CivicAction

The Greater Toronto CivicAction Alliance (formerly the Toronto City Summit Alliance), commonly known as CivicAction, is a non-profit, non-partisan organization based in Toronto that works with senior and emerging leaders from the business, government, labour, academic and community sectors to address urban challenges in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) and beyond. The purpose of the organization is to boost civic engagement and build better cities.

Not to be confused with civic action or CivicActions.

Organization

CivicAction is a non-profit, non-partisan organization formed to address challenges to the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area's social and economic future. It was created by David Pecaut following a 2002 summit of business and community leaders.[1] Pecaut led a 40-member steering committee that generated Enough Talk: An Action Plan for the Toronto Region, which provided the roadmap for the organization's focus on issues where there was a clear consensus for action and where it felt progress could be made quickly. CivicAction adopted its current name in December 2010.

Following Enough Talk, the committee formed The Toronto Summit Alliance on October 8, 2003, to convene leaders from all sectors to work together to tackle specific social and economic challenges.

Leadership and staff

CivicAction is led by a Board of Directors and a small team of dedicated staff led by interim CEO Tamara Balan.

Past and present Board Chairs:

Past and Present CEOs:

Regional Summits

Every four years, CivicAction holds a summit to identify the biggest issues facing the region. Out of the summit, CivicAction sets its agenda for the next four years and launches initiatives and campaigns to help tackle these issues. These summits bring hundreds of civic leaders from the business, industry, academic, non-profit and community sectors to collaborate, connect and provide insight on what next steps should be considered.

The fifth CivicAction Summit "Canvas – Drawn Together for a Purpose" was held on April 29, 2019 and focused on the following five urban issues:

  • Getting ready for the future of work
  • Tackling housing affordability
  • Preparing for extreme weather
  • Preventing sex trafficking
  • Unlocking inclusive leadership

Coming out of the 2019 Summit, new initiatives will be launched starting with Future of Work and Anti Sex Trafficking efforts.

Shared Purpose

To boost civic engagement and build better cities.

CivicAction Leadership Foundation

The CivicAction Leadership Foundation is the charitable arm of CivicAction and was launched in 2017. It is a registered charity with its own Board of Directors that delivers programs that inspire, educate and build inclusive leadership in the GTHA.

Past and present Board Chairs: 2016-Present: Tim Hockey, President and CEO, TD Ameritrade

DiverseCity Fellows

Each year, the DiverseCity Fellows program selects approximately 25 rising leaders who represent all sectors and communities within the GTHA. To date, over 250 individuals have completed the DiverseCity Fellows program.

The Fellowship came out of DiverseCity: The Greater Toronto Leadership Project, a partnership between Maytree and CivicAction, which identified the need for more diverse leadership in the GTHA.

Emerging Leaders Network

CivicAction’s Emerging Leaders Network (ELN) develops, connects, and activates the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area’s (GTHA) future leaders. Created in 2006, the ELN is 2000+ rising leaders strong (including DiverseCity Fellows alumni) and represents a wide range of ethno-cultural backgrounds, communities, and sectors throughout the GTHA.

ELN members get:

  • Invites to free and accessible monthly events on leadership development and city-building.
  • Access to opportunities for thought-provoking dialogue and valuable skills training.
  • Connected to a network of like-minded rising leaders.
  • Opportunities to participate in high impact city-building projects and initiatives.
  • A special invitation to ELNstudio our bi-annual conference where you’ll explore some of the region’s most pressing civic issues.

ELN members have led high-impact projects such as the Pan Am Path, Toronto Homecoming, and Project Neutral.

Current initiatives

Escalator: Jobs for Youth Facing Barriers

Escalator: Job for Youth Facing Barriers launched in 2014 addresses the issue of youth unemployment through programming that involves the private, public and community sectors. This initiative has included a number of programs that provide digital job search skills (YouthConnect) and mentorship opportunities (netWORKS), and demand-let IT skills training for youth (NPower Canada) and resources on youth-inclusive hiring for employers (HireNext).

HireNext

Launched in April 2018, HireNext is a free, made-in-Canada tool and set of resources to help employers find, onboard, and retain youth talent. The tool provides customized recommendations to the organization after taking a short assessment, to help improve their HR practices. Over 250 employers are using the tool including over 30 HireNext employers that have made a public commitment to change one thing in their practices.

Mental Health in the Workplace – MindsMatter

The Mental Health in the Workplace initiative aims help GTHA employers better support their employees' mental health through simple workplace initiatives. This is mainly accomplished through MindsMatter, an online assessment tool for employers to gauge where they currently stand in their mental health supporting journey. This initiative was launched in April 2016, and to date over 1,500 organizations have taken the assessment with the capacity to support the mental health of as many as 3.1 million employees.

Past initiatives

Over 10,000 people in the Toronto region have been involved in projects CivicAction has developed and supported, including:

Toront03 Alliance

Raised and invested over $11 million in post-SARS tourism recovery and branding, leading to over $80 million in economic benefit for Ontario.

Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council (TRIEC)

Developed in partnership with The Maytree Foundation, TRIEC aims to address the persistent problem of immigrant underemployment – the fact that extremely highly skilled people come to Toronto from all over the world and end up in low-skilled jobs.

Strong Neighbourhoods Task Force

A collaborative effort of United Way Toronto, the City of Toronto and the Alliance, the Task Force created a plan to revitalize neighbourhoods, identifying 13 as priorities for investment.

Modernizing Income Security for Working-Age Adults (MISWAA) Task Force

Developed a roadmap to modernize income security to ensure the full economic participation of working-age adults. An initiative of the Alliance and St. Christopher House, MISWAA helped to bring about the federal Working Income Tax Benefit, the new Ontario Child Benefit, and a provincial dental plan.

Toronto Region Research Alliance
Main article: Toronto Region Research Alliance

United governments, technology-based companies, colleges and universities and financial institutions in attracting major investments and promoting research in the Golden Horseshoe.

Luminato
Main article: Luminato

Initially incubated within CivicAction, this annual $15 million international festival capitalizes on Toronto's strong cultural and tourism assets. It features artists from across Canada and abroad and attracted over one million participants in 2007 and again in 2008.

Your32 campaign

Launched in the fall of 2012,[3] CivicAction's Your32 regional transportation campaign brought citizens, community leaders, and elected officials together to build public support for a better and financially sustainable regional transportation system. The campaign saw half of all elected officials from across the GTHA and across levels of government join thousands of residents to pledge their support for new sources of funding for transportation, resulting in dedicated new investment in regional transportation for the GTHA in the July 2014 Ontario budget.

Greening Greater Toronto

The 120-member Greening Greater Toronto Task Force and Working Groups charted a plan to help the GTA become the greenest city region in North America.

Race to Reduce

Greening Greater Toronto's flagship project was the Race to Reduce, a four-year corporate challenge to reduce energy consumption in participating office buildings by 10% from 2011-2015. By 2015,42% of the GTA's offices collectively reduced energy consumption by 12.1%. Race to Reduce participants dropped nearly 193 million kWh or 12.1 percent in collective energy use over four years, equivalent to taking more than 4,200 cars off the road and putting $13.7 million back into office landlords' and tenants' pockets.

The Race to Reduce became one of the largest regional energy challenges in the world, with 196 buildings participating representing more than 69 million square feet or 42 percent of the commercial office space in the GTA. The Race has garnered industry acclaim and was recognized as the Canadian recipient of the 2015 Energy Globe world award for sustainability, along with the Green Award of the Year at the NAIOP 2013 Greater Toronto chapter's Real Estate Excellence Awards.

Infrastructure in the GTHA

CivicAction has worked with a variety of organizations on two separate interventions that focus on important infrastructure issues. The first was a series of roundtables and interviews with civic and community leaders from across the GTHA that followed the Canadian federal government's announcement of $60 billion in infrastructure funding in 2016. These roundtables resulted in the report Ensuring We Get It Right, which features four recommendations to help guide infrastructure investment decisions. The second intervention was a forum with representatives from the private, public, non-profit, and community sectors to discuss strategies to engage and motivate Toronto region homeowners to minimize their vulnerability to flood risk. The result was a report entitled Blueprints for Action: Minimizing Homeowner Flood Risk in the GTHA from 2017.

Better Child Care in the GTHA

CivicAction worked with the Ontario Ministry of Education to lead consultations with employers to inform the Renewed Early Years and Child Care Framework and Expansion Strategy. 31 different employers from across Ontario contributed through a series of one-on-one interviews and a roundtable meeting in January 2017. The consultations had employers identify the ideal state of child care, opportunities for success, and barriers to action.

References
  1. "Knelman: David Pecaut, 54: 'Greatest mayor Toronto never had' | Toronto Star". thestar.com. Retrieved 2017-06-16.
  2. "Postmedia Network chairman Rod Phillips appointed head of CivicAction". National Post. Retrieved 2017-06-16.
  3. "Anti-gridlock campaign: How would you spend an extra 32 minutes a day?". Toronto Star. Retrieved 2017-06-16.
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