We are grateful for everyone who was able to join us for our Annual General Meeting (AGM) on June 20^th. Thank you so much for your interest in our work. We’re also extremely thankful for Dr. Suzanne Jackson’s leadership, our former chair, whose term ended this year. In addition, it was a delight to be able to publicly recognize and honour Kawalpreet Singh and Benoît Guibord from University Health Network (UHN), both of whom have played a key role in growing the Courage to Lead program at UHN. Thank you KP and Ben for your continued support, we appreciate you!

In this post, we also wanted to take this opportunity to briefly share our reflections from the AGM. After the business portion of the AGM, we proceeded to watch “A New Economy”, a film that sought to explore what it would look like to have an inclusive, equitable and thriving economy for all. The focused conversation we had thereafter was extremely invigorating.

For one, it was inspiring to see individuals and businesses that have successfully tested new business models that are centered around cooperation and horizontal leadership. Social enterprises such as Sole Food Street Farms which uses vacant urban land in Vancouver to grow “artisan quality foods and vegetables”. “Sole Food’s mission is to empower individuals with limited resources by providing jobs, agricultural training and inclusion in a supportive community of farmers and food lovers” (excerpt from Sole Food’s website). Similarly, SENSORICA, another enterprise that was featured in the film, is a company that is structured as a “commons-based peer production network focused in hardware development, production and distribution” (excerpt from SENSORICA’s website). Other ventures that were featured were Loomio, Thorncliffe Park Women’s Committee, London Brewing Co-op and the Red Victorian.

A common thread amongst all these enterprises is that they are committed to people first before profits. You can clearly see, at least from the film, that they genuinely care for each other, and every single person’s role is highly valued. Sadly, this is not typically the case in the dominant present-day economic model where accumulating wealth by ‘all means necessary’ rules or dictates a business’s actions (e.g. the degradation of our environment, food insecurity, massive job losses due to outsourcing, speculating on vacant properties in spite of the rampant homelessness and unaffordable housing in places like Toronto and Vancouver, etc. On this note, according to Huffington Post, over 99,000 homes were unoccupied in Toronto since 2001).

In our post-film conversation, there was a lot to think about and discuss, though many of us were left with these questions: how do we engage with those who see things differently? In other words, how can those who are trying to maintain the status quo (i.e. the current economic model) and those who have a desire to test new inclusive economic models come together? How can we bridge this gap? What would such a movement look like? What are your thoughts? We would love to hear from you and remember everyone has wisdom and there are no wrong answers. Feel free to drop us an email, a, instagram comment/DM, a facebook message or a tweet to keep the conversation going.