LeBreton Flats is the largest piece of undeveloped land in Ottawa’s downtown core, owned by the federal government on unceded Algonquin territory. It was also home to 2 800 working class people before mass evictions in the 1960s. The government intends to sell the land. 

As a community union, Power Lab partner ACORN (Central Ottawa Chapter) is organizing to make sure that any development meets local residents’ needs through a community benefits agreement.

Lifting up the voices of ACORN members and residents, they’ve now published a new report, Development for Who? The Community’s Vision for LeBreton Flats. It’s the result of a survey of over 300 residents. Their demands include:

• Affordable, integrated housing
• Local hiring into good jobs, with fair wages
• Child care and other community amenities and services, such as a community centre, library,  public space, and public wi-fi
• Food security, including a affordable grocery store

Find the full report and list of demands here.

With the goal of a stronger, more just and more inclusive city, the Just Recovery Hamilton Coalition launched its #JustRecoveryHamOnt campaign with a challenge to residents and organizations: “How we respond to, recover from, and rebuild after this crisis will define the next chapter of Hamilton history. Will the challenges of these times be met with fear and austerity? Or will we work together towards a just recovery for all Hamiltonians?”  

Power Lab partners at the Hamilton Centre for Civic Inclusion and Hamilton-ACORN participated in building the coalition that includes community members and eleven organizations. At the outset, collaborators have laid out core values to guide recovery, starting with mobilization during the 2021 municipal budget process. Priorities and a case for investment are set out in the coalition’s report, A JUST RECOVERY FOR HAMILTON: Municipal Policy, Investment and Opportunities for a more equitable COVID-19 recovery. 

The report’s 150 recommendations include: 

• Investing in Women & 2SLGBTQQIA+ communities
• Mobility Justice & Disability Justice 
• Housing as a Human Right 
• Tackling Systemic Racism 
• Investing in decent jobs & our local economy 
• Growing a Climate Resilient #HamOnt 

Coalition members will continue to engage with Hamilton city council and community members to advance these issues and build solidarity.  

As Toronto City Hall started to consider what pandemic recovery might require, initial economic stakeholders identified were primarily representing business interests.

Knowing that workers and communities have the greatest stake in the city’s future, Power Lab Partners immediately mobilized to claim a voice in the policy debate. Toronto Environmental Alliance, Toronto Community Benefits Network, Parkdale People’s Economy and Toronto-ACORN started coordinating with allies Progress Toronto, Social Planning and Urban Alliance on Race Relations.  

Operating on the basis of trust, shared values and the principle of putting residents and communities first, the groups collectively wrote a letter to the Mayor, City Council, and Toronto’s new Recovery and Rebuild Office. Signed by 29 organizations, the letter outlines ten equitable principles for a bold, green, and just recovery to transformative change, and rejects a return to ‘normal.’ The campaign was reported in the Toronto Star.

By September, Toronto Power Lab partners contributed to and mobilized around the Toronto Office of Recovery and Rebuild report, Covid: Impacts and Opportunities to ensure that City Council implemented a fair economy agenda. The report contained recommendations signalling progress and opportunities for more coordinated collective action to continue to shape the city’s recovery plans.

Since the COVID-19 shut downs in March 2020, lab partners have been leading advocacy for an inclusive recovery from this public health and economic crisis. 

Led by the Toronto Community Benefits Network’s Kumsa Baker, several partners collaborated to launch the Canada-wide Inclusive Recovery campaign. In anticipation of increased federal infrastructure development dollars and the sale of crown land to drive economic recovery, this campaign calls on governments to leverage Community Benefit Agreements to create local workforce and business opportunities for Black and Indigenous peoples, women, persons with disabilities, veterans, youth and newcomers. Twenty-nine organizations and over 1200 people have signed on to the campaign. 

Kumsa organized the development of a policy brief with feedback from partners, particularly the United Way Windsor-Essex County’s Frazier Fathers and the Toronto Environmental Alliance’s Heather Marshall. Check out their policy recommendations here.

Lab partners met in London, Ontario as part of the Canadian Community Economic Development Network’s (CCEDNet) annual national conference in September. This allowed us to reconnect and reflect on the first year of our experience, the relationships we’ve built, how our framing has changed, and the lab’s impact on our organizing work.

During the conference, Broadbent Institute’s Alejandra Bravo, Parkdale People’s Economy’s Mercedes Sharpe Zayas and Toronto Community Benefits Network’s Kumsa Baker delivered a workshop on organizing for fair local economies. We also met Ted Howard, the co-founder and president of the Democracy Collaborative and co-author of a new book, The Making of a Democratic Economy: How to Build Prosperity for the Many, Not the Few. It was a constructive exchange and learning opportunity that deepened our understanding of community wealth building strategies. We also met with members of the London Calling project and the Hamilton Centre for Civic Inclusion to explore common ground and opportunities for collaboration.

In May, Toronto-based Power Lab partners and allied organizers attended When Tech Comes to Town in New York City. Tech corporations are making an impact on cities as real estate developers, political actors, employers, and designers of tools and services that are changing our infrastructure and public services. In Toronto, we’ve witnessed this with Sidewalk Labs plans for Quayside. 

In preparation for the meeting, we convened Toronto-based partners, Progress Toronto’s Michal Hay, independent researcher Bianca Wylie, and The Digital Justice Lab’s Nasma Ahmed. Together, we collaborated to build a collective floor of demands for tech development as a tool to build stronger relationships and solidarities across our sectors and our organizing. 

In New York, we met with US organizers from Silicon Valley, Seattle, New York, Philadelphia, and beyond. Based on our experiences organizing for a fair economy and democratic governance in the face of big tech, we shared common challenges, tactics to build power and increase leverage around tech developments, and the support and resources we need.

In March, lab partners joined progressive organizers from across Canada and the US at the Progress Summit.

We contributed to this national conversation in two ways. First, we led a dialogue with Patrick Rondeau, from the Conseil régional FTQ Montréal Métropolitain. We shared strategies to put equity, workers, and community at the centre of key economic decisions about long-term transitions to a low-carbon economy. Second, we led an interactive workshop where we shared stories and strategies from Windsor, Hamilton, Toronto, and Ottawa producing material benefits for historically excluded communities. These include:

• local and trans-national community benefits organizing;
• local community benefits frameworks;
• just energy transitions that are fair to workers and the communities where they live;
• tenant organizing; and,
• disability rights.

Trade unionists, elected officials, environmentalists, housing and transit advocates, and community activists participated in this workshop. Together, they explored ways to generate power for people and to democratize local economies. These sessions sparked a high degree of engagement and resonated with participants, highlighting a shared language among progressive organizers from across North America. 

Chicago-based organizer and author Charlene Carruthers observed: “You can mobilize people and not be organizing. You may have people in the streets and still have changed nothing. Sheer numbers do not equal power.” — a reminder that in our current political climate we need to build deep relationships that foster strength, knowledge, and vision for more equitable, alternative futures within and across movements.

To win – in Canada and the US – we need to build collective power.

In September 2018, Power Lab partners met for the first time in person at EconoUs, the annual national conference of CCEDNet. Partners set out to learn alongside members of this pan-Canadian community economic development network and to exchange ideas about strategy.

The conference’s plenary session, Building a Fair Economy from the Ground Up, was moderated by Power Lab co-founder Colette Murphy and included City Councillors Matthew Brown (Preston, UK),  Matthew Green (Hamilton, ON) and Maeva Vilain (Montreal, P.Q.) They shared their experiences as community organizers and elected officials committed to equity in local economic development.

Power Lab co-facilitators, Mercedes Sharpe Zayas and Alejandra Bravo, delivered a workshop called Community Benefits 101. They introduced community benefits as a strategy for historically excluded people to share more equitably the economic opportunities created by public infrastructure projects. Partners shared their organizing experiences in neighbourhoods like Parkdale and Rexdale in Toronto. They also reflected on the experience of winning a community benefits policy (inclusionary zoning) in Ontario.

Partners discussed how we are responding to — or working with — constituencies in promoting and organizing for fairer local economies. We drilled down into the competencies needed to build and sustain coalitions and networks — and to deal with challenges. We also identified opportunities to support each other in achieving our goals.

As a result of this first face-to-face lab in Moncton, we have stronger organizing muscles for building powerful relationships, a fairer economy, and a more robust democracy,

The first 10 lab partners from across Ontario met today. They are all engaged in the process of developing public infrastructure projects, and negotiating benefits for low-income and equity-seeking communities.

• Kusma Baker, Toronto Community Benefits Network;
• Mark Ellerker, Hamilton-Brantford Building Trades Council and Hamilton Community Benefits Network;
• Frazier Fathers, United Way Windsor-Essex County and the Windsor-Essex Community Benefits Coalition;
• Heather Marshall, Toronto Environmental Alliance;
• Olivia O’Connor, ACORN-Canada;
• Adaoma Patterson, Region of Peel and the Peel Poverty Reduction Strategy Committee;
• Rosemarie Powell, Toronto Community Benefits Network;
• Mercedes Sharpe Zayas, Parkdale Activity-Recreation Centre and the Parkdale People’s Economy Project;
• Dusha Sritharan, Toronto Environmental Alliance; and
• Ashley Reyns, ACORN-Ottawa.

This digital meeting was the springboard for their first face-to-face lab meeting in Moncton (NB) from September 24 – 26, 2018. In addition to the lab, they’ll participate in EconoUs 2018 organized by CCEDNet, the Canadian Community Economic Development Network.

At this national conference, Colette Murphy will moderate a plenary session called “Building a Fairer Economy from the Ground Up” — a panel discussion among three city councillors, Matthew Green from Hamilton (ON), Maeva Vilain from Montreal (PQ), and Matthew Brown from Preston (UK). Alejandra Bravo and Mercedes Sharpe Zayas will deliver a “Community Benefits 101” workshop.

Earlier this week, we welcomed CCEDNet (The Canadian Community Economic Development Network) as one of the first collaborators in the Power Lab’s global network.

CCEDNet received a grant from the Atkinson Decent Work Fund to monitor public policy developments — at all levels of government across the country — on community benefits and related strategies for equitable economic development. Executive Director Michael Toye and his team will be working with lab partners to co-create a tool to identify and track organizing opportunities related to investments in public infrastructure.

Effective today, we’re proud tenants of Greenpeace Canada at 33 Cecil Street in downtown Toronto.

This newly renovated building is located on the south side of Cecil Street between Cecil Community Centre and United Steelworkers Hall. It’s the original site of the Toronto Labour Lyceum.