all of these recent changes will have on immigrant integration in the short and long term. The last time such sweeping changes in immigration policy were announced, in 2002 with the launch of IRPA or even further back in history in 1967 when we launched the famous point system, there was significant debate, both in public and in parliament. There were green papers and white papers, resulting in a certain policy coherence.

Immigration policy is too important to be made in a piecemeal manner. It touches every aspect of Canadian life and has an impact on health, education, housing, transportation, trade, innovation, the economy, and the labour market.

Therefore, it is essential for Canadians to be part of this debate. In the absence of government engaging Canadians in this debate, perhaps it is time for Canadians to step up to the plate and to provide their own answers to the following three questions:

1. Why do we have immigration?
2. How should we do it?
3. And how do we achieve our short- and long-term goals?

As Stephanie Baker of McMaster University has recently noted, “public debate is not an irritation to be ignored or snuffed out. It is a sign of political maturity to share public space with people who speak out on the impact of public policy.”

Let’s start talking – all of us: Business groups, chambers of commerce, labour and unions, resident associations, local and provincial governments, not for profits and civil society organizations, faith groups, think tanks, and academics.

(Please note: we had a technical problem in the last 4 minutes of Blair’s presentation, which affected the audio. You can still hear his presentation clearly (thanks for a great presentation voice, Blair!), but you will detect a difference in the quality. Thanks for understanding!)

Download the presentation slides (PDF).

Five Good Ideas

1. Map to the why: measuring progress is mission critical.
2. From accountability to action learning: thinking “if…, then….”
3. Ask the right questions.
4. Make what you measure work for you.
5. In our world of networks, engage.

Five Good Resources

1. Jim Collins, “Good to Great for the Social Sectors;” Grantcraft, “Mapping Change.”
2. 4^th Quadrant Partners, “Where Learning Turns into Results;” International Development Research Centre, “Tools and Training.”
3. Charting Impact, “The 5 Questions;” Social Asset Measurements “Non-Profit and Charitable Solutions.”
4. Grantcraft, “Making Measures Work for You;” Center for Effective Philanthropy, “Foundation Performance Assessment Framework.”
5. Tamarack Institute for Community Engagement: “Resource Library;” Innovation Network: “Point K Learning Center;” Grantmakers for Effective Organizations: “Do Nothing About Me Without Me.”

By Ratna Omidvar

This week has seen the release of both the federal and Ontario budgets. Austerity budgets always hit the most marginalized in our society the hardest. As part of the budget postscript expect to hear suggestions of finding service and cost efficiencies through partnerships, merged services, horizontal and vertical alignment and more.

We can expect to be asked to continue to do more with less. And we will be told that we can do better through collaboration.

For many nonprofits, collaboration has become part of their daily jargon, in part because funding regimes demand demonstration of collaborations and in part because it is the flavor of the day. The term gets easily bandied about, misused and confused.

So, what is collaboration?

Let us start with what it is not. Collaboration doesn’t necessarily mean working by consensus, or merely coordinating services, or even simply co-operating. It certainly doesn’t merely mean convening to discuss, describe and re-describe the problem.

Collaboration requires being committed to a course of action that is mutually beneficial. The operative word is action. While social challenges are complex and everyone brings a unique perspective on these, collaboration succeeds when there is agreement on a solution that serves the interests of all parties. It works even better when complementary capacities are exercised to bring about the desired results. Magic can be and has been created when diverse perspectives, diverse stakeholders, diverse organizational values, and diverse capacities are all brought to the table to achieve real and tangible results.

An interesting and effective recent collaboration created a sustainable future for British Columbia’s mid coast temperate rainforest region, known as the Great Bear Rainforest. There are many interests in the region: First Nations communities; non-First Nations residents; governments; environmentalists and conservationists; logging, fishing, and tourism; and others. The collaboration brought together individuals and groups working on individual issues to develop a common agenda, a plan for action, a funding strategy, and effective implementation. The result was a sustainable way into the future that was affordable and acceptable to the broad national and provincial interests, a remarkable achievement.

Collaboration is often mentioned by funders as an inexpensive and straight-forward way to build efficiencies. But true collaboration is hard work, and it is certainly not inexpensive. There are costs to effective, meaningful collaboration. Collaboration, whether short-term or long-term, takes time, effort, resources, agreements and processes (see ONN’s upcoming webinar series for a sense of the complexities involved ).

There is no doubt that the next few years will be tough ones for our communities and our sector. We will fight for dollars and poach talent and ideas. Some will come out stronger, some will not. This is then a time both of crisis and opportunity, or as Homer Simpson would say, a “crisitunity.”

As always, new ideas, new thinking and new approaches will be on the table. Already we are hearing more and more about social entrepreneurship, social finance, and community impact bonds. These are exciting new ideas, which could provide relief for some of us from the endless treadmill of grants and reliance on changeable funders.

However, while new ideas and approaches are always important, they do not replace existing and necessary forms of long-term community service and advocacy. New ideas are sometimes like champagne and caviar, nice to enjoy, but they cannot replace the bread and butter of a daily diet.

At times like these, the work of sector funders, such as the Ontario Trillium Foundation, the Metcalf Foundation, the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation, the Atkinson Foundation and the United Way, sector associations such as the Ontario Nonprofit Network, Imagine Canada, and think tanks like the Caledon Institute for Social Policy and the Mowat Centre, becomes so much more important.

Those funders and associations cannot replace the scale and impact of government funding. But, during our next austerity period, they can lead us into action-based collaboration with like-minded as well as unusual partners, to address society’s “sticky” problems (child and racialized poverty, health inequities, supportive housing, etc.), so that when the current crisis subsides, we’re ready for new opportunities with new ideas and approaches and new collaborations.

Until then, always be/beware of collaborating!

Five Good Ideas

1. Being clear on why we are opening our doors
2. Changing our culture – let’s start with NOT treating community members as “clients”
3. Treating people as experts in what they know
4. Transparent pathways of involvement
5. Infrastructure of training and support

Five Good Resources

1. Need help getting started? Check out www.catalystcentre.ca. The “Catalyst Centre One-Stop Pop-Ed Shop Worker Co-op” is a collective of educators committed to democratic, social justice education and community development. Popular Education is a movement, a practice and a theory of social change that is based on learning and committed to resisting unjust uses of power.
2. A book that provides important questions we need to ask ourselves and a framework for moving forward is Rinku Sen’s Stir It Up – Lessons in Community Organizing and Advocacy, 2003.
3. Check out the transformative approach that is being led by Social Justice Leadership (SJL) – www.sojustlead.org. This organization is about “catalyzing a new generation of individuals and organizations to lead a renewed social justice movement”.
4. Get inspired and challenged by Jennifer Gordon’s Suburban Sweatshops: The fight for Immigrant Rights, 2005.
5. Learn about interesting work of centres all across the US that are mobilizing and bringing together immigrants, racialized communities and low-income families in Janice Fine’s book Worker Centers: Organizing Communities at the Edge of the Dream, 2006.

Last week, Immigration and Citizenship Minister Jason Kenney laid out a plan to help Canada find the right immigrants for the right jobs. These changes have the potential to accelerate the rate at which new immigrants can get on their feet and the rate at which Canada can benefit from their contributions.

Job opportunities in the trades abound, so choose immigrants who can work in skilled trades. Canada has an aging population and predicted labour shortages, so choose those who are young and will have a long career in this country. Employment and economic outcomes are better for those who speak one of Canada’s official languages, so choose immigrants who already have the fluency required to work in their occupation.

These proposals are grounded in common sense. And they’re likely to give Canada what it needs, without sentencing talented and skilled new Canadians to languish in survival jobs.

The changes, of course, will have consequences, whether intended or unintended, so their implementation must be carefully considered. With regards to age, for example, Canada must find a balance between immigrants who are not so young that they will compete with recent graduates against whom they might be disproportionately disadvantaged, yet young enough, qualified enough and skilled enough to adapt to Canada’s labour market.

While raising the bar for language requirements may help employment outcomes, it will also have an impact on the mix of countries from which we draw immigrants. A recent study by University of Waterloo economist Mikal Skuterud and his Australian co-author, Andrew Clarke, finds that, in Australia, where language requirements are high, close to 20 per cent of immigrants are drawn from the United Kingdom. In Canada, it’s roughly 5 per cent. We can conclude that the real impact of increasing language levels will be on the mix of source countries, with possibly more immigrants being drawn from English-speaking countries such as the United States, Britain, Australia and New Zealand.

Canada needs to consider the long-term implications of this shift. The scope and scale of our demographic diversity has been an essential ingredient of our multicultural success. This diversity is also a natural, if somewhat latent, link to new markets and new products. As the economies of Russia, India, China and Brazil continue to grow, it will become more important that we use all our assets, including our immigrant ambassadors, to further our interests in these regions.

So flexibility, not rigidity, will be the key to our success. Mr. Kenney is proposing that different occupations require different levels of language proficiency. This is appropriate. A flexible language grid will evaluate an applicant’s language skills against what’s required for their occupation – a university professor will require higher levels than a pipefitter. It will help ensure that Canada continues to draw immigrants from a variety of source countries.

The minister may also consider a stream for immigrants whose language may fall short by a small margin but who have demonstrated a willingness to learn before they arrive. This willingness to learn, to adapt and to change is possibly the secret ingredient to any immigrant’s success, and it’s hard to codify in a rigid selection grid.

On the other hand, in some areas, we’ve had too much flexibility. In recent years, Canada’s immigration system has become increasingly regionalized. Where Ottawa used to play the principal role in selecting immigrants, today’s applicants can choose from more than 50 immigration streams operated by the provinces and territories. The system is complicated and fragmented, leading to confusion for both public servants and immigrants. It’s time to bring some coherence to this fragmentation.

While we look forward to a new immigrant tomorrow, we must keep in mind the immigrant of today. We know that he or she has a hard time finding work that’s in keeping with his or her education and experience. This means that our current investment in the efforts of settlement organizations, universities and colleges in the form of internships, co-ops, mentoring and bridging programs must not waiver. As we look forward to a more finely tuned selection system, we must not forget that we have a commitment to those who are already here. In the short term or the long term, their success is our success.

We must remember that immigration selection is not simply about headhunting, but about nation-building.

Originally published on March 9, 2012, as an op-ed in the Globe and Mail.

By Alan Broadbent

Democrats and scientists have a lot to be concerned about in Canada these days. For those who think the essence of democratic governance lies in a vibrant exchange of views and protection of the rights of minorities, recent developments have been troubling. And at the annual meeting of The American Association for the Advancement of Science in Vancouver recently, a topic of conversation was the muzzling of scientists working in government or funded by government. They are increasingly required to funnel their findings through government public relations channels.

In the lead-up to the hearings by a Federal Joint Review Panel into the proposed Enbridge pipeline from Alberta’s tar sands to Kitimat on the B.C. coast, the federal government picked up on the industry campaign to discredit dissident voices. It warned darkly of foreign money from US philanthropists intent on impairing the Canadian economy in order to advantage US commercial interests in the oil industry, a loopy conspiracy theory lacking evidence. It also railed against environmental extremists who they claim oppose any progress and are driven by a destructive ideology, pleading for letting science be the basis for deciding pipeline issues.

And it also proposed to truncate the pipeline hearings, characterizing them as vulnerable to the delaying tactics of opponents.

In Toronto recently a senior civil servant was summarily fired for daring to speak truth to power. His sin was to give his best professional judgement on future transit development, an analysis that ran counter to the mayor who then engineered his departure.

Governments, especially majority governments, get impatient with democracy. It is messy and discordant, and it takes time. It raises voices and issues some prefer not to hear. It can have unpredictable results.

So there is an instinct in some to suppress it, to end parliamentary sessions prematurely, to shorten periods of debate, to withhold inconvenient information, or to create large omnibus bills that hide all sorts of evils amidst essential or admirable items.

And there is a tendency to use language that derides others, to claim that “you can stand with us or with the child pornographers”, or saying critics should “take off their tin foil hats and deal with reality”. Such febrile language slips from the lips of too many politicians these days.

Winston Churchill famously said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried. He was a man involved all his adult life in democratic government, who wore the badges and bore the scars like few others.

Resisting the devaluation of our democracy has always been one of the obligations of a citizen. We can add to that resisting the devaluation of the evidence science produces. Science can inform the choices we make in our democratic institutions, which is surely in the national interest.

Let democracy flourish. Let science be heard.

While these things are important, when asked what makes someone a good citizen, Canadians emphasize being active in their community, volunteering, helping others, and accepting others who are different.

The survey also explores issues around citizenship acquisition, rights and responsibilities, civic participation, civic education and multiple identities. Read the summary report (PDF). Download the final report (PDF).

Canadians on Citizenship is the result of a collaboration between the Environics Institute, the Institute for Canadian Citizenship (ICC), the Maytree Foundation, the CBC and RBC to further the national dialogue on citizenship.

ICC pulled together a small group of new citizens for a roundtable discussion on citizenship, and asked them to give their insights about what it means to be a Canadian citizen.

More videos can be found on the ICC website.

For more information:

• Press release (PDF)
• Summary report (PDF)
• Final report (PDF)

In the news:

• Immigrants the proudest Canadians, poll suggests
• Are you a good Canadian citizen? Test yourself in CBC’s interactive quiz

Five Good Ideas

Social innovation -

1. Starts with passionate amateurs
2. Marries the past and future
3. Does not have a dress code
4. Goes better with belonging
5. Has unintended consequences

Five Good Resources

1. Anything by Frances Westley. The best introduction to her work is Getting to Maybe: How the World Has Changed (Random House, 2006), co-authored with Brenda Zimmerman and Michael Quinn Patton.
2. John Elkington and his team at Volans are at the leading edge of thinking about social innovation. Check out their website and their recent report Future Quotient.
3. Ezio Manzini is a leading European thinker about design, social innovation and sustainability. Check out his blog. Here is a link to a long but inspiring video of a recent presentation in Australia. SIG will be bringing him to Torontothis spring. Keep in touch at http://sigeneration.ca/.
4. Adam Kahane has practical insights and proven strategies to improve our ability to work with allies and colleagues as well as strangers and opponents. His latest book, Power and Love: a theory and practice of social change (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2010). Read his approach to change-labs.
5. The Long Now Foundation hopes to provide a counterpoint to today’s accelerating culture and help make long-term thinking more common. Their most majestic project is the Clock of the Long Now – a clock designed to tick for 10,000 years but will only tell the time if you power it.

By Alan Broadbent

The great challenge for governments in these hard economic times is reducing spending without doing harm. National, provincial and municipal governments are all considering how to economize, and are looking at cuts to programs and services.

Those who think it will be easy point to reports of auditors general as popularized in the commercial press, and believe that there are great inefficiencies to correct. They imagine pots of money being spilled daily, and scads of unworthy recipients of government supports and services who can otherwise cope without public assistance.

Promises of fiscal rectitude just around the corner have been made from time to time in recent decades, and have almost never proven out. It turns out that our governments are not cesspools of lavish spending and profligacy. Much of the federal expenditure goes to programs like the Child Tax Benefit, supports for seniors and the disabled, and others who cannot participate successfully in the labour market. Provincial expenditures go for health care and education in large part, two of the fundamental pillars of economic competitiveness and well being. Municipal expenditures go to clean water, sewage and waste management, roads and transit, and other necessary hard services.

However, there is a frontier of smart public expenditure that can produce bang for the buck. It would be tempting to call it a New Frontier, but it is in fact an old idea to which government has been oddly resistant.

It is the idea of spending on prevention rather than the cure. Preventing something from happening rather than paying to remediate its negative effects is almost always a lot cheaper. Like the old Fram oil filter ad used to say, “You can pay me now, or you can pay me later,” with “later” being the more expensive alternative of major engine work.

The late Fraser Mustard told us decades ago that paying systemic attention to a child’s development in the early years would pay immense dividends later in their ability to grow into productive and well adjusted people. “Participaction,” the federal government fitness campaign from the 1970’s, promoted fitness and healthy living. Supportive housing advocates have for years told us that giving disabled people stable housing increases their functionality enormously, reducing their dependence on the medical system, welfare, and other supports. Public transit is known to boost civic engagement, labour market attachment, and pollution reduction. And numerous other early interventions have shown they can prevent people from expensive engagements with the health, criminal justice, and welfare systems.

Yet we remain publicly addicted to old ways, and have governments wanting to spend on prisons rather than housing, roads rather than rail, hospitals rather than parks and recreation. And we pull back funding for kids’ breakfast programs at schools, or leave them sparsely funded. There are some points of light, like the Ontario government’s commitment to early childhood education.

What if governments really wanted to reduce public expenditures, and decided to focus on preventing expensive late stage interventions? What could they do right now?

• The Caledon Institute has recently raised the idea of a Jobseeker Loan, a new temporary income measure to fill the gap between Employment Insurance and welfare, which would prevent unemployed Canadians from having their assets stripped and from falling into poverty.
• In New Zealand, work funded by The Tindall Foundation is developing a social housing bond to support low income housing in the rebuilding of earthquake devastated Christchurch. The bond would combine a government guarantee of principal with private capital, underwritten by the real estate value, to fill the low end of the housing market which the market does not serve. Stable housing helps prevent people from slipping below the poverty line.
• The Toronto District School Board conducts Faith Walks and Community Walks for teachers to explore the dimensions of their school’s community. Teachers go on organized walks to discover the community, and go into the faith institutions to learn about different faiths, all of which can increase their awareness of and sensitivity to their students. This helps prevent isolation with all its attendant later costs.
• Governments can follow the recommendations of The Workers’ Action Centre to hire a relative handful of workplace inspectors to end employer abuse of contingent workers, making sure the workers are paid what is due to them and not terminated unreasonably. Lost wages from abuse result in many people falling into poverty and relying on welfare and other assistance programs. Complaints filed amount to over $40 million per year, but the real abuse is very much more because most victims don’t file complaints.

These are examples of experiments or ideas governments could adopt to avoid downstream problems of poverty, isolation, and misunderstanding, which usually lead to more costly interventions.

Creating an orientation to prevention requires new architecture of government, never an easy task. But rather than opting for a general squeeze everywhere to reduce expenditure, which can harm good things and marginally restrain bad things, redesigning government to focus on avoiding expensive downstream or late-stage interventions would be a smart approach.

And there are no times like hard times to wring out a mandate for change.

Five Good Ideas

1. Reach beyond the usual suspects
2. Empower your membership
3. Give the media what they want
4. Embrace Deep Democracy
5. Advocate for democratic renewal

Five Good Resources

1. Commercial Advertisements:  The best way to learn about design and marketing is to study the ads that surround us.  On the bus, in the newspaper, online.  How are companies using images, words, fonts, shapes and colours to convey their message?
2. Right-wing radio: Get out of your bubble. Expose yourself to different views to understand how and why other people are looking at the same issue through a different lens.
3. Mailchimp: Having a long list of supporters, endorsements or volunteers is great.  But using a database that allows you to send customised targeted messages, based on various personal criteria – that’s really powerful. MailChimp is one affordable online tool. www.mailchimp.com
4. FairVote Canada: Learn about FairVote Canada, and join the ranks of those who are fighting for proportional representation. www.fairvote.ca
5. Ranked Ballot Initiative of Toronto (RaBIT): Proportional Representation doesn’t work well in our municipal context, but a small simple change to runoff voting could transform our political culture, making it more inclusive, friendly and fair. Hop to it! www.RaBIT.ca

Stuttgart

Hamburg

Berlin

Cologne

We recently returned from a trip to Germany where we visited four German cities to share some of Toronto’s best ideas in immigrant integration, and to bring back some new ideas from Stuttgart, Hamburg, Berlin and Cologne.

While Canada and Germany are very different countries, cities in both countries exercise a powerful attraction for immigrants who are moving across borders, time zones, and regions to large urban centers. In Toronto, close to half of our population are immigrants, in German cities such as Stuttgart that number stands at 40%. In Toronto, we are fond of saying: if immigrants succeed, then so does Toronto. We’ve seen that is true for German cities too.

When integration is done well, it fuels economic growth, spurs innovation and prosperity and leads to socially cohesive societies. When it is done poorly or ignored, it results in exclusion, poverty and segregation with lasting effects.

We are fortunate. The City of Toronto is seen around the world as a model for immigrant integration.

And we’ve got plenty of practical examples of how this is true:

• In our public libraries you borrow books in other languages and learn English;
• In our schools, you can drop off your kids and then get settlement advice;
• In our local colleges and universities, it is very apparent who is going to be the next generation of engineers, doctors, scientists and teachers; and
• We see more and more inter-ethnic marriages – up by 33% since 2001. With diversity, it seems, romance is in the air. The parents may or may not approve, but the young kids don’t seem to care.

You know this already, but it bears a reminder: Toronto’s defining feature is its diversity. It is why people come here; it is why other countries want us to tell them about our experiences. We must remember that to the over 50% of Torontonians who weren’t born here, Toronto offers a relationship built on two words: hopes and dreams.

But it’s not all romance. Dark clouds have formed over us. Inequality is growing in Canada. In Toronto, those at the bottom are more likely to be minorities, many of them recent immigrants. While the recent recession took a toll on all of us, it had a particular deep impact on recent immigrants, with their unemployment rates being twice that of others. The narrative of doctors driving cabs and engineers delivering pizzas is not just local mythology, it is quite real. We have too many in the immigrant community working in precarious jobs in the service sector, part-time, or seasonal. They often hold down more than one job.

Add to this the lack of affordable housing and you have a city which succeeds only in driving people out to the suburbs, where there is little or no public transportation. Their disconnect with our city becomes more and more real. Their settlement, hindered further.

You get a hint of a perfect storm in the form and shape of high ethnic concentrations in certain parts of our city. We’ve always had our “Little Italy” and “Greek Town.” But something feels different today; and, not only in the scale and size of newer immigrant-dominated settlements. They’re isolated in our cities. There’s a hold the “old country”, including older, even antiquated, values have on people’s hearts and minds. It enables them to live and work in Toronto but exist emotionally in another place altogether. This isn’t the nation-building we have in mind.

In this context, we must give new legs to the hopes and dreams of those who come to Toronto. We need to look for new instruments for new times. We must create the city that better welcomes our newcomers. We must build the relationships in our city that allow us all to achieve our hopes and dreams.

Thankfully, we don’t have to look far for inspiration.

One of the most powerful instruments for integration and cohesion is also one of the most overlooked: sports. When kids play together, when their parents stand side by side with other parents and cheer them on the side lines, you create social glue. When I first came to Canada, my daughter was a member of a gymnastics club and parents spent our weekends driving the girls to smallish towns like Lindsay and Paris. As my daughter became more adept with ribbons and jumps, I learned some of the written and unwritten rules of engagement through other parents. That was the most practical settlement experience I had – and no one paid for it. The relationships I made were real, and had a true impact on my integration. I think we have a greater chance of building a nation in hockey rinks and on cricket fields instead of in lonely ESL classrooms.

It’s time for Toronto institutions to actively move from passively paying lip service to diversity, to real inclusion. What if every Toronto institution, voluntary agency, civil society organization set out to ensure that its board of governors was as diverse as its customer base? Not merely from a sense of social justice, or equity, but from a place of responsiveness to a new public and a new customer base. Think of our hospitals, our museums, libraries, the shelters, and the food banks. Think of the people who sit around these board rooms making decisions for the public good. Most often, they will replace themselves with others they know, others who think like them, who read the same books and went to the same kind of schools.

Think about this as an investment strategy. Your smarter money managers always advise you to do this. In this case, diversify not to protect you from the shocks of the stock market, but to protect you against irrelevance, outdatedness and a lack of competitiveness.

In case you need help, just ask us. We have a list of 1,500 candidates, ready, willing, able and trained.

Toronto has been incredibly successful in Canada’s multicultural experiment. We can’t forget what makes us beautiful – hopes and dreams. We have to foster the conditions that keep us open, responsive, growing, and connected (not closed, divided, disconnected, and fractured). We need to find deliberate strategies to connect us so we don’t end up with permanent solitudes. Yes, we should and must get the instruments and attention from senior levels of government. But the glue that I am talking about, the glue between people that really makes a difference, is in our own hands, on the sports fields, and in the boardrooms.

So my hope for 2012 is for all of us to get a tad sticky and to put our fingers in the glue.

For more information on Maytree’s visit to four cities in Germany, visit Good Ideas from Toronto: An Exchange of Immigrant Integration Practices.