Making Cents

Between September to November 2020, Councillor Wong-Tam hosted five virtual panel events featuring subject matter experts and community organizers discussing critical issues facing Torontonians through a budget lens.

Why Focus on a Budget Lens?

Every year, the City of Toronto embarks on a lengthy consultation process to review our budget. This is where we decide which programs to fund, including the Toronto Police Services; the TTC; Housing and shelters, and youth and recreation programming, and how we intend to pay for them. A budget expresses our values. It should reflect a commitment to real community safety.

When COVID-19 hit, the pre-existing cracks in our social safety net were laid wide open. Much more needs to be done to create healthy, safe, inclusive neighbourhoods that work for everyone and the city budget can be a gateway for equitable access to programming. While Toronto looks to rebuild and recover, these conversations are critical in ensuring that no one is left behind.

Now, more than ever, we have to be specific about how we direct our finances. How do we determine the health of our communities? How can we make sustainable investments for our future? How can we help take care of ourselves and each other? Community revitalization is not just about bricks and mortar. Successful community revitalization is one where both the physical infrastructure and social development receive equal commitment and focus. Looking towards the future, this is how we can make our priorities known.

Review these tabs to learn more about each topic and the panel discussion.

Every day we walk through our own neighbourhoods and local streets, visiting parks, friends and businesses. We each travel the city in different ways; walking, cycling or taking public transit. What makes us feel safe as we visit friends and businesses in our neighbourhoods? How do we get to our local coffee shop? Is there a public green space we can explore? If we feel sick, is there a nearby clinic? When we ask these questions, we consider the social determinants of health, including disability, food insecurity, access to healthcare, housing, gender and gender identity, to name a few. All of this and more contribute to our own wellness and that of our neighbourhoods.

What do healthy communities look like? What do our streets look like? How can our budget reflect the needs of our neighbourhoods? Together, we examined how the City of Toronto budget can impact the health, safety, and wellness of our communities.

Watch the Recording

Read a transcription of the panel event

Meet Our Speakers

Former Deputy Mayor and Vancouver City Councillor

University of Toronto Department of Family and Community Medicine (DFCM)’s Indigenous Health Faculty Lead

Executive Director at 8 80 Cities

Executive Director, FoodShare Toronto

Executive Director, Gerstein Crisis Centre

Amanda has been with 8 80 Cities since the beginning in 2007. She has held several positions within the organization and was instrumental in developing the 8 80 City concept. Over 13 years she has supported the successful growth of the non profit through strategic planning, partnership development, and team building. Amanda has worked on diverse public space projects in cities and towns across North America, Europe, and Australia. She enjoys working collaboratively with city governments and community partners to make it easier for people to walk, bike, take transit, and build connection and sense of belonging in public space. Amanda is a sought after speaker, advisor, and thought leader on age-friendly mobility and public space and inclusive participatory approaches to city building. She is a life-long learner, abundance-thinker, momma to three kids, and has the perfect job to feed her insatiable curiosity about people and place. She is a 2017 Salzburg Global Fellow and Co-Chair of the Children, Play, and Nature Committee for World Urban Parks.

Susan Davis is the Executive Director at Gerstein Crisis Centre, a 24 hour Mental Health and Addiction Crisis Centre in Toronto. She has over 30 years of experience in the community mental health and addiction field with many years in direct service as well as leadership. Susan has been a leader in the development of innovative services, partnerships and systems that improve access to the supports people need and that recognize the impact of the social determinants of health on people’s overall well-being. Susan has been instrumental in the development of the Mental Health and Justice Network and the Downtown and Toronto Region Human Service and Justice Coordinating Committees. She has served on a number of Boards and is currently on the board of Working for Change, a social enterprise organization that provides employment opportunities for individuals living with mental health and addiction issues. Susan is committed to creating services and systems that consider the whole person, treat all people with respect and dignity and create opportunities for people living with mental health and addiction issues to maximize their well-being.

Community centers and youth services are critical for building safe and healthy neighbourhoods. We know that investing in sports and arts programming prevent youth from engaging in violence, and help them prepare for a promising future with youth education and employment opportunities. With the City of Toronto facing a huge financial deficit, many youth programs, and centres designed to keep kids off the streets, and out of gangs face massive cuts to funding. Now more than ever it is critical to ensure that the City of Toronto budget reflects the needs and values of our communities.

Our community and youth services offer vital supports that have been proven to reduce gun violence with young people. Some of these services provide employment opportunities, recreation, peer to peer mentoring and food security in downtown neighbourhoods. These programs have historically been underfunded despite their role in crime prevention and poverty reduction.

Through a panel of experts and advocates, we discussed how the municipal budget can prioritize supporting our most vulnerable young people, the impact of policing on black and racialized youth, and the role community and youth services play in keeping our communities and young people safe.

Watch the Recording

Read a transcription of the panel event

Meet Our Speakers

Dr. Wesley Crichlow is a professor of criminology and Chair President’s University Equity Diversity and Inclusion Taskforce, Director for Youth Transitioning From Care to University and the first past Associate Dean of Equity, at Ontario Tech University. His 28 years of scholarly and community engagement have engendered trust, credibility, and respect. He is committed to working across borders, connecting the spaces between the Caribbean and Canada, as well as unsettling the uneven terrain.

Dr. Crichlow's teaching, research, public lectures, and workshops have focused on the challenges to implementing policies and practices that strengthen broader notions of equity, diversity, social justice and LGBTQI+2S inclusion within educational institutions and organizations across Canada. The following theoretical frameworks guide his work (a) Critical Race Theory (CRT), which reminds us that racism and ABR are permanent; (b) Anti-Black Racism Theory, which engages meaningfully with CRT; and (c) Intersectionality, a tenet of CRT, reminding us that there is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives (Lorde, 1984).

Ismail Afrah is passionate about learning and creating change in the City of Toronto and specifically for his community in Regent Park. While he prefers the world of ideas given his studies in philosophy and religion, in the last 3 years, he has fallen in love with community development. Through volunteering for the Regent Park Neighbourhood Association (RPNA) - Ismail with residents and organizations established the community benefits coalition and succeeded in securing community benefits in the value of millions for phase 4&5 in Regent Park.

As a part-time community support worker for a grass-root group called Access to Recreation - the group succeeded through the city budget process in creating a “Learn to Swim” pilot in Regent Park and are working with Parks, Forestry and Recreation on policies to increase access for marginalized communities.

As the social development coordinator, Ismail alongside residents and organizations succeeded in advocating and securing $2.5 million for the Regent Park community to implement its social development plan.

With so many challenges and opportunities, Ismail attributes a lot of the progress to the power of relationships and social networks. Ismail is a twin and learns and creates by thinking out loud; he invites others to think out loud with him with the purpose of creating change together.

Currently, Ismail Afrah is the Regent Park Neighbourhood Association (RPNA) Community Coordinator.

Before the COVID-19 global pandemic, Toronto was already facing a homelessness crisis of massive proportion. During the pandemic, the crisis has become more visible and incredibly more acute. Advocates and frontline workers supporting encampments continue to ring alarm bells about inhumane conditions. Residents who live adjacent to the encampments and shelters are demanding that the City do more to find more appropriate and permanent housing solutions for people who are under-housed. Chronic underfunding and failed policies have created the housing and homelessness crisis that is before us. The homelessness emergency is a public health crisis that requires an intergovernmental funding response, and concentrated efforts to invest in permanent affordable and supportive housing.

On Monday, October 26th we learned from panellists with a range of expertise and backgrounds about housing and homelessness. This panel discussed how our municipal budget can be used alongside provincial and federal funding to end the homelessness crisis and increase long term investments for permanent affordable and supportive housing in the City of Toronto.

Watch the Recording

Read a transcription of the panel event

Housing & Homelessness Speakers

In 2019 we successfully campaigned for the creation of an Intersectional Gender Equity Strategy and Gender Equality Office, which was finally approved and funded as part of the 2020 budget. The Gender Equity Strategy and Gender Equality Office participates in our City budget process by analyzing and evaluating the budget through an intersectional budget lens. This work is important, but there is more we can do to ensure our city works for everyone. Throughout the pandemic, we have received report after report after report which shows that marginalized and oppressed communities are experiencing the brunt of the issues related to COVID. When all members of our communities aren’t adequately supported, we all suffer.

Joined by experts in the field and panellists with lived experience, we asked what an equity lens is and how it can be applied to our municipal budget, why an equity lens is critical to the budgeting process, and where our current funding gaps exist in the system and how we can fix it.

Watch the Recording

Read a transcription of the panel event

Equitable Cities Speakers

Since the pandemic began in mid-March, the City of Toronto has experienced significant financial impacts in the form of both added costs and revenue losses as a direct result of COVID-19. This pandemic has exposed and brought attention to a number of gaps in the system, and has applied significant strain on our social programs and community supports. We cannot look to recreate the same systems that failed us before the pandemic. We must emerge and create a new path forward, with an economic and social recovery that leaves no one behind.

We know that the City of Toronto is under immense financial pressure because of COVID-19. Through a panel of experts and advocates, and building on each previous panel, we took what we’ve learned and considered what recovery looks like for the City of Toronto.

Watch the Recording

Read a transcription of the panel event

The Aftermath: COVID Recovery Speakers

Dr. Notisha Massaquoi is one of Canada’s leading experts in developing equity responsive organizations. Most notably she spearheaded the development and served as the Executive Director of Women’s Health in Women’s Hands Community Health Centre in Toronto, Canada – the only Community Health Centre in North America that provides specialized primary healthcare for Black and racialized women. Notisha is a subject matter expert in the areas of Health Equity, Anti-Black Racism and Race-Based Data Collection. She has served as an advisor on the Ontario Premier’s Advisory Council on Violence Against Women, the City of Toronto Anti-Black Racism Strategy Work Group on Race-Based Data Collection and she co-chaired the Anti-Racism Advisory Panel of the Toronto Police Services Board, which was recently responsible for producing the first mandatory race-based data collection policy for a police service in Canada. She serves as Board trustee for the Centre for Addictions and Mental Health (CAMH) and The Canadian Foundation for AIDS Research (CANFAR). Notisha is currently a Provost Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work at the University of Toronto.