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“Building a New Canada”, in Meeting the Civic Challenges of Social Inclusion (2005)

Commentary by: Joey Edwardh

I watched as Marvyn walked into the room and smiled, acknowledging the mayor, the previous mayor, city councillors, leaders in the faith, educational, business community and, sitting with them, powerful natural leaders from local neighbourhoods. He smiled, warm and respectful, and began to talk of social inclusion as a building block of a civic and just society. One hour later, all were still sitting motionless, entranced, and in deep reflection, pushing to understand social inclusion and how to lay the ground work to build an inclusive Burlington. This scene of the first meeting of the Burlington civic panel is etched in my memory. Burlington was one of five cities taking part in the Inclusive Cities Canada initiative.

Marvyn’s insatiable curiosity, study and reflection led him to envision cities as important places where we could forge a response to the civic challenge of social inclusion, a response that would shape the future of Canada. Marvyn was very aware of the fact that over 80% of Canadians live in cities and this trend is growing. Marvyn was committed to cities as incubators reducing the social and economic distance between people; where diversity and the lived experience of people are recognized and where all members of the community can participate as equally valued and respected citizens.

Funded in 2003 by Social Development Canada, the Inclusive Cities Initiative took form involving five social planning councils along with their municipal counterparts: Burlington, Edmonton, Saint John, Toronto, and Vancouver/North Vancouver. Its purpose was to assess the state of social inclusion in those cities and identify needed policy and program changes. Civic panels were established in all cities to guide the local research. Each was co-chaired by a senior municipal official and a senior community leader. Panel members were from diverse civic sectors and cultural backgrounds. They brought informed and committed perspectives to their recommendations.

The panels demonstrated that civic leaders from different regions of Canada shared many common concerns and proposed a wide range of complementary priorities. Decades later, Marvyn’s belief in the civic panel as an example of local democratic practice, where ideas and experiences converge, generating shared knowledge and strategies for change, remains an important insight into the process of democratization and decision-making in communities. This is so critical in the struggle of communities to come together and collaborate to contain and recover from the COVID-19 virus.

An analyzes and synthesizes of findings and recommendations of the respective civic panels has been captured in the report, Meeting the Civic Challenges of Social Inclusion: Cross-Canada Findings and Priorities for Action. This report was released as a draft for presentation and comment at the national symposium on Building a New Canada: Meeting the Civic Challenges of Social Inclusion, November 27 and 28, 2005, in Gatineau, Quebec. The report and the recommendations from the symposium died the next day when the Government of Paul Martin fell in a no confidence vote and the then to be elected Government of Stephen Harper rejected any vision of inclusive cities as essential to the economic and social development of a civic and just Canada. Many years later, the voices from the civic panels from across Canada remain prescient, relevant and are a cry for dialogue and action essential for a future based on civic participation, belonging and human well-being.

The issues flowing from the civic panels are synthesized into four challenges for governments and communities: 1) make civic democracy work; 2) affirm urban diversity; 3) reduce disparities in living conditions; and 4) invest in social infrastructure. Today, these challenges continue to form a serious and thoughtful social agenda for cities with priorities for action at all levels of government. Marvyn would contend that embedded with each challenge is a national mission whose pursuit and realization can help redeem the promise of Canada.

The first ‘thought-legacy’ of the civic panels is to make local democracy work in our times by promoting civic citizenship. They believed that local governments lay the critical foundations for promoting democratic experiences among all segments of the population. The concept of civic citizenship means recognizing all adult residents of the municipal community as active participants in local governance, with contributions to make and responsibilities to assume as full members. Local democracy is where preparation for the responsibilities of national and global citizenship can be cultivated. In a country of growing diversity, local democracy can nurture formative experiences of cohesion and solidarity. Civic initiatives can help create social and economic conditions for all community members to thrive. Marvyn’s reflection on local democracy working as a creative practice empowering people to come together to meet the disparities created not only by forces of globalization but now by the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Second is the ‘thought- legacy’ of affirming urban diversity to secure human dignity. Civic panels believed that large cities are the critical places where Canada will either succeed or fail in living with diversities. They argued that Canadian cities share a common range of diversities based on language, gender, religion, indigenous, newcomer, ethno-racial, and orientation differences. The common presence of these differences means that all cities have to become places which can welcome and value many forms of diversity whatever the intensity or scale of that presence. Inclusion under conditions of diversity can mean that we have to go through a process of civic renewal in which we learn to recognize and respect differences at the same time as we struggle to discover and sustain commonalities. The outcome of this renewal can be cities of mutual affirmation where civic institutions are pluralized into places that reflect everyone and belong to everyone. The struggle against colonialism and racism marking this decade illustrate the challenge that Marvyn left us and that is to affirm urban diversity and secure human rights and human dignity.

Third is the ‘thought- legacy’ of reducing disparities in living condition to create a common prosperity for all. The civic panels were acutely aware of the impacts of disparities in their cities and proposed a wide range of public measures to create more inclusive living conditions. They recognized that economic and fiscal strategies during the last decade have failed to benefit all residents in Canadian cities. Chronic levels of adult and child poverty, precarious employment, low wage jobs, food insecurity, unaffordable and inadequate housing are serious threats to the social cohesion of cities. When neighbourhood concentrations of disadvantage grow, residential patterns of stigma and separation emerge. Inclusive pathways to prosperity can be sustained through public investment in policy and programs which advance both social equity and economic efficiency. Over the last fifty years, Marvyn marked our social policy journey to eradicate poverty. His influence on strategies for social transformation are just as pertinent today.

Fourth is the ‘thought-legacy’ of investing in social infrastructures to build strong communities. Cities require social and physical infrastructure to function. Cities are complex environments of settlement and activity for which basic sustaining assets are required. Traditional understandings of infrastructure focus on assets such as water, roads, transit, ports, utilities, fire, police, hospitals, parks, schools, libraries, and shelter. Less understood are the requirements for a full range of civic assets which can sustain the social well-being of diverse communities and people. A focus on social infrastructure compels us to look at the civic resources required to care for and to connect people of diverse backgrounds who share common local environments. This connectedness can generate social capital, a necessary condition for social cohesion. This occurs when there are opportunities for affiliation across horizontal networks of reciprocity and trust. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the enormous cracks in our physical and social infrastructure. Also, it has revealed the scale of inequality across this land. I have no doubt that Marvyn would argue vehemently for a framework that reorganizes our economy, social relations, and democratic political institutions to create a society of equity, justice, and shared opportunity for all.

Marvyn’s gift to us is an understanding of the elements necessary to build inclusive cities based on democratic institutions functioning in local communities marked by collaboration, citizen participation, respect for diversity and human rights, and supported by investment to create social and economic justice. This understanding grew from the deep dialogues and exchanges where cross-Canada civic panel members shared their insights and wisdom. Today, this collective vision belongs to all of us and our challenge is to come together and make it real so that opportunity and well-being belong to all Canadians.

Joey Edwardh, PhD, is the former executive director of Community Development Halton. Today she is a community activist.

The full document is available here.

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