Canada and the World
Current Events with a Canadian Perspective
Last update
31 May 2011
Decline of Civic Pride
A sure sign that a community is in decline is loss of civic pride. This shows up
in a variety of ways -
You can skip the vacuuming for a week, and the place doesn’t look too bad. But, leave the housework for more than a couple of weeks and home begins to look a mess.
An untidy room is a magnet for more clutter; unwashed dishes seem to attract more unwashed dishes. Pretty soon stuff starts to smell; it might even become a health hazard. A household can slip into decay very quickly, and so can communities.
Underfunding of Cities
Just like a home, communities need constant care and attention to stay viable. But, for a couple of decades, many of Canada’s communities have been postponing the vacuuming and dusting, as it were, and it’s starting to show.
Under the pressure to balance budgets governments at every level in Canada have cut spending. Most governments have made the matter worse by cutting taxes at the same time.
Ottawa has slashed the money it gives to provinces. Provincial governments have reduced funding to municipalities. Local government is the level that has the greatest immediate impact on communities, so the cost cutting has been felt most sharply at this level.
Local governments have tried to keep essential services such as policing and firefighting
from taking too many hits. But, the frills have gone.
Parks and recreation departments have been gutted, music programs axed, library hours
shortened, and many other “non-
The Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) has been watching this closely. In 2004, the Federation published a report on the status of 20 of Canada’s cities. The report makes for somber reading, concluding that the “quality of life in the 20 municipalities is at risk, as pressures continue to mount on income, the environment, and people living on the margins.”
Growing Income Gap
The issue that troubles the people at FCM most is the widening gap in incomes among
Canadians. Middle-
During the 1990s, families in these two groups (and that’s the majority of Canadians)
have seen their real incomes go down. “Median-
Only the wealthiest 30 percent experienced an increase in pre-
What’s happening is the hollowing out of the middle. Declining real income is pushing
some middle-
The people who started the decade of the 1990s in rough economic shape have now fallen off the charts. These are the homeless families that are living in cars, on the streets, and in emergency shelters.
Franco Folino
This is not a pretty picture and it is having a negative impact on the overall quality of life in many communities. As the number of destitute people rises, the dreadful conditions under which they live begin to find their way back up the social ladder. Tim Myles explains one symptom.
Mr. Myles is an urban entomologist with the University of Toronto; he studies insect life in cities. In December 2003, he issued a bulletin to the effect that local homeless shelters had become infested with bed bugs. These are nasty little critters that suck blood as a means of survival.
Mr. Myles predicts that it’s only a matter of time before the parasites break out from the overcrowded shelters and start to make their way into hotels, hospitals, and detached family homes. His bulletin points out that: “Bedbugs may be a biological indicator of changing social conditions.”
Six years later, Carmen Chai wrote this in the National Post: “[Toronto’s] bed bug
infestation has grown so quickly and drastically that the blood-
Signs of Urban Decline
Aside from a plague of bedbugs, a community knows it has problems when:
Media outlets have competitions in the spring for citizens to find the biggest pothole;- Families no longer go to public spaces for picnics for fear someone is going to sit on a syringe;
- Ordinary folk don’t go out because gangs such as Crips and Bloods control the streets;
- Hospitals start to report an increase in fractures caused by people slipping on ice that hasn’t been cleared from sidewalks;
- People can no longer remember a time when “we didn't lock our doors at night.”
There are many more symptoms, but they all point to the same thing, a drop in the level of involvement and pride in the community in which we live. Litter, graffiti, and untended lots signal to outsiders that this is a neighbourhood in decline and no one really cares.
A downward spiral begins that leads to criminals and drug dealers moving in; families
and businesses moving out. The opposite happens with signals of community health.
Well-
Time Crunch for Families
There are plenty of reasons why communities fall into decay, but probably the two
most important are time and money. We’ve already seen that the pre-
The average working person is worn out. As businesses struggle with the challenges of globalization, workers have to put in longer hours to stay competitive.
In 1992, a national study found that 38 percent of Canada’s work force was “highly stressed;” by 2002, that number was 55 percent.
When they get home at the end of the day, people have family chores and kids to look after. There simply isn’t any energy left to go out and beautify the neighbourhood.
Not surprisingly, the amount of time people give to volunteering is plunging. In 1990, about 42 percent of the population did some form of volunteering; by 2001, this was down to about 25 percent. That’s a huge drop in a single decade, and it is leading to an erosion of things that make communities tick.
How to Halt Urban Decline
This can be turned around, but it requires the input of human energy. Charles Dobson in Vancouver has provided a blueprint for the reconstruction process: it’s called The Citizen’s Handbook. In it Mr. Dobson gives advice on how people can rejuvenate their communities. And, it’s people who have to do the job.
What works best, he says, is small groups of people joining together on small projects:
“Hence the attractiveness of child-
Such activities help to break down the reluctance of people to get involved. They lead to community activism of the sort that created:
- Fresh Choice Kitchens. Now about 15 years old, the idea behind this “is to build
community around food and create opportunities for people to cook together. The project
creates educational and fund-
raising tools, training programs, and cooking resources that empower and support individuals and community agencies in their efforts to start and maintain community kitchens.” There are community kitchens in many neighbourhoods across Canada; - Ottawa’s Community Gardening Network. This is
part of an international movement (The
community garden pictured here is in Melbourne, Australia) that uses gardens, or
the process of working on the land, to enhance communities. Many of these communities
are made up of disadvantaged or marginalized individuals. The poor and those suffering
from mental health problems and other disabilities are among those represented in
such communities; - Pitch-
In Canada . This group was started in 1967 by a few people who were concerned about the over-packaging of consumer goods. Today, Pitch- In Canada involves millions of volunteers in various activities, from starting up recycling and composting programs to cleaning up and beautifying streams, wilderness, and urban areas;
An important common feature to these initiatives is that they were undertaken by
ordinary people. The work of making our communities strong and vibrant is the responsibility
of the people who live in them. It’s just like our homes -
Image credits
Jeremy Shields
Sources
“Building Prosperity from the Ground Up.” Federation of Canadian Municipalities, June 2006.
“Bed Bugs in Toronto.” Tim Myles et al, Centre for Urban and Community Studies, December 2003.
“Bed Bugs so Bad in Toronto They’ll soon Spread on Transit, in Theatres, Experts Warn.” Carmen Chai, National Post, November 10, 2009.
“The Citizen’s Handbook.” Charles Dobson
© Canada and the World, May 2011
All rights reserved
FUNDING FOUNDATIONS
Few people have heard of community foundations but there are 177 of them in Canada.
According to Community Foundations of Canada (CFC), they’re one of the fastest growing networks dedicated to building and strengthening Canadian communities. Their numbers have more than quintupled since 1990 when there were just 32 foundations across the country.
The first one was formed in Winnipeg in 1921. Now, they exist in every province and one territory and are linked to the national CFC, which was founded in 1992.
In 2009, the country’s community foundations handed over more than $149 million in grants to community organizations across the country.
Grants support a wide range of local activities from health, education, and social services to arts, culture, recreation, and the environment.
The concept has taken hold worldwide. According to the Worldwide Initiatives for
Grantmaker Support -
In 1989, there were only a handful of them outside of Canada, the U.K., and the U.S.; by 2000, the number had grown to about 80, and, in 2003, the number rose to around 180. By 2010, the number had exploded to 1,680.
According to the WINGS 2010 Community Foundation Global Status Report, “Most of the growth has come from Europe, where growth has been spectacular. At the start of the decade in 2000, there were 103 community foundations in Europe. At the end of the decade in 2010, there are 631. The remarkable story is Germany where there were 10 community foundations in the year 2000, and 240 in the year 2010...
“In other continents, numbers have remained below 100 for the whole decade, though there are some suggestions that numbers are set to grow in Africa and Asia.
“The United States is the country where community foundations have the largest assets, with seventeen times the assets of the next country on the list – Canada.”
No matter where they are, community foundations have similar aims. They:
- Seek to improve the quality of life in a geographic area;
- Are independent from control or influence by other organizations, governments, or donors;
- Are governed by a board of citizens broadly reflective of the communities they serve;
- Make grants to other non-
profit groups to address a wide variety of emerging and changing needs in the community; - Seek to build, for the long-
term, a permanent resource for the community through the creation of endowed funds from a wide range of donors, including local citizens, other non- profits and businesses; - Provide services tailored to the interests and giving capacity of donors;
- Help donors achieve their philanthropic and charitable goals;
- Engage in a range of community leadership and partnership activities, serving as catalysts, conveners, collaborators, and facilitators to solve problems and develop solutions to important community issues;
- Have open and transparent policies and practices concerning all aspects of their operations; and,
- Are accountable to the community by informing the general public about their purposes, activities, and financial status on a regular basis.
QUALITY DEFINED
According to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities there are six elements that make up the quality of life in communities.
These are:
- Developing and maintaining a vibrant local economy;
- Protecting and enhancing the natural and built environment;
- Offering opportunities for people to achieve personal goals, hopes, and aspirations;
- Promoting a fair and equitable sharing of common resources;
- Enabling residents to meet their basic needs; and,
- Supporting rich social interactions and the inclusion of all residents in community life.
Bruce McKay
Prince Rupert, British Columbia (above) established its Civic Pride Program in 1992. With its mountains, rain forests, port, and ocean, the tourist city wanted to ensure its safety as well as make it a clean and healthy place to live.
It describes the program as “the engine behind city clean-
The city wanted to involve as many residents as it could in the program with the aim of boosting civic pride.
Residents in Seattle name their neighbourhoods, and then help design colourful street signs to mark the boundaries.