Civic Action

CivicAction (the Greater Toronto CivicAction Alliance, formerly the Toronto City Summit Alliance) is a coalition of civic leaders in the Toronto region. For the past 10 years, CivicAction has worked with business, government, community, labour, and academia to address social, economic and environmental challenges in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area. CivicAction adopted its current name in December 2010. ^[1]

Organization

CivicAction (www.civicaction.ca) is a non-profit, non-partisan organization formed to address challenges to the Toronto region’s social and economic future. It was created by David Pecaut following a 2002 summit of business and community leaders.^[2] 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.

Following Enough Talk, the committee created a non-profit corporation to convene leaders from all sectors to work together to tackle specific social and economic challenges. CivicAction is led by a Board of Directors and a 75-leader Steering Committee.

Past and present Board Chairs:

• 2003-2009: David Pecaut, the late American-born civic leader and former managing director of The Boston Consulting Group
• 2010-2014: John Tory, businessman and former leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario^[3]
• 2014-present: Rod Phillips, former CEO of the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation^[4]

Projects

Following are CivicAction's current projects, campaigns, and initiatives:^[5]

• Your32 campaign : Launched in the fall of 2012,^[6] CivicAction's Your32 regional transportation campaign aims to build measurable public and decision-maker appreciation for the value that a better system will bring, and the need for sustainable ways to pay for it.

• 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. Greening Greater Toronto's flagship project is the Race to Reduce, a four-year corporate challenge that will reduce energy consumption in participating office buildings by 10%.^[7]

• DiverseCity : The Greater Toronto Leadership Project: Guided by a 40-leader Steering Committee, CivicAction and The Maytree Foundation have developed a roadmap to help ensure that the Toronto region’s leadership landscape becomes as diverse as its population and draws on the growing number of visible minorities and recent immigrants who live in the region. CivicAction and Maytree have created eight concrete, practical and measurable initiatives to help diversify the leadership of public, private, non-profit and political institutions and create the conditions for maximizing the benefits of diversity.

• Emerging Leaders Network : Launched in 2006, CivicAction's Emerging Leaders Network (ELN) is a diverse network of 700+ emerging leaders whose mission is to advance the Toronto region through awareness, influence and action.

Over 6000 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's Mentoring Partnership has created 4200 mentoring matches and Career Bridge has facilitated over 1000 internships (close to 80% of Career Bridge interns have secured full-time work in their field);

• 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: unites governments, technology-based companies, colleges and universities and financial institutions in attracting major investments and promoting research in the Golden Horseshoe;

• Luminato: 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; and

• Canada's first Social Entrepreneurship Summit: together with MaRS Discovery District, the Centre for Social Innovation and The Boston Consulting Group, the Alliance brought together 160 Canadian social entrepreneurs and others to support social entrepreneurship and award the Schwab Foundation's first Canadian Social Entrepreneur of the Year award.

References

1. ↑ "City-building group renamed as Greater Toronto Civic Action Alliance", National Post, December 9, 2010
2. ↑ "Knelman: David Pecaut, 54: 'Greatest mayor Toronto never had'", The Toronto Star, December 15, 2009
3. ↑ "Good for John Tory", The Globe and Mail, January 7, 2010
4. ↑ "Postmedia Network Chairman Rod Phillips appointed head of CivicAction", The National Post, June 6, 2014
5. ↑
6. ↑ "Anti-gridlock campaign: How would you spend an extra 32 minutes a day?", The Toronto Star, October 10, 2012
7. ↑ "Heads Up Energy Efficiency Newsletter - January 2013", Government of Canada, January 2013

External links

• www.civicaction.ca