Author: ODP

Akaash Maharaj on how the Mosaic Institute is building engagement with different communities during the pandemic.

Tell us about the Mosaic Institute. How would you describe its purpose and what makes it unique?

Mosaic is a Canadian charitable institution that advances pluralism in societies and peace amongst nations.  We operate through Track Two Diplomacy, and bring together people, communities, and states, to foster mutual understanding and to resolve conflicts. Our unique contribution to global affairs and inter-cultural understanding is that we begin our work with diaspora communities in Canada, convene them together across the divides of international conflicts, help them understand one another’s perspectives, and in doing so, help them acknowledge our shared humanity.  We then create opportunities for those communities to join hands in common efforts to resolve or at least mitigate conflicts abroad.

For us, success is rarely a question of persuading people to agree with one another on all aspects of bitterly contentious disputes, but instead, to find was to disagree constructively, and to protect one another’s human rights as a way of protecting their own human rights.

We are all navigating the global pandemic in different ways. What’s a key insight from how the Mosaic Institute is responding to the crisis? 

On the one hand, the pandemic has lain bare the extent to which our interests as individuals are inextricably linked to the wellbeing of every other member of society, and that we can not be healthy, prosperous, or successful individuals, unless we build health, prosperous, and successful societies. On the other hand, the pandemic has made it no less clear that those with the least are being called to sacrifice the most, either by continuing to work in public-facing activities that bring high risks and low remuneration, or by being stripped of their livelihoods altogether.

Over the past few months we have seen groups seize this moment of uncertainty to advance racial and economic justice in their communities. How does this relate to your work?

Physical distancing has only increased the appetite for social interactions, especially amongst Canadians who were already isolated or confined by poverty or powerlessness. Mosaic is working to bring such people together, especially across ethnic, cultural, and confessional divisions.  If a community’s hunger for human interaction is at least partially met by other communities from whom they have been historically alienated, this may build bridges of social cohesion and unity between them that could outlast the pandemic.

What’s one big challenge you see Canada’s democracy facing?  How are you working on this challenge, what solutions do you propose?

Discrimination in Canada is often far more subtle than in other countries.  It has learned to speak the language of virtue, even as it practices the most appalling vices.  Public and corporate actors will mouth the words of inclusion, precisely to mask their practice of racial, class, and gender exclusion.  As a result, discrimination in our country is strangely insidious: it strengthens its grip on the body politic, even as many citizens insist that it is an imagined phantom.

Part of the response must be for social-purpose organisations – including Mosaic – to pay no attention to the words or the expressed intentions of public figures, and to instead place our emphasis entirely on a critical assessment of those figures’ actions.  Part of the response must be fostering a culture that rejects the tyranny of low expectations, a tyranny that persuades citizens to mute their criticism of hypocritical political figures, out of fear that a still worse breed of politician would benefit from such criticisms.

Could you share an idea or initiative related to increasing civic engagement or democratic participation that inspires you? This could be related to your work or something you see happening in the sector. 

I have been deeply impressed and moved by the work of our colleagues at the St John Eye Hospital in Jerusalem.  Israeli and Palestinian doctors have pooled their efforts to provide ophthalmic services in Jerusalem, irrespective of the patients’ ethnic or confessional identity or ability to pay.  The core identity of the hospital emphasises our duties to one another, and the fact that we become our better selves by fulfilling those responsibilities.

Tell us about how the Mosaic Institute is making its work more inclusive and building engagement with different communities. Any tips or lessons to share with others in the sector about decreasing barriers to participation? 

There is a surprisingly widespread misconception that online video engagement activities are necessarily more accessible, because they do not require travel.  In reality, virtual barriers can be as restrictive as physical ones: not all communities have extensive access to high speed internet service, to computers, or to quiet work areas.

During the pandemic, the digital divide was exacerbated by the closing of public libraries and schools. We are in discussions with technology firms about the possibility of creating systems to make basic computer equipment available in deprived communities.  We are also examining regulatory options that would compel large telecommunications firms, as a condition of access to the Canadian market, to provide low-cost internet access to Canadians of modest means.

Are there specific asks the Mosaic Institute has for the broader sector — things you need help with, problems you’re trying to solve or wishes you have?

Like virtually all not-for-profit organisations, we are grappling with the fact that funding agencies have embraced project funding models, and abandoned core funding.  We need to find a way to better persuade funders that investing in institutional capacity and resilience is not only productive, but the only effective and efficient way of ensuring that organisations can continue our work at times of crisis and convulsion, when that work is most desperately needed.

Mosaic Institute is a Canadian charitable institution that advances pluralism in societies and peace amongst nations.  We operate through Track Two Diplomacy, and bring together people, communities, and states, to foster mutual understanding and to resolve conflict. Over the past ten years, Mosaic has convened Chinese and Tibetan youth leaders, for discussions on peaceful co-existence on the Tibetan Plateau; assembled Sinhalese and Tamil representatives, to create strategies for reconciliation after the Sri Lankan civil war; called together survivors of genocides, to break cycles of trauma; and established programmes in schools and universities, to nurture the next generation of leaders in pluralism. Follow @MosaicInstitute.

This is an unprecedented moment for democracy in Canada so we created Sector Spotlight to learn about how leading practitioners are responding to it. Have ideas for our next Sector Spotlight? Get in touch!

The countdown is on for DemocracyXChange – Canada’s annual summit which is co-founded by Open Democracy Project and the Ryerson Leadership Lab. Join us as we seize the opportunity to strengthen democracy in the recovery from COVID-19. Pay what you can to access both the Summit and Festival. 

• Our virtual Summit (October 13-15) will raise critical questions about systemic inequality, the relevance of our public institutions and how we can respond to this global moment with imagination.
• Our Festival (October 16-22) enables participants to deepen their engagement with program material by attending online workshops, training sessions and events organized by non-profits, associations and community groups. 

Check out our full Summit schedule which features keynotes from Karen Lord, Waubgeshig Rice, Cory Doctorow, Minister Dominic LeBlanc, Sheri Berman, Siyabulela Mandela, Thomas Piketty, Hahrie Han, and Mutale Nkonde. 

Sessions will also feature important insights from Oren Cass, Elizabeth May, Beverly Jacobs, Colleen O’Manique, David Coletto, Doug Saunders, Eva Salinas, Darcy Lindberg, Michal Rozworksi, Lynette Ong, Matt Stoller, Paul Bailey and many others. 

The Festival includes organizations from across Canada working to enhance democratic engagement from the ground up. Check out events from CIVIX, Massey College, Mosaic Institute, the Institute for Change Leaders, the Democratic Engagement Exchange, Feedback Frames, Canadian Interfaith Conversation, Institut du Nouveau Monde, Centre for Mindfulness Studies, Fair Vote Canada and others. 

Join us for one panel or settle in for the full program: REGISTER

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A week before the country-wide shut down in response to coronavirus, a small group of MPs, aides, and national representatives of religious groups gathered in a small conference room on the third floor of a Parliamentary building on Wellington Street, Ottawa. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the creation of an All-Party Interfaith Caucus, an entity that could facilitate dialogue between parliamentarians and Canada’s diverse religious communities about areas of mutual interest and concern: reconciliation, poverty, environmental stewardship, hate speech, and other issues. MPs who have been helping to steer this initiative with the support of the Canadian Interfaith Conversation, will be speaking about the role of faith as a vehicle for dialogue at the upcoming DemocracyXChange Summit. 

The most recent Federal election campaign featured discussion of religion primarily as a source of division and polarization. Whether it was the moral positions of the Conservative leader or the debate over Bill 21 in Quebec, religion was seen as a conversation stopper for politicians. It became clear that we need new language and concepts to engage with religion in the public sphere. We often recognize religion as a source of identity, spiritual practice, and deep-rooted articles of faith. These are sources of difference that add to the diversity of our country. They call us to summon the same ethic of inclusion, toleration, and mutual learning that we are applying to other social differences.

As much as Canada’s religions contribute to our diversity, however, they also reinforce our common life in a variety of ways. At an individual level, religious communities help to educate young people to dedicate their lives to the betterment of the world and to serve others. Religion also reinforces the bonds of community ties that help to foster neighbourhood vitality and relationships of social trust. These communities also give rise to institutions, from charities to small businesses, which generate significant public benefits. In other words, Canada’s religions are an important part of the fabric of democratic life. Few would question that religion can be anti-democratic, especially when its leaders promote prejudice, misinformation and fear. Our challenge, then, is to create structures that can reinforce prosocial religion by connecting the insights arising from the teachings and experience of religious communities to processes of democratic deliberation. 

The All-Party Interfaith Caucus is intended to be a mechanism for this kind of democratic action. All-Party groups are informal parliamentary bodies that have become a feature of several Westminster legislatures. They typically bring together backbencher parliamentarians across different parties to work with non-governmental groups on issues of shared concern. As Dr. Paul Thomas has noted, All-Party Parliamentary Groups have proliferated in Canada over the past several decades – often driven by these converging interests. They create opportunities for parliamentarians to develop policy ideas through structured interaction with constituents, community groups, and lobbyists. While many parties also have issue caucuses, All-Party Groups exert a countervailing influence on growing partisanship by bringing together parliamentarians from across the aisle.

On October 15th at 11am ET, three parliamentarians from different political parties will participate in a panel discussion at DemocracyXChange about how faith can be a vehicle for dialogue in an age of partisan polarization. Elizabeth May (Green Party), Garnett Genuis (Conservative Party), and Anthony Housefather (Liberal Party) will discuss how religion can have a positive role in public policy and the best way to engage with a religiously diverse citizenry. I have worked with Dr. John Milloy,  a former Cabinet minister in the Ontario government and the Director of the Centre for Public Ethics at Martin Luther University College, to organize this conversation. Our hope is that the discussion will point to concepts and principles that transcend partisan difference and promotes a space for more robust public dialogue.

The Ontario Parents Action Network on the importance of intersecting with other organizing efforts.

Tell us about the Ontario Parents Action Network. How would you describe its purpose and what makes it unique?

We are a grassroots collective of parents and other family members that came together in a moment of crisis, due to the threats of further attacks and defunding of public public education from the Doug Ford government. We began a campaign to resist those cuts and to work explicitly in solidarity with education workers who were heading into bargaining and negotiation with the government. Then we pivoted to face the dire circumstances that public education finds itself in during this pandemic. Where we are watching the government come up with inadequate, deficient plans to address transmission through appropriate safety and health protocols for workers, kids and the broader community. We are seeing the consequences of the failure to adequately plan for the reopening of schools with recent outbreaks. Our campaign now is about healthy, safe, equitable schools. 

What makes us unique is that we link the struggle for properly funded public education to a broader politic with the understanding that public services in general have been so underfunded. We are trying to provide an alternative perspective than the dominant frame offered by most governments, which is a strong adherence to austerity and neoliberalism. We’re trying to counter that explicitly by talking about the increasing and deepening polarization in terms of income and equity in this province, this country and globally.

Your website has a list of #SafeSeptember demands like smaller class sizes and increased funding for student supports. You also include demands related to addressing racism, worker protections and housing. Why is it important to intersect with other organizing efforts?

It’s really important to us to ensure that we’re understanding safety within our school system as a concept that reaches far more broadly than specifics to this pandemic. We want to echo the long articulated call from many organizers, racialized communities and community leaders that there have been overlapping crises within public education for decades. So those calls for removing police from all public schools, to update the curriculum to stop reflecting a white supremacist perspective of the world – that’s about supporting the inclusion of lives and histories of all students in the classroom and the adults working to support them. 

The government needs to address safety as a wider concept than about wellness. It’s about driving being seen and not having oppressive discriminatory conditions within the school system. This is not just about what happens in the classroom but about the conditions of life.  We need to also be talking about ways to secure dignified permanent housing, to address food deserts and resolve other kinds of social issues. This is about more than COVID-19 testing outcomes. It’s about thriving communities and tangible change that secures a good quality of life for all.

Tell us about #SafeSeptember as a campaign and as a way to mobilize.

Well see #SafeSeptember as a concept, a rallying cry that encapsulates what we’re fighting for. It’s a campaign that we launched with other parent organizing groups and education worker groups. It has caught on very widely – it’s an international hashtag. There are groups following or aligning in most provinces across the country now. It involved us working over the summer, trying to mount significant pressure as needed to force the government to allocate funding and resources needed to keep community transmission at a minimum. This was about ensuring children and staff had a plan to return that was safe, sustainable and equitable. We think we accomplished a lot but not what was needed. The government has not allocated the funding necessary and has doubled down on their refusal to address the deeply held concerns of parents, grandparents, epidemiologists, doctors – so many that have a stake in #SafeSeptember. It is shocking and really troubling. 

What’s a key insight from organizing during a pandemic? 

The level of uprising in the United States has had an impact here on motivation and inspiration. A lot of people understand that about this moment. The stakes are very high and they’re willing to put themselves on the line in ways that didn’t feel as possible or didn’t feel as watershed as it does now. We’re at a really important crossroads as a society and as a planet. 

That said, it’s always important to be really creative when you’re mainly trying to mobilize parents because their time capacities, especially during the pandemic balancing work with kids, has been terrifically draining. So you know everyone needs help, everyone needs an outlet for their frustration and anger and to feel like they’re part of something that’s trying to improve the situation. We tend to use a decentralized model that allows people to take action locally – with their local government representative or at their actual school. That’s the trend that we’re trying to stick with because we’ve found it’s the most effective in terms of actually mobilizing people. We also need to make sure that we are not under doing it or overdoing it. We try to stay connected without asking too much.   

We are well into September now. So what comes next? 

We think what comes next is continuing to fight for the improvements that are needed, not just within schools. Certainly absolutely within schools but also on a broader level to bring down community transmission which at this point is terrifyingly high. What we want is to be able to see the situation improved so that there’s a chance schools might be able to stay open during the pandemic. But we’re far from the conditions for that now. So those are the sort of circumstances that we’ll be examining and working really closely with the parent leaders in different parts of the province to address. We are also linked with different education worker organizations to make sure we have a really united front, so that we can mount as broad and powerful a resistance as we can.

For people looking to engage with you, how can they get involved? Who can they contact?

Join us on Twitter, Facebook and visit our website. 

Image Credit: Amber Williams-King

The Ontario Parents Action Network is a collective of concerned parents, guardians, & grandparents organizing to resist the Ford government’s cuts to public education. We want fully-funded, equitable schools for our kids, & we stand in solidarity with education workers.

This is an unprecedented moment for democracy in Canada so we created Sector Spotlight to learn about how leading practitioners are responding to it. Have ideas for our next Sector Spotlight? Get in touch!

Karim Bardeesy and Braelyn Guppy on seizing activation opportunities in a pandemic. 

Tell us about the Ryerson Leadership Lab. How would you describe its purpose and what makes it unique?

The Ryerson Leadership Lab is an action-oriented think tank working at the intersection of public policy and leadership development to make progress on our most pressing civic challenges. Through leadership development, civic convening, and policy and research activation, we are building a new generation of skilled and adaptive leaders and change-makers, at all ages and stages, to create a more trustworthy, inclusive society. 

We aspire to cultivate power and knowledge and connect it to existing power. We hope to develop capacity for sustainable change-making and find places for direct action into the issues that matter to all of us. We are one of the only Canadian think-tanks working in this hybrid space to combine the need for research, leadership, and public policy literacy together to make change. 

We are all navigating the global pandemic in different ways. What’s a key insight from how  Ryerson Leadership Lab is responding to the crisis?

When the full force of the pandemic started to set in and physical distancing measures were implemented, we did our best to pivot to new streams of engagement and activation. I’ll offer two examples of work that we are doing in new ways at the Ryerson Leadership Lab.

In collaboration with the Brookfield Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and Matthew Mendelsohn, we launched First Policy Response, a project bringing together the best social and economic public policy ideas to keep us afloat during the immediate crisis and prepare us for an equitable recovery. Through this channel, we have been sharing original commentary assessing gaps and opportunities for governments and institutions to deliver more supportive programs for Canadians. We have broadened the conversation by convening participatory, online town halls featuring leading thinkers and practitioners and people from across Canada. Recently First Policy Response created a contributors’ fund to better enable pitches and submissions from people in these groups, with a priority on Black and Indigenous writers and contributors. The fund will also support writers and contributors from other under-represented groups, including people of colour, people with disabilities, youth and unemployed people or low-wage earners. We immediately saw an upwelling of support and the emergence of a stronger, more connected policy community. This supports builds on the Leadership Lab’s and First Policy Responses’ shared goal of amplifying diverse policy ideas and amplifying voices at the front lines of inclusive policy making.

We also launched the Cybersecure Policy Exchange, our new initiative working to advance effective and innovative public policy in cybersecurity and digital privacy with Rogers Cybersecure Catalyst, powered by RBC. We moved up the launch to respond to the crisis by running a number of video conversations about pressing cybersecurity issues created or exacerbated by COVID-19 including the digital divide and privacy in the education and health sectors. We also launched our inaugural report, The Race to Trace on the security and privacy of COVID-19 contact tracing apps which included a survey of 2,000 Canadians and five critical recommendations for the government to implement in any national contact tracing strategy. We also launched our policy agenda highlighting the urgency for new public policy in cybersecurity and digital privacy and outlining the three high impact technologies we will focus our research on this year: social media platforms, Internet of Things devices and biometrics.

Through these two initiatives, we have seen the power of knowledge sharing between communities and the rapid dissemination of accessible, creative ideas. It is clear that people may be distant from one-another but they are not out of touch. Instead, they are eager for activation opportunities, forward thinking policy and action-oriented conversations around pressing issues. 

What’s one big challenge you see Canada’s democracy facing? How are you working on this challenge, what solutions do you propose?

We have a deficit of trust in our public institutions. Across the country, Canadians are feeling disconnected from the systems that represent our communities and govern the best interests of the public. Our institutions were created to remove barriers to access, promote social cohesion and reflect the people whom they serve in their policy-making. Without the inherent trust that public good is at the heart of every institutional decision, citizens will feel removed from democratic participation and from one another. Conflated partisan ideology and the rise of populism has fundamentally changed the relationship between our government and our society. 

We need to rebuild trust at all levels. By coming together around issues and public policy, we can further civic engagement, political action and community mobilization. Rebuilding trust will require immense collaboration and deeper understanding across communities, to uplift the priorities of our future society. There are several core assumptions that must be made — one, society as a whole must maintain the inherent belief that government and their systems are good, perhaps flawed, but fundamentally designed to support their constituents. Two, we need to engage and listen to groups — young people, Black and Indigenous communities, our aging population —  who have felt removed or suppressed from participating in the democratic processes that are meant to serve them. If we can mobilize knowledge, community, research and an appetite for change-making we will see movement on our most pressing civic issues, and build trust through action.

Could you share an idea or initiative related to increasing civic engagement or democratic participation that inspires you? This could be related to your work or something you see happening in the sector. 

I am constantly inspired. Coalitions of communities working at the frontlines of democracy to make change. Their passion is inspiring. Healthcare workers protecting our national public health at the risk of their own. Their commitment is inspiring. Rallying in solidarity against anti-Black racism and structural inequities. Their power is inspiring. Across the country, there are communities of people who are making change and taking collective action towards a more inclusive society. I admire their tenacity and hope that we can honour that leadership in our own way, through our work, at the Ryerson Leadership Lab. 

I also am inspired by the Ryerson students in the Ryerson Leadership Lab’s anchor course Making the Future, who among their studies, caregiving responsibilities and various jobs, dedicate their time to collective action in their communities. The Lab has recently launched a new social media segment called “I am a Change-Maker” to provide a dedicated platform to lift up student stories and showcase the work of passionate young people. Our most recent spotlight fell on Cristal Hines. She is a leader and advocate for youth political participation in the Durham region. Her most recent venture, Youth Vote Counts is a community-driven organization aimed to build political literacy, especially in youth between the ages of 18 and 29. It was born out of the 2019 federal election to educate members of her community who were looking for resources. You can read about her work on our website here.

Tell us about how Ryerson Leadership Lab is making its work more inclusive and building engagement with different communities. Any tips or lessons to share with others in the sector about decreasing barriers to participation?

The Ryerson Leadership Lab works at the intersection of leadership and policy. Our work centres around creating knowledge on issues and connecting that knowledge to the institutions where those issues are being discussed.

We have recently taken over stewardship of the Coalition for Alternatives to Streaming in Education (CASE). This group aims to advance equity in our public education systems that disproportionately stream Black students into applied, rather than academic, programming. Students in applied streams have less access to post secondary opportunities and significantly lower graduation rates. CASE’s advocacy will help break down barriers for marginalized students to excel, get ahead and create equitable outcomes so that no student is left behind in our public education system. In mid-July, we saw that community engagement and mobilization can lead to change when the Ontario government announced they would be working to de-stream Grade 9. Now we need to continue our work to be part of the effective implementation of streaming. 

Conversations that are pointed toward action is the only way to make meaningful change. But action and even change can mean something different to everyone, even those in the pursuit of the same thing. To encourage participation in conversation and then action, we need to find commonality and community in the diagnosis of issues that matter to us, mobilize collective knowledge and move forward. 

Are there specific asks Ryerson Leadership Lab has for the broader sector — things you need help with, problems you’re trying to solve or wishes you have?

A problem at the Ryerson Leadership Lab is trying to solve is how to help engage on the key issues that live in expert silos without intervention from young people, the public or impacted communities. We are trying to do more of this in our work, by activating our research findings through convening opportunities, interviews, roundtables and more and engaging our student base through our leadership development classes and training. 

Our biggest wish would be for institutions to make our proposed changes around equity in education, adopt privacy-by-design technology, take climate action and engage with young people on issues that matter to them. Public institutions need to include this new generation of change-makers into their conversations especially around urgent public policy issues, especially those that impact communities that will be set back from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Looking to the community we hope that they continue their work engaging voices of all ages and stages into conversations around our most pressing civic issues to make change at all levels.

 

The Ryerson Leadership Lab is an action-oriented think tank working at the intersection of public policy and leadership development to make progress on our most pressing civic challenges. Through leadership development, civic convening, and policy and research activation, we are building a new generation of skilled and adaptive leaders and changemakers, at all ages and stages, to build a more trustworthy, inclusive society.