Episode Transcript
Elizabeth McIsaac: Welcome to Five Good Ideas. My name is Elizabeth McIsaac, and I'm the President of Maytree, a Toronto-based human rights organization. Five Good Ideas is a monthly program designed to strengthen the capacity of the non-profit sector. For each session, we invite experts to share their practical advice on key issues faced by non-profit organizations today.
Now, let's get to today's conversation.
While many of you will have seen the news about supervised consumption sites closing in Ontario, and I'm conscious that many of you are not in Ontario, this was a step taken by the provincial government in the name of community safety. Today we're joined by Angela Robertson and Bill Sinclair. Two people, community leaders, who have seen the impact of that decision, and how it affects people on the ground, and how it has hurt the most vulnerable people in their communities.
Angela and Bill were both part of the unprecedented step of launching a legal Charter challenge to protect the health care in their community. Today, they're going to share their story, and how their organizations have come out even stronger than before, recognizing that there have been many challenges in the past year and a half.
Welcome to Angela and Bill! It would help if you start us out with a bit of context, because we're not all from Toronto, we're not all from Ontario, and we're not all party to the whole story.
Bill Sinclair: Thanks very much Elizabeth.
And thanks Maytree for holding these events. I've been enjoying them for many years. I'm Bill Sinclair, and I'll be starting us off. The Charter challenge is not the only way that organizations can be fearless and can stand up for their principles, but it is one that brought us together today, Angela, myself, and Maytree.
The Neighbourhood Group Community Services, Parkdale Queen West Community Health Centre are part of hundreds of people who came together to challenge this new law.
Let me just give a quick summary for those who haven't been following it as closely as we have.
The Charter challenge is against the Community Care and Recovery Act, 2024 in the province of Ontario.
It's a law which states that supervised consumption sites could not operate within 200 metres of a school or a child-care centre. This law did close Angela's site and would close our site. And, in our case, it would close our site, the Kensington Market Overdose Prevention Service, because we operate next door to our own licensed child-care centre that we have operated for 50 years, safely, in our neighbourhood.
And it was the fact that it's our site, our child-care site, that is closing our supervised consumption site that really drove us to be the primary applicant for the Charter challenge, that our rights are being harmed and that our people who use our site are being harmed.
I also want to take a moment and just thank the hundreds of people who have been part of this challenge in one way or another, and this is one of those public forums where I get a chance to do that.
I want to thank my board of directors, my board chair, my senior staff, and the individual staff in the Kensington Market Overdose Prevention Site. And that includes Lorie Steer, Amber Kellen, and Barb Panter. I also want to thank our co-applicants, Katie Resendes and Jean-Pierre Aubry Forgues, who stood with us in court in our Charter challenge.
Thirdly, I'd like to thank our pro bono legal team, which are Stockwoods LLP, Lax O'Sullivan Lisus Gottlieb LLP, and Nanda & Company, including Carlo Di Carlo, Olivia Eng, Rahool Agarwal, and Avnish Nanda, who led us through this process. Believe me, my organization had no experience with doing this before, and very few of us do.
Fourth, I'd like to thank all the interveners, which are the other organizations who gave evidence in court and participated with the court challenge, including the HIV Legal Network, HIV and AIDS Legal Clinic Ontario, Black Legal Action Centre, Aboriginal Legal Services, John Sewell, Barbara Hall, the Harm Reduction Service Providers Coalition, including Parkdale Queen West Community Health Centre, the Harm Reduction Policy Coalition, and the City of Toronto Board of Health.
And then lastly, there are a few community champions that I would be remiss not to mention, including Sandra Ka Hon Chu, Janet Butler-McPhee, Reverend Maggie Helwig, our MPP Jessica Bell, and Dominique Russell in Kensington Market, and so many others who made it possible for us to take this brave step and to take this action.
We are going to touch on these points again in our five ideas, but I just wanted to set that context. So the first good idea, building a fearless board.
Over the years I've observed that boards have pretty standard reports that they receive, quarterly financials, regular government funding reports, and I have been troubled that this can confuse boards into thinking that their role is about managing money and managing funders - and not about managing their mission. Because their mission is broadly based on social change.
So about 15 years ago, my organization, our board, created a board advocacy committee as a standing committee of the board. They meet, like the finance committee, quarterly. They received reports on advocacy, and they set and monitor our advocacy agenda. And because like our finance committee, they meet regularly and report regularly to the board. Our board gives equal time to conversations around advocacy as they do to finances. And the chair of our advocacy committee has equal weight on our board to the board treasurer.
I think this is important because we need to have boards change their thinking, that it's not about reducing risk or just managing current assets, but fighting for social justice. That's the real goal of the board.
Over time, we have often participated in provincial and local coalitions, everything from the Social Planning Council and others, to work together on advocacy, lobbying, and public education. And I think this is very important.
But we also wanted our organization to have some cases where we're not a follower but leader, where we're actually leading a campaign and moving something forward.
To make it engaging in our organization, we use a bit of a “Dragon's Den” approach, where each year staff and volunteers pitch an advocacy idea for the committee, and the board votes and chooses what will be the board campaign. And each year the board leads a campaign directly. The board members lead a campaign directly.
Our last one was fighting for 10,000 youth summer jobs. We're finding a terrible problem in Toronto, and I'm sure other cities, around youth not getting summer jobs, so we wanted to make that our advocacy priority. And we held a youth conference, a postcard campaign, several press conferences, meetings with politicians and all kinds of actions to try to make this happen.
And the key for us is that the board planned it and led this directly, and it's transformed the way our board acts and thinks. And it also meant that when the Charter challenge arose, our board was very comfortable having these conversations. They were comfortable speaking out, and they were comfortable taking some risks - because sometimes you have to criticize the government to get the change that you need to see.
The last thing I want to say is just that a fearless organization is not a careless organization. We know our responsibility under CRA, we register, where necessary, with government lobbyists registries.
But you should know that board members do not have to register as lobbyists. They're unpaid volunteers and they are explicitly exempt from being lobbyists. And I think this shows that the role of the board is widely recognized that it's their job to speak out, and that this is part of the role we want them to have. Angela?
Angela Robertson: Thank you, Bill, and very much appreciate Maytree for inviting myself and you to this important conversation. Just in terms of locating, in terms of Parkdale Queen West, so also saying Happy Black History Month. We're at the tail end of this important month, but you know, we're Black 365. That's just ongoing work.
Always important in these gatherings for me to locate myself, because I think who I am informs how I do the work and how I seek to make change. So, I'm an immigrant to this country, a Black woman, part of the LGBTQ community, and this intersectional location informs both my leadership in trying to be fearless and in building and supporting fearless organizations.
And we know, I know, that for communities and populations who experience being in the margins, on the margins, living on the edge, is - of any structure - is that resistance for our survival requires that we act, that we are deliberate, and that this is not a theoretical exercise, but it's an exercise for survival. Hence, I am relentless in valuing what works to make social change conditions better and to critique what really deepens structural inequalities. And some of those inequalities we are seeing right now, the elements of DEI, trans rights, reproductive rights, the receding of the tide in pushing back against anti-Black racism and the resurgence and the surgence of the anti-immigrant, anti-refugee sentiments, here in this country and elsewhere.
And at this epicentre in this conversation is the pushing back on the continuing marginalization of marginalized populations who use drugs. And I say “marginalized populations who use drugs” because we know that there are affluent people and people of means who use substances but who use from the comforts of their home, the privacy, the network of friends and company, but they're not part of who is the target of some of the legislation that Bill spoke of.
So just wanting to bring that location and that context, in addition to some of the things that Bill noted, in terms of building fearless boards, fearless organizations.
A thanks, as well, to our board, Parkdale Queen West Board, and the staff and the workers in the service who have continued doing the work, even in the face of these threats.
A few things that I'll just throw around - what are some of the things that compels us in building fearless boards and doing this work - is really us as organizations in this group, 140 strong, is making compelling the impact of the work that we're doing as a way to attract board members whose values align with our mission.
So make compelling the work that we do. Make it compelling by also talking about the impact of the work in changing social conditions and material conditions for the communities who come to us for service. The other piece, I think, in building fearless boards, and I'm talking at the foundational level, is in our recruitment efforts. Having board members who are, and community members, who come to join the board, who understand the values and value the important impact that the work is going to make. Board members who understand and are committed to a population and health equity lens. Because the work that we do may be service delivery, but it's service delivery to do change-making work, to make lives better because of the inequalities that people are facing. To have board members that understand that the work of the organization is part of a wider network. That is a network, that we are part of a network that is building what I call, and providing the basket of, health rights.
So it's not just Parkdale Queen West alone that you are joining. You are joining a sector that is doing work to make lives better.
So sometimes people come, because I want to join your organization, and I'm saying, no, come to join the sector because that sector, I believe, is part of a movement.
And that as a board, building fearless boards, also means deliberately and not tokenisticly, but deliberately and meaningfully, involving people with lived/living experience of the social conditions that we're seeking to change, being part of that process. And, lastly, on this particular topic, is that as an executive lead in building a fearless board, I believe it is our responsibility to keep the board very much aware of the threats and challenges and the changes in the political landscape and policy landscape around us.
You know, sometimes we can shield the board and only bring the good stories. We want to show what our successes are as an organization, but the board needs to know what the sites of challenges are because they need to be primed to be responsive when trouble come knocking at the door as they did to both Bill and our organization.
Two last pieces that I would mention, is that building your board and building your culture in your organization, and the culture of your board: it must be understood that it is against our values to cherry-pick which marginalized populations we will speak in support of and which ones are too risky to speak in support of.
So because we are in this moment, the folks who use illicit substances (substances that are criminalized) are at the epicentre - we could choose to be silent because we're dealing with the issue of criminalized substances. But in fact, these are marginalized populations who have less ability to speak, and therefore it is our responsibility to lean in and to not cherry-pick who we speak up and for when there are threats.
The last point I would make is: speaking and building fearless boards means that we need to know that biting the hand that feeds you is a risk, and sometimes a necessary risk. And that when you speak back to the hand that feeds you, in opposition, that it may mean that your organization may not be the one that benefits from an investment. But that what you are seeking is not that the investment comes to you, but that the investment remains in the sector. So it may not be you, individually as an organization, who benefit, but you want to keep those resources in the sector. And it may be that you decide that the risk of speaking means that you don't get that investment, but your sector and somebody else in your sector gets that investment.
Bill Sinclair: Thank you, Angela. Good idea number two, and Angela has led into it, is defending your rights and values. So of course, this entire challenge is really one of the most extreme ways you can defend your rights, and we identified that our right to provide health care, our right to provide service was being taken away from us.
We went through multiple steps of defending ourselves, of expressing our opposition and our concern. But it ultimately led to what the maximum things you can do, which is leading a Charter challenge or being part of a Charter challenge.
And I know that many people I've spoken to have found this step frightening to take but also have been impressed that the sector is able to take these steps and that we have tools that are there for us. They belong to us to use and we must use them.
Angela just mentioned our values and so we need to centre our values in deciding which tools to use and when to use them.
So what are our values? One of the values is, of course, harm reduction that we share. And it's a value that is currently under attack on all sides.
But a broader value that I think many of us in this room will share is social justice. That social inequality must be challenged and reversed, and we cannot be silent on one issue or another if we're prioritizing injustices in our community. We cannot be silent when the communities we serve are being attacked.
I won't speak for Angela, but for myself, sometimes people are unhappy - I talk about the Neighbourhood Group Community Services as a charity. I think charity has become a bit of a bad word now, a bit of an outdated concept for people. But, you know, I think if you look back, charities have led to most of the government reforms in history.
It's where schools come from, hospitals, social assistance, libraries, public housing, child care. So many things came because of the actions and movement of charities. And for me, our organization is part of that continuum. But charity doesn't mean accepting the status quo, and it doesn't mean being silent in the face of terrible things happening.
I think that when we face everyday inequality, it's equally our charitable mission to raise our voices and to support community voices about them. That's central to a charitable vision, and it's not on the side or adjacent or optional. If we are going to tackle the toughest problems, we not only have to act, but we have to speak.
And that's something that I'm proud that we've been practicing on this issue as well.
Angela Robertson: To follow that, because as a not-for-profit charitable organization, we certainly agree that the work of our organization is about delivery of service, but it's also about delivery of change, and delivery of change that gives rise to why we exist in the first place.
And it is in this vein that the third good practice that we identified is the importance of data and evidence. It was that that was a particular driver for us as an organization and for the Parkdale Queen West Board, why we also stepped forward studying all of the risks and all of the challenges to join as intervener and to build a coalition of interveners to bring evidence of impact and evidence of impact of the value of consumption treatment services, but also the evidence and impact of the closure of services and what that would mean for the marginalized populations of substance users that we serve. So it was that that brought us forward: the importance of data and evidence.
And here I thank Gab Laurence, our director for harm reduction services, who stood in the courts and on the record as our affiant, leading and supporting a coalition of eight organizations that we pulled together supported by the Addario Law Group.
So our coalition of interveners includes St. Felix Centre, Street Health, Ottawa Inner City Health, Sandy Hill Community Health Centre, Elevate NWO and Sanguen Health Centre, and Parkdale Queen West with the RNAO or Registered Nurses’ Association.
So, when we talk about the importance of evidence as a part of the five good ideas, we're in a moment when there is a receding tide and a conservative politic that is pushing back and away from evidence, data, research, and science.
And there is really a mobilized network and groups that are extrapolating, and are amplifying, tragic and isolated events to weaponize what I see as fear and safety concerns and risks, against the Other. And the Other in this intense war are people, marginalized populations, who use drugs.
Part of what we are saying is that we need to not relinquish hold on the value of data and evidence, because we believe that data and evidence leave what I call footprints, what I call the breadcrumbs, that we need to be able to pick up and find and find each other. And to find and make change possible, we need to create those breadcrumbs.
We have the decisions that are being made at the political level that are not informed by evidence, that are not informed by data. And that is also what led to the creation of the closure of these sites, is that safety was asserted. Yet when we looked at the evidence, things that were asserted around high crime rates, higher rates of violence where consumption treatment services were located, did not prove to be the case when you looked at the data.
So we need to not relinquish hold on the data. The other pieces that I would say is that by relinquishing hold on the data is to, I say, give in - is to give into this politic that says evidence and data does not matter and should not be centred.
The last few pieces I would flag here is that we need to be deliberate in using evidence and data to tell stories, and to humanize the stories, and to humanize the impacts of the changes because it's hard to argue.
It's harder, you know, it can always be done, but it is harder to argue with evidence, data, and facts. And it can become an insulator to you as an organization when it is not Angela Robertson spouting off some opinion about a matter and then we end up in some wrestling match. No, it is the organization speaking to data, evidence, and facts - about impacts, about implications.
And that becomes harder for regressive public policies to push back against.
Bill Sinclair: Absolutely. And in fact, there are too many to thank and to name, but the university researchers and the academics who provide evidence and provided evidence in our court case, but also to the media, are incredibly powerful and are part of the allies.
And that leads to our fourth good idea, which is you need to embrace unusual allies in media, people who you don't normally talk to on a daily basis. So at the top of the session, I thanked 20 people who have helped us with our Charter challenge, and I'm deeply humbled about the dozens and hundreds of people who have been part of our journey to where we are.
From Bay Street to Queen's Park, from the pulpit to the street, so many different people have come together. And former mayors of the city. It's blown my mind who has come to aid us and to support us.
But as far as concrete tips, because I know people want tips, so know this, that I didn't know 99 per cent of these people when we started. But it's like a snowball rolling down a hill. When you start reaching out and being open to help and saying, who can help me? Who has expertise, who has influence, who has knowledge, who has expertise, resources? People introduced me to people and people introduced more people to more people, and this list grew by being open to it.
I guess I would say, “keep your DMs open,” as they say, and get used to saying “yes” to unknown callers, because the people who will help you, you don't know them yet. You honestly don't. But they are there, and they are incredible.
The second is media. I didn't know any of the media when this started.
I got to know lots of people in media. And media are your friend in this. I know that can seem unlikely at times, but we are fighting in court. All social justice is fighting in the court of public opinion. And you have to lean into the media.
One thing I learned was that you can never say no. You have to say yes to every media. And, in fact, media that isn't always friendly to you can sometimes be your best opportunities to correct misinformation, to put your case out there, and to reach a different audience of people who aren't normally listening to you.
So, you have to say yes, because we didn't have a budget to buy TV commercials, and we don't have a budget to buy billboards.
So we rely on the media to tell our story, and the media to have a societal dialogue that we're meaning to have. And so you have to participate in that.
Through the past year and a half, we've done radio, print, TV, website journalism, even student journalists; and some of the most helpful have been investigative journalists who have found additional evidence and information that we didn't have and are able to actually hold up a mirror to the people who are developing the laws and policies that we're trying to fight.
So, you do have to be open and embrace new allies and new media in order to be brave and to do these fights.
Angela Robertson: Thanks, Bill. And I know that, Elizabeth, you are waiting in the wings. So this is really tips on the last of the five good ideas. And this is: Take a new approach to risk management.
As leaders in organizations, as folks who work in the sector, we all have varied response to risk. And some elements of our sectors are risk averse and are seized often with assessing sites of risks in order to go around, steer away from - but sometimes the risks just come at you, and it's what do you do when that happens.
So one is, I think, always doing your own gut check about, are you steering away from walking, quote unquote, “into the fire” because of fear? And if it is because of fear, then what is that fear? So just always doing that gut check for you as a leader, and with your organization, and with your board.
So, some of the ideas that we have mused on around new approaches or different lens on approach to risk is finding company and support in coalition and networks - that you may, in fact, need to build.
Because in these moments, one of the things that we have seen is that you may not be able to rely on your usual networks and/or your associations to lead the charge in advancing some of these efforts, as some organizations, some associations, some networks may want to lead from behind because of the same fears and anxieties about biting the hand that feed you or being shut out of forums because you're confronting the hand of power and/or the places where decisions are made.
So, finding others to build your own network is one of those risk strategies and pushing to have a broad network of voices. You heard some of the folks who we pulled together as part of our coalition of eight for the intervener coalition.
And as Bill has noted, it is alliance and coalitions are about sharing the risk. It's not about eliminating the risk, as Bill has stated in other forums. And, you know, I like Bill's statement that you cannot hide in a group. In a group you are standing together, firmer, and surer, but you are certainly not hiding.
The other piece that we have identified in this moment around new approaches to managing risks is that you may find yourself - never before have you had to invest in government relations resources. And we have found ourselves having to do that as part of risk mitigation strategy and work. That some of the work also includes, as Bill noted, you may need to register as a lobbyist to not run afoul of certain regulations and/or funding agreements.
So some protective factors that before we had not considered. The other piece that I would recommend as well is - we know we all have corporate lawyers who help us with by-laws and articles of incorporations, et cetera. In this moment, we also need to think about, how do we seek legal counsel that can provide support around these kinds of issues that come at our door?
So we have many shelters likely in this room who have faced, you are building a new shelter, you are building a new housing development. And there is neighbourhood pushback of all kinds. And that you need to bring legal arguments that is beyond just about the incorporations and the by-laws.
And we also know that there are networks here that are seeking to have a coalition, the owning and supporting the resourcing of legal counsel so we can all absorb the kind of costs that may come with that.
The other piece that I'll also flag that we immediately became attuned to is: alert your insurer.
You know, sometimes we think about our insurance only when there's a fire and there's a flood. And in this moment now where these are the kinds of different challenges that are coming to organizations is you also need to think about, these are places where your insurer can also provide support. And some of that support can also come with coverage, from an insurance standpoint, in some of the legal costs that may come in mounting defence and challenges.
The other piece is what I call, and Bill talked about, alliances.
I think one of the ways to manage risk is that you may need to find, I call it provisional alliance, and it's not my word. It's a French philosopher, Jean-Luc Nancy, who talks about provisional alliances or grimacing alliances in that there may be people who you have had no relationship with prior, who you may have even objected to prior. But on a single issue, there may be points of connection and points of unity, and you may just need to grit your teeth and lean into that as a point of alliance, because there is a linkage that is provisionally needed to advance a single agenda. And that may be the only thing that you are building with these partners and/or alliances. So think about this notion about provisional alliances.
The last two points I would say is taking action to hold governments accountable is, as not-for-profits we cannot be selective about when we live our values, and when it is safe to do so and when it is not.
If it is the value, and it is the mission, it is the value, and it is the mission. The strategy of how you respond may change, but whether or not you respond should not change. So that is just a studied risk that I think we need to live in.
The last piece that I would say is that the risk analysis that we do, and, you know, boards are now asking us as leaders to bring risk analysis and risk mitigation strategy, in those analysis and mitigation strategy must always be the clients and the communities we serve. And that is also part to whom we are accountable. So yes, we're accountable to the funder. Yes, we're accountable to the public. Yes, we're accountable to the public purse. But we are also accountable to the people who come to us for service.
We're also accountable for staff who work in the organizations who bring their expertise to support the clients who we serve. And if we do not consider those groups as part of the studied groups that we consider risk, then if we are silent when challenged, then we erode the trust that clients have in us. And we erode the trust that staff have in us.
You need to consider staff and clients as part of the community to whom you're accountable, because they are impacted by your action and/or your inaction.
Bill Sinclair: Thank you, Angela. I don't think I have much to add to that great summary. I'll just state that some of our organizations are quite old. Our organization has roots a hundred years ago before any of the current ministries that we work with, any of the current governments that we work with. And so we don't work for the government, we work for the community. And we partner with the government. I think you need to remember that all the time that the people we work for are the community and we're working with the government to help the community.
Elizabeth McIsaac: That's an excellent note to finish with. Thank you, Bill. We exist for the community.
Both of you, that was just so rich. Angela, thank you.
There were so many points in each of those good ideas. And I just love the fact that by the practice of acknowledging who was with you, beside you, behind you, it just demonstrated the importance of allyship, of standing together. That's just really important.
I want to pick up, Angela, with your last point.
You started to talk about the staff a little bit. And the reality is you're not just leaders of an organization. And you're not just managing, working with your board to get them in place. You're not just speaking on behalf of the issue in public. You're not just out there building alliances. You're leading a team. You're leading a team that may have different opinions about what the best way to proceed is. They may agree with your strategy and tactics, and they may disagree, and they may also being at the front line, and to be very clear, both your organizations are at the front line of very difficult values-based decisions daily, hourly. And so what are the strategies around supporting them, bringing them along? And then also supporting them and helping, preventing them from burnout, and protecting them in their role in all of this?
Bill Sinclair: I just realized I've been through this entire session without saying people are dying. People are dying around us. And people have lived, because of the work of our staff. And every day people are living because of the immediate actions of our staff.
We need to ground all of this in the fact that this isn't hypothetical, this isn't big theory policy. These are saving people's lives. And that is hard to do. That's hard work, and it's hard to witness. And we do worry about staff burnout, and we do worry about staff grief, and loss, and suffering.
But what we have found is that communicating our values and speaking up for advocacy and taking visible actions are an anti-burnout strategy. That staff can be filled with sadness, and anger, and troubling emotions from this work, and they often need somewhere to put all of this.
And so the fact that we hold a press conference, hold a rally, that we have our day in court, that we speak in the media constantly, that we are raising public awareness is a way, actually, of helping people cope with what they carry and what they're carrying every day.
I think we have found it has been a strategy that has been very helpful to balance the difficult and intimate, emotional work of our staff with the big picture. That this is part of a big picture, and we are part of a big picture, and this is how we're going to contribute to that.
Angela?
Angela Robertson: I think, as leaders, we need to be open to facing the fire, which is that we are in a place where, as Bill said, people are dying, and people have died. And staff and the work that they do have been a life raft for many and continue to be. And therefore, closure of these sites hits differently. And that rage of staff, not just grief, but rage of staff and rage of community, is a legitimate response to what is happening, and that we should not shy away from being in the front of rage and/or suggesting or feeling that it shouldn't exist.
Because nothing that we do, as a response, may be perfect. But it is also legitimate for staff to have space, and community to have space to speak to us directly about that impact and for us to be in company with each other about that.
Just that one: sometimes I think we can sequester ourselves and lock ourselves away. Yeah. So that's just one.
Two, to comment to Bill, is the act of acting is an act of support. So the act of being an intervener, the act of being a litigant, is an act of tangible support in taking an action that provides a space for both the grief and the rage.
Lastly, I would just say communicate, communicate, communicate.
There is never too little opportunity to communicate even in the midst of disagreement. Be open always to just coming and creating space for that contestation. Because I think what wins, if we inside the organization are more against each other than with each other in fighting the thing that we're confronting, is the thing that we're confronting is what wins.
So therefore just create more space for us to be in contestation and in dialogue.
Bill Sinclair: Yeah, and the other thing I just say, you also alluded to, and I forgot to cover, was the people who use our services are not disposable. They're human beings. The staff who provide these services are not disposable, and they're human beings, and we need to have a decent work approach. We need to make sure that people have sick days and benefits and wages that they can afford to live in Toronto. And all of these things are also part of that as well. And that we're trying to assemble a whole package of meaningful work, meaningful advocacy, and decent work.
And that is how you really prevent burnout.
Elizabeth McIsaac: Very rich. Thank you.
Angela, you talked quite a bit about risk management in the fifth good idea.
There's interest in hearing more about how you manage different risk tolerance levels among the board. Bill, you talked a lot and really well about the readiness. How do you build an organization where the board has it in their DNA to think about advocacy, to have that readiness to tolerate risk, to face it, and to understand, and have values drive the decision, and community benefit being the end goal?
But when it's uneven, when you've done all those right things and you still have an unevenness of tolerance, how would you navigate that?
Angela Robertson: So, be prepared to have late evening urgent meetings, because we went through that in the deliberation about becoming interveners.
One was around deliberating joining as an affiant and then joining as an intervener. We felt that it was important to not go alone. That was one of the deliberation of the board. Are there others? Who can join us in making, quote unquote, “good trouble” is what I say. They didn't say that I said that. Are there others who can join us in making good trouble? Not to hide but to create a broader shield?
The board was very focused on: We need to bring facts to the table. We need to bring evidence to the table because the decisions here that have been made have not been made informed by facts and evidence. And the service that the board had lifted up in 2017, 2018, in lifting up supervised consumption service, were services that were created informed by evidence and facts, of need.
So there was a threading back to, what is it that enabled us to create this service in the first place? And with its closure, what is it that still needs to be spoken to? So there was this tying back to the genesis of SCS/CTS and its closure and its impact. So that was one of the deliberation and a strong decision-making point.
Clearly, having pro bono legal was a plus. Because it's not as if there was a reserve for a legal challenge. So finding that resource was also another important check mark for the board to make that decision.
The final piece was, what is the risk if we didn't do anything? The question was asked not about in relation to the funder, but what was the risk in relation to our accountability to clients and then our accountability to staff?
And the decision was we would have failed both if we did not act, particularly in the face of having been a vocal advocate for the service.
Those were the things that were considered that, I think, tipped us into the balance of we needed to act and step forward.
Bill Sinclair: Two quick points.
One is just to remind people that my organization started providing child care, and we responded to one community need after another. And so, this Charter challenge wasn't a single decision in isolation, but a string of small decisions over the last 50 years. How do we respond to what's around us? How do we respond to what we're seeing in front of us?
Didn't mention it for time, but, we used to be funded to provide this service. We were defunded six years ago. And then the board decided we would keep going when our funding was lost.
And then in this challenge, they decided that we should challenge that decision. So it wasn't a single decision, but a string of decisions that if we were going to be true to ourselves, what is the next step that we're going to take?
Many people are anxious about biting the hand that feeds you, as Angela said, about being government-funded, but also disagreeing with government.
And, I think I speak for both organizations, we do receive government funding. Eighty per cent of our funding comes from government. We partner with government on many important services, including child care and health care, but we just can't let that stop us from saying the right things and doing the right things.
And so I do urge people not to think that you have to be non- government-funded in order to speak out, or that it's too dangerous to both receive government funding and to tell them the truth. We have to tell them the truth. I think it's actually part of the contract, the social contract that we have, that they're going to fund us and we're going to be truthful.
Elizabeth McIsaac: Well said.
Angela Robertson: I just also want to bring home the personal on this. Bill has laughed. I have chuckled when we step into the ring and take the risk in speaking back or pushing back or saying yes to a media event where you're critiquing the hand that feeds you.
And folks say, you know, oh, that was brave. And I see that in the chat. And you know, while I appreciate it, it's a lonely thing and that also can take its own personal toll. And that is why more of us need to be equally brave if it's bravery that we're doing here, or foolhardy. Whichever one it is, more of us need to be doing it, because it is a very isolating and lonely place.
Bill Sinclair: We agreed to be here today because we're trying to infect our sector with bravery.
We are trying to share our bravery. And if you admire anything that we've done, then follow us and join us. And, we appreciate you, and you can do this too.
Elizabeth McIsaac: I can't think of a better way to finish this.
Except to just express deep gratitude for your leadership. For leading community first. It's about the community. It's about the people. It's about the lives that you spoke about. It's about the people that work with you. It's about the communities you serve.
And I think bringing people along is another part of your leadership and what you've done.
And so I'm just grateful that you took the time to share this story. It's an important story. It's not finished. And, I think that, I say this as someone who sits on the other side of some of this, we need to be supporting that as well as funders who are not government funders, who can be better supporters, and advocates, and allies in this.
Thank you so very much.
I think the comments in the chat have also spoken to the wisdom, the inspiration, and the importance of what you're doing, and how you're doing it.
Thank you, Bill and Angela. Deeply grateful.
