Toronto: Crazy, Sexy, Cool?

Recently, the American blogger Laurie Lyons wrote in the Huffington Post that “Toronto is the hot new destination for all things crazy, sexy, cool”.

Yes, really.

In her article, she highlights Toronto’s accessible art (from Luminato to Nuit Blanche), our fusion and fresh restaurants and the fact that Toronto, a city of just five million and over 200 ethnic groups and 130 languages, is also one of the most diverse cities in North America.

And growing.

Each year, the city absorbs another 50,000 new immigrants.

While smugness is never attractive, Toronto has something else to be proud of. Global cities around the world look to Toronto to understand and learn from our ongoing experiment with diversity.

For instance, in 2008 the Toronto District School Board was held up as a global model for successful social integration and equal opportunities for schools when it was awarded the prestigious international Carl Bertelsmann prize. The City of Toronto is one of the few international cities of migration that provides information to city residents in 180 languages on services such as recycling, garbage and municipal elections. The Toronto Public Library has successfully turned itself into an institution that not only lends books, but also provides settlement services to its many immigrant visitors.

However, lest we start feeling totally virtuous, we need to remember that Toronto has still a long way to go before claiming success. To do so, it must be open to learning from other cities.

For instance, here in Toronto, there are more than 200,000 permanent non-citizen residents who cannot vote for their mayor, their city councillor or school trustee – even though they live, work, own property and pay taxes in the city. Meanwhile, non-citizen residents in Dublin, Stockholm and Caracas can all vote in municipal elections. In the city of Chicago, non-citizen residents can vote in school site elections.

Similarly, while bike lanes are a hot issue in our current mayoralty race, the city of Copenhagen is successfully using cycling as a way to integrate newcomers into the fabric and streets of the city.

So while we have much to offer to global cities, we also have much to learn from them.

Globally, there is an increasing interest in cities learning from cities. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg points to New York’s new urban plan that drew on the experiences and ideas for “traffic reduction from London, Stockholm, Singapore, for transit-orientated development policies from Amsterdam and Tokyo, and so on.”

City-to-city learning can travel fast because it is local and grounded in the business of daily living. It is almost always practical and is therefore more readily transportable.

For the past 18 months through the Cities of Migration project, we’ve been working with international partners in the UK, New Zealand, the US, Germany and Spain to help cities better connect around their shared issues of urbanization and migration.

Cities can hear about and share good ideas in integration. For the first time, there is an organized way for London to learn from Toronto, and for Toronto to learn from Zurich. Through webinars and the Cities of Migration website the interest in learning from and transporting successful ideas from one place to another has grown with remarkable speed.

In October, Toronto will go to The Hague to learn from practitioners from far-flung cities like Malmo, Madrid and Moscow. We will listen to and talk with leaders drawn from urban planning, local governments, media, employers and academics. And we will bring back ideas that have been tested in other cities – from deploying the police force in teaching English to refugees (and simultaneously building community trust) to training immigrants in the provision of culturally appropriate health care.

To learn more about the upcoming Cities of Migration conference, visit the conference website.

About Ratna Omidvar

A closer look at diversity

We live in one of the most diverse cities in the world. Almost half of our residents are visible minorities. And if we are to believe the projections of Stats Canada, by 2031 this figure will rise to over 60 per cent.

Visible minorities are everywhere – in schools, on campuses, in the TTC, in the shops and malls of Toronto. But, they are still few and far between in places of privilege and power, in the leadership echelons of our city – on Bay Street, in Queen’s Park, or in board rooms.

As we publish our second DiverseCity Counts report, we once again point to the disconnect between who lives in the city and who has power and influence.

This year’s report by Ryerson University’s Diversity Institute on behalf of DiverseCity: The Greater Toronto Leadership Project tracks 3,348 leaders across the corporate, public, elected, education and nonprofit sectors. Findings show that just 14 per cent of leaders in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) are visible minorities (relative to 49.5 per cent of the population studied), up marginally from last year’s 13.5 per cent.

There are organizational trailblazers and laggards in each sector

This year, we dug deeper into the data to better understand the extent to which some organizations have made diversity a priority. There is some encouraging news. We found that:

• 21.9% of all the organizations examined have more than 20% of their leadership who are visible minorities;
• 80% of university boards of governors and 83.3% of college boards of governors have more than 20% visible minorities; and
• Most municipalities are represented by at least one representative who is a visible minority.

However, in other sectors, a majority of organizations have no visible minority representation at all. For example, 76.9% of corporate boards and 69.2% of corporate sector executive teams have no visible minorities. In the voluntary sector, 61.5% of charities and 80% of foundations have executive teams without any visible minorities.

This gap between high and low performers reinforces the importance of examining the practices of successful organizations in each sector in order to promote learning between organizations.

Media leadership mirrors corporate sector leadership

This year, we also took a special look at the news media that are most consumed by GTA residents. Media organizations are important institutions because they play a role in defining who is a leader in society and can shape the ambitions of those who wish to be leaders.

As in the corporate sector generally, visible minorities are under-represented on boards and among senior executives of large media corporations.

The research also revealed that visible minorities are under-represented among columnists, experts and even stock background photographs in newspapers. Visible minorities are also under-represented as hosts, experts and in the background of stories on the supper time broadcast news.

There are a number of simple and cost effective ways that mainstream media could diversify their news content. These include for example updating stock photography, identifying experts from diverse backgrounds by using databases such as DiverseCity Voices, and recognizing how diversity can strengthen journalism.

Recommendation for all sectors

Organizations which stand out for the progress they have made, even over a year, subscribe to some of these best practices; they:

• Understand the business case for diversity;
• Make diversity a strategic priority;
• Mainstream diversity through their business practices, from recruitment strategies to procurement policies;
• Develop and sustain excellent human resources practices;
• Develop the pipeline through succession planning and building a qualified pool of diverse leadership candidates; and
• Count because what gets measured gets done.

Why should we worry about the lack of visible minority leaders?

When our leadership doesn't look like us, it signals that only some of us can rise to the top and the rest of us should mind our place. It tells us that we don't have the right to be represented. And it means that the vision that guides us will be limited in its scope and potential.

Diversity in leadership has benefits in the workplace, in the boardroom and in the broader society. It can play a key role in a country’s economic prosperity because when there is diversity around the decision-making table, the performance of organizations improves, innovation happens and new solutions are generated.

So, ultimately, we need to bring diversity to leadership not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it will contribute to our shared social and economic prosperity.

For a more detailed analysis, download this year’s DiverseCity Counts report.

About Ratna Omidvar

Integrating immigrants key to Toronto's future

The successful integration of immigrants is not simply a matter of individual efforts by newcomers to Toronto. It must be accompanied by the city’s will to make social cohesion a priority by engaging a range of stakeholders, and it requires action from many players. In other words, inclusion is a two way street.

In a cosmopolitan city like Toronto – where our residents speak more than 100 languages and come from 200 distinct ethnic groups – the integration of immigrants is critical. Toronto continues to be a city of choice for many newcomers to Canada with 49 per cent of our city’s population comprised of immigrants.

In light of our aging population and our declining birth rate, we’ll rely more and more on immigrants as a key resource for building and strengthening our city and country. By 2011, Canada will rely 100 per cent on immigration for our net labour market growth; by 2026, our net population growth will be derived from immigration. 

Based on these imminent realities, we need to continue to effectively integrate new immigrants into our communities, especially if they choose Toronto as their home. 

This is why Maytree incubates ideas and collaborates with many stakeholders on local practical solutions for immigrant integration. This is also why we are communicating and partnering with national and international organizations on solutions that work.

We know these initiatives have made a meaningful and tangible impact on Toronto. And they are gaining traction in diverse urban centres across Canada and abroad – many communities are looking to Toronto to lead by example.

A few key highlights:

Since the Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council was launched in 2003 by Maytree and the Toronto City Summit Alliance, a range of successful projects have helped skilled immigrants integrate smoothly into the Greater Toronto Region labour market.

Now through the ALLIES project, a partnership with The J.W. McConnell Family Foundation, cities across Canada are learning from – and adapting – the TRIEC model to set up their own, locally-led, immigrant employment councils. In Vancouver, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Ottawa, Montreal, Waterloo Region, Niagara, London, Fredericton, Moncton and Halifax, a strong civic movement is building to ensure immigrants can put their international skills, education and experience to good use.

Toronto’s story of immigrant integration has also garnered the interest of civic leaders and policy makers from outside of Canada, from Sweden to Singapore to Spain.

The Mentoring Partnership is another successful program founded in Toronto in 2004. It has helped over 5,000 skilled immigrants navigate the local job market with guidance from volunteer mentors in similar professions.  Eighty three percent of mentees said their mentoring relationship made a positive difference to their job search.

Over 50 corporate partners from the private and public sector have been actively engaged in the program as a means to nurture their staff’s leadership capacity and to build cross-cultural competence in an increasingly diverse workforce.

Through a recently launched national initiative, urban cities across Canada – and as far away as Auckland, New Zealand – have implemented their own mentoring programs for skilled immigrants as well.

DiverseCity, another project launched by Maytree and the Toronto City Summit Alliance, supports and develops up-and-coming leaders from under-represented ethnic and racial groups to address their low numbers in senior leadership positions in the Greater Toronto Area. Other communities across the country are interested in learning how to ensure that institutions are governed by qualified leaders who are more reflective of their population.

Cities of Migration, also a Toronto-based project, is the first international initiative to connect communities in Canada, the United States and around the globe on issues of migration and immigrant integration. With existing partners in Germany, Spain, the UK and New Zealand, the project just began a new collaboration with The National League of Cities to exchange key learnings about successful integration strategies.

While Maytree has had a hand in shaping these projects and solutions, we have not developed these ideas alone. It is only with the vision, energy and innovation of key players including employers, educators, community agencies, media, civic leaders and government, that Toronto has moved the marker on immigrant integration.

This collaborative approach is yet another reason why communities around the world are looking to Toronto for inspiration.

Indeed there is still much work to be done in Toronto, but we have made measurable and marked progress.

For that, our city should be proud.

About Ratna Omidvar

New workers, new skills special section

Will Toronto become two cities?

Statistics Canada tells us that a demographic shift is happening, that soon we will no longer speak of visible minorities. By 2031, 63% of Torontonians will have become visible majorities.

In the streets of Toronto, in the subway and buses, the shopping and strip malls of the city, this international, multicultural make-up of our residents is already a fact of life. Clearly, this will only intensify over the next 20 years. The question is whether we are doing the right things today to be ready for tomorrow.

Consider the following.

In the city of Toronto, close to half of our residents are visible minorities (43%). But you would be hard pressed to see any visible minority faces in the leadership profiles of our city - whether you looked at Bay Street, in Queen's Park, or at the city's largest voluntary sector organizations and its many agencies, boards and commissions. In Toronto City Hall, only four councillors are visible minorities.

Further, immigrants and visible minorities are disproportionately affected by trends that impact all of us. The recession, for instance, has left its mark on all of us, but more so on recent immigrants. While we all seem to be disengaged as an electorate, immigrants and visible minorities often find it difficult to even become engaged.

Have we then already become a new modern version of a “Tale of Two Cities”?

The residents of one city enjoy inherited privilege and natural social networks that help them in many ways. In the other city, residents are on the outside of this circle, wanting to get in, but not quite managing to do so. It is cold comfort to them to know that their children may well succeed where they now fail.

The future of a majority minority city is alluring for many reasons: An intensified, international outlook to the world, new markets, new talent, new customers, new ideas, new tourists – all this for the asking. But can we rely on these positives for tomorrow without addressing the economic, social and political gaps that exist today?

Here are a few things we can do today to be ready for tomorrow:

• Ensure that new voices are being heard at City Hall, including finding alternatives to the way we elect city councillors (Better Ballots);
• Allow landed immigrants to vote in local elections so they can learn and experience early on what it means to be a participating citizen (I Vote Toronto);
• Reward Toronto employers who hire skilled immigrants (Immigrant Success Awards);
• Ensure that city institutions are governed by qualified appointees who are more reflective of the people who live in the city (DiverseCity onBoard).

Many argue that time will take care of these issues. But time is what we don't have. We are less than two decades away from a new reality. We would be better advised to work at collapsing natural time frames so that we ready for the Toronto of tomorrow.

About Ratna Omidvar

This is our election, Toronto!

Ratna Omidvar.

Torontonians should take the lead in defining the issues that matter to them in the next municipal election.

We’re only into the third month of a long election campaign, with eight months still to go until we go to the polls on October 25th. The top issues for debate are already emerging from the declared mayoral candidates: transit, outsourcing, bike lanes, the city’s budgetary woes, to name a few.

But who is asking Torontonians what matters to them? Affordable housing, transparency at City Hall, housing for the homeless, city streets and parks … these things matter too.  If we fail to raise them, then we run the risk of letting the candidates set the agenda.

The Toronto Star blog is one way to encourage this debate. Other groups, too are reaching out to their constituencies including the Toronto Board of Trade on Vote Toronto 2010 and ChangeCamp, an interesting project to re-engage citizens in the political process.

Maytree is doing its bit by inviting our constituency to define, discuss and share the issues that matter to them. We will be reaching out to many individuals who are reflective of the city’s new demographics to articulate their vision of a new Toronto. Already, some have identified the need for our next Mayor to champion the right of all landed immigrants to vote in local elections (I Vote Toronto). Others have tabled their concerns that there are few opportunities for new voices at City Hall.

Let’s wake up Toronto and make this our election!

About Ratna Omidvar