Mark Cabaj explores with Sherri Torjman and Anne Makhoul of the Caledon Institute of Social Policy how communities engage in public policy making as they seek improved access to public programs and services, or help design local spaces and programs that respond to their concerns.
Learning Objective:
To gain an overview of ways communities can participate in shaping government policies related to poverty.
Sherri Torjman - Sherri Torjman is Vice-President of the Caledon Institute of Social Policy. She has written in the areas of welfare reform, customized training, disability income and supports, the social dimension of sustainable development and community-based poverty reduction. Sherri is the author of the book Shared Space: The Communities Agenda. She has also written many Caledon reports including Reclaiming our Humanity; Strategies for a Caring Society; Proposal for National Personal Supports Fund; Survival-of-the-Fittest Employment Policy; The Social Dimension of Sustainable Development; The Key to Kyoto: Social Dimensions of Climate Change; The Social Role of Local Government; The Canada Pension Plan Disability Benefit; Reintegrating the Unemployed through Customized Training; and How Finance Re-formed Social Policy.
Anne Makhoul - Anne Makhoul is Principal Project Officer for the Caledon Institute. She is the lead writer and coordinator of the ‘community stories’ series – accounts of social policy in action which highlight innovative community initiatives. In 2007, she was the principal writer of ANC Sketches: Building a Neighbourhood Renewal Process. This publication documented the change process and accompanying projects undertaken throughout the two-year action research project, Action for Neighbourhood Change. Joining Caledon in 2000, Anne previously had worked as a freelance writer, a project manager and writer/researcher for an environmentally-focused consulting company, and an educator.
Mark Cabaj - Mark Cabaj is the lead coach at Tamarack and Vibrant Communities, working with foundations, all levels of government, voluntary organizations and businesses to assist them with their specific community engagement efforts.
Mark first cut his teeth on community building with Human Resources Development Canada and Aboriginal groups in rural Alberta. In the early 1990s, he served as the Foreign Assistance Coordinator for Grants in Poland’s Ministry of Privatization and Mission Coordinator for the United Nations Development Programme’s first regional economic development initiative in Eastern Europe. Read more here.
Mark and Sherri began by summarizing the ten areas that should be in any poverty reduction policy. Sherri points out that governments and community agencies have different roles and experiences working in communities. Their work used to be in parallel tracks, but combining their experiences can be a tremendous advantage that has benefited both governments and communities.
Here, Sherri gives examples that show how policy work is at the core of poverty reduction.
The Caledon Institute, with the support of the federal government, formed a community of practice to gather and document the experiences of communities across the country that have worked or tried to work with different levels of government on policy matters. Caledon is documenting the experiences and tracking them, and developing an index to help monitor and track policy developments. A manual on collaborative policy development has been produced; it will be a living document that will change as new experiences are added to it.
In this clip, Anne describes the participants, the goals and the results of the community of practice.
While some would argue that tracking policies, building evidence for new policies and looking at the overall impact on the community’s quality of life is the work of government, Sherri makes the case that by monitoring policy developments, communities will find opportunities, red flags, and the small technical changes that don’t get media coverage but that might make a lot of difference to the issues and programs that affect them. Communities can also help governments collect evidence on the impact of policies, for example, whether one benefit results in the loss of other benefits. The form of the evidence makes a difference; the real-life stories that communities can provide are often the most useful and have the most impact.
In this clip, Sherri gives examples that demonstrate why communities should monitor policy developments.
Sherri’s paper, Poverty Policy, points out that many people don’t benefit from the income security programs we have. For example, many benefits are delivered through the income tax system but receipt depends on people knowing and applying for them. Make Tax Time Pay, an Edmonton initiative, helped low income people get thousands of dollars of benefits to which they were entitled. In Calgary, Vibrant Communities and partners helped arrange for low income people to access discounted bus passes – and now the program, called Fair Fares, is permanent. Innovations like these have impact far beyond the communities where they start, as they are replicated and adapted in other places.
Communities can play a crucial role in how governments shape new policies. For example, in British Columbia’s Capital Region on Vancouver Island, community agencies were the catalyst to bring thirteen different municipal governments together to work on affordable housing. Because the municipalities had a bigger pool of money to work with and were planning together, they had a much greater impact than any one of the governments could have had on its own.
Another example is the Living Wage movement. In many communities, the costs of living far outstrips what fulltime work at minimum wage can cover. Communities have calculated the costs of basic needs in their cities, and demonstrated to businesses and governments why it benefits everyone if workers are paid a living wage.
Here, Sherri explains how convincing the City of Calgary to adopt a procurement policy that includes a provision for a living wage set an example for employers and had impacts far beyond city employees.
Poverty Policy - This paper discusses ten major policy areas that comprise the core of a comprehensive poverty reduction strategy.
Reclaiming our Humanity - The paper proposes that a civil society seeks to achieve three key objectives: caring communities, economic security and social investment. The overarching theme of civil society is citizenship – which includes not only rights but also broad, collective responsibility for economic, social and environmental well-being.
Red Ink Budget - The Caledon Institute’s comment on the 2009 federal budget argues that the funds could have been more effectively deployed. Instead of income tax cuts that favour the affluent, they would invest in income security programs that put cash into the hands of low- and modest-income consumers and the unemployed.
Make Tax Time Pay - Make Tax Time Pay (MTTP) is an education and tax preparation assistance program that was originally launched in 2006 by Vibrant Communities Edmonton. It alerts residents to ten benefits, subsidies and tax credits for which they can apply.
Success for Fair Fares - Calgary City Council’s November 2008 decision to make Low-Income Transit Passes a permanent project was the successful conclusion of a decade-long push to help low-income residents and people with disabilities participate fully in the life of their city.
Vibrant Communities Calgary’s Living Wage Campaign - Members of Vibrant Communities Calgary have encouraged the development of a municipal Sustainable Ethical Environmental Purchasing Policy and broadened the discussion about wages to include other exemplary employment practices.
Community Roles in Policy - This Caledon paper discusses place-based interventions and their unique contribution to tackling complex issues, such as poverty.
Collaboration on Policy – This manual describes the initial lessons learned by the Government Collaboration on Policy, a community of practice that operated from March 2008 to March 2009. The Collaboration on Policy manual is also available in French here.
Mark Cabaj explores with Sherri Torjman and Anne Makhoul of the Caledon Institute of Social Policy how communities engage in public policy making as they seek improved access to public programs and services, or help design local spaces and programs that respond to their concerns. 
Sherri Torjman - Sherri Torjman is Vice-President of the 
Anne Makhoul - Anne Makhoul is Principal Project Officer for the 
Mark Cabaj - Mark Cabaj is the lead coach at Tamarack and 
