Resistance Along the Rails: Confronting Deindustrialization and Urban Renewal as a Neoliberal Socio-Ecological Fix through Social Movement Alliance-Forming in Toronto, Canada
by
James Patrick Nugent
A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Geography and Planning University of Toronto
© Copyright by James Patrick Nugent 2018 Resistance Along the Rails: Confronting Deindustrialization and
Urban Renewal as a Neoliberal Socio-Ecological Fix through Social
Movement Alliance-Forming in Toronto, Canada
James Patrick Nugent
Doctor of Philosophy
Department of Geography and Planning
University of Toronto
2018
Abstract
This dissertation analyzes post-Fordist social movement coalitions between labour, community and environmental groups that responded to, but also helped constitute, processes of deindustrialization and so-called urban renewal in Toronto, Canada between 2004-2015. I theorize this urban restructuring not only as a spatio-temporal fix but as a more encompassing “socio-ecological fix” that better accounts for the socio-ecological constraints and opportunities placed on the production of urban space for and by capital, labour and a wider range of social (movement) actors. The emergence, development, efficacy and impacts of two labour-community coalitions in Toronto are analyzed by integrating macro-scale theories of coalitions (i.e., eco-Marxist and Gramscian approaches) with social movement theory and ethnographic approaches. The Mount Dennis Weston Network (2007-2012) sought to create “green jobs” on a brownfield site before scaling-up into the Toronto Community Benefits Network (TCBN).
The TCBN (2013-2015) aimed to win Ontario's first “community benefits agreement” (CBA) as a tool for leveraging rapid transit infrastructure investments to achieve other social and environmental policy
ii objectives (e.g., employment equity, social procurement, environmental design, etc.). I appraise these coalitions as efforts to demand a right to the city—i.e., more democratic and egalitarian production of urban space (including the regulation of the urban metabolism)—and in terms of social movement alliance-forming that I define as a two-way shift in scale: an institutional broadening (or organizational scaling-up) and an ideological deepening (i.e. praxis). These social movement processes require more extensive on-the-ground organizing within neighbourhoods and unions without which coalitions risk becoming coopted and confined to negotiating minor concessions and trade-offs that deepen socio- ecological tensions and contradictions. In this way, discourses around “green jobs,” “sustainable cities,” and “community benefits” have been used by the state and corporations to organize consent for neoliberal urban governance (i.e., increased privatization and deregulation of the transit and energy sectors, and transit-led gentrification).
iii Acknowledgements
Thank-you to all the activists past, present and future who will never be thanked.
To all the organic intellectuals who will never be called doctor
but whose praxis advances our collective struggles.
Thank-you Mom for giving birth to me
even though you already had another crying baby and toddler
(two good guys though as it turned out).
Dad, for the sacrifices you have made.
To all my family for your emotional and intellectual support and insight.
Special thank-you to my supervisor Scott Prudham for fostering intellectual curiosity.
And to Steven Tufts, Sarah Wakefield, Peter Sawchuk and Ken MacDonald
who have all guided my research over the years.
Thank-you to Alana Boland for your pedagogical mentorship.
And to all my students through whom I continue to learn so much.
Finally, love to all my union buddies, my gang of IDSers, my roomies and office mates!
iv Table of Contents
Acknowledgements iv
Table of Contents v
List of Tables vii
List of Figures viii
List of Appendices x
List of Acronyms xi
Resistance Along the Rails 1
Chapter 1 Transformative Research: Building and Studying Social Movement Coalitions 18
Chapter 2 Social Movement Alliance-Forming: An Institutional Broadening and Ideologically Deepening of Coalitions 44
Chapter 3 Deindustrialization and Urban Renewal as a Neoliberal Spatio-temporal Fix and Socio-ecological Fix 73
Chapter 4 Toronto's Deindustrialization & Ontario's “Green Jobs” Policies Toronto's 92
Chapter 5 Toronto's Urban Renewal as a Socio-ecological Fix 112
Chapter 6 The Mount Dennis Weston Network (2004-2010): Resisting Deindustrialization in Toronto's Inner Suburbs 137
Chapter 7 The Mount Dennis Weston Network (2011-2012): Struggling for Good Green Jobs in the Neighbourhood 172
v Chapter 8 Organizing for Community Benefits (Take Two): The Mount Dennis Weston Network (2012) 196
Chapter 9 The Challenge of Cross-class, Multi-Ethno-Racial Alliance-forming in York South-Weston 225
Chapter 10 Scaling-up Demands for a Community Benefits Agreement: The Toronto Community Benefits Network (2013-2015) 252
Chapter 11 Community Benefits Agreements: Social Bargaining or Negotiated Neoliberalism? 292 Evaluating CBA Negotiations for the Eglinton Crosstown LRT Project
Conclusions 330
Bibliography 341
vi List of Tables
Table 0.1 Social Movement Organizations in York South-Weston (2004-2013), not state-funded 3
Table 8.1 Timeline of MDWN meetings and other significant events 201
Table 8.2 CBA Proposal by the MDWN to Metrolinx, November 12, 2012 204
Table 8.3 Family Day workshop, break-out groups' responses to key questions 213
Table 9.1 Meetings on gun violence in York South-Weston 229
Table 10.1 Key Milestones for the Toronto Community Benefits Network 258
Table 10.2 TCBN Meetings 2013 (Does not include TCBN working group 265 meetings)
Table 11.1 Political lobbying by the TCBN 297
Table 11.2 Comparison of CBA proposed by the Network and the Community Benefits Framework and RFP clauses agreed to by 306 Metrolinx
vii List of Figures
Figure 0.1 Map of Toronto, Ontario, Canada showing York South-Weston 2
Figure 2.1 Neoliberalism's Logic of Participation 54
Figure 5.1 Ontario's average annual change in per capita public infrastructure 121 stock, 1955-2009
Figure 5.2 Non-residential Construction Jobs in Ontario (1991-2012) 127 organized according to governing political party
Figure 7.1 An illustrative summary of the Mount Dennis Economic Development Workshop Summary held December 18th, 2012 186
Figure 8.1 Newly formed TCBN unveils banner in front of Metrolinx offices during Board Meeting December 5th, 2012. Participating are members 208 of the MDWN, SAWRO and Labour Council
Figure 8.2 Family Day Flyer (February 18th, 2013) 210
Figure 8.3 Family Day in Mount Dennis, February 18, 2013, showing child- minding centre in foreground, food tables at left, with presentations and 211 break-out groups in background
Figure 8.4 Hammer Heads graduation ceremony with Metrolinx CEO Bruce McCuaig, Councillor Nunziata, COBT Business Manager James 218 St.John, Hammer Heads student Lawrence Toulouse and Glen Murray, Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure
Figure 9.1 Advertisement for gun violence meeting in York South-Weston, August 30th, 2012 231
viii Figure 9.2 Dot map of York South-Weston. Each dot represents one person based on the 2011 Canadian Census and National Household Survey and coloured according to visible minority status. Green dots represent Black residents, predominantly along the rail corridor and Weston Road 237 running diagonally (northwestwardly). Blue dots represent white residents, red dots represent Asians, brown dots represent South Asian and yellow dots represent other/mixed
Figure 10.1 Map of Toronto's Neighbourhood Improvement Areas (formerly "Priority Neighbourhoods") showing the route of the Eglinton 256 Crosstown Light Rail Transit line
Figure 10.2 Organizational Chart of the Toronto Community Benefits Network 272
ix List of Appendices
Appendix I Map of York South-Weston (Federal Electoral Riding District) 383
Appendix II Letter to Metrolinx from Mount Dennis Weston Network, May 24th, 2012 384
Appendix III Toronto Community Benefits Network Foundation Document, May 22nd, 2013 390
Appendix IV Metrolinx Community Benefits Framework 394
Appendix V Building Opportunities through Community Benefits Agreements: Leveraging infrastructure projects to increase training and labour market 399 access for equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups in Ontario
x List of Acronyms
ACORN Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now APCOL Anti-Poverty Community Organizing and Learning AFP Alternative financing and procurement ANC Action for Neighbourhood Change ATU Amalgamated Transit Union BIA Business Improvement Area CBA Community Benefits Agreement CCF Co-operative Commonwealth Federation FYI For Youth Initiative GTS Georgetown South (rail corridor expansion project) IBEW International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers LEC Labour Education Centre LRT Light rail transit MDCA Mount Dennis Community Association MDWN Mount Dennis Weston Network MPP Member of Provincial Parliament MP Member of Parliament NDP New Democratic Party PAT Professional, administrative and technical (jobs) P3 Public-private partnership RFP Request for Proposals SAWRO South Asian Women's Rights Organization TCBN Toronto Community Benefits Network WCC Weston Community Coalition
xi 1
Resistance Along the Rails This dissertation is about social movement coalitions between labour, community and environmental groups that have emerged in post-Fordist Toronto as part of struggles over deindustrialization and urban “renewal.” Deindustrialization and urban renewal are often discussed from the perspective of capital or the state which backgrounds the agency of social movements in producing urban space. My dissertation seeks to understand how social movement coalitions provide opportunities for ordinary residents to realize their visions for the city (i.e., a city for themselves). At the same time, I explore how the visions and coalition-building of neighbourhood groups, working- class organizations, environmental organizations and equity-seeking groups are undermined, narrowed or coopted through the political manoeuvring of the ruling elite as it organizes consent to a neoliberal city. I began my research in an effort to understand—and contribute to—a wave of social movement activity proliferating along Toronto's northwestern rail corridor. This area experienced industrial decline, growing poverty, racialized marginalization, big box retail development proposals and new infrastructure projects—all parts of what I will discuss below in terms of a changing urban metabolism and a “socio-ecological fix.” This rail corridor cuts through the inner suburban neighbourhoods of Weston and Mount Dennis within the political riding of York South-Weston (see figure 0.1 and, for a more detailed map, appendix I). Between 2004-2013 an impressive list of social movement organizations emerged in York South-Weston, including: the Mount Dennis Community Association; the Weston Community Coalition; the Weston Village Residents' Association; the Clean Trains Coalition; two Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) chapters; the Mount Dennis Weston Network; Positive Change; and the Toronto Community Benefits Network (see table 0.1 for a summary of each organization).1 These groups often worked together as coalitions. This social movement activity clearly threatened the political establishment as electoral representation in York South-Weston at both the federal and provincial levels shifted Left away from the dominant Liberal Party to the social democratic New Democratic Party (NDP).2 But the political
1 State-funded social service agencies are not included in this list but those that have taken on political and organizing roles around particular issues include: the Learning Enrichment Foundation (LEF); For Youth Initiative (FYI); Social Planning Toronto; York Youth Coalition; and Action for Neighbourhood Change (ANC). 2 At a federal level, York South-Weston had been held by the Liberals since 1979 when the riding was established. Before its 1979 boundaries were established, the York South federal riding was often won by the NDP (and its predecessor the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation). It was held by the federal leader of the NDP, David Lewis, between 1965- 1974 after which it went Liberal. The new federal riding has stayed Liberal until NDP Mike Sullivan's win in 2011. Provincially, the riding was a stronghold for the NDP (and before this the CCF), being held by three party leaders (Ted Joliffe, Donald McDonald, and Bob Rae). Following the defeat of the NDP in 1995, the provincial riding turned Liberal 2
Figure 0.1 Federal electoral ridings map of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, showing York South-Weston highlighted in red. Source: Adapted from Elections Canada (2015) success of social movement organizing in York South-Weston went beyond simply changing traditional political representation. Social movement organizations in York South-Weston demanded direct participation in decision-making over a broad range of issues: urban planning; economic development; environmental regulation; public education; and policing. Social movement organizations successfully challenged the design and purpose of new rail lines and brownfield sites in the area; protected heritage buildings; brought and won charges against absentee landlords who had neglected their low-income apartment buildings; fought against racial profiling by police and the under- representation of racialized teachers; supported a city-wide campaign that raised the minimum wage; and pushed for more equitable distribution of the benefits associated with urban development—namely more equitable access to training and jobs associated with public transit infrastructure projects.
until NDP Paul Ferriera won a by-election in 2007, which was then soon lost again to the Liberals in the 2007 general election by only 452 votes. 3
Name of Organization Topic Areas Year Established Association of Community Affordable housing; Tenant Rights; Anti- 2004 Organizations for Reform Now poverty (ACORN) Mount Dennis Community Various; urban planning; urban design; 2004 Association neighbourhood beautification; social events Weston Community Coalition Urban/transportation planning; small 2005 businesses Mount Dennis Weston Network Sustainable economic development; land use 2007 planning Clean Trains Coalition Air quality associated with expansion of train 2009 lines Weston Village Residents' Various; urban planning; urban design; 2010 Association neighbourhood beautification; social events; coordination of community groups Positive Change Youth violence; Education rights of Somali 2012 immigrants Toronto Community Benefits Community benefits agreement (jobs, 2013 Network training, neighbourhood improvement, economic development) Table 0.1 Social Movement Organizations in York South-Weston (2004-2013) that are not state-funded.
The abundance of social movement organizing that took place in York South-Weston is unfortunately rare in the neighbourhoods of post-Fordist cities like Toronto despite there being no shortages of urban problems associated with growing poverty, socio-spatial polarization, congestion and environmental degradation. For many of the residents living in low-income neighbourhoods like Mount Dennis and Weston, steady, good-paying jobs and affordable housing cannot be found; bed bugs and cockroaches are an everyday battle; public transit is increasingly unaffordable and inadequate; childcare is hard to come by and expensive; shelters are overcrowded; and food banks are empty. Most social service agencies in neighbourhoods across Toronto that are set up to address these problems are funded by the state and so refrain from political organizing in fear of losing their funding. Although the labour and environmental movements continue to claim large numbers of members, most of these members are politically inactive and have not been trained to lead mass community organizing in a sustained and participatory democratic way. 4
Meanwhile, people are disenfranchised from formal political processes today more than ever before. Voter turn-outs and participation in political parties are at historically low levels. Reflecting the depoliticizing effects of neoliberalism, residents and citizens have been recast as “taxpayers” or “consumers” by politicians and as “clients” (by social service agencies). The major national and provincial political parties lack the desire or capacity to engage in mass organizing (this is also true for municipal councillors in Toronto where no formal municipal political parties exist). These political parties approach social movements opportunistically often undermining them by seeding partisan divisions and coopting factions of the leadership. Political disenfranchisement linked with deepening social and environmental problems has promoted anti-establishment populism in Europe, the United States and Canada. The general lack of organized mass resistance despite the pervasiveness of urban problems in post-Fordist cities makes the significant amount of social movement activity in York South-Weston all the more intriguing and worthy of study. An analytical purpose of this dissertation is to better relate the local and extra-local so as to give more theoretical emphasis to the agency of social movements in the production of urban space. My dissertation highlights the role of social movements in shaping the timing, character and consequences of deindustrialization and urban renewal. Social movements are on the one hand conditioned by broader neoliberal processes of deindustrialization and urban renewal taking place at the city, national and global scales but at the same time mediate these processes. I follow Doreen Massey's (1995, 6) argument that general theories of how capitalism produces space guides analysis (and political activism) only so far; spatial restructuring is always mediated through the specific (i.e. historically and geographically contingent) social relations of a particular locality, while capitalism “can only be changed―challenged politically―in its specific form.” My action-oriented and ethnographically- embedded research design offers rich insights into particular place-based struggles that I relate analytically to a broader historical and geographical conjuncture and more abstract theories of the production of space. My community-based participatory research focused on—and contributed to—two moments of labour-community coalition-building that emerged out of York South-Weston between 2007-2015. I explain the emergence, strategic development and efficacy of these social movement coalitions, while critically appraising their impacts, by relating these coalitions dialectically to macro-scale urban transformations (i.e., how deindustrialization and urban renewal are experienced, resisted, or consented to at neighbourhood and city-wide scales) as well as ideological and institutional transformations 5 brought about through the process of coalition-building (i.e., social movement learning and the formation of new relationships and organizational forms across multiple scales). I demonstrate empirically how the production of urban space is a deeply contested process: Existing power relations are reproduced through a (highly uneven) process of negotiation and compromise between the ruling elite and social movement coalitions—always within the context of real or potential state coercion. More radical challenges to the existing organization of urban space (including the built environment and socio-ecological relations) proposed by social movement coalitions are undermined by ruling political parties, fractions of capital and other socio-cultural actors (e.g., the mainstream media) by fostering political division within or against a coalition or by coopting certain sections of the coalition or its leadership. I appraise labour-community coalitions as a way for residents, workers and their organizations to assert more democratic control over the production of urban space, critically highlighting “green job” creation initiatives and the use of community benefits agreements linked to fixed capital projects. Chapters six to nine examine the Mount Dennis Weston Network (MDWN)—a labour- community-environmental coalition in York South-Weston that, between 2007-2013, rallied against a real estate developer's plans to convert a 52-acre industrially-zoned brownfield site into a “big box” retail complex. The MDWN advocated for green economic development on the site instead—namely the creation of manufacturing jobs within the growing renewable energy sector. Chapters ten and eleven discuss the Toronto Community Benefits Network (TCBN)—a labour-community coalition that developed out of the MDWN with the goal of winning a community benefits agreement (CBA) covering a $6.6 billion light rail transportation project in Toronto called the Eglinton Crosstown (that had one terminal located in York South-Weston). The goal of the CBA was to leverage public infrastructure funding for realizing social justice objectives (e.g., employment equity and poverty alleviation), environmental objectives (e.g., green design) and various neighbourhood improvements (e.g., new public spaces and creating local economic development opportunities). I examine the TCBN from its inception in 2013 until 2015. Deindustrialization and urban renewal are two linked moments of uneven development as capital “see-saws” out of developed areas and then back in again, always looking for the highest rate of profit (N. Smith 1984). David Harvey (1982, 2001a) refers to attempts by capital to overcome the contradictions and crises of capitalism through spatial reorganization as the “spatio-temporal fix.” Harvey observes that any spatial “fix” to these crises is only temporary since the fixing of capital into 6 long-term capital investments and (physically immobile) infrastructure places constraints on capital's mobility during future rounds of accumulation. Deindustrialization is encouraged through trade policies and technologies that increase the mobility of capital so that it can more easily seek out higher rates of accumulation around the world (e.g., by off-shoring production to areas with cheaper wages or new markets). Urban renewal involves capital returning into deindustrialized spaces and redeveloping these spaces in profitable ways (“creative destruction”). Urban renewal is facilitated through zoning policies, tax incentives, public infrastructure investments and the regulation of labour in order to position particular cities as globally attractive sites for capital investment. Improved transit infrastructure, which is the subject of the TCBN's advocacy, is a critical part of urban renewal because it allows for the concentration of markets (e.g., increased density of housing and office buildings) and more efficient circulation of capital. Besides creating more efficient circulation of capital in general, urban infrastructure projects themselves directly absorb surpluses of capital and labour. Public infrastructure projects procured through “public-private partnerships,” including the light rail transit project at the centre of the TCBN's advocacy, have become especially lucrative for large multi-national corporations. As important as Smith's and Harvey's perspectives may be, by placing the logic, needs and agency of capital at the centre of analyses, their theories of uneven development and the spatio- temporal fix undertheorize the role and importance of social movements in producing urban space. These theories of uneven development and the spatio-temporal fix identify struggles between capital and labour (e.g., the socio-spatial division of labour) as integral to geographical differentiation and the movement of capital between places; however, it was left to authors such as Doreen Massey (1995 (1984)) and Andrew Herod (1997b) to demonstrate empirically the agency of workers in producing spatial structures. Even still, these theories and studies have failed to appreciate how other social movement actors—sometimes in coalition with labour or fractions of capital—account for the timing, character and consequences of deindustrialization and urban renewal. In chapter three I argue that theorizing the spatio-temporal fix as part of a broader “socio- ecological fix” better captures the role of social movements in mediating or regulating a fix. The concept of a socio-ecological fix captures “ways in which the social relations and material and symbolic conditions of capitalist accumulation are reproduced through investments in landscapes that are simultaneously and always conjoined productions of space and nature” (Ekers and Prudham 2017, 2). A socio-ecological fix attempts to reorganize the urban metabolism in ways that (temporarily) overcome interrelated material, institutional and symbolic constraints for capital accumulation that 7 were produced during previous rounds of accumulation. The urban metabolism refers to “networked flows of energy and raw materials tied to associated labor processes, institutions and ideological framings of 'nature' and the 'city' that sustain and constitute processes of urbanization” (Ekers and Prudham 2017, 2). A socio-ecological fix not only responds to the needs for capital accumulation, but also tries to resolve related socio-ecological crisis tendencies (caused by previous rounds of accumulation) that threaten the legitimacy of a given ruling regime or mode of accumulation. But neoliberal socio-ecological fixes are organized in ways that end up reproducing oppressive social relations or undermining the conditions of future socio-ecological reproduction. My analytical approach identifies or anticipates the winners and losers of a given fix (both present and future), accepting Harvey's insight that fixes only displace or temporarily defer socio-ecological contradictions and crisis tendencies creating uneven spatial and temporal impacts. The socio-ecological fix is therefore a heavily contested process constituted through political struggles over resource distribution, environmental quality and environmental justice, as well as broader ideological struggles over the meaning of, and visions for, “the environment” and “the city.” I begin taking up these considerations empirically in chapters four and five where I analyze Toronto's deindustrialization and urban “revitalization” as contested, multi-scalar and neoliberal socio- ecological fixes. I focus my analysis on the state's land-use conversion and trade liberalization policies, its attempt to create “green” manufacturing jobs by subsidizing renewable energy companies and its investments in public infrastructure using so-called public-private partnerships (P3s). I account for how the timing, character and consequences of these fixes were mediated or regulated not only according to the logic of capital, or the livelihood concerns of labour (e.g., for job creation and access to affordable housing), but also through broader socio-ecological struggles over air pollution (including greenhouse gases), traffic congestion, urban sprawl and the toxic legacy of industrialization. Chapters 6-9 analyze how these fixes shaped, and were shaped by, socio-ecological struggles at the neighbourhood scale in York-South Weston. For example, I show how local protests over pollution and disturbances associated with the construction and operation of new (diesel) transit lines scaled-up into a “community relations” problem for Metrolinx and the provincial government. Meanwhile, the MDWN pushed for expensive environmental design features for Metrolinx's future transit yards and other features requiring costly soil remediation. These proposals to increase project costs can be understood as another grassroots attempt to mediate a socio-ecological fix. My argument and empirical analysis support the recent hypothesis of Ekers and Prudham 8
(2017b, 1) that socio-ecological fixes “need to be understood in ideological terms and specifically in the establishment and contestation of hegemony.” Socio-ecological fixes are initiated or directed by ruling state actors working in alliance with fractions of capital (e.g., real estate developers, financial institutions, and infrastructure construction consortia) and sometimes together with certain fractions of labour (e.g., the building and construction trade unions) and coopted elements of other social movements. One reason I provide such detailed empirical chapters is to demonstrate how the governing power bloc organizes public support (i.e., consent) around particular neoliberal socio-ecological fixes and the legitimacy of the urban regime more generally. My analysis identifies several strategies and tactics used by the governing power bloc to organize consent: framing neoliberal projects within socially progressive or environmental discourses (what I refer to interchangeably as political cover, ethical fig leaves, positive spin, or good news stories); coopting social movements through prolonged negotiations that only ever lead to very minor concessions; seeding divisions between social movement groups (e.g., accommodating groups unevenly according to class, race, sex, status, etc.; negotiating trade-offs between the needs of differentially-oppressed social groups); diffusing political pressure for more democratic participation through meaningless “public consultation”; and deflecting bottom-up proposals through a politics of scale. Of course, these negotiations are always conditioned by the latent threat of state violence or the actual use of state violence in the case of certain oppressed social groups (e.g., police brutality targeting racialized residents). Socio-ecological contradictions of the neoliberal city constrain coalitions into making strategic trade-offs between a multitude of concerns about employment, equity, affordable housing and the environment. For example, the MDWN fought against the conversion of industrial lands that would have allowed for a big box retail store in their community, but some low-income residents saw the big box retailer as a potential source of desperately needed jobs and cheap consumer goods. The TCBN's fight for employment equity on transit construction projects failed to address how transit-led development was causing gentrification and displacing marginalized residents. Meanwhile, in negotiations for a CBA the government forced the TCBN to give up its concerns around privatization and environmental design before it would enter discussions over employment equity. Rendering these trade-offs as natural or inevitable was a key act of power by the state as it organized consent for a socio-ecological fix. My study supports the hypothesis of Desfor and Keil (2004) that “the ecological has become an important arena where subaltern groups mount their challenge to institutions and structures of power as 9 well as where they express their alternative designs for different social relations” (3). But my research also details how oppression and contradictions between social groups are being reproduced through a politics of the environment. For example, middle class desires to “clean-up” neighbourhoods in Toronto from industrial activities has encouraged deindustrialization. Gentrification, expressed through socio-ecological metaphors of urban “renewal” or “revitalization,” is displacing low-income and racialized residents. Organized labour's demand for good-paying “green jobs” in York South-Weston came into tension with low-income (and largely racialized) residents who were desperate for any jobs. Meanwhile, the state has employed a seemingly progressive environmental discourse to roll out neoliberal policies: the off-shoring of polluting industrial production; the privatization of “green” energy; and the delivery of low-carbon rapid transit systems through public-private partnerships. Understanding the politics surrounding a given fix, including strategies used by those in power to gain consent, is useful for those of us trying to shape these fixes through an emancipatory politics. My analytical approach helps identify overlapping concerns (“natural allies”) amongst potential social movement participants and points to the ideological and practical organizing work needed to build a more powerful common front for resisting, if not transcending, the divisions, hierarchies and socio- ecological crisis tendencies reproduced through neoliberal processes of deindustrialization and urban renewal. Building this common front and overcoming these divisions, hierarchies and crisis tendencies is the organizing work of social movement alliance-forming. In chapter two I develop a multi-scalar theory of social movement alliance-forming that explains the emergence of coalitions in response to changing socio-ecological conditions and identifies the factors that make social movement organizing effective in shaping the timing, character and consequences of deindustrialization and urban renewal, or that account for its failure. Eco-Marxists have theorized how deteriorating socio-ecological (including political-economic) conditions together with political openings within the state foster the emergence of coalitions (J. O’Connor 1998). But the formation of coalitions and the effectiveness of alliance-forming are never guaranteed by these changing conditions or structures alone; it is necessary to analyze particular historical and geographical contingencies, the organizing strategy and tactics employed by coalitions and the mobilizing vision and tact of activists leading the coalition. I draw on a Gramscian theoretical framework, social movement theory and ethnographic approaches to understand how the MDWN and TCBN coalitions strategically developed over time, what accounts for their efficacy and to appraise their impact. I explain the processes that brought these coalitions together, why their compositions and 10 strategic objectives changed, and in the case of the MDWN I explain what led to periods of inactivity and its ultimate disbanding. I demonstrate how coalition partners are brought into cooperation (or not) through the negotiation of ideological, strategic and embodied differences. I argue that effective alliance-forming involves the framing of grievances in ways that attract and inspire participants and/or that elicit favourable responses from the state and capital, as well as the mobilization of resources to sustain and extend coalition activities. I argue for an assessment of labour-community coalitions not only in terms of whether they succeed in changing policies or defending against immediate threats posed to workers and the community (e.g., fighting a strike, land use zoning changes, or anti- worker/environmental legislation), but also in terms of related ideological transformations or social movement learning that the coalition and its members undergo as part of alliance-forming. I use the term alliance-forming to refer to the process of building social movement coalitions in an attempt to bring about emancipatory change. Alliance-forming is characterized by a two-way shift in scale: an ideological deepening for overcoming sectionalism or “militant particularism” (Harvey 2001b); and an institutional broadening or “scaling-up” of organizational activity. Alliance-forming is a process of transformative learning through which subjects are “repositioned” ideologically so as to become politically concerned and the institutionally engaged with broader socio-political movements of resistance or at least the concerns of other coalition partners (S. Hall 1988; Freire 2000; Zullo and Pratt 2009). Alliance-forming often calls on participants to reorient their beliefs, values and/or strategic goals, while at the same time leads to an intensification of their motivation and commitment to the work of the coalition (Tattersall 2005; Obach 2004). But alliance-forming is also about the nuts and bolts of collective action: building an organization and vision that invites participation and that brings together resources at scales necessary to carry out and sustain its work. Social movement coalitions express the potential of differentially oppressed groups finding common ground with one another in order to strengthen their collective political power. The ruling regime resists social movement alliance-forming precisely because the regime's power—including its ability to organize consent around neoliberal socio-ecological fixes—rests on creating or reproducing ideological and material divisions and hierarchies within society according to race, gender, physical ability, sexual orientation, status and class. These divisions and hierarchies are (re)produced geographically: through the separation of “workplace” from “community” concerns; the subjugation of Indigenous sovereignty to “the national interest” of colonial states; the gendered and racial division of labour; the socio-spatial segregation of low-income and racialized residents; the class-based separation 11 of spaces of conception from spaces of execution within the labour process; the separation and even opposition of “the environment” from “the economy” or from “the city;” and so forth. Labour- community coalitions are therefore revealing spaces for understanding how emancipatory struggles do or could intersect to overcome these oppressive divisions to produce emancipatory social and socio- ecological change. One purpose of my dissertation is to draw out strategic reflections from the alliance- forming experiences of the MDWN and TCBN that might inform others engaged in building emancipatory social movement coalitions. Studying the emergence and development of the MDWN and the TCBN over an eleven-year period (2004-2015), including my first-hand account between 2011-2015, provides unique insights into how and why the composition and strategic objectives of coalitions changed over time, and what happens as social movement coalitions “scale-up.” Chapters six through eight document how the focus of the MDWN shifted from green manufacturing, to green economic development more generally, to trying to win a CBA for the redevelopment of a brownfield site. Chapter ten explains why the Mount Dennis Weston Network, which had gained organizational strength just before the city-wide TCBN was formed, dissolved altogether as priorities changed and as scarce social movement resources were shifted towards the TCBN. Chapters ten and eleven explain why, following a process of lobbying and negotiation, the TCBN's initial demands for a CBA were narrowed and institutionalized into programs and policies that were more acceptable to the state. The TCBN shifted away from it's initial activist and political organizing approach towards a more bureaucratic model of service-delivery that is common to social service agencies (with the membership of the TCBN changing to reflect this shift). I explain these organizational changes and strategic shifts in relation to broader changes in socio-ecological conditions, political openings (and manoeuvring) within the state, as well as the ongoing learning, strategic calculations and changing resource capacity of the coalitions. In appraising the impact the MDWN and TCBN I account for both tangible outcomes (e.g., policy changes) but also things that are harder to pinpoint like the formation of new relationships or changes in policy discourses (e.g., the incorporation of "community benefits agreements" into speeches by the Premier and media reports). My extended ethnographic insights allowed me to not only assess the time-bound “outputs” of coalitions, but also to appreciate coalitions as long-term, ongoing processes. In terms of social movement learning (i.e., ideological deepening), I detail the intellectual transformations of activists and state actors through their involvement in or with the MDWN and TCBN. Through praxis, coalition members became more aware about the workings of power (e.g., the 12 state's resistance to direct democratic participation) and the efficacy of different counter-hegemonic strategies and tactics for mediating or contesting the production of urban space. Chapter eight and ten detail how the TCBN arrived at its vision for a CBA only after a prolonged period of learning about CBAs in other jurisdictions, establishing new cross-movement relationships and building strategic consensus internally. A coalition's success at institutionally broadening may invite new challenges. I argue that scaling-up from the neighbourhood-based MDWN to the city-wide TCBN helped the coalition bring the provincial government to the negotiation table. However, these “high level” negotiations forced the TBCN to abandon some of the everyday, neighbourhood-scale concerns that had kept MDWN members motivated to continue participating in the coalition. Coalitions sometimes fail to emerge despite seemingly opportune political conditions and this too demands explanation. In chapter nine I identify the factors that undermined what might have otherwise been the formation of a multi-racial, cross-class alliance in York South-Weston. These inhibiting factors included: the state's framing of “Black issues” in terms of crime and gun violence, segregated from debates over economic development; the constrictive legal and political context of state-funded social service agencies servicing marginalized groups; contrasting ideological orientations, collective identities and organizational cultures of different social groups; and weaknesses in the MDWN's organizing model. I argue that overcoming these types of challenges and the negotiation trade-offs discussed above requires coalitions to move beyond an “insider” strategy (e.g., lobbying, communications strategies) to a model of deep community organizing centred on raising political and strategic understanding of the current socio-ecological contradictions, fostering long-term commitment and building collective power. Another theme highlighted in this dissertation is the critical role played by organized labour in setting up and supporting social movement coalitions in order to contest and mediate the production of urban space. The weakening of labour's political power through the collapse of Fordist social relations has encouraged unions to forge new partnerships with other unions, employers, or with social movements (Turner 2006). Chapter two includes a review of the labour studies literature on community unionism (also called “social unionism” and “social movement unionism”) that documents cases of the labour movement attempting to transcend the workplace-community division of space reproduced through capitalism. In some cases unions develop solidarity with community groups more instrumentally to strengthen their battle within a particular workplace (e.g., during a strike, lockout, or 13 plant closing). In other cases, progressive unions have understood that union renewal requires them to extend their political support and resources to broader social movement struggles. My dissertation covers the later case. Organized labour in Toronto helped to ideologically coalesce concerns over employment, social justice and the environment while providing the necessary resources (including political clout) for scaling-up resistance from the neighbourhood to the province. The labour studies literature often frames labour-community coalitions in terms of debates about union renewal which tends to overshadow the role, motivations and political context of community groups and organizers helping lead coalitions. My study approaches alliance-forming more from the perspective of community groups that understand their struggle as a fight for recognition and democratic control of the city. Problems of class, race, gender and ecology have always been struggled over within the workplace (e.g., over improved health & safety, employment equity, parental leave, discrimination, etc.). The coalitions in this study bring movements for racial, gender, class and environmental justice taking place within the community into particular workplaces (e.g., transit infrastructure construction sites) and spaces of redevelopment (brownfield sites). I use the-right-to-the-city concept as a way of assessing the strategic demands of coalitions and to appraise how they impact the production of urban space. Demands made by social movements groups and coalitions in York South-Weston for democratic participation, good jobs, equity, environmental justice, dignity, etc. have been articulated and advocated for in terms of both radical and reformist conceptualizations of the right to the city.3 David Harvey (2008) interprets the right to the city as a radical collective demand for democratic control over the production and utilization of surplus value concentrated in cities under capitalism. Henri Lefebvre’s original radical formulation of the right to the city emphasizes the right of all inhabitants (regardless of citizenship) to use and occupy urban spaces and the right to collectively own and manage urban space so that it is produced for the needs of inhabitants rather than as exchange value for capital (Purcell 2002). Lefebvre challenges the structures of capitalism as well as state bureaucratic power arguing that inhabitants should have control, not only over decisions traditionally made by the state, but over any decisions having to do with the production of urban space (Purcell 2002). Lefebvre saw the right to the city not as an expansion of liberal- democratic human rights to be enforced through a so-called social contract with the state, but rather as a revolutionary process through which inhabitants come to appropriate and embody the role of the state
3 The next two paragraphs are passages taken from an article I wrote contemporaneously with my dissertation. Nugent, James. “The Right to Build the City: Can Community Benefits Agreements Bring Employment Equity to the Construction Sector?” (Nugent 2017). I thank an anonymous reviewer for helping me develop this distinction. 14
(i.e., as autogestion or self-management) leading to its withering away (Purcell 2014). In practice, right-to-the-city movements—including the two coalitions at the centre of this dissertation—have been oriented primarily towards reforming and compromising with the state rather than abolishing it. Social Democratic and liberal-progressivist frameworks of the right to the city are aimed at expanding the range of actors and priorities governing urban planning and development, albeit in ways that do not fundamentally challenge capitalist social relations (e.g., private property rights) nor the state’s role in facilitating capital accumulation. Reform-oriented right-to-the-city movements primarily operate through existing liberal-democratic structures of citizenship and political participation (e.g., elections, political parties, the law and stable state institutions) and pressure the state for such things as: funding to build affordable housing; laws to constrain landlords and gentrification; increased access to public spaces (e.g., urban gardening, community spaces, bike lanes, etc.); a higher minimum wage; affirmative action policies, particularly within the state; and inclusive planning and policy-making (e.g., gender-mainstreaming) (Purcell 2014). Despite winning some notable reforms and impressing upon the state an expectation of community participation, the wave of social movement activity in York South-Weston cited above mostly struggled at gaining decision-making power. For the most part, the political establishment contained social movement demands through bureaucratic “public consultation” exercises that lacked any concrete resolutions. Still, social movement organizations did prevent the area's total neglect by the provincial and municipal state during a period of disinvestment by industrial capital while pushing back against market “forces” from rampantly directing urban renewal schemes in the area. The strong resistance by the state to even reformist demands reveals the incredible organizing challenges ahead for those of us hoping to challenge systems of oppression more fundamentally. On the one hand, reform-oriented social movements may fail to inspire people to get engaged and they risk losing participants' interest by turning political organizing and mobilization into an overly-bureaucratic, legalistic, or institutionalized process. But “radical visions” and organizing should not always be separated from the more mundane and tempered organizing efforts of real existing social movement coalitions. Arguably, it is difficult to imagine organizing a socialist or eco-socialist future if we are unable to even organize around and win much more modest reforms. Moreover, it is hard to predict how alliance-forming processes in one conjuncture—even reform-oriented ones—will impact future rounds of political struggle. 15
Overview of chapters
My dissertation is organized into eleven chapters. My first chapter sets out my participatory, community-based research design. I discuss organizing-oriented and academic-oriented problems that motivated my study and call for all research to pay greater attention to axiological questions. I explain why I chose to study and help build labour-community-environmental coalitions and how I chose York-South Weston and Toronto and as my study sites. Chapter two integrates various theoretical approaches within the academic literature used for conceptualizing and studying labour-community coalitions, including: Marxist and eco-Marxist crisis theories; Gramscian theories of counter-hegemony; social movement theories; and theories of social movement learning. I develop a unified, multi-scalar theory of labour-community coalitions for explaining and analytically connecting their emergence, development, efficacy and political significance. I refer to this theory as social movement alliance-forming, but I also use social movement alliance-forming as an analytical concept for understanding coalitions as a scalar process (i.e., involving an ideological deepening and an institutional broadening). Chapters three, four and five theorize deindustrialization and urban renewal as two linked moments of a contested socio-ecological fix. I offer a multi-scalar and dialectical analysis that appreciates how a range of social movements—through their resistance and role negotiating consent— are constitutive of the political economy and urban metabolism more broadly. I focus on Toronto's deindustrialization (chapter four) and urban renewal (chapter five) as socio-ecological fixes that respond to struggles over capital accumulation, jobs, equity and the degradation of the conditions of production (e.g., environmental conditions, workers' health and public infrastructure). These chapters situate labour-community coalition-building by the neighbourhood-based MDWN and by the city-wide TCBN as part of broader socio-ecological processes of deindustrialization and urban renewal. I argue that the state's discourse on “green jobs” and community benefits agreements are minor concessions at best that provide ruling political parties with seemingly progressive political cover for what is actually their deepening of neoliberal governance (e.g., the privatization of public infrastructure and energy). I emphasize the state's use of environmentalist discourse to organize consent for these neoliberal fixes. Chapters six, seven, eight and nine cover the emergence, development, efficacy and impacts of the Mount Dennis Weston Network (2007-2013) through several different phases of its existence. In adopting Massey's (1995, 7) assertion that “the geography of industry is an object of struggle” that can 16 only be explained by analyzing particular places, I track the MDWN's attempts to influence the redevelopment of a large brownfield site in York South-Weston known as the Kodak lands. Chapter six examines how the MDWN (2007-2010) fought to have the Kodak land revived with green manufacturing rather than converted into a big box retail complex while chapter seven covers the MDWN's renewed efforts in 2011 to spur green economic development more generally. I argue that unemployment in deindustrializing areas like York South-Weston—as part of a broader crisis of manufacturing job loss and growing concerns around climate change—motivated the state to develop “green jobs” policies. But the MDWN found it was unable to scale-down these green economy policies into concrete neighbourhood job creation projects. Chapter eight appraises efforts by the MDWN to negotiate community benefits (e.g. local hiring, environmental design, etc.) for two public transit infrastructure projects being built through York South-Weston. These chapters highlight how socio- ecological contradictions of deindustrialization and urban renewal were experienced by residents at a neighbourhood scale that in many ways curbed efforts by MDWN to build a cross-class and multi- ethno-racial coalition. Chapters ten and eleven cover the emergence, development, efficacy and impact of the TCBN between 2013-2015, as it scaled-up the activities of the MDWN into a city-wide coalition aimed at winning a community benefits agreement for the Eglinton Crosstown light rail transit project. I chronicle how the TCBN formulated its key demands; mobilized organizational resources; and arrived at strategic decisions during negotiations with the provincial government. I explain and critique the TCBN's strategy for gaining bargaining power, which was primarily based on political lobbying rather than resource- and time-consuming door-to-door organizing within communities and member-to- member organizing in unions. Given the state's resistance to negotiating a comprehensive and legally- binding CBA and the TCBN's minimal bargaining power, the TCBN was forced to narrow its objectives and accept a very limited set of gains. This strategic narrowing in turn limited the types of people and groups participating in the coalition. I conclude by reflecting on the contradictions associated with urban renewal (including public transit infrastructure projects) that create trade-offs during negotiations between jobs, equity, affordable housing and environmental objectives. Barring a much deeper participatory movement that radically redefines the purpose of urban development, reform-oriented movements for the right to the city—e.g. as they are codified in community benefits agreements—risk facilitating a “negotiated gentrification” that trades-off gains for some marginalized groups only at the expense of others (I. MacDonald 2011, 17
206). Meanwhile, the state's rhetoric of “green jobs” and “community benefits” is helping it organize consent for the deepening of neoliberal urban governance (e.g. the privatization of energy and infrastructure). 18
Chapter 1
Transformative Research: Building and Studying Social Movement Coalitions
This chapter begins by discussing the philosophical commitments that placed my research within the transformative research paradigm. I distinguish between two types of research problems that my study engaged with (i.e., an organizing-oriented problem and academic-oriented problem), understanding these as two moments of my research praxis. I then ground the ontological and epistemological assumptions of my study within a critical realist philosophy. I discuss how critical realism supports a participatory research approach which has a subjective-objective ontology and an epistemology that emphasizes experiential and practical knowing. Participatory research has raised the importance of considering the axiology of a study in addition to epistemology, ontology and methodology. Taking a cue from participatory research, I argue that all forms of research could pay greater attention to the axiology of research by being more explicit about the methods we use as researchers to define our research problem and questions in the first place. I therefore provide a discussion around the methods and values that shaped my research problem and questions. This discussion explains why I chose to study and help build labour-community-environmental coalitions, and how I chose York-South Weston and Toronto and as my study sites. I then detail my methods of data collection and participatory research techniques, followed by my method of analysis. I conclude by addressing the quality of my study (i.e., in terms of its trustworthiness and emancipatory impact), as well as my study's methodological limitations.
Transformative Research
Research paradigms are typologized according to a researcher's philosophical commitments, or strategic approaches, to ontology (how they conceive of the world), epistemology (how they claim to know things about the world), axiology (the role of values within the research process) and methodology (Guba and Lincoln 1994; Heron and Reason 1997). A methodology aligns a study's epistemology with its ontology and axiology (Crang 2009; Heron and Reason 1997). Six major paradigms are commonly cited in the literature: positivism; post-positivism; constructivism; critical theory; participatory inquiry; and pragmatism (Guba and Lincoln 1994; Heron and Reason 1997; R. 19
Hall 2012; Leavy et al. 2014). The two primary paradigms that guided my research design—critical theory and participatory research—are sometimes categorized together as “transformative research” (Mertens 2007; Creswell 2003; Mackenzie and Knipe 2006). Transformative research well- characterizes my project because part of my research aligns more closely to traditions within critical theory while other aspects of my research are clearly participatory.
Organizing-oriented and Academic-oriented Problems
My dissertation research involved two types of problems and questions: a more practical and participatory problem and set of questions related to community organizing; and a more academic- oriented problem and set of (critical theory) questions. These two problems and sets of questions were related methodologically as part of an overall iterative, dialectical process of action and critical reflection that characterizes participatory action research (B. L. Hall 2005) or what Lather (1986) calls “research as praxis.” The first problem was an organizing-oriented problem: how could we build-up a labour-community coalition to assert our right to the city? This problem gave rise to several practical and strategic questions raised by the coalitions I worked with, i.e., the Mount Dennis Weston Network (MDWN) and the Toronto Community Benefits Network (TCBN). Where can we find a meeting space? How should we facilitate meetings? What should the organizational structure of the coalition be? How can we do outreach to bring more people into the coalition? How can we attract environmentally-oriented companies to invest onto the vacant Kodak industrial site? Who are the decision-makers and how do we influence them? What is a community benefits agreement (CBA) and what has been the experience of CBAs in other jurisdictions? How should we approach CBA negotiations with Metrolinx? What are the updated procurement and construction project timelines? How can we as a labour-community coalition play to the strategic needs of Metrolinx and the provincial government? How have things been going for our coalition and what should we be doing differently? And so forth. Members of the coalitions and I spent considerable amounts of time and energy trying to answer these questions over a three-year period through: internal discussions; trial-and-error; cross- jurisdictional research; community-asset mapping; power-mapping; petitioning and meeting with decision-makers; protest tactics; community popular education workshops; and the work of community researcher-organizers (discussed below). The first set of questions were based on the philosophical 20 assumptions underlying the participatory research paradigm, which emphasizes experiential and practical knowing and a commitment to cooperative or collaborative methodologies (Kapoor and Jordan 2009; Heron and Reason 1997; Bradbury and Reason 2014). These questions were driven by the immediate and changing needs of the coalition. The biggest shift in my research-organizing came after the neighbourhood coalition we were building-up to bring about local green economic development in York South-Weston, changed into an effort to build-up a city-wide coalition to win a community benefits agreement for a provincial transit project. In keeping with the goals of participatory research, I let the shifting organizing needs of the labour-community coalitions drive my research process, and set the practical and strategic questions that I pursued. As a member of the coalition, I also helped determine these needs by contributing to strategic discussions and activities. This oriented my dissertation process towards benefiting the aims of the coalition as well as the transformative learning of participants, rather than simply fulfilling my needs to produce a written dissertation. Consequently, some of the discussion and knowledge produced around this first set of practical and strategic questions is not included in my written dissertation or is only referenced tangentially. My second research problem was more narrowly academic and reflected back on the organizing-oriented problem, to document this experience, generate theoretical insights and provide strategic advice for future organizing efforts. My questions critically examined the alliance-forming process itself—its emergence, development, impediments and impact, understood across multiple scales of analysis. My second set of questions corresponded more closely to the critical theory paradigm, however also provided me with a reflexive moment that supported my research praxis. Characteristic of the critical theory paradigm (and most participatory research), my research findings and analysis have the explicit goal of creating a more just, egalitarian, peaceful, sustainable and democratic society. Critical theory has explanatory, practical and normative objectives that come together to “address what is wrong with current social reality, identify the actors to change it, provide clear norms for criticism, and identify practical goals for social transformation” (R. Spencer, Pryce, and Walsh 2014, 17). My dissertation findings will strengthen my own future organizing and research praxis, and contribute to the strategic thinking of future labour-community coalitions. But compared with our process for developing and answering the first set of organizing-oriented research questions, my dissertation writing process has been much less collaborative and less directly beneficial for other 21 coalition members. I did use some methods of collective debriefing and member-checking, discussed below, to increase the validity and credibility of my findings. These two research problems and sets of questions and processes cannot be separated. Some questions were immediately useful both practically and theoretically, such as the identification of power-brokers and cross-jurisdictional research on community-benefit agreements (which gave our coalition direction while offering me a benchmark and parameters for evaluating the impact of our coalition's work). More generally, my dissertation analysis drew directly on my active participation in, and reflection on, labour-community alliance-forming. And conversely, my involvement in alliance- forming was motivated and guided by much more abstract, political concerns, as I detail below. Of course, I also have a material interest in completing my PhD program, even if this was certainly never the primary motivation driving my research process.
Philosophical Groundings: Critical Realism
My inquiry draws on several methodological approaches: critical ethnography (J. Thomas 1993; Carspecken 1996); the extended case method (Burawoy 1998); historical materialism (Harvey 1984; Cox 1986); (urban) political ecology (Heynen, Kaika, and Swyngedouw 2006; Robbins 2012); and participatory action research (B. L. Hall 2005; Bradbury and Reason 2014).4 These methodologies provide a critical analysis of power and emancipation that captures processes of social (and socio- ecological) change across multiple temporal and spatial scales of analysis. My data collection methods included: long-term participant observation; preliminary archival research; semi-structured interviews; as well as critical deconstruction of policy documents, government press releases and journalistic accounts. In later sections of this chapter I will elaborate on these data collection methods as well as my method of analysis. My methodology is underpinned philosophically by critical realism (Archer et al. 1998). Critical realists see the world as being ontologically stratified across three domains: “the empirical
4 Political ecology which has been variously (and sometimes confusingly) described as a “field” (Robbins 2012, 4), a “theoretical framework” (Heynen, Kaika, and Swyngedouw 2006, 8), a “discourse and practice” (Keil and Boudreau 2006, 41), and as a “community of practice united around a certain kind of text (original emphasis)”(Robbins 2012, 20). I agree with Robbins (2012, 84) that political ecology is too eclectic to be considered a unified theory, and that political ecology is difficult to define by its methods given the near full range of qualitative and quantitative methods employed by political ecologists. But Robbins seems to be confusing methods and methodology, which is evident by how he conflates “a sort of methodological procedure” with “a kind of method: something that people do (original emphasis)” (Robbins 2012, 84–85). The use of mixed methods does not preclude political ecology from having a coherent methodology. 22
(events that we experience), the actual (events that happen whether we experience them or not) and the real (a deeper dimension of objects, structures and generative mechanisms that produce events)” (Gregory and Bassett 2009, 622). As Marx (1999) famously put it: “Men (sic) make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.” Critical realism accepts that a material reality exists outside of the conceptual systems we use to talk about it, even if our knowledge about that reality is mediated through discourse (i.e., reality is highly concept-dependent, but not concept determined) (Sayer 2000; Gregory and Bassett 2009). My methodology was therefore positioned in-between the extremes of positivism on the one hand and constructivism (postmodernism, relativism) on the other (Sayer 2000). In trying to ontologically connect the human experience with non-human agency, critical realism shares in the philosophical project of political ecology and eco-marxism that tries to transcend the human-nature dualism through concepts such as the production of nature (N. Smith 1984), socio- nature (Swyngedouw 1996) and socio-ecological urban metabolism (Heynen, Kaika, and Swyngedouw 2006). In this view, nature and capital are seen to co-constitute (or co-produce) one another in temporally and spatially varied & contingent ways: “cities are built out of natural resources, through socially mediated natural processes” (Heynen, Kaika, and Swyngedouw 2006, 4). In this sense, I analyze industrial decline and urban renewal projects in Mount Dennis-Weston, together with labour- environmental-community alliance-forming, as socio-ecological processes. In accepting a stratified reality, critical realism refuses methodological individualism—i.e., the reduction of powers and mechanisms operative in one strata (e.g., class) to those of a lower strata (e.g., the individual). This points to the importance of multi-scalar analysis to understand how different strata are related spatially and temporally—a methodological strength of political ecology, critical ethnography and the extended case method. Critical realists believe in our ability to reveal and understand the social structures that enable and constrain our lives, thereby enabling emancipatory critique and social change (Gregory and Bassett 2009). This supports the consciousness-raising methodology of participatory research through which participants learn to identify and challenge how their everyday practices and ideas reproduce oppressive social relations. My methodology bridged an individual and group-level analysis of social movement learning by coalition participants—understood through participant observation methods and semi-structured interviews, with a macro analysis of socio-cultural, political-economic and socio-ecological systems (my analytical method is discussed 23 below). I used the concept of alliance-forming to analyze the dialectical relation between social movement coalitions and the production of urban space and to capture what Smith (1993, 101) refers to as the concomitant “scale of struggle and the struggle over scale.”
Participatory (Activist) Research
My research design blurred the lines between research and activism. I was both an active member as well as a student of labour-community coalitions. This type of participatory action research contrasts with the colonial legacy of geography, anthropological ethnography and more generally with the view that social science should be a detached, abstract, disinterested and objective science conducted by outside experts on a population. Whereas critical theory carries out research about or for oppressed groups, participatory action research engages in a potentially radical programme of working with oppressed groups. Participatory action research, also simply called participatory research, was developed by thinkers and practitioners in the Global South, including Paulo Freire, Orlando Fals- Borda and Marja-Lisa Swantz, all of whom centred social science inquiry on the everyday struggles of the poor, oppressed and marginalized (Jordan 2009; B. L. Hall 2005; Glassman and Erdem 2014).5 To the extent that a participatory research project facilitates oppressed groups being the ones to define the research problem and questions and to choose the methods of inquiry, the distinction between “researcher” and “research participants” collapses and is replaced with hybrid object-subjects who are referred to as “co-researchers,” “co-participants,” or what I identify as: “activist-researcher.” Similar to participant observation, participatory research garners “insider knowledge” about a group or community that is useful for developing understanding, explanation and theory. But unlike ethnography, the primary purpose of participatory methodologies remains the emancipation and transformation of participants. This notion of activist-researcher is similar to Gramsci's idea of the organic intellectual (see chapter two). However, researchers, even activist-researchers, seldom emerge organically from the (oppressed) groups or classes that they are engaging with on a project. Importantly, activist-researcher still often have the privilege of abandoning the project at any time; unlike for marginalized participants for whom the “project” is just their life and ongoing struggle.
5 My research draws on this tradition of participatory action research, in contrast to the traditions of “action research” within adult education developed by Eduard Lindeman, Kurt Lewin, John Dewey, and Jean Piaget, or the “participatory action research” developed by sociologist William Foot Whyte (Glassman, Erdem, and Bartholomew 2013). 24
The critical theory, participatory research and constructivist paradigms all reject the idea that the researcher can somehow be separate or objective from participants and relationships of power. The participatory research paradigm goes the furthest in fundamentally challenging the ontological opposition between objectivity and subjectivity, offering a subjective-objective ontology that understands reality as a “felt reciprocity” (Abram 1996, 124) or a “transactional, interactive” encounter (Heron and Reason 1997, 279). As Heron and Reason (1997) explain, “to experience anything is to participate in it, and to participate is both to mould and to encounter; hence, experiential reality is always subjective–objective” (278). A subjective-objective ontology corresponds with an epistemology that views practical knowing as primary. Practical knowing “is knowing how to do something, demonstrated in a skill or competence,” (Heron and Reason 1997, 281) in other words, “knowledge in action” (Hills and Mullett 2000). Practical knowing is grounded in three other types of knowing: experiential knowing (the “lived experience of the mutual co-determination of person and world”); presentational knowing (representations of our experiences); and propositional knowing (conceptualization, theorization and description) (Heron 1996, 164; Heron and Reason 1997). Practical knowing synthesizes and operationalizes these other forms of knowledge through practice (Hills and Mullett 2000). In this way, practical knowing links the three ontological domains of critical realism (the empirical, the actual and the real). A subjective-objective ontology philosophically supports what Heron and Reason (1997, 284) call the “epistemic principle” of participatory research: “that any propositional knowledge that is the outcome of the research [be] grounded by the researchers in their own experiential knowledge....researchers are also the subjects.” The practical knowing of activist-researchers strengthens the trustworthiness of propositional (“academic”) knowledge. At the same time, practical knowing is critical for effective political organizing. Organic intellectuals who build coalitions must pragmatically align lived experiences with more abstract narratives of social and political change (i.e., propositional knowing). The participatory action research and emancipatory learning traditions developed by Paulo Freire, Orlando Fals-Borda, Marja-Lisa Swantz and others saw collective reflection on experiential knowing and practical knowing as key to developing critical consciousness and social change. In aligning a subjective-objective ontology with an epistemology that emphasizes experiential and practical knowing, participatory action research methodologies facilitate oppressed groups being active agents in their own emancipation. Freire (2000) refers to this process of critical self-awareness as 25 conscientization. Conscientization is an iterative process in which people interrogate their own lived experiences through dialogical reflection and action (i.e., praxis), in order to understand and overcome internalized social myths and contradictions that reproduce oppression and keep people as objects or instruments for the goals of others rather than as their own self-determining subjects (Goldbard and Adams 2006; Glassman and Erdem 2014). Below I discuss my methods for engaging marginalized residents in Toronto and the coalitions I worked with in an abridged (i.e., less iterative or systematic) process of conscientization through: popular education workshops; open-ended interviews; co- authoring written reports; and dozens of organizing meetings in which we collectively reflected on our efforts to bring about social change. I refer to this process in my analysis as social movement learning. As an activist-researcher, I was also engaged in praxis: helping to organize coalitions; recording my reflections privately in a fieldwork journal; and communicating my reflections dialogically at meetings with other coalition members. For Heron and Reason (1997) participatory research not only aims to alleviate oppression but has a broader goal of increasing participants' “human flourishing,” understood as the celebration and expansion of the creative human mind and realizing a “balance” between “deciding for others, with others, and for oneself” (287). The participatory research process itself is meant to be intrinsically valuable to research participants. My participatory research methodology was intrinsically valuable to myself and the members of the two labour-community coalitions with whom I worked, in so far as it encouraged us to assert a right to the city (i.e., more democratic control over the production of urban space) and fostered our creativity and know-how to do so (e.g., facilitating visioning exercises; increasing political acumen; confidence-building; developing research and organizing skills; etc.). But the main groups of people that my research-organizing and the work of the coalitions set out to benefit were poor, equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged residents of Toronto who did not directly participate in the coalition (with a couple of exceptions). Rather, these target beneficiary groups were primarily represented by organizations or community activists who worked on their behalf. Some targeted groups were not represented at all. In this sense, the research-organizing we did as a coalition was still being done for oppressed groups rather than with them. Whether or how to better engage marginalized residents directly in the work of the coalition became a major organizing problem and research question. 26
The Research Problem as Method
Methodology is often thought of narrowly as the choice of appropriate methods for constructing and analyzing data used to answer given research questions. The participatory research paradigm opens this up to a discussion around the methods and values (i.e., axiology) that gave rise to the research problem and questions in the first place. Two common methods that researchers use for defining a research problem include identifying a “research gap” in the academic literature, or identifying a practical problem facing a population. But why do researchers choose to investigate one research gap or practical problem over other possibilities? On what basis is a given research problem given greater value or importance? There is a process—an unacknowledged method—behind this choice that is driven by the values of the researcher, their colleagues and institution and society more broadly. Researchers arrive at their research problem partly through informal discussions with colleagues and friends. The choice of research is also directed by the availability of research funding in a certain topic area, and motivated by concerns for publishing, career advancement, or greater public status. The written introductions of studies are used to rationalize or motivate the significance of the research problem, but this is most often done in a way that completely removes any consideration of the researchers' personal values and influences: their family histories; social circumstances; economic needs; or political commitments. The research problem is presented as being important for the advancement of knowledge or to society, but somehow not important personally for researchers themselves or for the institutions providing the research grants. Moreover, given the limited funds and time available to researchers, supporting a particular research project is highly political; there are always opportunity costs of foregoing other possible research projects. I provide an explicit discussion on the motivations and the methods used for developing my research problem for three reasons: 1) to be explicit about the underlying values and politics shaping my choice of research problem and biasing my analysis; 2) to give readers additional information for evaluating the trustworthiness of my study; and 3) to reveal the extent to which participants were involved in defining the research problem. The critical theory and participatory research paradigms make it clear that research is never value-neutral. Rather than try to neutralize or bracket the researcher's values, in hopes that this can create a more objective analysis, critical theory and participatory action research understands the research process as a way of actualizing certain values (e.g., social justice, democratic participation, 27 etc.). The research process is said to be “value-directed” or “value-mediated” (R. Spencer, Pryce, and Walsh 2014, 19). A methodological objective of transformative research is not to eliminate researcher bias but rather to make it more explicit, as I try to do below by discussing the motivations, values and politics that guided my project. Presenting the development of a research problem as a method helps evaluate the extent to which the research process fulfills what Heron and Reason (1997, 284) call the “principle of political participation” which “means that research subjects have a basic human right to participate fully in designing the research that intends to gather knowledge about them.” Collaborating with research participants in the research design is meant to avoid reproducing oppressive research agendas and processes. The many varieties of participative action inquiry fall along a continuum according to the extent to which research participants initiate and collaborate in defining the research problem and questions (as well as the degree to which they are involved with collecting and analyzing data; writing, revising and communicating results; and building their capacity as researchers) (Heron 1996; Heron and Reason 1997; Castleden, Morgan, and Lamb 2012; Bradbury and Reason 2014).6 What I am calling the organizing-oriented problem and questions of my study were very much developed by the coalitions I was part of, while the academic-oriented problem of my study was developed out of my much longer interest and engagement in social movement coalition-building.
Defining My Research Problem and Site Selection
My theoretical and political interests in labour-community coalitions did not simply begin when I entered “the field” in the summer of 2011, nor even when I enrolled as a PhD student in 2009. My methodology reflects a longer period of praxis, aimed at understanding social and environmental justice by trying to actualize it. My research goals were very much shaped by my family's deep engagement with working class struggles (including left-wing political parties and the Canadian trade union movement), coupled with an environmentalism that developed out of my childhood growing up on a sheep farm, influential high school teachers and later through summer jobs working in provincial and national parks. The need to reconcile working class politics and environmentalism has always been
6 With Heron and Reason's “cooperative inquiry” methodology, research subjects, as co-researchers, participate fully in defining the purpose of the research and research questions, as well as make decisions over operational methods (including those for defining research problems and questions). Similarly, the “community-based participatory research” process discussed by Castleden, Morgan and Lamb (2012, 162), “decision-making power and ownership is shared between the researcher and the community involved; bi-directional research capacity and co-learning are promoted; and new knowledge is co-created and disseminated in a manner that is mutually beneficial.” 28 intuitive for me, which is not to dismiss the very real tensions that may exist, or are constructed, between certain types of jobs and environmental regulation. Between 2001-2006, I pursued an undergraduate degree in international development studies and environmental science that brought me overseas to southern Malawi, where I spent a year as an intern for a globally-funded biodiversity conservation organization. I researched the political ecology of poverty and rainforest cover change on Mulanje Mountain in southern Malawi. This investigation revealed the stark contradictions between the goals of Western environmental movements, internationally-mobile capital (invested in colonial-era tea estates that surrounded the mountain and that occupied the best land) and the livelihood struggles of tea estate workers and adjacent subsistence farmers. I left Malawi wishing I could do more to support the struggles of these tea estate workers, some of whom were trying to organize unions to escape poverty, as well as the subsistence farmers who had little options but to clear rainforest on Mulanje Mountain in order to plant subsistence maize gardens—a practice for which they were criminalized by the biodiversity conservation organization and government. This experience led me to think more strategically about the relationship between the labour and environmental movements and the potential of forming social movement alliances across various scales. Not knowing the vernacular of Malawi, I knew I could not be an effective ally to these tea estate workers and farmers while living in Malawi unless I committed to staying in the country for several years to learn the language and culture. Moreover, knowing that the tea estate companies in Mulanje were listed on the London stock exchange and that funding for the Mulanje Mountain biodiversity conservation projects (including those that criminalized farmers on the mountain) were funded through the Global Environment Facility,7 I realized that the struggles of tea workers and farmers in Mulanje were very much shaped by an uneven global political economy produced on terms favourable to the Global North. So I returned to Canada hoping to undermine the power that my own country's corporations and policy-makers had over the environments and lives of the world's poor. My goal was to see whether the Canadian labour and environmental movements could bring about a shift in power. The refocusing of my activism back to the Canadian context was not because I questioned the intrinsic potential of the rural poor—such as Malawian tea estate workers or subsistence farmers—to become agents of radical social change. I was unaware of dated debates within Marxism over whether
7 This international biodiversity conservation funding was used for increased scientific study of the mount, and some “co- management” projects, but also greatly increased the Forestry Department's capacity to patrol the Mulanje Mountain forest reserve for illegal activities. 29
“the revolutionary subject” would be found in rural peasant movements or rather in the struggles of the urban proletariate (J. Glassman 2006). Nevertheless, I perhaps naively (in retrospect) saw the labour and environmental movements within a rich country like Canada as having greater organizational capacity and better political positioning than the world's poor to address the contradictions between capital accumulation, impoverishment and environmental sustainability. Compared with Malawi, Canadian unions and environmental organizations had far more resources, were better protected from state repression or company reprisals during organizing campaigns and could (at least in theory) better make use of legal and formal electoral processes available in Canada in order to regulate multi-national corporations (e.g., through capturing profits that could be redistributed for organizing efforts abroad, or by supporting legislation that would hold Canadian corporations abroad to Canadian and/or international labour, environmental and human rights standards). My entry into organizing and researching the Canadian environmental and labour movements was therefore motivated by a praxis of internationalism and an effort to reconcile tensions between working class politics and environmentalism. My hope was that coalition-forming between the Canadian labour and environmental movements could “jump scales” to ultimately support struggles for social and environmental justice around the world (even if not directly in solidarity with struggles in Malawi, then somewhere else in the Global South). In 2007-2008, I spent a year helping the Toronto Climate Campaign organize demonstrations for climate justice in Toronto, seeing in global warming an issue that inherently and more obviously connected livelihood concerns in the Global South with production and consumption processes in the North. Meanwhile, my Master's work examined the history of labour-environmental relations in Canada and the ongoing role that organized labour was playing in shaping climate change policy (Nugent 2009). In the mid-2000s, the Canadian and American labour movements had begun to look to the creation of “green jobs,” particularly in the renewable energy sector, as a way of simultaneously addressing the ongoing loss of manufacturing jobs (many unionized) as well as the climate change crisis. In 2009, I joined a labour-community coalition called the “Good Jobs Coalition,” spearheaded by the Toronto and York Region Labour Council that had emerged in response to the financial crisis. Reflecting the labour movement's hope that “green jobs” could help stimulate job creation following the financial crisis, the keynote address of the inaugural Good Jobs Coalition meeting was the founding Executive Director of the Blue Green Alliance—a labour-environmental coalition in the United States between the United Steelworkers Union and the Sierra Club. A speaker from the Mount Dennis Weston 30
Network (MDWN) also spoke at the inaugural Good Jobs Coalition meeting, about the loss of good- paying jobs through deindustrialization and the MDWN's fight against the conversion of the Kodak industrial lands into a big box store. Soon after, I joined a green jobs sub-committee of the Good Jobs Coalition that would be made up of unions, environmental organizations and community advocates. We organized a weekend conference named “Good Green Jobs for All!” that over six hundred people attended (Hogarth and Ireland 2009). The purpose of the conference was to fuse equity and social justice concerns with the need to transition the economy to more environmentally sustainable forms of production and consumption. The call for environmental justice was raised primarily in terms of the equitable distribution of environmental goods—in this case, green jobs. Despite the success of this conference and regular monthly or even bi-monthly meetings over the course of two years, the Good Green Jobs for All! sub-committee struggled to bring about policy changes or any concrete green job projects. Similarly, the Ontario provincial government's Green Economy and Green Energy Act (2009), failed to live up to its promise of creating 50,000 jobs in the renewable energy sector and stimulating Ontario's manufacturing sector (see chapter four). The limits and failures of these labour-community-environmental coalitions and government green job policies made me question the apparent disconnect between rhetoric, policies and practices of the “green economy.” By engaging in a participatory action research project with a labour-community coalition, I wanted to learn, through praxis, the challenges or opportunities for creating green jobs within a particular neighbourhood. So in the summer of 2011, when I heard through an email sent over a listserv that the Mount Dennis Weston Network (MDWN) was having a meeting at a church not too far from my house, I attended. The organizational goals and work plan of the MDWN were in-line with my long-standing desire to form a cross-class, multi-racial, coalition amongst social movement actors concerned about racialized poverty, job creation and quality and socio-ecological degradation. The group I started working with was very small at the start—only about six people. At the time, the membership of the MDWN was comprised of mostly white, middle-class, homeowners, along with representatives from the labour movement, a social agency and an environmental organization. Although this did not reflect the high level of poor and racialized residents living in area, the MDWN was open to growing its coalition and previously did include members from a low-income tenants' rights organization. Group members were also reflexive in their positions of privilege relative to other local residents, which gave me hope for alliance-forming. Over a few meetings, we started to brainstorm a way to re-initiate the 31
MDWN's previous work aimed at resisting the area's deindustrialization and stimulating green economic development to create jobs for the high level of unemployed residents in the area. It was through these initial discussions that we developed our organizing-oriented problem and that I developed my academic dissertation research problem, as discussed at the beginning of this chapter. My research questions would change throughout my collaboration with the MDWN and once again while helping to establish the Toronto Community Benefits Network as our initial activities and research that was centred around green economic development shifted to winning a community benefits agreement associated with transit infrastructure projects. I therefore selected my dissertation research project as a continuation of my own activism and praxis, and through collaboration with the coalitions I encountered.
Methodology
I carried out my fieldwork in several overlapping phases that loosely follow the critical ethnography (or critical qualitative inquiry) methodology developed by Carspecken (1996). Carspecken's (1996) methodology employs five phases: 1) building a primary record from an etic perspective; 2) preliminary reconstructive analysis of the primary data, using hermeneutic inference and making the tactic explicit; 3) dialogical data generation (interviews, group discussions, etc.) to “democratize the research process” (42); 4) analyzing the social site under study in relationship to other specific social sites; and 5) higher order reconstructive analysis that relate my findings to social theory. This methodological approach was useful for capturing change in my study sites and participants (e.g., what I refer to as social movement learning), and for relating findings across multiple scales of analysis (e.g., what I refer to as social movement alliance-forming). In contrast to Carpsecken's abductive approach, my fieldwork and analysis was guided by pre-existing theories of social movements, and my use of praxis for understanding the possibilities and challenges of social movement alliance-forming. The first phase of my research was building a primary record in order to get a “feel” for my study sites (i.e., York South-Weston, and the Mount Dennis Weston Network), and to build trust with people who would later become my key informants (mostly members of the MDWN). I used this phase of research to learn the history of social movement activity in York South-Weston, to map the power relations amongst different groups and actors (identifying organic leaders and potential key informants) and to understand how the MDWN and other leaders in the community framed neighbourhood 32 problems. During this phase, I identified organic community leaders or organizations active in the area who were not already in the MDWN who could potentially join or support the labour-community coalition. A general familiarity with the study area would help me later explain why there was social movement activity around certain issues but not others and for understanding the character and form that this activity took. My initial passive observations provided me with a baseline from which I would also be able to evaluate any future influence that our labour-community coalition-building would have in the area. For this phase of research, I drew on a wide range of data sources: websites, email blasts and reports of community groups, social service agencies and politicians; videos posted on Youtube of past local all- candidate election debates; articles from the local newspapers (The York Guardian); reports by social service agencies; motions and staff reports by Toronto City Council. Using a field notebook, I recorded passive observations at every community event or meeting in York South-Weston that I found out about (e.g., residents' association meetings; historical society meetings; government consultations on public works projects and gun violence, meetings hosted by social service agencies about housing or city budget cuts; a public memorial for a young Black man shot in the neighbourhood; etc.). Where possible and appropriate, I digitally recorded these public meetings, eight of which I transcribed.8 I recorded my observations and preliminary reconstructive analysis in hard copy field journals and an electronic journal application called Journaler. This application allowed me to create a chronological record of my fieldwork, was searchable using keywords and allowed me to develop initial thematic codes through the use of “tags” and “categories.” I also used Journaler for organizing and storing electronic data I collected (e.g., web links, important emails, news articles, etc.). When I began to take the minutes for coalition meetings, I wrote some of my real-time observations and personal reflections alongside the official minutes. To aid with ongoing reflection and analysis, I wrote summaries of my observations and preliminary analysis every few months and kept a working document of major themes and arguments. I compiled a basic timeline (in addition to chronicling entries in Journaler) of any meetings and key political events that took place at the neighbourhood, municipal and provincial levels. A still different spreadsheet was used for historical analysis, with the vertical columns of the spreadsheet
8 Soliciting consent for recording public meetings was not necessary. But all individual and group interview participants (n=40) signed a consent form that was approved by the University of Toronto Research Ethics Board. I also gave all interview participants an approved Information Letter describing my research project. Interview participants included both key leaders and many regular members of the MDWN and TCBN. At public meetings, including coalition meetings, I introduced myself as a PhD Candidate at the University of Toronto. 33 listing month-by-month events between 2004-2011, and separate columns running horizontally for different key actors and scales of analysis (e.g., Mount Dennis, Weston, the Mount Dennis Community Association, Labour Council, City Planning, Province, etc.). This spreadsheet helped me understand how the Mount Dennis Weston Network emerged and changed in relation to these entities. My primary record also drew from two archives and a local written history of York Township by Wilbert Thomas (1996). These historical sources allowed me to investigate the period of industrialization, real estate development and Anglo-Saxon socio-cultural dominance, in York South- Weston between 1920-1980. The City of York archives housed the Mount Dennis News Weekly from 1931-1965 that revealed everyday life in Mount Dennis at a time when it was, what planners today call, “a complete community” (i.e., a neighbourhood in which people lived, worked, shopped and played). The City of Toronto archives contained important materials of interest to the project, including: government reports on urban planning, industrial policy and environmental management; evidence of working class struggles and political organizations; as well as arial photographs taken every few years between 1946-1992. Although I do not write very much about this local history in the following chapters, archival research helped me better situate the nostalgia being expressed at community meetings by long-time residents and the motivation driving social movement activity in the area. At the same time, the historical record helped me understand the lingering dominance of Anglo-Saxon socio- cultural institutions and traditions that at times challenged my efforts to bring about alliance-forming across ethno-racial groups. Building trust with other coalition members was not only critical for strengthening the validity of my interviews with key informants, but also for succeeding as a community organizer. Building participants' trust—or what activists call “solidarity”—was ongoing throughout my project and was strengthened by the long duration of my fieldwork. I spent two years (with some overlap) with each of the MDWN (2011-2013) and the TCBN (2013-2015). As somebody who lived a short bike ride to, but still not in the study area, I was considered an outsider who needed to establish my legitimacy and make clear my intentions for joining what was a neighbourhood coalition (my previous coalition-work certainly helped in this regard). At the same time, my lack of previous involvement in the MDWN was an advantage in building bridges (and gaining access) across partisan lines, which had become strained by the end of the first wave of the MDWN's activity (2004-2011). I took deliberate steps at the beginning of my fieldwork to gain the trust and respect of coalition members. I attended every meeting, completed research on topics requested by the group and volunteered to do menial tasks (e.g., typing up 34 meeting minutes; helping to arrange the meeting room; designing the flyer; writing materials for the website; etc.). Especially at the beginning of my fieldwork, I also took care of most administrative tasks for a research grant that allowed our coalition to hire community researcher-organizers. The type of nonparticipant observation proposed by Carspecken for the first phase of fieldwork was not possible for the initial coalition meetings, since I was expected—and wanted—to contribute to strategic discussions. But I did adopt more of a listening role during early meetings as I took time to get to know people. My initial set of interviews were also more monological, as I refrained from engaging in debates with interview participants, compared with my second set of interviews near the end of my fieldwork during which I often asked participants probing follow-up questions that stirred more debate and dialogue. As my involvement with the MDWN deepened, I contributed more of my opinions during meetings. My concern for not creating too much social distance between myself and potential informants within the coalition never prevented me from articulating my views, but did make me check my tone and approach (e.g., treating others with respect and providing constructive alternatives when offering criticisms). I conducted forty semi-structured interviews, including: twenty with key activists who were, or had been, deeply engaged in social movement activity in York South-Weston; ten with peripherally or sometimes-active participants of social movement organizations; and ten with community members who were not actively engaged in any organization. Of these three groups of interviews, I transcribed all twenty interviews of the key activists, seven of the peripherally-involved participants and four of the non-engaged participants. Most of these interviews were aimed giving me multiple perspectives on the history of community organizing in York South-Weston between 2004-2011, particularly the MDWN's advocacy around the former Kodak industrial lands and the reasons why the MDWN was promoting environmentally-oriented economic development. While most participants were sympathetic to the MDWN, some interview participants had actively campaigned against the positions taken by the MDWN. Two small group interviews—one with two people who were active members of the MDWN and one with three people from a residents' association who opposed the MDWN's proposals—created a more comfortable space for participants while helping to jog or verify their memories (i.e., “group triangulation”). Participants were also asked about why the MDWN adopted a “green” orientation to economic development and their personal motivations for becoming involved (or not becoming more involved) in social movement activity. The set of interviews I conducted later in my fieldwork were reflective discussions about the successes and challenges of carrying out the work we had been doing 35 with the MDWN and TCBN. Some of the most insightful conversations I had with participants was during informal small group chats or one-on-one chats that we would have before or after meetings or over the phone. These chats would often fuse social interactions (e.g., joking around, discussing neighbourhood gossip, family life, etc.) with expressions of political opinions that somebody did not feel comfortable, or relevant, to bring up during a meeting. Informal chats were also the best way for me to learn about coalition members' feelings towards one another, and so to get a sense of group dynamics. My participant observations, or praxis, involved four primary types of activities: participating in numerous coalition meetings; advocating at public meetings; community organizing; and participating in community benefit negotiations with Metrolinx as part of a team representing the TCBN. I recorded my participant observations and preliminary analysis of these experiences while I was taking meeting minutes, or in my electronic journal, as well as through periodic written summaries. By coalition meetings I am referring to meetings of the Mount Dennis Weston Network (see table 8.1), as well as meetings of the Labour Council task force, meetings with an advisory group that setup the Toronto Community Benefits Network, TCBN general membership meetings, and TCBN steering committee meetings (see table 10.2). Meetings were important sites of social movement learning, as we collectively reflected on our work and debated tactics and strategy. I helped organize and facilitate two popular education workshops held by the MDWN aimed at: strengthening relationships amongst members and potential members; brainstorming problems in the community; reviewing the past work of the coalition; and strategizing a future work plan. I also prepared workshop materials and made presentations aimed at familiarizing TCBN members with the concept of, and strategies for winning and successfully implementing, community benefits agreements. In addition to the public meetings and community events I attended at the beginning of my fieldwork, at which I took passive observations, I also later participated in public consultation meetings on transit projects, gun violence and economic development in York South-Weston where I actively challenged government officials to respond to the proposals being promoted by the MDWN. As part of the TCBN's efforts to win a community benefits agreement, I helped to meet with politicians and sat on the TCBN's negotiation team during the first year of negotiations with Metrolinx (the Ontario government's transit authority). These sometimes tense interactions gave me first-hand insights into how the government was defending the status quo while at the same time helping me to see where political openings existed for effecting change. 36
In terms of community organizing, I tried to broaden the membership of the MDWN and the TCBN by meeting with community groups and agencies in York South-Weston, as well as Scarborough and Flemingdon. I identified organic community leaders at public meetings we organized and invited them to future MDWN meetings. I participated in small meetings setup by the MDWN with organizations and government workers in an effort to operationalize the MDWN's green economic development vision. I was also jointly responsible, along with the Director of the Toronto Labour Education Centre (LEC), for managing a $40,000 research grant issued by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Community-University Research Alliances (CURA) program. The work of the MDWN was selected as one of eight case studies in neighbourhoods across Toronto that comprised the Anti-Poverty Community Organizing and Learning (APCOL) project. We hired three community researcher-organizers to support the work of the MDWN including one of the existing members of the MDWN (a white, middle-aged male), and two younger residents of York South-Weston (one woman and one male) who were not previously involved with the MDWN.9 The two younger residents were already active community organizers within York South- Weston's Somali and Caribbean communities—ethno-racial groups experiencing higher levels of poverty and political marginalization but with whom the MDWN had struggled to build connections. These researcher-organizers helped plan, and conduct outreach for, the two community meetings we held in Mount Dennis aimed engaging marginalized residents in the development of a community benefits agreement.10 All three researcher-organizers actively participated at MDWN meetings, and two of them continued to participate in the TCBN following the end of their contracts. Our team of community researcher-organizers met eleven times between November 2012 and March 6th, 2013, outside of regular MDWN meetings. These meetings were opportunities to coordinate and debrief outreach efforts and the community meetings. Through working and reflecting with these researcher-organizers, we gained a deeper appreciation for the challenges of cross-class, cross-race, social movement alliance-forming. Community researcher-organizers realized several benefits besides being paid for their work, including: training and experience with how to give formal presentations, how to lobby politicians, and how to build a website; first-time exposure to unions (both in terms of
9 Funds from the SSHRC-CURA APCOL grant were also used to pay for meeting expenses (e.g., food, sound equipment, child care, transportation, etc.), interview transcription, and an administration fee for LEC. 10 Reports of these events, including special measures taken to make the events accessible to single parents and low- income residents, can be found on-line: Nugent, James, 2013 February 18, “Family Day in Mount Dennis: Residents gather to discuss barriers to accessing transit-related jobs,” http://www.apcol.ca/Case_Studies/Mount_Dennis_- _CBA/Family_Day_2013/index.html; Nugent, James, 2013 April 26, “Interactive Panel Discusses 'Community Benefits' in Mount Dennis,” http://www.apcol.ca/Case_Studies/Mount_Dennis_-_CBA/Interactive_Panel.html. 37 union activism and being covered by a union contract for their paid work); new social networks with other community organizations and social service agencies; and new strategic insights surrounding community benefits agreements and local economic development. Two community-researchers were able to use their work experience with the MDWN and TCBN to secure directly related jobs after their contracts ended, and the third community-researcher secured a good reference which they told me was instrumental in securing their next job. Finally, I gathered participant observations over the course of a year while I was a member of the team representing the TCBN in negotiations with Metrolinx for a community benefits agreement. As with other meetings, I took minutes, recorded my observations and wrote down initial analysis. My role in these negotiation meetings was more of an academic advisor and my comments focused on sharing cross-jurisdictional research of community benefits agreements and related policies. Being in the negotiation room allowed me to see how different interests within government and the TCBN played out, and to evaluate the level of the TCBN's power and the efficacy of its strategy. Prolonged participant observation allowed me to detail the process through which key decisions were arrived at, the mundane, “nuts and bolts” processes of how labour-community-environmental coalitions form and operate, as well as some of the challenges blocking alliance-forming. I more easily related internal coalition dynamics and decision-making to broader events or political processes to explain the emergence and development of the coalitions. One advantage of using ethnographic methods was being able to track alliance-forming in real time rather than reconstructing the process retrospectively through interviews and secondary documents. Many of the contingencies, failed attempts, social tensions, emotions and day-to-day efforts sustaining a coalition are easily forgotten after the fact. Participant observation helped capture the messy reality of alliance-forming—fragmented and ever-changing ideological formations, uneasy and uncertain feelings, the need to speculate and take action in an open-ended and rapidly evolving political context—that, looking back (e.g., through interviews), often appear more certain and crystallized than they actually were at the time. One disadvantage of participatory research and using ethnographic methods is that you can quickly become associated with the group you are primarily engaged with. This might have shaped how some participants responded to me in their interviews—improving access to participants in cases where they saw the coalition in a positive light, while likely closing down dialogue in other cases where the coalition—and me by association—were viewed as threats (e.g., by politicians who had fought against the coalition in the past). Another disadvantage is that ethnographic methods and 38 participatory research can take considerable amounts of time. This can create significant financial and professional pressures on scholars, especially those who are in the early stages of their careers when institutionalized expectations for publishing one's findings is high. As I found out, with participatory research, it can also be hard to walk away from the “field.” Although my empirical data collection formally ended in 2015, I was never able to completely walk away from the organizations and people I had been working with for four years, and have continued to advise the TCBN and other groups now working on community benefits.
Analytical Method
Analyzing my data was an iterative process. I did not formally code every transcript for each of my interviews and meetings. Given my prolonged experience in the field and progressive preliminary analysis, I had already identified my major themes, explanations and arguments by the time I began writing my draft chapters. Once my fieldwork was over, I reviewed the analytical summaries I had periodically written, key interview transcripts, all the meeting minutes (including my sidebar observations and reflections) and most of my journal entries. I used this review process to clarify, change, or strengthen my initial analysis and to draw out key supportive quotes from my transcripts. To understand the dialectical relation between social movement coalitions and the production of urban space (including the transformation of the urban metabolism), my analysis moved across multiple scales and between empirical findings and theory. I brought together ethnographic and historical materialist insights in a similar way as critical ethnography, extended case method and political ecology. These methodologies tend to be abductive, basing analysis in ethnographic findings at a particular site and then moving towards an engagement with regional to global relations and existing social theories. Carspecken's “systems analysis” (i.e., stage four and five of his approach) begins by comparing the main field site under study with other social sites and then relating these findings to social theory. The extended case method “applies reflexive science to ethnography in order to extract the general from the unique, to move from the 'micro' to the 'macro,' and to connect the present to the past in anticipation of the future, all by building on preexisting theory” (Burawoy 2003, 5). Political ecologists draw on the (strictly abductive) “progressive contextualization” methodology of cultural ecology, but incorporate a more iterative engagement with critical social theory to analyze 39 persistent power relations and to advocate for socio-ecological change (Robbins 2012).11 My methodology was less abductive than these approaches. Rather than starting my analysis by contextualizing the 'micro' (i.e., the neighbourhood for my fieldwork) and then moving progressively to wider and denser contexts (e.g., macro political-economic analysis), my research problem, participatory ethnographic inquiry and analysis were all firmly motivated and guided by my previous theorizing and praxis in Malawi and Toronto regarding poverty alleviation, environmental justice, labour-community- environmental coalitions, deindustrialization, “green” economic development and climate change policy. My analysis first examines deindustrialization and urban renewal descriptively by comparing the changing demographic, labour market and socio-ecological conditions of Mount Dennis, and York- South Weston with other Toronto neighbourhoods. I then used a historical materialist analysis to relate these neighbourhood and city-wide changes, as well as the emergence of labour-community coalitions, to broader contradictions within capitalism. Historical materialism is a dialectical method for analyzing how the relationship between the forces of production and social relations lead to societal transformations. It explains why material power, ideology and institutions come together in certain times and places, while coming apart in others (Cox 1986). For example, I understood labour- community coalitions as a response by labour unions to deindustrialization, which was driven by contradictions between the forces of production and the social relations of production (Harvey 2007, 1982; N. Smith 1984). I understood deindustrialization and urban renewal not only as local or city-wide processes but also as part of provincial socio-ecological governance and global processes of uneven development and spatio-temporal fixes by internationally-mobile capital. Neoliberal urban governance
11 Progressive contextualization explains particular human-environmental interactions “by placing them within progressively wider or denser contexts” (Vayda 1983, 265). Progressive contextualization situates interactions within a complex set of causes and effects, but resists a structural or systemic analysis for theorizing how socio-ecological relations and processes are reproduced: “we can start with the actions or interactions of individual living things and can proceed to put these into contexts that make the actions or interactions intelligible by showing their place within complexes of causes and effects. No a priori assumptions need to be made, however, about the permanence of these complexes or their correspondence with units previously defined or identified for purposes of systems analysis. Thus progressive contextualization provides us with a way to gain holistic understanding without recourse to procrustean systems frameworks and their attendant and arguable assumptions about the stability of systems and about the mechanisms whereby such stability is achieved” (Vayda 1983, 270–271; see also Robbins, 2012). In his extensive survey of political ecology, Robbins (2012) finds that: “Political ecologists typically operate from case studies, often using immersive techniques to understand both values and practices of people, within households, communities, and localities. Participant observation techniques are common, as are survey instruments. This approach reflects the field's deep roots in development-oriented research in small communities, where anthropological and geographic field techniques were typically ethnographic. These are further analyzed in a comparative fashion, stressing how local knowledges and practices, along with their social network and ecologies, are impinged upon by political and economic upheaval—commodity price changes, the implementation of conservation reserves, or the introduction of new markets, contracts, or technologies.” 40 was aimed at making Toronto a globally competitive city, which led, in part, to tensions or conflicts vis-à-vis the needs of neighbourhood groups and their desire for more participatory democracy. Historical materialism grounded my theory of the state, in which the bourgeois state understands its role as facilitating renewed conditions for capital accumulation (e.g., through free trade agreements, public-private infrastructure projects, urban planning, etc.) and preventing radical challenges to the capitalist system and existing political hierarchies by mediating conflicts between labour, capital and other social movement actors (e.g., by regulating labour and the environment, fostering oppressive ethno-racial and gendered divisions, manufacturing consent to non-participatory and undemocratic governance, and applying coercive force when necessary). Eco-Marxists have theorized how deteriorating socio-ecological (including political-economic) conditions, together with political openings within the state, foster the emergence of coalitions (O’Connor 1998). But the formation of coalitions and the effectiveness of alliance-forming are never guaranteed by these changing conditions or structures alone. I drew together eoc-Marxist theories with a Gramscian theoretical framework, social movement theory and ethnographic approaches, to understand how the MDWN and TCBN coalitions were strategically organized and how they developed over time. My goal was to not only describe causes and effects at multiple scales, but to explain these in order to change them.
Assessing the Quality and Limitations of My Study
The positivist and post-positivist paradigms assess the quality of research in terms of its ability to reduce bias through techniques aimed at increasing reliability and validity. In contrast, the transformative research paradigm sees bias as inevitable and even warranted. I have argued for the need to make the researcher's bias more explicit by elaborating on the axiology of the study including the method used by the researcher to arrive at their research problem. The trustworthiness (or credibility) of transformative research can be increased through immersion, collaboration and triangulation:
Rather than removing or guarding against researcher bias, the dynamic interaction between the researcher and participant is viewed as central to capturing the inherently contextualized experiences of the participant. Issues of rigour remain but take on different meanings and forms. The goal here is not to eliminate bias— because that would be futile—but rather to enhance the trustworthiness of the findings by including and documenting multiple perspectives on the focus of the inquiry. In some cases, this 41
might mean demonstrating that the researcher became immersed enough in the participants’ experiences so as to credibly represent and interpret them. In others, this might involve triangulating the data sources and/or the investigators (Spencer, Pryce, and Walsh 2014, 4; also see Patton 2015).
I have already detailed how I immersed myself in my study site and with my participants over an extended period of time. Participant observation, as well as other document analysis, allowed me to understand multiple perspectives on the coalitions under study. I have also discussed how I used interviews to gather multiple interpretations of the MDWN historical development (before I became involved). Using a range of methods allowed me to triangulate my data. For example, I used archival research (including old youtube videos of public meetings), newspaper articles and document analysis of city council reports to cross-reference historical narratives offered by interview participants. The quality of critical theory can also be assessed in terms of whether it inspires or enables action, while the quality of participatory research being assessed in terms of how well it empowers research participants in a meaningful and lasting way (Lincoln, Lynham, and Guba 2011; Correa 2013). With this in mind, my analysis identifies some of the direct benefits that coalition-building has had for people participating in the Mount Dennis Weston Network and the Toronto Community Benefits Network, and critically evaluates the impacts that these coalitions' work on green economic development and community benefits agreements have had for targeted beneficiaries (i.e., marginalized residents). I have taken some steps to strengthen my study's trustworthiness through collaboration with research participants, or what Lather (1986, 268–69) calls “debriefing sessions” and “theoretical exchange”:
Research designs can be more or less participatory, but dialogic encounter is required to some extent if we are to invoke the reflexivity needed to protect research from the researcher's own enthusiasms. Debriefing sessions with participants provide an opportunity to look for exceptions to emerging generalizations. Submitting concepts and explanations to the scrutiny of all those involved sets up the possibility of theoretical exchange — the collaborative theorizing at the heart of research which both advances emancipatory theory and empowers the researched.
Similarly, Carspecken (1996) employs “member checks.” This type of collaborative dialogue between researcher and participants about emerging research findings, can raise altogether new insights while also helping to increase the validity of the study's data and conclusions since data is put under broader 42 scrutiny and verification by the participants themselves. I fully shared with participants my reflections and research findings relating to our organizing- oriented research problems during meetings and workshops. Considering how my understandings coincided or were at odds with the views of organic intellectuals providing learning moments for me. These “rich points,” as Michael Agar (1996; 2006) calls them, helped shed light on how my socio- cultural knowledge (i.e., my common sense and assumptions about power relations) and strategic perspective differed, or coincided, with other research participants. For example, I presented my cross- jurisdictional research on community benefits agreements to members of the TCBN at a meeting, who challenged and refined my conceptualization of CBAs. Similarly, I contributed to extensive discussions and debates during coalitions meetings over the purpose and terms of a CBA for Toronto's Eglinton Crosstown project. This allowed me to better appreciate how different coalition members strategically understood CBAs. I have already mentioned how I also held several debrief meetings with community researchers to reflect on our alliance-forming efforts and how my later interviews were much more dialogical. A major limit on my participatory methodology was that I have not yet gone back and shared all of the findings relating to my academic-oriented research problem with research participants (e.g., by sharing a draft executive summary of my written dissertation). I intend to do this, but will not be able to incorporate the feedback I receive before submitting my dissertation. Still, key leaders of the coalitions have been present at academic conferences where I presented my findings. The chair of the TCBN was a co-editor for one of the non-academic publications I wrote about our coalition's work (Nugent 2014), and he also co-edited and commented on the final report for our SSHRC-CURA grant, which included my preliminary analysis (Nugent 2013). There are a few more limitations to my study. Originally, I proposed interviewing all coalition members at the very beginning and end of my fieldwork period in order to track their ideological change through coalition-building. However, the expanding scope of our coalition's work (i.e., scaling- up to a city-wide coalition negotiating a CBA) consumed so much of my time that I was forced to stagger my interview schedule over the duration of my fieldwork. Many of the participants I interviewed at the start of my fieldwork, ended up not being people who participated actively in the coalition throughout the course of my fieldwork (I did conduct a follow-up interview with one participant). Consequently, my analysis of ideological change at the individual level comes primarily from key informants reflecting back on what they had learned, coupled with my participant 43 observations. My analytical focused became more about social movement learning at the scale of the organization rather than the individual. Another limitation is that my fieldwork ended before the Community Benefits Framework negotiated between the Toronto Community Benefits Network and Metrolinx was implemented. Therefore, I was not able to fully assess the concrete impacts that these negotiations had in terms of benefiting marginalized residents. My conclusions for my work with the TCBN instead focus on the gains and compromises made during the negotiation process for the Community Benefits Framework. 44
Chapter 2
Social Movement Alliance-Forming: An Institutional Broadening and Ideologically Deepening of Coalitions
Several literature reviews and edited volumes have documented an increasing number of labour-community coalitions over the past thirty years in the United States (Nissen 2004; Obach 2004; Tattersall 2008; Brecher and Costello 1990; Tattersall 2013; Reynolds 2004; L. Turner, Hurd, and Katz 2001; L. Turner and Cornfield 2007a), Canada (Ross 2007; Ross and Savage 2012; Simon J. Black 2005) as well as outside North America (McBride and Greenwood 2009; Frege and Kelly 2004; Vandenberg 2007; Wills 2001). Labour-community coalitions have set out to achieve a wide range of objectives: living wage campaigns (Luce 2007; Holgate and Wills 2007); preventing or fighting plant closures (Haines and Klein 1982; Lynd 1983; Keil 1994; Fitzgerald and Simmons 1991; Nissen 1995); local and regional economic development (Whalen 2010; Applegate 2007; Greer, Byrd, and Fleron 2007); union organizing campaigns of precarious workers (Krinsky and Reese 2006) and within racialized communities (Lucio and Perrett 2009; Fletcher and Gapasin 2009; Moody 2009); challenging free trade agreements (Gould, Lewis, and Roberts 2004); shaping urban planning (I. T. MacDonald 2011; Wolf-Powers 2010; Tufts 2008; L. Turner and Cornfield 2007a); building electoral power and influencing public policy (Reynolds and Byrd 2006; Hauptmeier and Turner 2007; Rhee and Sadler 2007); and realizing environmental justice and sustainability (Rose 2000; Obach 2004; Nugent 2009; Estabrook 2007; Moore 2002). The wide range of issues addressed by labour-community coalitions has invited analysis of these coalitions from a variety of disciplines and theoretical traditions: labour studies; labour geography; eco-Marxism; Gramscian theories of (counter)hegemony; and social movement theory developed from within the sociological tradition. Scholars have theorized labour-community coalitions variously: as moments of union renewal and labour's spatial-fix; as struggles for community empowerment, recognition, and the right to the city; and as part of a broader (eco)socialist or counter- hegemonic movements. These different theoretical approaches for studying coalitions have not been well-integrated because they ask fundamentally different questions of coalitions based on contrasting political orientations and/or scales of analysis. In this chapter, I draw together different disciplinary perspectives and theoretical approaches to offer a unified, multi-scalar theory of labour-community coalitions that I refer to as social movement alliance-forming. My theory of alliance-forming explains 45 and analytically connects the emergence, efficacy, and political significance of labour-community coalitions. Deteriorating socio-ecological (including political-economic) conditions together with political openings within the state foster the emergence of coalitions. But the emergence and effectiveness of coalitions in responding to these conditions and seizing these political circumstances depends on the organizing strategy and tactics employed by coalitions, and the tact of activists leading the coalition. Coalitions and coalition leaders are effective when they: frame grievances in ways that attract and inspire participants and/or that elicit favourable responses from the state and capital; mobilize resources to sustain and extend coalition activities; and facilitate cooperation within the coalition by negotiating ideological, strategic, and embodied differences. The impact or success of a labour-community coalition should be assessed not only in terms of whether it succeeds in changing policies or defends against immediate threats posed to workers and the community, but also in terms of related ideological transformations or social movement learning that coalition participants, and the coalition as an organization, undergo as part of alliance-forming. The political significance of labour-community coalitions cannot be predicted or understood a priori; the transformative aspect of alliance-forming (or its absence) can only be properly assessed through empirical analysis of particular coalitions. My concept of social movement alliance-forming tries to reconcile two tensions within the literature on labour-community coalitions. First, insufficient attention has been given to the scalar limits of different methodological approaches used for studying coalitions. The emergence of labour- community coalitions has most commonly been theorized at the macro-scale, as a response to changing political-economic conditions and labour regulation and/or in terms of their counter-hegemonic potential. This chapter aims to demonstrate how these theories can be informed by social movement theory and ethnographic approaches that explore the day-to-day activities and thinking of individual activists and social movement organizations. For example, eco-Marxism's second contradiction of capitalism thesis helps explain the emergence of social movement coalitions in terms of the degradation of socio-ecological conditions under capitalism (J. O’Connor 1998). But this model presents a somewhat mechanistic explanation of how labour-community coalitions form, paying too little attention to the particular contexts, organizing challenges, and ideological processes that often block or enable the formation of coalitions. Other authors have drawn on Gramsci's work to situate social movement coalitions as part of a broader counter-hegemonic project that challenges the ideological and coercive power of a ruling 46 alliance or “historical bloc” (Carroll 1997; Estabrook 2007; Gramsci 1992). Gramsci's concept of the organic intellectual helps us move across scales of analysis by highlighting the role of individuals, organizations, and institutions in reproducing or making new ruling alliances through articulating and organizing around a “popular collective will." But the processes or mechanisms through which consent, or the counter-hegemonic collective will, are organized are seldom detailed, especially at the scale of the individual or the social movement coalition. This chapter shows how eco-Marxist and Gramscian approaches to theorizing alliance-forming can be strengthened by applying concepts within social movement theory (e.g. political process theory, resource mobilization, framing, and collective identity formation) and theories of social movement learning. Social movement theory provides a more nuanced, mid-level, theoretical framework for explaining the success or failure of coalitions and for understanding the ideological and strategic work that coalitions undertake. The second tension in the literature on labour-community coalitions, stems from a long- standing debate between orthodox socialist theory and post-Marxists regarding the political significance or revolutionary potential of labour-community coalitions (Waterman 1993). Traditional socialist theory, which orients much of the labour studies and labour geography literatures, and which guides many trade union and socialist activists, interprets labour-community coalitions as a broadening of working-class struggle against capital and its state allies. The contradictions of capitalism are given analytical and political primacy, and labour-community coalitions are usually viewed from the perspective of labour, as part of unions' efforts to renew their bargaining strength and political power in response to post-Fordist or neoliberal restructuring (Turner and Hurd 2001; Simon J. Black 2005; Wills 2001; Ross 2008). The relation of labour-community coalitions to union renewal is important, but the focus on labour in these studies, and a union perspective in particular, can sometimes overshadow the role of community groups or organizers in leading coalitions, or can miss the significance that alliance- forming has from the perspective of community groups (e.g. as part of struggles for recognition or the right to the city). In contrast, post-Marxists interpret social movement coalitions as part of a radical democratic, “more-than-class,” struggle that unifies people fighting against multiple forms of hierarchy and oppression (Laclau and Mouffe 1985). I argue that the political orientation and revolutionary potential (or lack of potential) of labour-community coalitions, in terms of overthrowing capitalism or bringing about radical democracy, cannot be evaluated a priori. Some coalitions present themselves in class terms—i.e. as struggles for union renewal, a living wage, income inequality, and against corporate 47 power. Other labour-community coalitions articulate their demands in terms of equity, democratic participation, or a mix of these motivations. Coalitions are commonly reform-, rather than revolutionary-, oriented, advancing the interests of some groups in ways that exclude, if not worsen, the situation of others. Evaluating the strategic orientation of coalitions and the extent to which they engaged in a universal, transformative project, requires empirical analysis. One of my motivations for engaging in participatory research with labour-community coalitions is to better explain why certain coalitions frame their strategic demands and identities in the way that they do. Although coalitions are seldom explicitly aimed at building-up a popular counter-hegemonic movement, let alone guided by revolutionary ambitions, they are inevitably engaged in a “politics of scale” (Brenner 2001). Swyngedouw (1997, 141) points out that “the continuous reshuffling and reorganization of spatial scales is an integral part of social strategies and struggles for control and empowerment” (quoted in Brenner 2001, 608). Labour-community coalitions may form in response or opposition to rescaling processes by the state and capital (e.g. austerity-driven downloading or uploading of public services; the decentralization or centralization of collective bargaining regimes; the relocation of production offshore or regionally; etc.) (Swyngedouw 2000; Herod and Wright 2002; Estabrook 2007). Labour geographers have well-documented how spatial competition and capital mobility have been used to discipline labour, but also the ways that labour has organized to “fix” and regulate capital in particular locales, or scaled-up to contend with increasingly mobile capital (Walsh 2000; Herod and Wright 2002). Less attention has been given in the literature to how other social movements, sometimes organizing in coalition with labour, have mediated what I refer in chapter three to as the a socio-ecological fix. These re-scaling processes form or reproduce scalar hierarchies that are not simply the setting of coalition activity, but the very stakes contested through that activity (Brenner 2001).12 Alliance- forming is an attempt to transcend spatially-delineated categories and scalar hierarchies through which power is exercised—such as the separation and forced trade-offs between “home” or “community” from “the workplace;” or between “workers” and “community” from “the environment;” or the subordination of neighbourhood priorities to city or national imperatives. At the same time, alliance- forming challenges social movement actors to scale-up their place-bound identities and “militant particularism” into more universal concerns (Harvey 2001b). Alliance-forming is an ideological transformation, but also an institutional process of building organizations and pressuring the state and
12 Brenner (2001, 608) calls for empirical and theoretical research into “the particular historical-geographical conditions under which scalar hierarchies may become stakes rather than mere settings of social struggle.” 48 capital in ways that co-produce new scales of struggle (and struggles over scale) (N. Smith 1993). Whereas this chapter focuses on how alliance-forming produces scale, the following chapter will discuss labour-community coalitions as a spatial strategy for gaining greater democratic control over the production of urban space, including more equitable distribution of surplus value concentrated in cities. I begin this chapter by developing my concept of alliance-forming as a transformative project, understood in terms of an ideological deepening as well as an institutional broadening or scaling-up of organizational activity. I then discuss how Marxist and eco-Marxist crisis theories help explain the emergence of labour-community coalitions. I turn to Gramsci's notions of hegemony and organic intellectuals as a start for exploring how coalitions produce scale in ways that relate everyday common sense-making of oppression to broader socio-historical alliances. Finally, I use social movement theory from within the sociological tradition and theories of social movement learning to delve deeper into the process of counter-hegemony, detailing how organic intellectuals engage in alliance-forming and the factors that make them effective.
Alliance-forming as a Deepening and Broadening of Coalitions
The terms “network,” “coalition”, and “alliance” are sometimes used interchangeably in the literature and in practice but here I aim for greater specificity. I use the term network to refer to a group of people and/or organizations that come together virtually or in person primarily to share strategic information rather than to jointly run political campaigns, to offer one another financial resources, etc.. Networks are less institutionalized since joint decision-making does not take place (e.g. networks do not commonly have by-laws or annual general meetings). Participants may be required to formally register, pay membership fees and be subject to screening criteria before joining. Improved transportation and telecommunications has encouraged the proliferation and scaling-up of networks.13 Despite the presence of the term “network” in their name, both the “Mount Dennis Weston Network” (MDWN) and the “Toronto Community Benefits Network” (TCBN) fall within my definition of coalitions.
13 The sociological analysis of social networks uses a less restrictive use of the term network (Knoke 2008; Scott and Carrington 2011). Social network analysis is used to track relationships between two or more individuals who are socially tied together as friends, kin, neighbours, work colleagues, or through their involvement in formal organizations or institutions such as religion, community groups or recreational teams. Building new social networks in this sense, or connecting different social networks together, is a central goal of social movement coalitions and a key way that organic intellectuals produce new scales of struggle (Sadler and Fagan 2004). 49
Coalitions are commonly thought of as two or more organizations, that traditionally work on separate issues, or the same issues independently, now working together in either a short-term or long- term relationship towards a strategic political goal. I define labour-community coalitions as community groups and unions, union activists, or other labour organizations such as labour councils, engaging together and taking actions towards a common political objective or goal. I broaden the common concept of coalitions to not only include organizations but also individuals since a combination of individuals and organizations often constitute labour-community coalitions at local or neighbourhood scales (this is the case for the MDWN and TCBN examined in this dissertation). By community groups I am referring to place-based organizations that engage in strategic or political activities within a particular city or town, such as: neighbourhood or tenant associations, social justice and human rights organizations (e.g. those advocating for the rights of women, migrants, those with disabilities, gay rights, as well as anti-poverty and anti-racism groups, etc.), social service agencies engaged in an advocacy role, religious groups, and environmental organizations. In this sense, “community” has three meanings—community as organizations; community as social relationships based on common interests or collective identities; and community as particular places (understood as a physical location, the physical spaces of everyday life, as well as a sense of place) (Tattersall 2008; Agnew 1987). Following Tattersall (2008), I incorporate these three meanings of community into my concept of labour-community alliance-forming which often includes different organizations working together, pursuing or developing common interests and identities and producing new spatial and scalar relationships in the process. There is considerable conceptual overlap and terminological slippage in the ways that labour studies scholars have discussed labour-community coalitions. To the extent that labour-community coalitions advance an anti-economistic and anti-sectionalist agenda, or make unions and the broader labour movement more democratic, equitable, and participatory, they are considered a form of social unionism (Ross 2007), social movement unionism (Waterman 1993; L. Turner, Hurd, and Katz 2001; L. Turner 2007), or social justice unionism (Fletcher and Gapasin 2009). Most commonly, labour- community coalitions are understood as one strategy of community unionism (Banks 1992; Tattersall 2008; McBride and Greenwood 2009; Simon J. Black 2005; Stewart et al. 2009; Cranford and Ladd 2003). Cranford and Ladd (2003, 51) situate community unionism in the middle of a spectrum between industrial unionism (characterized by collective bargaining and union organizing within a workplace or sector, albeit often with community support) and community development outside of the workplace 50
(i.e. “a process whereby [oppressed] individuals begin to see personal problems as broader political issues and begin to think about how to address those problems collectively”). Labour-community coalitions can operate anywhere along this spectrum, but Tufts (1998) argues that community unionism should only refer to coalitions in which community groups have significant strategic decision-making power. Scholars have typologized labour-community coalitions according to the structure, duration, scope, and scale of cooperation, as well as the depth of organizational and ideological transformations that takes place through this cooperation (Obach 1999; Tattersall 2005; Lipsig-Mumme 2003; Frege, Heery, and Turner 2004).14 Implicit in these typologies is a normative evaluation that favours a progression from more top-down, ad hoc coalitions based on narrow and rigid self-interests of group members (e.g. fighting a strike, lockout, plant closure, or development project in a particular neighbourhood), towards what I view as a deepening and broadening of coalitions through social movement learning, democratic decision-making, and the breaking down of spatial and scalar hierarchies. For example, in Tattersall's (2005) typology of labour-community coalitions, ad hoc coalitions refer to temporary or one-off requests for support (e.g. picket-line support, or a financial donation), often in response to a crisis. Support coalitions are also short-term and focused on a single- issue, but use formal meeting spaces for event or campaign planning. In both ad hoc and support coalitions the initiating union or community partner defines the agenda, with solidarity often being superficial (i.e. one partner is much more engaged than the other with the supporting partner providing only limited human resources and political buy-in from leaders). Mutual-support coalitions are based on common interests. Strategy and decisions are arrived at jointly and through a deeper cultivation of trust. The buy-in and participation of high-ranking union officials helps encourage more active membership engagement. But unions are required to reframe their interests in relation to the broader community (e.g. teacher unions striking for “quality of education” vs. “increased salary for teachers”). Deep coalitions involve greater commitment of resources and engagement of memberships, but also a
14 Obach (1999, 2004) study of labour-environmental coalitions differentiates between instrumental cooperation, compromise cooperation and enlightened cooperation. Instrumental cooperation refers to short-lived coalitions around a specific policy and for which coalition partners need not modify their stated organizational goals. A compromise cooperation occurs when organizations must diverge from their stated goals to accommodate partners in a coalition so that cooperation can take place thereby increasing the likelihood that at least part of the organization's goals will be realized. Enlightened cooperation occurs when ongoing cooperation and organizational learning leads organizations to expand their original missions to internalize the concerns of their coalition partners. Comparably, the typology developed by Frege, Heery and Turner (2004) contrasts vanguard, common-cause, and integrative coalitions, while Lipsig-Mumme (2003) distinguishes between coalitions that are based on an instrumental link, common specific issues, joint social movement struggle, or a transformative link. 51 decentralized structure that allows for connection and activity between coalition members at a variety of scales as well as more participatory decision-making. Deep coalitions share a broader set of interests and engage in long-term strategic planning to build power at a societal level. Union renewal and community power can been seen as both an outcome and precursor of building deep coalitions. I use the terms labour-community alliance-forming or coalition-building to understand coalitions as a process, emphasizing the dynamic relationships, including ideological and organizational transformations, involved in coalition activity. Typologies of coalitions risk representing coalitions as static entities, downplaying the potential for particular coalitions to progress along the spectrum of coalitions typologized by Tattersall and others. Similarly, the common definition of coalitions—as organizations working together towards a common cause (and which I used earlier)— presents a static interpretation of coalition members' interests that neglects how coalition activity can cause participants to question and redefine their interests. My concept of labour-community alliance- forming emphasizes, and moves better between, the dynamic scales of coalition activity from individual ideological and organizational changes to the formation of broader hegemonic and counter- hegemonic strategic alliances. Using the term “labour” moves us beyond a union-centred view of the labour movement to include the full range of labour and working-class activists and organizations. In Toronto and other cities labour-community coalitions have been formed by labour councils, workers centres, working-class political parties, anti-poverty organizations and trade unions. I use labour-community alliance-forming as an analytical lens but also hold it up as a political objective to bring about a two-way shift in scale—both institutionally broadening, as well as ideologically deepening coalition activity. By institutionally broadening I am referring to efforts by coalitions to scale-up struggles beyond any initial workplace-community struggle. My definitions of community and community groups emphasize the local scale where labour-community coalitions often emerge and operate. But coalitions may “jump-scale” (N. Smith 1993) by mobilizing resources such as funds or political support from city-wide, provincial, national or even international organizations (Estabrook 2007), or by opening up its membership geographically. My research on the Mount Dennis Weston Network shows how a neighbourhood coalition jumped-scale into city-wide organization in order to generate more bargaining leverage against the provincial government. Jumping-scale can also go in the other direction: neighbourhood or “community” chapters are sometimes established by national unions or coalitions initially struck at the national or city-wide level (see e.g. Kriesky 2001; Sneiderman 1996). 52
Coalitions trying or needing to scale-up often struggle to overcome what Harvey (2001b) refers to as militant particularism—i.e. scaling-up the coalition beyond the narrow and often place-bound set of interests that initially bring people together into collective action. As coalitions try to broaden their organizational mission, e.g. by re-framing their particular demands as part of more universal interests, they risk losing participants by undermining the motivating reason or collective identity that brought them together in the first place. Overcoming militant particularism requires an ideological transformation that I refer to as a deepening of social movement activity. The formation of long-term, “deep coalitions” (Tattersall 2005), or what Obach (2004) calls “enlightened cooperation,” between labour and community groups involves the reorientation of coalition members' beliefs, values and/or strategic goals, and the intensification of their motivation and commitment to the work of the coalition. Alliance-forming is a process of transformative learning, or educative praxis, through which subjects are “repositioned” ideologically so as to become politically concerned and possibly engaged with broader socio-political movements of resistance, or at least the concerns of other coalition partners (S. Hall 1988; Freire 2000; Zullo and Pratt 2009). As social movement actors share their experiences, perspectives, ideas and feelings on issues, through both formal and informal learning moments, this may lead other actors to change their original beliefs or attitudes regarding power, race, class, gender and ecology. In this way, social movement alliance- forming can foster new political imaginings, generate hope and produce concrete plans for grappling with, and perhaps linking, problems across various scales (e.g. linking poverty and the need for good- paying local jobs to broader processes of neoliberalism, democracy and climate change). It is not just individuals, but also organizations or larger social groupings that might become ideologically repositioned. In this sense, alliance-forming refers to the broader arrangement or organization of social forces—individuals, organizations, social movements, fractions of capital, and state institutions—towards common political goals, even though these actors may not be working directly or consciously together at an operational level. The challenge for coalitions and coalitions leaders is to organize around grievance frames and collective identities at broader scales while still motivating coalition participants to stay engaged by addressing their particular needs including their desire for democratic decision-making within the coalition. Often, issues that seem to have obvious linkages or social groups with similar interests or strategic goals fail to coalesce into a common struggle; or, only a limited ideological deepening takes place during coalition-building. To help explain these failures and limitations I turn to Gramsci's theory of hegemony, social movement theory and 53 theories of social movement learning.
Coalitions as a Response to the Contradictions of Capitalism
Marxists and eco-Marxists explain the rise of social movements as a response to two contradictions within capitalism. Whereas the first contradiction of capitalism is traditionally associated with struggles of the labour movement, the second contradiction helps explain the emergence of so- called “new social movements” (NSMs) centred around race, gender, disability and ecology (J. O’Connor 1998). The first contradiction arises out of class struggle between labour and capital. The competitive logic of the market tends towards more productive, labour-saving technological innovations, and declining profits rates (Harvey 1982, 2007). This can lead towards overproduction and insufficient demand causing a realization crisis, or the overaccumulation of capital. In the West, class struggle during the post-War industrial boom won organized labour a greater share of profits and political power. But neoliberal policies setup in the 1970s and 1980s re-established profit rates and restored political power for the capitalist class through market liberalization (e.g. free trade, deregulating capital mobility), anti-union legislation, and tax breaks for corporations and the rich. These policies eroded the welfare state, weakened the political and economic position of organized labour (e.g. declining union density; back-to-work and 'right-to-work' legislation; etc.), led to deindustrialization, facilitated the rise of “flexible” work (i.e. temp, part-time, and contract), and widened income disparities. The negative impacts of these changes have been widespread but also uneven, disproportionately affecting workers and residents who are racialized, women, First Nation, disabled or injured (Block and Galabuzi 2011; Khosla 2014). Labour-community coalitions and alliances are analyzed by labour studies scholars primarily from the perspective of organized labour as a strategy by unions to resist neoliberal policies and to restore the political and economic power of the labour movement (i.e. “union renewal”). Neoliberalism forces both corporations and unions to either innovate or decline in what Turner (2006) describes as a “logic of participation.” According to this logic of participation unions will continue to decline if they engage in either defensive cooperation (concession bargaining and acceptance of employer demands) or defensive opposition (trying to resist neoliberal pressures on their own using traditional tactics such as top-down collective bargaining). Union renewal can occur through activist integration (mobilization of the rank-and-file and internal democratic reform) or expansive integration (organizing new groups 54 of workers, union mergers, building new coalitions with other social movement actors, international solidarity, or new labour-management partnerships) (see figure 2.1). Labour-community coalitions are therefore part of a broader suite of coalition-strategies for revitalizing the labour movement in the context of neoliberalism.
Figure 2.1: Neoliberalism's Logic of Participation. (Source: Nugent, 2009, adapted from Turner, 2006).
It is not only the organized labour movement that is negatively impacted by neoliberal policies and the capitalist market but rather the entire working class and society more generally (Polanyi 2001). The second contradiction of capitalism refers to the underproduction of the conditions of production-- i.e. nature, labour power (including human health), and communal conditions (such as urban space and infrastructure) (J. O’Connor 1998). These conditions of production are necessary for production, circulation and consumption but are neglected or externalized by the capitalist market. The environment, humans and communal conditions are treated like commodities under capitalism even through they are not (re)produced according to the logic of the market (Polanyi 2001). Their degradation, or underproduction, ultimately increases the costs production, creating economic (profitability) crisis tendencies on the supply side. Economic crises and the degradation of humans and their environments under capitalism may 55 give rise to socio-political movements of resistance that call into question the legitimacy of the state, if not the entire market system (M. O’Connor 1993). The state responds to these struggles, or tries to anticipate these struggles, through a number of material and ideological interventions (e.g. building infrastructure, urban planning measures, market regulation, social and environmental programs, reframing crises as opportunities for investment, and providing support strategically to certain affected social groups but not others, etc.). Whereas the first contradiction of capitalism is traditionally used to explain class-based struggles (i.e. the labour movement), the second contradiction helps explain the emergence of so-called “new social movements” centred around the politics of the body (e.g. feminism, disability rights), ecology (e.g. environmentalism), and the urban condition (e.g. the right to the city). Referring to feminism, the civil rights movement, and even environmentalism as “new” social movements denies their rich histories, within and outside of the labour movement (Weir 1993). But the term “new social movements” usefully highlights how the concerns of women, racialized workers and the environment were often shut out from the post-war social contract negotiated between capital, the state and certain segments of the labour movement. Of course, it would be economistic to try to explain the emergence of all struggles against patriarchy, racism, homophobia and chauvinism, as well as the philosophical basis of environmental degradation, in terms of the contradictions of capitalist social relations and economic crises.15 O'Connor's analysis of the first and second contradictions of capitalism helps identify the material basis for many social movement grievances while pointing to the potential of various struggles to form alliances out of their common structural opposition to capitalism.16 But O'Connor's analysis of the second contradiction of capitalism and Karl Polanyi's (2001) theory of a “double movement” on which O'Connor's analysis is based fail to explain how social movement alliances are formed—the formation of alliances are said to emerge “spontaneously.” This mechanistic explanation of alliance-forming can be avoided by incorporating Gramsci's theory of alliances (together with its post-Marxist variations).
Hegemony, Historical Blocs and the Role of Organic Intellectuals
A Gramscian analytical framework helps explain how alliance-forming co-produces new scales of struggle (and struggles over scale), as social movement activists try to organize everyday common
15 See Foster (2002) for a critique of an economistic and functionalist reading of the second contradiction of capitalism thesis. 16 Karl Polanyi (2001) refers to resistance by social movements to the market's intrusion into, and degradation of, everyday life as the “double movement.” 56 sense-making around lived oppression into broader socio-historical alliances of resistance, while those in power try to reproduce the status quo by blocking the organization of dissent and the socialization of alternative political imaginings. Not only do the disenfranchised organize social movement alliances from the “bottom-up,” but the elite also organize alliances from the “top-down” in order to maintain their power. Gramsci saw political power organized at a national scale into a “historical bloc”—a “system of alliances” between the dominant economic classes and a strata of the subaltern who have been won over by concession and compromises (Hall, 1986). Gramsci moved beyond Lenin's conception of class alliance—i.e. as the alignment of objective political “interests” based on actors' structural (class) positions within a given mode of production. Political interests, and the identification of classes as such, cannot be taken for granted but are rather the very subject of class struggle, i.e. ideological struggle waged in the cultural sphere as much as the political or economic (Laclau and Mouffe 2001). Power, or what Gramsci calls hegemony, is exercised not simply through force (i.e. the coercive functions of the state, or “political society”), but by garnering the consent of the masses to their own oppression through the organization of “civil society”—i.e. the ideology, institutions and intellectuals of the ruling class. Class struggle is contained so long as the particular interests of the ruling class, or class-alliance, are interpreted by the subaltern as the general or common interest, and the ruling group's worldview (including the ordering of social relations) is internalized as the natural order of things. Hegemonic power not only involves state violence and political and economic coercion but also a socio-cultural process that propagates the norms and values of the ruling classes as an obvious, taken-for-granted common sense (G. Smith 1999; Williams 1977). In advanced capitalism, where power is exercised through consent as much as coercion, Gramsci saw revolution not simply occurring through the violent take-over of the state by one vanguard class—i.e. a war of manoeuvre. Rather, revolutionary struggle involves a war of position: a long and slow ideological process of winning over the “national-popular collective will” through intellectual and moral leadership, and by organizing a new historical bloc by forming cross-class alliances. The ideological leadership and organizational work involved in forging a historical bloc is undertaken by what Gramsci termed organic intellectuals. Whereas intellectuals refer to all those individuals and organizations that instill knowledge in others so as to reproduce a given worldview, organic intellectuals emerge from, and articulate the ideologies of, a particular class (Crehan 2002). Organic intellectuals of the ruling classes reproduce hegemony while organic intellectuals of the subaltern articulate and organize counter-hegemony (although Gramsci never directly used this term). 57
Through their educational, organizational and leadership roles, labour-community coalitions can act as organic intellectuals. Hegemony involves the socialization of dominant worldviews amongst the subaltern into a widely held, taken-for-granted common sense. But this common sense also contains a nucleus of critical understanding of hegemony that people gain from their day-to-day experiences with oppression. Gramsci refers to this emergent class consciousness as “good sense” or “practical sense” (G. Smith 2014). A disjuncture or contradiction arises between people's subjective experiences of oppression and the prevailing hegemonic worldview that tries to represent this oppression as natural and normal. But practical sense remains “incoherent and fragmentary 'feelings'” until an organic intellectual articulates it into a counter-hegemonic worldview and possibly a new collective will (Gramsci quoted in Crehan 2002, 130). Ideology is not only a “relatively formal and articulated system of meanings, values, and beliefs, of a kind that can be abstracted as a 'world view' or 'class outlook'” (Williams, 1977, 109). Ideology also has a material existence, “an organic and relational whole, embodied in institutions and [state] apparatuses,” and strategic purpose because it “welds together a historical bloc around a number of basic articulatory principles” (Laclau and Mouffe 1985, 67). Hegemony is the propagation and organization of ideology through institutions and social movements. Class oppression and the formation of class alliances were the focus of Gramsci's analysis, and for some activists and scholars, labour-community coalitions are squarely efforts to revitalize the labour movement and to build-up working class power. David Harvey (2008) interprets struggles for the right to the city in this way—as a class struggle over the distribution of surplus capital in the production of urban landscapes. But post-Marxists argue that “workers” or the class subject should not be privileged analytically or politically as the basis for counter-hegemonic alliance-forming since class is compounded and contingent upon other forms of oppression (Laclau and Mouffe 2001). In this sense, labour-community coalitions and the right to the city are part of a democratic struggle for recognition as much as redistribution, i.e. a broader struggle to seize democratic control of all political and social spaces through which everyday urban life (and oppression) is experienced. Appealing to class-based identities (as “workers”) may bring some residents into social movement alliances to fight for the right to the city but others are more apt to join democratic struggles based on oppression they have experienced because of their race, gender, sexual orientation, nationality or citizenship status, disability, age, religion or ecological worldview. The task and test of organic intellectuals is to forge solidarity across multiple identities by articulating a common counter-hegemonic vision or “collective 58 will” that still attends to individuals' particular grievances.
Social Movement Theory
The strength of a Gramscian analysis of social change (including its post-Marxist modifications) comes from its ability to account for multiple forms of oppression and to connect multiple scales of activity: from everyday individual experiences with oppression, to the role of organizations in building social movement alliances, to ideology and the formation of historical blocs at the societal level. While the “war of position” identifies the ideological depth at which power and oppression is socially reproduced, a Gramscian analysis also points to the agency of actors in changing their (co-constituted) material and ideological conditions through the concepts of organic intellectuals and alliance-forming. Social movement theory developed primarily from within the sociological tradition can bring a more fine-grained analysis of agency into a Gramscian framework by identifying the mechanisms through which organic intellectuals go about articulating and organizing a counter- hegemonic popular will. Social movement theory is useful for explaining the factors leading to the success or failure of social movement alliance-forming from the vantage point of organizations and individual participants, often in relation to a particular policy, round of collective bargaining, electoral cycle, or administrative regime, and usually within a single locality. This scale of analysis complements the macro-scale political-economic and socio-ecological analysis of Marxist and eco-Marxist approaches, respectively, as well as Gramsci's theory of alliances which only take us so far in understanding why and how social movements or coalitions form in some places but not in others. Social movement theories help explain why, in the same city for instance, a labour-community coalition may form in one neighbourhood but not others, despite seemingly similar political-economic or historical-geographical conditions. Drawing on different approaches developed by social movement theorists, the efficacy of coalition-building can be understood in terms of how organic intellectuals: mobilize resources (J. D. McCarthy and Zald 1977, 2001); form collective identities (Melucci 1989, 1996); strategically frame their grievances (R. D. Benford and Snow 2000); and seize political opportunities (Meyer and Minkoff 2004; Meyer 2004; Tarrow 1998); using a variety of advocacy strategies and repertoires of contention (Tarrow 2011; Tilly and Tarrow 2007). Central to my concept of alliance-forming is ideological and organizational transformation, which social movement theorists have begun to study in terms of the 59 learning that takes place within social movements (Kilgore 1999; Foley 1999; Brookfield 1987) and coalitions in particular (Zullo and Pratt 2009; B. Spencer 1995). Rather than see these theoretical approaches as competing paradigms, I discuss how they can all contribute to our understanding of social movement coalitions.
Resource Mobilization
Building effective coalitions, like all collective action, requires the mobilization of resources. Resource mobilization theorists have identified five types of social movement resources that coalitions simultaneously draw strength from: moral, cultural, human, material and socio-organizational (Edwards and McCarthy 2004; Edwards and Gillham 2013). Moral resources include the legitimacy and political support that coalitions receive, often through external power brokers such as the media, politicians or celebrities, but also through state institutions (e.g. being granted non-profit tax status by the tax authority). Other social movement organizations and patrons also provide public support and legitimacy for a coalition. Moral resources help coalitions leverage political support and increase their chances of securing money from foundations, the state, or individual donations. Cultural resources refers to the tacit knowledge used for carrying out the everyday activities of a social movement organization (e.g. organizing a protest, planning and running meetings, managing social media, etc.), as well as the technical and strategic know-how, including tactical repertoires, used for mobilizing campaigns, organizing events and accessing additional resources. Human resources refers to labour, experiences, skills and leadership available to a coalition. Socio-organizational resources include the social networks and publicly available infrastructure (e.g. the internet, a postal system, public transit, etc.) used to recruit members and carry out campaigns. Coalitions themselves serve as a socio-organizational resource for individual social movement organizations and the social movement as a whole. Finally, material resources includes financial and physical capital required by the coalition, including membership fees, funding grants, tax breaks, in-kind support, physical buildings and equipment, donations, etc. Coalitions like the TCBN that are almost entirely funded through foundation grants are highly vulnerable to funding shortfalls (not to mention the political agenda of funders). But many labour-community coalitions are financially supported independently through union membership 60 dues. Organic intellectuals are characterized by having high levels of moral, cultural, and human resources, and useful social networks. Organic intellectuals draw on these other resources to mobilize financial resources and as part of the issue-framing process (discussed below) to inspire and legitimize the work of social movement coalitions. The moral, cultural, and human resources of organic intellectuals enables them to: open up and carry out political negotiations by “talking the talk, and walking the walk” of decision-makers; effectively appeal to funders; and successfully recruit and motivate new participants who come from a range of backgrounds. Coalitions draw on resources held by individual members organizations in ways that strengthen the coalition as a whole. For the Toronto Community Benefit Network, the Toronto and York Region Labour Council had social and political connections (e.g. to funders and decision-makers) that were well beyond the reach of grassroots organizations. Grassroots organizations had social networks and moral legitimacy (e.g.,“trust”) that reached far deeper into the community than could labour leaders or other politicians. The combined resources of these coalition members
Political Process Theory
For a social movement or coalition to succeed requires more than the presence of widespread grievances and the mobilization of resources around these grievances. The political process theory helps relate the the emergence, development and decline of social movements (including labour- community coalitions), to political opportunities or threats created by changes in the state: the relative openness or closure of the state (including political parties) to the presence and influence of social movement actors; divisions amongst the elites, or a realignment of governing alliances, that create support or sympathy for social movement organizations; the existence of influential allies; and the state's capacity and inclination to be repressive (Meyer 2004; Tarrow 1998; Tilly 1995; McAdam 1996). The state is not monolithic, meaning that coalitions can take advantage of different—and sometimes competing—political objectives, projects, and bureaucratic operating logics of departments and agencies (Estabrook 2007). Other authors have focused on how the formation, growth or continuation of social movements are motivated by threats, such as conservative “countermovements” or hostile government (Van Dyke and Soule 2002; Meyer and Staggenborg 1996; Fetner 2001; Rohlinger 2002). Early scholarship of “collective behaviour” identified four “lifecycle stages” of social 61 movements that are also useful for describing phases of coalition activity: emergence (widespread discontent with little or no organization or collective actions); coalescence (the causes of discontent, the attribution of blame, and proposed solutions are more clearly defined through organization and strategizing); bureaucratization (higher levels of organization and coalition-based strategies, often with professionalized staff, increases the movement's political power and provides access to elites); and decline or institutionalization (Blumer 1951; Christiansen 2009; Zald and Ash 1966). Many social movements or coalitions never coalesce let alone reach all four stages, and some may revert to an earlier stage rather than develop in a successive, linear manner. Political process theory offers several reasons why social movements fail or decline, and these point to the political challenges facing labour-community alliance-forming: state repression; co- optation of leadership; strategic errors; organizational strains caused by rapid expansion; factionalism within the movement or coalition. Social movements or coalitions can also decline through oligarchization, in which the concentration of power allows the leadership to engage in careerism and organizational maintenance as the end-in itself (Zald and Ash 1966; Rothschild-Whitt 1976). The development of new leaders, or “strategic capacity” (Ganz 2000), is critical if coalitions are to avoid dissolving following the loss (or co-option) of the central organizer or director. Of course, coalitions or social movements may fold after successfully establishing their ideologies or goals into the mainstream, making the movement either no longer necessary or seem unnecessary to potential recruits (Christiansen 2009). Coalitions as a whole, not simply the leadership, can also become co-opted or institutionalized into the state. In this case, the state placates the coalition through drawn-out negotiations, and by selectively incorporating some of its demands into policies or programs—but usually only in a diminished or perverted form. In Canada, governments commonly deflate political pressure from social movements by launching commissions, reports, and official inquiries, which take a long time to issue recommendations can then be ignored or only selectively acted upon by the government. A coopted social movement or coalition may become demobilized as supporters no longer feel a sense of urgency or need to provide support to the movement.17 Tempering protests may be seen by coalition leaders as a condition for negotiations with the state. This demobilization may, in turn, make it easier for the state to neglect or push out the concerns of the original social movement or coalition. In Toronto, political
17 As Meyer (2004, 140) puts it: “Authorities, through policy, make issues more or less urgent and institutional politics seem more or less promising. The better authorities are at convincing citizens of the wisdom of their policies and of the openness of their decisions to citizen influence—or, paradoxically, of their complete insulation from political influence —the more difficult is the organizer’s job.” 62 mobilization led by labour-community coalitions has often dissipated after the state partially incorporates some of the coalition's demands (e.g. phasing-in modest increases to the minimum wage), or institutionalizes coalition activities (e.g. Metrolinx entering into negotiations for a community benefits agreement with the Toronto Community Benefits Network). Rather than institutionalizing strong social movements or coalitions, the state may instead increase its repression leading to more violent protests and demobilization as one-time supporters begin to feel that the risks of collective action are too great. As Meyer (2004) summarizes: “protest occurs when there is a space of toleration by a polity and when claimants are neither sufficiently advantaged to obviate the need to use dramatic means to express their interests nor so completely repressed to prevent them from trying to get what they want” (p.128). As with Marxist and eco-Marxist theories, resource mobilization and political process theories have been criticized for providing too mechanical of an analysis, as if the emergence of coalitions simply depends on adequate resources and political opportunities (Goodwin and Jasper 2004, 1999). The “cultural turn” in social movement theory has focused more on the strategic actions and perceptions of movement activists, and the mobilization or production of ideas and meanings (Kurzman 2004; R. D. Benford and Snow 2000; Polletta and Jasper 2001; Goodwin and Jasper 2004). This approach explains how alliance-forming takes place through processes of collective identity formation, framing, social movement learning, and emotion. Analyzing these processes details the work of organic intellectuals, what accounts for their effectiveness, and how individual participants experience and engage with coalitions cognitively, socially and emotionally.
Collective Identity Formation
Collective identities have been analyzed as a source of motivation for collective action, as a strategy and strategic goal of collective action, as well as an outcome of social movements (Polletta and Jasper 2001). Common identities help bring and bind people together—a central objective of any coalition. Collective identities are formed through social interactions, cultural practices, and emotion, as much as through a common and coherent cognitive framework (Melucci 1988, 1995; Fominaya 2010; Polletta and Jasper 2001). Collective identity has be defined at the level of the individual as “self-conceptions, attitudes, or beliefs” (Whittier 1995, 16) or similarly “an individual’s cognitive, moral and emotional connection with a broader community, category, practice, or institution” (Polletta 63 and Jasper 2001, 285).18 At a social level, collective identity has been defined as “a shared sense of ‘one-ness’ or ‘we-ness’ anchored in real or imagined shared attributes and experiences among those who comprise the collectivity and in relation or contrast to one more actual or imagined sets of others” (Snow 2001, Online no page). Coalition forming is not simply a rational or articulated process to find mutual interest and a common strategy. A shared sense of identity can motivate individuals and groups to cooperate even in the absence of any clear personal economic benefits or the type of rational calculations first proposed by game theorists in their explanation of “political coalitions.” New social movement theorists challenged the idea of collective identities as simply pre-given through historical structures (e.g. class consciousness emerging spontaneously through capitalist social relations), seeing instead collective identities as the very process of forging a social movement (Melucci 1995; Hunt and Benford 2004). Although identities are historically structured, they must be actively reproduced, negotiated or newly constructed through everyday, routinized social practices and socio-cultural rituals (Fominaya 2010). Alliance-forming involves a process (at times unspoken) through which individuals or groups identify part of themselves—their beliefs, attitudes, desires, tastes, dress, language, schema of classification, etc.—reflected within the coalition and organic intellectuals leading it. Organic intellectuals leading the formation of coalitions often embody dispositions that overlap multiple collective identities helping participants “find their place” within the coalition and to “feel right” or feel comfortable attending meetings and interacting with one another. In contrast, one reason that coalitions fail to form—even in cases when different groups obviously share strategic goals—is because the collective identities of groups' leaders or members differ too much and so have difficulty relating to one another or do not even consider doing so in the first place. The formation and strengthening of new shared collective identities within a coalition occurs through ritualized practices such as meetings, workshops, conferences, websites, informal banter, and food sharing, that create group familiarity and bonds of trust or what Bandy (2004, 417) calls a “culture of solidarity.” Coalitions also revisit and revise “living documents” such as mission statements or founding documents helping to renew a sense of collective identity (Wood 2005, 110). These ritualized practices can take up considerable amounts of time without ever leading to policy changes or other institutional reforms. Evaluating the impact of coalition activity must therefore consider how it brings about changes in collective identity, transforming cultural representations and social norms, or “how
18 For a discussion on the social psychology of collective identity formation see (Fominaya 2010) 64 groups see themselves and are seen by others” (Polletta and Jasper 2001, 284). Collective identity formation is inherently a political process that often reflects and reproduces oppressive social relations based on gender, race, class, sexual orientation, ability, status, religion, and age. Resource mobilization theory helps analyze how spaces of privilege are only accessible to individuals or social groups that possess, practice, or embody certain types and amounts of moral, cultural, human, material and socio-organizational resources. Although a goal of alliance-forming is to overturn or transcend these power relations, they may nevertheless be reproduced within coalitions themselves. A case study by Zullo and Pratt (2009) reveals how these internal power relations expressed through collective identities can create barriers for engaging in social movement learning as part of alliance-forming:
There is a risk in a labor and community event for one ideology or position to dominate, and the educator needs to work toward equal status for non-union and union activists. For example, after the first organizing meeting, one volunteer felt intimidated by the abundance of union members and believed that there was little room for her input on her chosen topic. In her prior experiences with unions, she was marginalized due to her ethnicity. Her strong feelings on this matter could not be reconciled and she dropped out of the project.
The lesson we drew from these incidents was that the educator/organizer needs to be sensitive to the power and privilege differentials among individual activists, and work toward creating an environment where people from varying backgrounds and cultures feel comfortable interacting. It is not enough to simply invite people from different social identity groups and expect that a sense of equality will automatically emerge. The educator-organizer must encourage a dialogue that acknowledges differences, and the issues arising from these differences, to encourage broad and lasting participation (149).
An important limit on the emancipatory potential of a coalition is therefore observable in how well the coalition fosters a learning space of equal status amongst its members, providing a reflexive space for dialogue and interaction that is welcoming and empowering for equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups. Collective identity formation is a political act because organic intellectuals not only foster a sense of “who we are” within a coalition, but also “who we are not,” a process referred to as “boundary work” (Fominaya 2010, 395). For example, the Toronto Community Benefits Network presented itself as a coalition of unions, community groups, and social enterprises, that was advocating for equity- seeking and historically disadvantaged groups; however, to increase it's political appeal with decision- 65 makers, the TCBN chose not to associate itself with anti-privatization campaigns, left-wing political groups known for their direct action tactics (e.g. No One Is Illegal), or with championing the needs of ex-convicts. While boundary work can help unify a coalition, it can also undermined alliance-forming if it leads to internal fragmentation or factionalization, in which members form strong and exclusive sub-group identities or develop conflicting collective identities (J. Gamson 1995; Lichterman 1995; V. Taylor and Whittier 1992; Rupp and Taylor 1999).19 Boundary work is also used as a protest strategy to project differences with opponents or, conversely, to fashion a sense of similarity with decision-makers (Polletta and Jasper 2001).20 The MDWN and the TCBN claimed to broadly represent “labour and the community” as a strategy for gaining legitimacy in the eyes of developers and the government. At some moments the coalition played-up its “community” identity (e.g., when engaging politicians or funders) while at other times the “labour” identity of the coalition was emphasized (e.g., when negotiating with an employer and recruiting new trade unions into the coalition). The concept of collective identity helps explain alliance-forming as an ideological deepening and institutional broadening. The ideological repositioning and organizational scaling-up that takes place during alliance-forming often involves organic intellectuals producing a new collective identity that unites coalition participants across spaces and places (B. A. Miller 2000).21 For example, alliance- forming may lead environmentalists to identify as labour activists and vice-versa; or local NIMBY (not in my backyard) activists to identify with the global environmental justice movement. The identifiers “coalition,” “alliance,” “network,” or “community,” may be used to signify the emergence of a new shared identity. Conversely, these terms may be evoked by organic intellectuals as a form of “identity management” (Polletta and Jasper 2001, 292), which allows participants to feel they are building
19 For example, the Steering Committee structure of the TCBN allowed for a certain number of representative from “labour” and a certain number of representatives from “community.” While this structure helped encourage a sense of fair representation between groups, it also risked reproducing their ideological separation. 20 How a coalition presents its collective identity may change strategically according to the situation: “movement leaders must strategize not only against single opponents, but within a 'multiorganizational field' of allied, competing, and oppositional movement organizations, authorities, media, and funders...how a group frames its identity (exclusive or inclusive, involuntary or chosen, challenging or conventional) depends on the setting and the audience to which it is speaking, the kind of opposition it confronts, and the organizational linkages it has to other groups and movements” (Polletta and Jasper 2001, 295). 21 Miller (2000, 66) emphasizes how building solidarity across collective identities is a geographical predicament: “Collective identities are usually the primary basis for mobilizing movements, yet the demands of social movements can have systemic repercussions considerably beyond the location of the mobilized collectivity. Forming alliances that span several collectivities, as well as considering implications of movement demands for other groups, are central dilemmas for social movements--dilemmas that require building bridges across spaces and places. Such bridge building is by no means an easy task, requiring, as it does, the establishment of meaningful dialogue among multiple, geographically differentiated lifeworlds that do not necessarily share common views, values, or experiences.” 66 something new without having to sacrifice their pre-existing identities.22 Providing democratic representation of different identity groups within the governance structures of coalitions, combined with “regular, open and authoritative deliberation,” can ensure that coalition members' beliefs, ideas and values are being recognized and considered in the determination of strategic goals and activities of the coalition (Ganz 2000, 1016).
Framing
Framing is a key ideological process of organic intellectuals, including social movement coalitions. Framing is also used by those in power to manufacture consent, but here I focus on counter- hegemonic framing. Collective action frames are “action-oriented sets of beliefs and meanings that inspire and legitimate the activities and campaigns of a social movement organization” (R. D. Benford and Snow 2000, 615). Frames interpret reality (events, issues, material conditions, prevailing ideologies, political circumstances, etc.) in a condensed or simplified way, constructing meaning, organizing experiences and guiding action for participants (R. D. Benford and Snow 2000). Framing defines problems and legitimizes certain solutions. Effective framing is critical to inspire participants to join a coalition, to foster consensus amongst coalition members, to motivate collective action, and as a strategy for communicating the coalition's goals and demands to the public and decision-makers. Framing is part of the collective identity formation done by coalitions, articulating otherwise separate struggles in terms of common political goals. For some social movements, framing itself is seen as an end or goal of the social movement (e.g.,the framing of new collective identities that challenge oppressive interpretations of women, racialized groups, persons with disabilities, and LGBTTIQQ2S). Organic intellectuals (both individual leaders or the coalition as a whole) engage in three core framing tasks that are key ideological tasks of forging of a counter-hegemonic will: diagnostic framing, to convince potential participants that a problem exists and to attribute blame; prognostic framing, which proposes strategies, tactics and targets to solve the problem (often refuting the solutions proposed by opponents); and motivational framing, which encourages people to take collective action (Snow and Benford 1988). Frame-alignment is said to occur when frames “fit well with the beliefs of
22 While an appeal to “community” can in some ways help reduce tensions within a coalition by being inclusive to a wide range of groups, it can also be used to obscure power relations and suppress difference, doing symbolic violence to struggles for recognition being waged by different groups within the coalition. 67 potential recruits, involve empirically credible claims, are compatible with the life experiences of the audience, and fit with the narratives the audiences tell about their lives.”(Jasper 1998, 413). Frame alignment is a strategic process directed at recruiting members, gaining resources, convincing voters and decision-makers, and so forth.23 Framing is a discursive, strategic, and contested process (R. Benford and Snow 2000). Discursively, frames articulate or “package” (R. Benford and Snow 2000, 623) various experiences, events, feelings, beliefs, claims, and values, into coherent narratives and compelling visions. The effectiveness or “resonance” of a frame depends on the credibility of those articulating frames and the relative salience of frames to mobilization targets (R. Benford and Snow 2000). Those articulating frames will be more credible if: there is consistency or congruency between their beliefs, claims and actions; if they have social status (e.g.,celebrity status or “expertise”); and if empirically there is a fit between the frames and events in the world (R. Benford and Snow 2000). The relative salience of frames depends on: how important or central the beliefs, values and ideas captured by the frame are to movement participants and target audiences; whether movement frames are congruent or resonate with individuals' everyday experiences; and whether frames resonate culturally with prevailing narratives, myths, and ideologies (R. Benford and Snow 2000). Unlike the concept of “schema” used in psychology, “[c]ollective action frames are not merely aggregations of individual attitudes and perceptions but also the outcome of negotiating shared meaning” (W. Gamson 1992, 111; R. Benford and Snow 2000). “Frame disputes” (R. Benford and Snow 2000, 626) or “symbolic contests” (Mayrl 2013, 304) occur within social movements and coalitions over the diagnoses and prognoses of problems, as well as “frame resonance disputes” over how best to represent the problem to maximize mobilization (R. D. Benford 1993, 691). Coalitions can spend considerable amounts of time debating the arguments and appropriate language to use for even a single event flyer, poster, or information leaflet, let alone a mission statement. A much higher degree of “consensus mobilization” (Klandermans 1984) is required for deeper and longer-term alliances compared with ad hoc or instrumental coalitions in which one coalition partner clearly leads the framing tasks.
23 Four alignment process have been identified by Benford and Snow (2000). Frame bridging involves “the linking of two or more ideologically congruent but structurally unconnected frames regarding a particular issue or problem” (624). Frame bridging links a movement or coalition to “unmobilized sentiment pool or public opinion cluster, or across social movements” (624). Frame amplification involves “the idealization, embellishment, clarification, or invigoration of existing values or beliefs” (624). Frame extension tries to bring new participants into the coalition or movement by appealing to their views, concerns, or feelings. Finally, frame transformation involves participants changing their understandings, values or meanings. 68
Analyzing the framing process reveals the power dynamics at play within a coalition, as participants jockey to have their diagnostic and prognostic frames adopted by the entire group. For example, the term “wordsmithing” is used by activists to describe the final phase of frame negotiation within the coalition during which final decisions are made on the language used for written documents (e.g.,terms, phrasing, ordering of concepts, etc.). But the point at which strategic debates over framing should end and when wordsmithing should begin, is often itself a point of contention—especially since strategic debates are more deliberative whereas wordsmithing is usually carried out by one or two coalition members who hold more power within the coalition. Silence and deference is also an important part of the negotiation process, particularly for coalition partners who are socially, economically or politically beholden to other participants. Collective action frames are usually specific to the problems of a particular social movement, but some serve as much broader and generic master frames “functioning as a kind of master algorithm that colors and constrains the orientations and activities of other movements” (Snow and Benford 1992; R. Benford and Snow 2000, 618). In their review of framing, (R. Benford and Snow 2000) identify nine master frames: rights frames; choice frames; injustice frames; environmental justice frames; culturally pluralist frames; sexual terrorism frames; oppositional frames; hegemonic frames; and a “return to democracy” frame. Injustice frames are the most common. Master frames have broad interpretive scopes, are inclusive, flexible and can resonate across cultures making them useful to different social movements (R. Benford and Snow 2000). This means that organic intellectuals often appeal to master frames when trying to form cross-movement coalitions (Staggenborg 2008; Carroll and Ratner 1996; Gerhards and Rucht 1992). Framing is key to the scaling-up of coalitions: the work of organic intellectuals is to choose a master frame that is broad enough to be inclusive to as many groups as possible but that is not too abstract so as to lose motivational meaning for potential participants.
Social Movement Learning
Social movement theories focus on how collective actors come together to bring about social change. These theories are less clear on how social movement organizations, coalitions, and individual participants, themselves undergo ideological transformation as part of what I am calling alliance- forming—i.e. the reorientation and rescaling of coalition members' beliefs, values and/or strategic goals, and the intensification of their motivation and commitment to the work of the coalition. 69
Gramsci identified the “educative” role of organic intellectuals and the learning that emerges from everyday struggles (or what he called “practical sense”) (Mayo 1999). But how do organic intellectuals themselves escape the ideological grip of hegemonic consent in order to articulate commonly experienced practical sense into a counter-hegemonic popular will (i.e. through diagnostic, prognostic, and motivational framing, as well as through collective identity formation)? And what are the mechanisms through which coalition members overcome their militant particularism, allowing the coalition to progress from an ad hoc coalition towards a deep coalition, or to scale-up into a counter- hegemonic bloc? An ideological deepening that supports the emergence of social movement coalitions may come about through the reorganization or recombination of already existing, but somewhat discrete or disassociated, ideas and identities into new ones. An organic intellectual may emerge whose unique combination of collective identities and socio-cultural resources invites previously separated groups to share the same social space (e.g., a leader of a coalition who can move between trade unions and grassroots neighbourhood groups). Such leaders are referred to in the literature on labour-community coalitions as “bridge builders.” The organizational cultures of coalitions can themselves be more inviting or closed off to different groups coming from contrasting class cultures (including cultures of work and everyday life) or organizational cultures. As discussed above, the formation of new collective identities is an ideological deepening produced through the boundary work of organic intellectuals, and through ritualized practices within a social movement or coalition that cultivate solidarity between previously disassociated individuals or groups. Collective identity forming can be understood as a group learning process in which participants answers the question “who we are” by constructing “taken-as-shared meanings,” as well as by growing an awareness of the group as a social actor (i.e. group consciousness) through collective actions (Kilgore 1999, 197). The ideological repositioning of subjects during alliance-forming is also explained through the concepts of frame transformation and cognitive praxis. The concept of frame transformation was developed to understand how social movement organizations are able to instill new values, beliefs, meanings, and lifestyles to garner support and recruit participants, in cases where there is no existing resonance with constituents' existing interpretive frames or when the existing frames are at odds with the new frames being proposed (Snow et al. 1986). In developing the concept of frame transformation Snow et al. (1986, 474) draw on Goffman's (1974, 43–45) concept of “keying” through which 70 activities, events and biographies that are already meaningful within a participants' existing framework are redefined in terms of another framework so that they are seen to be “something quite else.” The two types of frame transformations identified by Snow (1986) include the transformation of domain- specific interpretive frames and the transformation of global interpretive frames. Both types of transformations can involve the adoption of an injustice frame in which a person that has previously seen their conditions “as an unfortunate but tolerable situation” now defines them as “inexcusable, unjust, or immoral” (Snow et al. 1986, 474). And both types of frame transformations involve shifting blame “from [internalized] self-blaming to [externalized] structural-blaming, from victim-blaming to system-blaming” (Snow et al. 1986, 474). Domain-specific transformations refer to the “reframing of heretofore taken-for-granted aspects of everyday life” (Snow et al. 1986, 475). Participants begin to see themselves, their life situations and activities, social relationships, social statuses, or the meaning of objects or places24 in their environment differently. With domain-specific transformations, changes in one aspect of a person's life, or “domain,” may affect other aspects of their life but “the change of frame is not automatically generalized to them” (Snow et al. 1986, 474). Global transformations are more radical changes in ideologies, worldviews or wide-sweeping lifestyle changes, in which “a new primary framework gains ascendance over others and comes to function as a kind of master frame that interprets events and experiences in a new key...a kind of thoroughgoing conversion” (Snow et al. 1986, 475). With global transformation, domain-specific experiences “that were formerly bracketed and interpreted in one or more ways are now given new meaning and rearranged, frequently in ways that previously were inconceivable, in accordance with the new master frame” (Snow et al. 1986, 475). The notion of frame transformation provides a useful description of ideological change but leaves unanswered many questions about the mechanisms through which these transformation take place. Why and how does somebody decide to “adopt” an injustice frame? How does blame-shifting take place? How did organic intellectuals who are orchestrating the “keying” of frames ever come themselves to accept the injustice (or any other) frame in the first place? Why does “keying” work in some cases but not others? The somewhat mechanical process of “keying” is developed in a more nuanced way by education scholars through the study of social movement learning. Unlike frame transformation, which is primarily used by social movement theorists to analyze the recruitment of individuals into social
24 Snow et al. (1986, 475) provide the example of residents shifting their perception of “run-down old houses needing demolition” in their neighbourhood, to “historically significant architecture needing preservation.” 71 movements, social movement learning focuses on ideological change of individuals and organizations through their participation within the social movement, and as a result of their interactions with those outside of the social movement (e.g.,adversaries, decision-makers, and the public). For adult learning and education scholars, social movements are not only instrumental and strategic praxes, but primarily a process and “cognitive space” through which new meaning, knowledge, and relationships are create (Eyerman and Jamison 1991, 60; Choudry 2015). Social movement learning occurs in coalitions tacitly, e.g., through social interactions with other coalition members during meetings, social events and political actions, as well as formally during educational workshops, training exercises, visioning sessions, and group break-out discussions during meetings. Participants of social movements and coalitions gain a critical awareness of the world and their own structural oppression (e.g.,taken-for-granted social roles) through praxis—an ongoing, iterative process of dialogical “reflection and action directed at the structures to be transformed” (Freire 2005, 126). Eyerman and Jamison (1991) use the term cognitive praxis to explain how knowledge is collectively produced through social movement struggles:
cognitive praxis means seeing knowledge creation as a collective process. It means that knowledge is not the 'discovery' of an individual genius, nor is it the determined outcome of systemic interactions within an established Research and Development system. Knowledge is instead the product of a series of social encounters, within movements, between movements, and even more importantly perhaps, between movements and their established opponents (57).
An analysis of cognitive praxis focuses on how social movement activists “learn by doing” in planning future activities, reflecting on past events, and debating tactics, strategies and messaging: “The heated debates over meeting agendas and demonstration slogans and specific organizational activities that are the stuff of all social movements are, for us, examples of cognitive praxis” (Eyerman and Jamison 1991, 58). Movement intellectuals have an “articulating role” that makes the underlying cognitive praxis explicit and conscious (Eyerman and Jamison 1991, 64). Cognitive praxis and frame transformations are social movement learning processes that explain how an ideological deepening takes place through social movement alliance-forming.
Conclusion The formation of coalitions between social movement groups offers the political hope that these 72 coalitions can transcend spatial divisions and scalar hierarchies that too often keep these groups from working in solidarity with one another, in order to build community power, assert democratic control, and possibly forge a broader counter-hegemonic bloc aimed at overthrowing entrenched structures of power. Coalitions are engaged in a politics of scale, producing new scales of struggle and struggles over scale (N. Smith 1993). I have developed the concept of social movement alliance-forming to discuss the potential of labour-community coalitions to contribute to this re-scaling process. Alliance- forming involves a two-way shift in scale: an institutional broadening that scales-up coalition activity; and an ideological deepening for overcoming sectionalism or militant particularism. These two processes depend on one another: an ideological transformation of participants is often necessary before they support the scaling-up of coalition activity; meanwhile, the political impact of establishing multi-scalar institutional linkages is limited if it does not bring about ideological transformation of participants and organizations. To capture the multi-scalar dynamic of alliance-forming, and labour-community coalition- building in particular, I have presented an analytical framework that draws on: Marxist and eco-Marxist crisis theories; Gramscian theories of counter-hegemony; social movement theories; and theories of social movement learning. Integrating these theories provides a holistic analysis of how coalitions emerge and develop in response to: changing socio-ecological conditions and contradictions; opening or closing of political opportunities or threats created by changes in the state; socio-cultural practices and cognitive processes that bind coalitions together; and strategies and tactics used by organic intellectuals to mobilize resources, articulate new collective identities, and frame a counter-hegemonic vision and course of action. These theories explain how coalitions succeed but also why they might fail to coalesce in the first place, lack the strength necessary to achieve their goals, or dissolve. I have argued that evaluating the success or failure of coalitions must go beyond a simple external assessment of whether coalitions realized their stated campaign objectives. Irrespective of any short-term campaign outcomes, coalition-building may cultivate new collective identities, resources, frame transformations, and cognitive praxis that supports future social movement struggles. Ethnographic investigation is required to properly assess these types of ideological and institutional transformations. 73
Chapter 3
Deindustrialization and Urban Renewal as a Negotiated, Neoliberal, Socio-ecological Fix
This chapter argues that deindustrialization and urban renewal should be understood not only as neoliberal spatio-temporal fixes but as broader socio-ecological fixes. By analyzing deindustrialization and urban renewal as socio-ecological processes I aim to highlight the wide range of urban metabolic considerations and social movement struggles that mediate the production of urban space. I discuss hegemonic narratives used by those in power to organize consent to a neoliberal vision of the city, and which draw heavily on environmentalist discourses for legitimacy. At the same time I discuss how labour-community coalitions mediate the timing, character, and consequences of socio-ecological fixes. Deindustrialization and urban renewal have created several grievances and political opportunities that encourage labour-community coalition-building. I briefly review the strategies used by labour- community coalitions to regulate the production of urban space, focusing my critical appraisal on their negotiation of so-called community benefits agreements. This chapter discusses broad theoretical themes that I will return to empirically in subsequent chapters where I analyze the Toronto and Ontario contexts. The deindustrialization of Toronto, as in many post-Fordist cities, has left a wake of abandoned buildings, contaminated brownfields, and unemployed factory workers. Urban renewal has generated wealth for real estate investors, construction companies, financial institutions, and service industries supporting gentrified neighbourhoods; however, access to related jobs has been unequal. For the poor, gentrification has primarily meant demolition and displacement. The uneven consequences of deindustrialization and urban renewal, according to class, race, and gender, have opened up opportunities and challenges for coalition-forming. I argue that political economic restructuring does not simply set the “conditions” of social movement activity. Rather, I offer a multi-scalar and dialectical analysis that appreciates how social movements—through their resistance and role negotiating consent—are constitutive of the political economy and urban metabolism more broadly. The wave of social movement activity and coalitions that emerged in York South-Weston between 2004-2015 formed to contest or mediate the timing, character, and consequences of Toronto's deindustrialization and urban renewal. Over the past decade, the Toronto and York Region Labour Council formed coalitions with 74 community groups across Toronto to defend against the loss of the city's remaining industrial lands and manufacturing jobs (even as other community groups championed gentrification, sometimes with the support of unions whose members stood to benefit from related hospitality jobs) (Wieditz 2017; Tufts 2017, 2010). The Labour Council supported manufacturing jobs because they are good-paying jobs, accessible to recent immigrants and low-skilled workers, and have a higher union density than many other sectors. The Labour Council, along with community groups and social service agencies, formed the Mount Dennis Weston Network (MDWN) in 2007 to fight against the conversion of a 57-acre industrial site in middle of York South-Weston, known as the Kodak lands, into a big-box retail development. The MDWN was concerned with maximizing economic development of the Kodak lands —namely, through emerging green industries—in hopes of reversing the neighbourhood's industrial decline, marked by high levels of racialized and gendered poverty. At the same time, social movement groups in York South-Weston formed to regulate public transit infrastructure projects being built through the area as part of provincial “smart growth” policies, the city's “urban revitalization” plans, and efforts to brand Toronto as a “global city.” The MDWN and the Toronto Community Benefits Network (TCBN), formed in 2013, demanded that the government negotiate a community benefits agreement that would tie transit infrastructure projects to neighbourhood improvements, and social and environmental justice goals. The MDWN and TCBN demanded that historically marginalized and equity-seeking groups be given access to nearby jobs to build, operate, and maintain public transit infrastructure. Whereas deindustrialization generally refers to the movement of industrial capital out of a location, urban renewal involves the relocation and fixation of capital back into areas of industrial decline—but often in very different forms and new spatial arrangements (e.g.,switching from industrial capital into real estate). I begin this chapter by theorizing this “seesaw” movement of capital (N. Smith 1984), and the creative destruction it entails, in terms of a “spatio-temporal fix” (Harvey 2003). Spatio- temporal fixes “defer and/or displace capitalism's inherent crisis-tendencies but...only [temporarily,] by subsequently intensifying these tendencies and their effects” (Jessop 2006, 142; Harvey 2003). Drawing on Peck and Tickell's (2008) concept of a “neoliberal institutional fix,” I discuss how the spatio-temporal fix in cities like Toronto has been operationalized through specific neoliberal policies (e.g.,“free trade” policies, land-use re-zoning), and has assumed a particular neoliberal form (e.g.,public infrastructure built using so-called public-private partnerships). This chapter argues that the spatio-temporal fix should not only be analyzed as a political- 75 economic process, but more fundamentally as a socio-ecological process—i.e. as a “socio-ecological fix.” I use a Polanyian-O'Connor analytical framework, and draw on urban political ecology, to better account for how the timing, character, and consequences of the spatio-temporal fix are produced through the concerns of, and struggles between, capital and a broad range of social movements over the degradation of the conditions of production—e.g.,air, soil, and water pollution; traffic congestion; and urban sprawl. The degradation of the conditions of production generates political-economic crisis tendencies to which the state has responded with market regulation, urban planning, and the provision of environmentally-oriented infrastructure. An understanding of labour-community coalitions through a Polanyian-O'Connor framework corrects for a capital-centric view of the spatio-temporal fix on the one hand, as well as a labour-centric view of these coalitions within the academic literature (especially within labour studies and urban geography). An analysis of socio-ecological processes brings into focus the broad set concerns over the socio-ecological reproduction of everyday life and the conditions of production that motivate labour-community coalitions, beyond the set of concerns traditionally associated with, or taken up by, trade unions.
Deindustrialization and Urban Renewal as a Spatio-temporal Fix
David Harvey (2003, 109) defines the spatio-temporal fix as a way of averting, or displacing, capitalist accumulation crises by absorbing surpluses of capital and labour through:
(a) temporal displacement through investment in long-term capital projects or social expenditures (such as education and research) that defer the re-entry of current excess capital values into circulation well into the future, (b) spatial displacements through opening up new markets, new production capacities and new resource, social and labour possibilities elsewhere, or (c) some combination of (a) and (b).
For Harvey, the term “fix” has a double meaning. In one sense, capital is literally fixed, or physically built, onto the land for a long period of time, e.g.,as investments in fixed capital (Harvey 2003, 115). In the second sense of the term, a spatio-temporal fix is “a metaphor for a particular kind of solution to capitalist crises through temporal deferral and geographical expansion” (Harvey 2003, 115).25
25 A spatio-temporal fix is only temporary, reflecting the inherent tension within capitalism between “fixity” and “mobility” (Harvey 2001a, 1989b). The fix for one crisis of over-accumulation (e.g. through increasing credit, building new infrastructure, more productive technologies, new spatial divisions of labour, etc.) sets conditions that eventually come to constrain future rounds of accumulation—and may threaten even-greater crisis. This contradiction plays out in the production of urban space through creative destruction: “a perpetual struggle in which capital builds a physical 76
Discussions of capitalism's spatio-temporal fix have mostly focused on the ways that capitalism’s systemic crisis tendencies towards overaccumulation are temporarily offset and displaced geographically through the relocation or extension of capital and circulation into the Global South, e.g.,by offshoring production and via “accumulation by dispossession” (Harvey 1982, 2003). Deindustrialization is commonly understood in this way, with industrial capital seeking cheaper wages and resources, as well as new markets, by relocating production to new regions or countries. Deindustrialization also refers to the loss of jobs as companies respond to competitive pressures by investing in new technologies to increase productivity (e.g.,new machines and labour processes). More attention needs to be given to Harvey's insight into how spatio-temporal fixes produce the built environment (largely, for Harvey, in an urban context) within developed countries by grounding capital in new long-term projects and new spatial configurations, rather than simply by displacement from the North to the South (Schoenberger 2004). The state coordinates spatio-temporal fixes through urban and regional planning policies—such as “smart growth” or “urban renewal” intensification policies—that maximize the profitability of new fixed capital investments, often located in downtown city cores and former industrial areas where land has been devalued. Urban renewal absorbs large amounts of surplus capital and labour through the construction of downtown condominiums, infill development, entertainment complexes, and through the turnover of businesses servicing these areas. The state plays a key role enabling or encouraging this real estate development by building public infrastructure (e.g.,transit, utilities, airport expansions, etc.) and public spaces (museums, parks, etc.), with these public investments also absorbing large surplus of capital and labour to help offset crises of over-accumulation. In North America, Europe, and Australia, new fixed capital investments and urban intensification policies have driven the gentrification of poor and often racialized downtown neighbourhoods, eliminating affordable housing and industrial lands (Goonewardena 2004; N. Smith 1996, 1979, 2002; Teelucksingh 2009). These “revitalization” policies have sparked social movement struggles over equitable access to affordable housing, public transit, public amenities, and good-paying jobs. Discussions of uneven development and the spatio-temporal fix that place the logic, needs, and agency of capital at the centre of analysis, risk neglecting the “inherent incompleteness of capitalist social formations” (Jessop 2006, 162), and the role played by a wide range of social movement actors in producing urban space. Deindustrialization and urban renewal are not simply imposed “from above”
landscape appropriate to its own condition at a particular moment in time, only to have to destroy it, usually in the course of a crises, at a subsequent point in time” (Harvey 1978, 124). 77 by the state and international institutions aligned with the imperatives of capital. I take up the call by Bob Jessop (2006) for analysis of the spatio-temporal fix that more carefully considers the “extra- economic” and “political” dimensions of the capital relation. Jessop argues that David Harvey's analysis of the spatial-temporal fix “is limited by a one-sided, value-theoretical analysis of the capital relation to the frequent neglect of its extra-economic dimensions” (Jessop 2006, 164–65). Although Harvey is attune to class struggle, “when he moves to the extra-economic aspects of the capital relation, Harvey has tended to revert to a more general ontology of internal relations that lacks the same focus on the specific causal mechanisms, pursued at increasingly concrete-complex levels of analysis, that connect the circuits of capital to the wider social formation” (Jessop 2006, 145). Similarly, Andrew Herod (1997a) critiques Harvey's discussion of the spatial fix (and location theory more generally), for being too focused on the agency of capital and the state, to the neglect of how organized labour regulates the locational decisions of capital—what Herod calls “labour's spatial fix.” My examination of labour-community coalitions demonstrates that it is not only organized labour, but a wide range of social movement actors involved in mediating spatio-temporal fixes. I adopt Jessop's (2006) approach for analyzing the spatio-temporal fix to account empirically for how crisis tendencies and contradictions of the capitalist mode of production are displaced, deferred or defused through struggles and negotiations between the state (and amongst state actors), various classes, class factions and other social forces. At the same time, deindustrialization and urban renewal are socio- ecological processes and part of what I discuss as a “socio-ecological fix”that is produced through broad-based struggles over a changing urban metabolism. Social movement groups such as labour-community coalitions can shape socio-ecological fixes directly—e.g., by fighting plant closures or by influencing decisions on proposed land-use zoning amendments. In more general or indirect ways, socio-ecological fixes emerge and take form through the ideological struggles, alliance-forming, negotiations and compromises—in short, the organization of consent—that binds together and empowers a “local hegemonic bloc,” or what regulation theorists refer to as an urban regime (i.e. an urban capital accumulation regime and supporting mode of regulation)(Jessop 1997). Socio-ecological fixes become a means for the state to address demands from organized labour and other social movement groups for jobs, better transit, equity, environmental quality, housing, etc. The state and capital may offer social movement groups concessions and compromises as a way to co-opt these groups, and thwart more radical critiques of the neoliberal character of a socio-ecological fix, or more fundamental challenges to the historical bloc itself. The 78 following chapters examine empirically how the state organized consent for a neoliberal fix in Ontario and Toronto by appealing to environmentalist discourse around air pollution, congestion, “green jobs,” and “revitalized” or “sustainable” city, as well as by offering minor concessions around employment equity in the form of “community benefits agreements.”
The Neoliberal Fix
The entwined processes of deindustrialization and urban renewal have been realized through neoliberal policies and programs—what Peck and Tickell (2008) call “a neoliberal institutional fix.” Neoliberalism has seen the dismantling of the post-War welfare state and a shift in its orientation. Since the 1970s, the state has increasingly abdicated responsibilities it once had under Fordism's social contract to negotiate with capital on behalf of, or in partnership with, labour and other societal interests. The state has redefined its purpose toward freeing capital from Fordism's social contract to establish conditions for high rates of capital accumulation—or what politicians commonly refer to as creating a “globally competitive business environment” (Ontario Government 2016). In addition to free trade policies that have increased the mobility of capital, the neoliberal institutional fix has included: corporate tax breaks (on land, fixed capital and profits); anti-labour laws (e.g.,“right-to-work” and “back-to-work” legislation); anti-immigration laws (e.g.,temporary foreign worker programs); the privatization of public infrastructure investments (so-called “P3” or public-private projects); and “smart growth” land zoning measures aimed at increasing the flow of capital through more concentrated and hyper-competitive “global cities” (Boudreau, Keil, and Young 2009a; Brenner and Theodore 2005; Harvey 2007). At the scale of urban governance, Harvey (1989a) identifies this neoliberal restructuring as a shift from managerialism (i.e. local provision of services, facilities and benefits) to entrepreneurialism (aimed at fostering local development and employment growth). One way the neoliberal institutional fix succeeds at restoring profits, is by frustrating the formation of organized resistance and alliance-forming through the production of new political subjects and socio-spatial relations of power. As distinctions between the state, civil society, and the market are blurred, and increasingly dominated by the logic of the market, people are encouraged to see themselves as more individualized, self-reliant, and entrepreneurial (Boudreau, Keil, and Young 2009a). Meanwhile, deregulation and privatization undermine publicly accountable decision-making, and an increasingly authoritarian politics of division and scapegoating has prevailed to justify or distract from 79 a deepening of inequities under urban neoliberal governance (Gamble 1994; Guarneros-Meza and Geddes 2010; Harvey 2007; Swyngedouw 2005; N. Smith 1996). These changes make it even harder for social movement organizers to convince people about the benefits of collective action and coalition- building. Increasingly, social movements are consumed by defensive battles simply to protect existing conditions and rights, making it difficult for them to go on the offensive and demand more state regulation of the market, and a more participatory democracy. Some unions have aligned with entrepreneurial neoliberal projects aimed at increasing the competitiveness of certain sectors or cities— a set of union renewal strategies Tufts (2009, 2010) refers to as “Schumpeterian unionism.” The increased mobility of capital and labour under neoliberalism undermine the formation of place-based collective identities that provide emotional strength and purpose to social movements:
The communities that often form the basis for collective political action can be significantly affected and even destroyed by capital hyper-mobility. Deindustrialization, lack of capital investment, and declining governmental interaction, produce or accentuate conflicts among community members, force people to move elsewhere in search of a livelihood, and otherwise break down or preclude the formation of the collective identities that are prerequisites for collective action (Miller, 2000, page 48).
People who are frequently uprooted in search of jobs or cheaper housing become less attached to place- based organizations such as their local neighbourhood association, school councils, congregation, or union local.26 This can frustrate the formation of labour-community coalitions aimed at mediating particular spatio-temporal fixes. Neoliberalism also undermines solidarity by placing workers and communities in ever-greater competition across all scales—between countries, regions, neighbourhoods, organizations, and individuals. Governments have outsourced responsibilities for delivering social services to private agencies and community organizations. But austerity has at the same time increased competition amongst these organizations for government grants, frustrating their collaboration, and undermining their leadership role in resisting the government (which holds the purse strings). Meanwhile, the threat of “capital flight,” articulated as much by capital as by the neoliberal state, has weakened the
26 The breaking down of traditional place-based identities may offer some opportunities for social movement organizing in terms of overcoming militant particularism, if it means that people are better able to form collective identities across broader social spaces (e.g. as “casual workers” or “temp workers” rather than workers of a particular factory or office). But militant particularism also recognizes the strong solidarity that is formed by placed-bound relationships and identities. 80 negotiation position of organized labour and community social justice organizers. Unionized workers are told to accept wage and benefit cuts or else see their jobs moved to an anti-union region or a low- wage country with lax labour (and environmental) laws. Communities are told they must accept austerity measures—cuts to social programs and services—so that governments (at all levels) can compete with one another to “attract investment” through corporate subsidies and tax breaks. Although neoliberal competitive pressures have generally challenged alliance-forming, the breakdown of the Fordist mode of regulation has encouraged some unions to strengthen or seek out new partnerships with community organizations as a way of restoring their political influence (Reynolds 2004; L. Turner 2006; L. Turner and Cornfield 2007b). Urban capital accumulation regimes (and modes of regulation that support them) are organized through the intellectual and moral leadership of a ruling “growth coalition,” or “local hegemonic bloc” (Jessop 1997). The local hegemonic bloc: rationalizes and legitimizes certain visions of the city (whilst suppressing alternative visions); governs urban development; regulates labour and everyday life; and enforces social control. Labour-community coalitions may try to resist the local hegemonic bloc, by offering an alternative (counter-hegemonic) vision for the city that challenges prevailing power relations. More commonly, they adopt a reformist or pragmatic strategy—articulating their demands in terms that do not radically challenge the dominant vision and power relations, but that win some minor concessions or compromises from those in power. Labour-community coalitions might also reinforce existing power relations by allowing some unions or social groups to benefit from neoliberal projects at the expense of others. In Toronto we see how a ruling alliance comprised of construction capital, land developers, finance capital, state actors (such as planners, politicians, and state agencies), as well as opportunistic civil society groups, have fostered consent around particular neoliberal growth strategies and discourses of the urban subject (Keil 2002). This alliance has worked to fashion Toronto as a “competitive city” and a “global city” (Kipfer and Keil 2002; Parlette 2007; N. Smith 2002). The local hegemonic bloc has promoted suburban sprawl, while at the same time naturalizing deindustrialization (through narratives of “urban decline”) in order to justify the conversion of industrial lands for profitable “downtown revitalization” projects (e.g.,waterfront redevelopment, neighbourhood gentrification, and “condo-ism”) (Rosen and Walks 2015; Desfor et al. 2006). Real estate development on former industrial land, and of other devalued residential properties, offers a quicker return on investment than new investments in industrial production. I discuss below how the neoliberal urban fix 81 reorganizes socio-ecological or urban metabolic conditions, and draws legitimacy through environmentalist discourses.
Labour-Community Coalitions as a Spatial Strategy
Labour-community coalitions are a spatial strategy by unions and social justice organizations to mediate the timing, character, and consequences of spatio-temporal fixes. As I discussed in chapter two, alliance-forming is an effort to transcend spatial divisions and scalar hierarchies between “home”, “community,” “environment” and “workplace,” as well as between nations and regions. The hegemonic bloc consolidates its power and stimulates capital accumulation through these spatial divisions and hierarchies, for example: creating antagonisms between voters (“taxpayers” or “ratepayers”) and public sector workers; naturalizing trade-offs between economic growth and social justice or environmental objectives (e.g.,“jobs vs. the environment”); promoting nationalism and xenophobia to justify neocolonialism; and alleviating the state and capital from responsibilities for social reproduction (e.g.,relegating childcare to “family life”). Labour-community coalitions extend the concerns of unions into problems of urban planning, environmental quality, and social justice, while encouraging neighbourhood groups to become more concerned about employment (job access and quality) and economic development, if they are not already. At the same time, coalitions are often coopted by the state, or directly by capital, consenting to a neoliberal institutional fix in exchange for minor concessions or compromises. The emergence and composition of social movement coalitions in relation to a spatio-temporal fix are not easily predicted through a priori analysis of groups' structural positions within capitalism. People have often contradictory material self-interests in their roles as producers, consumers, and community members. Any proposed spatio-temporal fix must be articulated through the historically specific social relations and spatial configurations of a particular place. Fractions of capital may also form coalitions with different unions or community groups to facilitate neoliberal urban accumulation, even while other groups of workers and community organizations form counter-coalitions.27 Given the
27 For example, the destruction of old manufacturing buildings and affordable housing in downtown city cores to make way for new office buildings, hotels, condos, or entertainment complexes, may be supported by a coalition of middle- class house-seekers, hotel workers, and the building and construction unions while at the same time resisted by a coalition of manufacturing unions, poor and racialized communities being displaced by the projects, heritage building preservationists, and well-established home owner associations who disapprove of proposed building heights or increased traffic and pedestrian noise. At the same time, poor residents might welcome a certain degree of gentrification, 82 contradictions and multiple coalition-forming possibilities, empirical analysis is required to ascertain whether and how organic intellectuals articulate and mobilize the interests and resources of various social groups towards mediating a spatio-temporal fix. Two edited volumes have begun to investigate empirically the strategies used by labour- community coalitions to regulate spatial fixes and produce urban space (Turner and Cornfield 2007; Reynolds 2004; see also MacDonald 2014). The economic landscapes of cities have been shaped by unions and communities resisting manufacturing plant closures, in some cases proposing the take-over of manufacturing plants to operate them as worker cooperatives (Fitzgerald and Simmons 1991; Haines and Klein 1982; Keil 1994; Lynd 1983). Herod (2001) documents the successful effort of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union to intervene to protect the garment manufacturing district in New York City from loft conversion during the 1980s by blocking proposed land-use zoning changes. Periodic downturns in the American economy have led labour and community to form regional partnerships with business associations, as well as area labour-management committees, aimed at retaining and attracting investment into particular areas (Whalen 2010; Woodworth, Meek, and Whyte 1985). Community economic development has also been promoted through innovative uses of union pension funds (Croft 2004; Fung, Hebb, and Rogers, n.d.; Gates 2001; Mackin 2001). Despite some success stories, the literature reveals that it has been much easier to initiate discussions on these strategies, or to propose new policies, than to see concrete projects implemented. Labour-community coalitions have been most successful in leveraging city planning processes to win concessions from real estate developers, for example through the negotiation of community benefits agreements.
Community Benefits Agreements28
Urban intensification in major American cities over the past decade has led to an explosive growth of community benefits agreements (CBAs). CBAs are legally-binding contracts negotiated between a developer or public agency and representatives of a community, often in coalition with unions. CBAs place any number of conditions on a proposed development or infrastructure project, such as retail developments that promise to create low-paying service sector jobs, even at the expense of (vacant) industrial lands. Similarly, new toll-based freeways and premium service rapid transit systems may be championed by developers and wealthy residents even though they are resisted by the poor who could not afford to use them. But if proposed expressways are set to run through wealthier neighbourhoods, then a cross-class alliance could emerge to resist the projects. 28 Several passages from this chapter will be included in a forthcoming journal article: Nugent, James. 2017. “The Right to Build the City: Can Community Benefits Agreements Bring Employment Equity to the Construction Sector?” Labour/Le Travail. (80) Fall. 83 including: guarantees of training, jobs, and affordable housing protections for local and/or marginalized residents; the provision of neighbourhood amenities and environmental measures; union contracts; living wages and/or health benefits guarantees for workers involved in the construction phase or in the operation of the facility (Baxamusa 2008; Cummings 2007; Gross, LeRoy, and Janis-Aparicio 2005; Gross 2007; Tufts 2008; Saito 2012). In return for these benefits, labour-community coalitions often provide the political support (or lack of political resistance) needed by developers to clear political and regulatory requirements for the proposed project. CBAs have been most common in American cities, especially within California, but have also been negotiated in British Columbia and Scotland. Canada has far less experience with community benefit agreements (Cohen and Braid 2000; Karen Peachey 2009; Calvert and Redlin 2003), although they are very similar to impact benefit agreements common between northern Indigenous communities and mining companies (Prno 2007; Gibson and O’Faircheallaigh 2011; S. E. Mills 2011; S. Mills and Sweeney 2013; Kennett 1999). The first CBAs emerged in Los Angeles to protect the homes of low-income residents in the face of redevelopment pressures (Ho 2007). The backlash against urban sprawl in the late 1990s and early 2000s in favour of “smart growth,” coupled with a real estate boom and city redevelopment efforts, attracted investment back into inner city neighbourhoods that had been previously abandoned by capital. Low-income, often racialized, residents living in the inner city due to cheaper rent prices, began facing direct displacements to make way for new sports stadiums, hotels and luxury condos, big box retail centres, and the expansion of hospitals and universities. Low-income residents were also indirectly displaced through gentrification, as land values increased around new developments forcing up the price of rent and food. The political context motivating many CBAs is therefore a sense of injustice felt by low-income, often racialized communities, who are facing development-related displacement pressures. For unions, CBAs are a way of protecting or increasing their membership base, and to improve wages and working conditions. Political opportunities for negotiating a CBA increase with the need of the ruling government (or factions of a ruling coalition) to form political alliances with the trade unions and subaltern groups desiring a CBA. The power of labour-community coalitions to negotiate a CBA is proportional to their organizational strength, and—in the case of private sector projects—the extent of the “rent gap”—i.e. the difference between the existing land value of a proposed development site and the projected value of the land after the development is complete (N. Smith 1979, 1996). CBAs can be understood as a way for labour and community to capture and more equitably distribute some of the value generated through 84 a development project. At the same time, CBAs have been criticized for: endorsing tax breaks and public subsidies to private developers; prioritizing the needs of particular neighbourhoods over city- wide priorities; and shutting out community groups from the process (in cases where developers hand- pick their “community” partners) (Gross, LeRoy, and Janis-Aparicio 2005; Salkin 2007; Tufts 2008). Because of their reformist orientation, CBAs risk producing a negotiated form of neoliberalism and gentrification that trade off gains for some marginalized groups only at the expense of others (I. T. MacDonald 2011). Urban planning scholars have criticized the very premise of CBAs, arguing that exacting benefits or zoning changes for the particularist interests of neighbourhoods on an ad-hoc basis circumvents the fundamental goals of comprehensive city planning (Wolf-Powers 2010). They argue that CBAs privilege neighbourhoods undergoing gentrification rather than distributing the benefits of development across the city to all marginalized residents including those living in areas of disinvestment where CBAs are not possible (Parks and Warren 2009). According to this critique CBAs risk supporting “NIMBYism in reverse (benefits ‘only in my backyard’)”(Parks and Warren 2009, 102). Similarly, labour geographers have critiqued the “militant particularism” (Harvey 2001b) of unions involved in the negotiation of CBAs, arguing that unions often relinquish struggles over the purpose of development and implications that projects have for the working-class as a whole for the sake of securing minor or immediate benefits for a particular group of unionized workers. Because of their reformist orientation CBAs may reproduce rather than challenge the contradictions facing urban workers in their roles as producers, consumers and residents. The logic of real estate-led urban accumulation may result in CBAs facilitating a “negotiated gentrification” (I. T. MacDonald 2011; I. MacDonald 2014). MacDonald (2011) documents how the hotel, retail and building trade unions in New York have used their political leverage over the land-use zoning process to encourage the development of the hospitality industry on Coney Island. While CBAs tied to these developments have secured employment, better wages and union representation for workers within the hospitality sector, the anticipated gentrification of the area threatens access to affordable housing, affordable food and entertainment, and public spaces. Similarly, Tufts (2008) critiques a CBA linked to a proposed (but eventually cancelled) entertainment and gambling complex in Toronto arguing that unionized hotel workers stood to benefit from an employer neutrality clause in the proposed CBA but their support for rezoning the site facilitated the city’s deindustrialization. 85
Critical urban geographers argue that so-called planning gain agreements, including CBAs, allow developers to effectively purchase highly profitable zoning changes and secure state subsidies while giving relatively little to communities in return (Fox-Rogers and Murphy 2015). Fox-Rogers and Murphy (2015, 44) conclude that these agreements “not only reflect the dynamics of neoliberalism, they support the core neoliberal objective of redistributing wealth and power upwards.” Decades of neoliberal downloading of responsibilities by provincial and federal governments for the delivery of infrastructure, affordable housing, and social welfare, coupled with austerity, has created a permanent budget crisis for municipal governments and a backlog of capital projects (Fanelli 2009). Municipal governments have responded by becoming more “entrepreneurial,” with city planning departments shifting their role from regulating private developments, to finding innovative ways of courting them (T. Hall and Hubbard 1996). Planning gain agreements are often packaged together with tax incentives and zoning amendments as a way for municipal governments to secure private funds for projects traditionally financed through the Keynesian welfare state (Fox-Rogers and Murphy 2015). CBAs risk becoming “co-opted community unionism” that lets the provincial and national state “off the hook” from their former role in local economic development processes and the provision of things like affordable housing and community spaces, while promoting neoliberal competition between cities based on the level of tax subsidies given to private developers (Tufts 2008, 33; 2010).
Deindustrialization and Urban Renewal as a Socio-ecological Fix
To explain the emergence, orientation, and strategic dilemmas, of labour-community coalitions, we must understand deindustrialization and urban renewal not only as political-economic processes, but also as socio-ecological processes. I draw on urban political ecology to “re-nature urban theory,” presenting cities as socio-ecological processes within a context of power (Heynen, Kaika, and Swyngedouw 2006, 4). On the other hand, I seek to “urbanize environmental theory,” viewing urbanization as a major cause and site of acute socio-environmental problems (Heynen, Kaika, and Swyngedouw 2006, 4). Deindustrialization and urban renewal are constituted through struggles between capital, the state and a broad range of societal interests over the city's urban metabolism—i.e., the restructuring, transformation and circulation of flows of energy, resources and waste that are connected across multiple scales (Heynen, Kaika, and Swyngedouw 2006; Swyngedouw 2003, 2006). The concept of urban metabolism captures the way that cities are restructured and transformed 86 biophysically through the application of social labour to non-human nature as well as ideologically through competing constructions of the city as an “environment.” The state not only tries to fix periodic crises associated with declining profits rates and overaccumulation (David Harvey's concern in Limits to Growth) but must also respond to related crisis tendencies arising from the underproduction of the conditions of production, i.e. the socio-ecological reproduction of “fictitious commodities” including land, labour power and communal conditions (such as urban infrastructure) that are necessary for production, circulation and consumption but are neglected or externalized by the capitalist market (J. O’Connor 1998; Polanyi 2001). Social movements resist the way that capital accumulation and neoliberal policies degrade human health and other everyday quality of life concerns, deteriorate the environment (understood as both a biophysical metabolic process and ideological construction), and underproduce urban spaces (e.g.,through enclosure or neglect). A Polanyian-O'Connor approach theorizes how the degradation of these conditions of production generates political-economic crisis tendencies and threatens a legitimacy crisis for the state that, if left unchecked, could escalate into challenges of the capitalist market system itself (see also M. O’Connor 1993). The aim of dominant urban environmental governance is not to fundamentally or permanently address these contradictions, but to form stable political alliances that promote economic growth while averting deep green or eco-socialist challenges. The state is also pressured by certain fractions of capital that are concerned with the threat that degraded conditions of production pose to their bottom line, or by fractions of capital that stand to benefit from state regulations, land-use planning, and environmental infrastructure projects implemented to thwart socio-ecological crises (Vlachou 2002, 2005). Social movement actors, the state, and fractions of capital, form alliances and negotiate policies and projects to find a “socio-ecological fix” that averts or displaces, at least temporarily, socio- ecological crises tendencies (Castree 2008; Desfor et al. 2006). The historical development of environmental governance in North America and Europe can be understood as a series of socio- ecological fixes, moving from “anti-pollution” regulation in the 1960s and 1970s, to a “sustainable development” discourse in the late 1980s and 1990s, and organized in terms of “the green economy” since the turn of the century as climate change policies opened up opportunities for accumulation within the renewable energy sector. These environmental governance regimes have always been shaped by a wide range of social movement concerns surrounding jobs, anti-war (e.g., anti-nuclear testing), worker health and safety, environmental justice, and global equality (Gottlieb 2005; Meadowcroft 87
2012). The concept of the socio-ecological fix has primarily been studied from the perspective of capital—in terms of the challenges and opportunities for capital accumulation through the externalization and internalization of socio-ecological conditions (Bakker 2009; Castree 2008). Externalization increases the profit rate by socializing or displacing costs temporally and spatially (e.g.,increasing greenhouse gas emissions, or polluting human bodies with toxins). Internalization reflects the logic of ecological modernization which reframes environmental threats into economic opportunities (Hajer 1995; Mol and Spaargaren 2000). Profits are realized through the marketization, commodification, or financialization of negative externalities (e.g. pollution mitigation or carbon trading), as well as a more fundamental reorganization of nature, e.g.,through bioengineering or more rationalized agricultural, forestry and fishing production practices (M. O’Connor 1993; N. Smith 2006). The concept of a socio-ecological fix has also been used to refer to the privatization of previously public natural resources and environmental services (Castree 2008; Schoenberger 2004). Expanding this definition, urban geographers have begun to conceptualize urban restructuring in terms of a socio-ecological fix. One example is what While et al. (2004, 550) refer to as the “urban sustainability fix”--i.e., when urban governance regimes champion urban sustainability and the greening of the city as a whole as a way of attracting capital investment (e.g. creating more green spaces and otherwise boosting the environmental image of a city). Neoliberal growth strategies centred on creating an “entrepreneurial city” or “global city” have become increasingly articulated through visions of the “sustainable city” (While, Jonas, and Gibbs 2004; Keil and Boudreau 2006; Desfor et al. 2006; Bunce 2004). Drawing on the examples of Manchester and Leeds, While et al. (2004, 550) argue that ecological modernization policies and a green rebranding have been especially important for “cleaning- up” the image of post-industrial cities and bringing together an urban growth coalition:
urban entrepreneurialism itself might depend on the active remaking of urban environments and ecologies. This is especially true of the ex-industrial areas most often associated with the rise of the entrepreneurial city. Claims about the transition to a post- industrial city have depended, in part, upon promoting images of the city as clean and attractive—'a place for business' yet devoid of factories (Short, 1999). Moreover, active environmental policies and interventions such as river restoration, the cleaning up of old industrial sites, or `eco-investment' in public transport have been significant not only in re-imaging cities, but have also been important in opening up actual urban spaces for new waves of investment and bringing back the middle classes in the city or stabilizing 88
working-class communities (see Keil and Desfor, 1996).
As political projects, deindustrialization and urban “renewal” employ discourses of nature—e.g. through metaphors of “decay,” “renewal,” “revitalization,” or “rejuvenation,” as well as broader visions of city-building centred on “the sustainable city” (While, Jonas, and Gibbs 2004). Environmental narratives about a “cleaner,” “greener,” or more sustainable city can work to justify deindustrialization and gentrification, or conversely promote certain “green industries” over other types of “dirty” industries. My analysis of deindustrialization and urban renewal in Toronto concur with While et al.'s (2004) conclusion that ecological modernization policies cannot be completely dismissed as pure rhetoric, and may reduce some environmental externalities within post-industrial cities. Conditions for future rounds of urban capital accumulation are produced through brownfield remediation, pollution regulations, river and waterfront restorations, city parks and beautification projects, public transit improvements, and the construction of other environmental infrastructure projects. These projects themselves absorb significant amounts of capital and labour, generating immediate profits for capital— especially when they are undertaken through lucrative public-private (P3) arrangements. A Polanyian-O'Connor theoretical framework moves beyond a capital-centric view of socio- ecological fixes to better incorporates the role played by a wide range of social movement actors. Both the conditions that demand a socio-ecological fix, as well as the projects undertaken as part of a fix, are contested (or supported) by social movement actors and alliances. This analytical approach allows us to understand the state's governance of Toronto's deindustrialization and urban renewal not simply as a spatio-temporal fix, aimed at securing a safe long-term investment for capital and subduing class struggles around job creation, but as encompassed within a broader socio-ecological fix that tries at the same time to resolve (albeit temporarily) contradictions between capitalist economic development and people's expectations regarding their quality of life and other environmental objectives—e.g. struggles around smog, climate change, urban sprawl, traffic gridlock, and the toxic legacy of industrialization. Urban political ecologists that have analyzed Toronto's “sustainability fix” have tended to focus on the agency of urban elites, which downplays or ignores the direct and indirect roles of the labour movement and community groups (e.g. neighbourhood associations and social justice organizations) in urban environmental governance and the production of urban space more generally (Boudreau, Keil, and Young 2009a). A socio-ecological fix may be used by the state to roll-out neoliberal policies in the name of 89 sustainability and averting an ecological crisis—a process I refer to as “ecoliberalism” (Nugent 2011, 2009) and what Castree (2008) describes as a neoliberal environmental fix (see also: Bakker 2009). Chapters four and five discuss how growing socio-ecological crises in central Ontario in the late 1990s and early 2000s surrounding air pollution and traffic congestion were used by the state to roll-out neoliberal governance of energy and public transportation infrastructure. In contrast with the “Green New Deal,” which labour-environmental coalitions in North America and Europe hoped would create good-paying green jobs in the wake of deindustrialization while addressing environmental problems like climate change (Nugent 2011), Ontario's boom in environmentally-oriented infrastructure has instead been achieved through privatization and the weakening of unions' control over the building and operating of infrastructure. Meanwhile, environmentalist discourse critiquing urban sprawl and urban “decay” caused by deindustrialization was drawn upon to justify intensification policies and public infrastructure projects aimed at restructuring Toronto into a “World Class,” entrepreneurial city (Bunce 2004; Keil and Desfor 1996; Kipfer and Keil 2002; Todd 1995). But urban renewal has, in turn, facilitated gentrification and exacerbated socio-spatial polarization. A consequence of socio-ecological fixes is the displacement of socio-ecological crises to other spatial and temporal scales, raising concerns over environmental justice. The concept of environmental justice examines how the distribution of environmental “goods” and “bads” reflect and reproduce dominant social relations—i.e. racism, patriarchy, and class oppression (Bowen 2014; Buzzelli 2008; Massard-Guilbaud and Rodger 2011; Schlosberg 2013). Deindustrialization of post-Fordist countries in the Global North has been accompanied by increasingly polluted areas of production in the Global South (Giljum and Eisenmenger 2004; Roberts and Parks 2009). A push towards “green” energy aimed at reducing smog and greenhouse gases have also facilitated the proliferation of nuclear energy with its higher order risks and long-term waste storage problems. New inter-city rail transit projects aimed at reducing congestion and urban sprawl have created localized concerns around new rail corridors bisecting neighbourhoods and fumes from increased diesel trains. Because many environmental justice concerns do no have a direct or easily measurable market value (e.g. the distribution of clean air, stress from one's daily commute, pest-free housing, etc.) they are not well captured by traditional political- economic analyses. A Polanyian-O'connor framework can help better account for, and anticipate, these environmental justice concerns. Labour-community coalitions not only form to oppose environmental injustices (Estabrook 2007), but also to assert claims on the tangible benefits accruing from a socio-ecological fix. The 90 following chapters examine how the Mount Dennis Weston Network and the Toronto Community Benefits Network tried to regulate the socio-ecological fix in Toronto by demanding that “green jobs” created during the construction of renewable energy and public transit infrastructure be equitably distributed, good-paying, and unionized. At the same time, the hegemonic bloc has organized a response to problems like the loss of manufacturing jobs, air pollution, and congestion, in ways that deepen neoliberal governance.
Conclusion
The political-economy is at once always a socio-ecological process. This chapter has theoretically connected social movement activity in York South-Weston, and labour-community coalition forming in particular, to deindustrialization and urban renewal—which I have understood not simply as two moments of a spatio-temporal fix, but as part of a more encompassing socio-ecological fix. The concept of a socio-ecological fix allows us to theorize the production of cities in ways that better relate the logic of capital accumulation to struggles over jobs, equity, and the degradation of the conditions of production. Adopting a Polanyian-O'Connor analysis of the socio-ecological fix can correct for capital-centric analyses of the spatio-temporal fix and labour-centric analyses of labour- community coalitions by bringing into focus a broader set of concerns that motivate labour-community coalitions. Through this analytical approach we can understand deindustrialization and urban renewal not only as the conditions that motivate social movement activity and alliance-forming in Toronto, but also as the very content of socio-ecological struggles from the neighbourhood to the global scale. Labour-community coalitions are a spatial strategy for mediating the timing, character, and consequences of socio-ecological fixes. Of course, labour-community coalitions may also fail to have much influence over a spatio-temporal fix, or what I am calling the socio-ecological fix, and this too requires explanation. In negotiating a socio-ecological fix with the hegemonic bloc, social movement coalitions are often coopted or divided according to trade-offs proposed by the hegemonic bloc. The extent to which coalitions become coopted or divided depends on their organizational strength, ideological orientation, and ability to leverage prevailing political opportunities. The minor concessions offered to social movements by the hegemonic bloc through these negotiations, such as community benefits agreements or promises of “green jobs,” have strategically enabled the bloc to deepen neoliberal governance (e.g. 91 through greater privatization of public infrastructure). Finally, I have argued that the socio-ecological fixes displace socio-ecological crises to other spatial and temporal scales, raising new concerns over social and environmental justice. 92
Chapter 4
Toronto's Deindustrialization and “Green Jobs” as a Socio-ecological Fix
This chapter describes and explains Toronto's deindustrialization across multiple scales of analysis from the neighbourhood to the global. I argue that Ontario's deindustrialization, and the response to it by governments through so-called green economic policies, should be understood as planned, neoliberal socio-ecological fixes. I emphasize how these socio-ecological fixes were contested, emerging through struggles by fractions of capital for profit, and through social movement demands around jobs and the environment. Labour-community coalitions in Toronto have emerged to resist and reverse the loss of manufacturing jobs and industrial employment lands in the city. The Mount Dennis Weston Network, detailed in chapter six, formed to stop the conversion of an industrial park in York South-Weston, known as the Kodak lands, into a big box retail plaza. After providing a neighbourhood sketch of deindustrialization in York South-Weston, I relate this neighbourhood experience of deindustrialization to national neoliberal policies that have facilitated deindustrialization across Canada. I then examine how the City of Toronto has taken a contradictory approach towards deindustrialization over the past twenty years—in some cases facilitating, and at other times protecting against, the conversion of industrial lands. I highlight the uneven consequences of deindustrialization for different populations within Toronto, which have also been at the centre of labour-community alliance-forming. The second half of this chapter discusses the response by the government of Ontario to the loss of manufacturing jobs, focusing on the government's Green Economy and Green Energy Act (2009). The Green Energy Act's “feed-in tariff” program has provided billions of dollars in public subsidies to private renewable energy companies. The government promised this program would create 50,000 “green jobs” in the renewable energy sector over three years. The Green Energy Act reflects a socio- ecological fix that responded to political pressure from social movements regarding employment and environmental degradation, while catering to capital's ever-present need for accumulation. Although the program failed to deliver the promised boost in manufacturing jobs, it did co-opt labour and environmental groups, thereby subverting resistance to the government's ongoing privatization of the energy sector, and a growing reliance on nuclear energy—shifts that risk increasing the scale of future socio-ecological crises. 93
The Green Energy Act helped inspire labour-community coalitions like the Mount Dennis Weston Network to envision the redevelopment of vacant industrial lands in terms of “green” economic development. At the same time, contradictory zoning policies governing Toronto's industrial lands, and the underwhelming results of the Green Energy Act in terms of stimulating manufacturing employment, highlight the significant challenges facing coalitions like the MDWN in realizing their vision for economic development at the neighbourhood scale.
A Neighbourhood Sketch of Deindustrialization
Factory jobs once allowed Toronto's working-class industrial suburbs to thrive (Harris 1999; Gad 2004; Barber 1993). But over the past forty years, deindustrialization has taken its toll. Neighbourhoods in the political riding of York South-Weston have experienced the closure of large manufacturers: CCM (closed in 1983); Ferranti-Packard (1987); Dominion Steel Bridge (1990); Continental Can (early 1990s); and then Kodak Canada (2005), just to name a few. The closure of Kodak Canada in many ways marked the end of an industrial era for the surrounding neighbourhood known as Mount Dennis in the southern part of York South-Weston. In 1912, the photographic film production and processing company bought farmland in Mount Dennis on the outskirts of old Toronto in where it relocated its manufacturing plant and national corporate headquarters from its former downtown location. After opening in 1916, Kodak Canada became the economic anchor for the development of Mount Dennis. Mount Dennis was in many ways a company town, and Kodak worked hard to buy its workers’ loyalty through a wage dividend scheme, preferred hiring of relatives, sponsorship of baseball teams and social events, and on-site recreational facilities. A cluster of industries were established around the Kodak facility, forming one of Toronto's twenty-two designated Employment Districts. By the 1970s, over four thousand workers were employed at the Kodak plant alone. By 2001, employment at all businesses in the Weston Road Employment District had fallen to 3,061 jobs. Following the closure of Kodak and other companies, employment in the District fell to a low of 974 jobs, before rebounding slightly to 1,900 jobs in 2012 (Malone Given Parsons Ltd. 2012a; City of Toronto 2013b). Between 2001-2011, the Weston Road Employment District saw an 85% decline in office sector employment, and a 77% decline in manufacturing employment, reflecting the loss of Kodak Canada as both a manufacturing plant and corporate headquarters (Malone Given Parsons Ltd. 2012a). Manufacturing jobs in the Weston Road 94
Employment District decrease from 1,256 jobs in 2002 down to 303 jobs in 2009 rising only slightly to 410 jobs in 2012 (City of Toronto 2013b, 2010b). During this period, the service sector was the only sector that showed any net job growth, reflecting an economy-wide shift from industrial to service- based employment (Malone Given Parsons Ltd. 2012a). Where bustling factories once stood in York South-Weston, we now see coffee shops, housing developments, grocery stores and vacant brownfield sites. Many local small businesses that depended on the lunch-time and afterwork foot traffic generated by factory workers have since closed. The weekly newspaper (financed by advertisements of local businesses) is no longer published; the cinema closed in 1975; and a local baseball diamond, which once fielded teams sponsored by the nearby companies, lays abandoned. Deindustrialization therefore coincided with a weakening of socio-cultural institutions that once offered cohesion for the dominant white, anglo-saxon, protestant (WASP) community in York South-Weston. As the WASP workers retired or moved out of the area, attendance fell in the local Royal Canadian Legion branch and churches. The poor, largely racialized immigrants who have since moved into the area seeking cheap rent, have worked to build-up new socio-cultural institutions and small businesses (K. Rankin, Kamizaki, and McLean 2013), but without the same financial backing that industry once provided to the WASP community.
Deindustrialization as a Neoliberal Fix
Deindustrialization at the neighbourhood scale in York South-Weston was facilitated by all three levels of government. Although cities fall within the jurisdiction of provinces in Canada, the deindustrialization of Toronto has been part of a planned restructuring of the national economy.All three levels of government have generally favoured the shift away from manufacturing towards a service-based and commodities-export oriented economy, with some ad hoc efforts to support technological innovations aimed at increasing productivity to make Canadian manufacturing industries more globally competitive. Following a long recession in the 1990s, manufacturing employment in Canada rebounded and peaked in 1998 in the late 1990s before stagnating in the early 2000s, and then declining in the mid-2000s (Bernard 2009). Between 1998-2008, in the decade leading up to the Great Recession, Canada lost 123,000 net manufacturing jobs—many of these unionized (Bernard 2009).29
29 The unionization rate in the Canadian manufacturing sector dropped from 32.2% in 1998, to 26.4% in 2008 (Bernard, 2009). In 1998 there were 695,900 unionized manufacturing jobs, peaking in 2000 at 736,600, before dropping down to a low of 447,200 unionized manufacturing jobs in 2010 (a loss of nearly 40% since 2000). Source: Statistics Canada. CANSIM Series V2113886, Table 2820078. 95
The 2008-2009 Great Recession further deepened this decline. Between 2000-2007 the share of manufacturing employment in the economy dropped from 15% to 12% (a loss of 213,000 manufacturing jobs), and then declined further to 10% in 2009 (resulting in an additional 286,000 manufacturing jobs lost).30 In Ontario, manufacturing employment rose from 985,000 jobs in 1998, to a peak of 1,105,000 jobs in 2004, before steadily declining to 941,000 jobs in 2007 just before the Great Recession, after which manufacturing jobs have failed to exceed 780,000.31 The Ontario government's Green Economy and Green Energy Act (2009), discussed below, must be understood as a response to this long-term crisis for manufacturing workers, not only to the more general economic crisis caused by the Great Recession. At the federal level of government, there has been little vision or support for manufacturing jobs since the late 1980s. The federal Conservative government under Brian Mulroney significantly reduced the state's direct role in creating jobs, by liberalizing trade and privatizing what was at the time an impressive list of crown corporations. On January 1st, 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement came into effect between Canada, the United States, and Mexico (superseding the 1989 Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement). A year later, the World Trade Organization and the Uruguay round of international trade agreements (the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) were put into effect for Canada and 123 other countries. Canada's ratification of free trade agreements in the 1980s and 1990s, coupled with the development of more efficient global commodity transportation networks, caused some manufacturers to relocate to low-wage, non-unionized jurisdictions in the United States, Mexico, China, and other oversees locations (Atikian 2013; High 2015; Muszynski 1985; Norcliffe, Goldrick, and Muszynski 1986). Trade liberalization has been particularly hard-hitting for Canadian producers of non-durable goods such as clothing, textiles, paper, chemicals, food and plastics (Baldwin and Macdonald 2009; Baldwin and Yan 2010). Following other OECD countries, the Liberal and Conservative governments of the 1990s and 2000s continued to liberalize trade and abandoned the type of nation-building industrial policies that originally helped Canada emerge as an industrialized country (Ciuriak and Curtis 2013; Jenkin 1983). With some exceptions made for national defence contracts, federal governments have primarily seen their role as supporting business through strengthening “economic fundamentals”: corporate tax breaks;
30 Statistics Canada, Table 282-0088 - Labour force survey estimates (LFS), employment by North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), seasonally adjusted and unadjusted, annual (persons), CANSIM (database), accessed: April 18, 2017. 31 Statistics Canada, Table 282-0088 - Labour force survey estimates (LFS), employment by North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), seasonally adjusted and unadjusted, annual (persons), CANSIM (database), accessed: April 18, 2017. 96 balanced budgets; reduced public debt; and low rates of interest and inflation (Ciuriak and Curtis 2013; Department of Finance Canada 2006; Lang 2013; McQuaig 1995). The government of Ontario has followed a similar strategy as the federal government, focusing on corporate tax cuts and reducing debt. The spatio-temporal fix for industrial capital based in OECD countries has involved both capital investments at home and abroad. Manufacturers staying in Canada responded to increased global competition, as well as to currency fluctuations and three successive recessions in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, by increasing productivity and developing more globally integrated supply chains (Baldwin and Macdonald 2009; Baldwin and Yan 2010; Couture, Sydor, and Tang 2015). But these productivity gains involved labour-saving technologies that eliminated manufacturing jobs. Even as overall manufacturing GDP and employment dropped in Toronto over the period of 1997-2012, the remaining or new firms in Toronto increased their productivity by 27.6% (City of Toronto 2013e).
Toronto's Deindustrialization
Deindustrialization has profoundly changed Toronto's employment profile and built environment. Manufacturing jobs have been increasingly replaced by poorly-paid, more precarious, service sector jobs, along with a fewer number of well-paid, high-skill, jobs in the “knowledge economy” (e.g., research and development, and financial services)(City of Toronto 2015; Nowlan 1994; Tiessen 2014; Todd 1995). In Toronto, manufacturing represented only 9.0% of the city's employment in 2014, down from 22% in 1983 (City of Toronto 2004, 2015). Between 1997 and 2012, manufacturing employment across Toronto dropped 27% (44,500 jobs) despite overall employment increasing in the city by 13% (153,000 jobs)(City of Toronto 2013f). During the same period, Toronto's GDP from manufacturing decreased $2.5 billion, or 16%, falling to an estimated $13.6 billion, compared to an increase of 80% for all industries (City of Toronto 2013f). The number of manufacturing establishments in Toronto dropped by 1,300 firms between 1997 and 2012, and shifted in composition towards smaller firms (City of Toronto 2013f).32 Toronto has not only lost manufacturing jobs to other countries, but also to other adjacent municipalities. While downtown Toronto lost half of its manufacturing jobs between 1971-1991, manufacturing jobs peaked in the city's inner suburbs in 1981, and continued to increase in the municipalities adjacent to Toronto throughout the entire 1971-1991 period (Norcliffe 1996).
32 While the number of manufacturing establishments decreased in all size categories between 1997-2012, between 2002- 2012 establishments with 1-4 employees steadily grew in both number and as a percentage of total manufacturing establishments (City of Toronto 2013e). 97
Companies have been lured away from Toronto by adjacent municipalities that promise lower commercial taxes, more space to expand production facilities (on easier-to-develop greenfields), as well as newer, more efficient transportation networks (Wolfson and Frisken 2000).33 But deindustrialization has not left Toronto with a high number of abandoned industrial buildings and a declining population as is the case for America's rust belt around the Great Lakes. Coming out of the recession of the 1990s, the industrial vacancy rate in Toronto has remained relatively low and stable, staying between 4-5% (City of Toronto 2013e). For most of the period between 2000-2012, Toronto maintained the lowest industrial vacancy in the Greater Toronto Area (City of Toronto 2013e). The seeming paradox of Toronto's deindustrialization, which has seen low industrial vacancies, despite a decline in the number of manufacturing firms and employment, is explained by ongoing fixed capital investments in new or existing industrial facilities, coupled with an overall loss of industrial lands through conversions to other land uses. Building permits for new industrial buildings and renovations in Toronto totalled $982 million between 2006-2011 (including $276 million for new buildings, $81 million for additions, and $605 million for alterations and modifications) (Malone Given Parsons Ltd. 2012b). Between 2001-2011, the City issued an annual average of 725,000 square feet of new industrial building permits (Malone Given Parsons Ltd. 2012b).34 Although these permit figures point to continued investment in Toronto's manufacturing sector, they do not represent the annual net growth or decline of industrial space, only new space being constructed or renovated. A more accurate picture of how the industrial landscape is changing comes from property tax assessments. Property tax records show that the total current value assessment of Toronto's industrial properties (including the value of buildings and land) have decreased by 21% between 2001-2014 (excluding reassessment impact),35 compared with increases in residential properties (23%), multi-residential properties (12%) and commercial properties (7%)(City of Toronto 2014). This suggests a significant loss of industrial land and assets in Toronto, even if the remaining
33 Adjacent cities like Mississauga and Brampton are relatively new cities built around highways, rather than along an old port, railways, and narrow downtown streets dating back to the 19th century. 34 For comparison, the Greater Toronto Area has an industrial inventory of approximately 840 million square feet, ranking it within the top three markets in North America. The City of Toronto accounts for 34% of this total industrial inventory in the GTA (Malone Given Parsons Ltd. 2012b). Another report by Cushman & Wakefield, a commercial real estate services firm reported a lower annual average figure of 413,000 square feet of new industrial space supply during the same ten year period (Malone Given Parsons Ltd. 2012b). The lower figures may not include non-market industrial space such as public utility uses or government-owned properties (Malone Given Parsons Ltd. 2012b). 35 Properties are reassessed by the Provincial government for tax purposes every few years to reflect current market conditions. These figures do not include increases or decreases due to market fluctuations. Because warehousing and distribution space are classified by the provincial Assessment Act as “commercial” they are not included as part of the assessment value for “industrial” even though the City of Toronto considers warehousing as part of the manufacturing sector. 98 industrial properties remain active and are in demand by industrial capital. This conclusion is supported by the Toronto Industry Network—an alliance of manufacturers and manufacturer associations formed in 2001—that has warned that “industrial lands...are experiencing the pressures from sensitive non- industrial uses such as big-box retail, places of worship, schools, recreation clubs, etc”(Toronto Industry Network 2015). Although urban planning policy is set by the provinces and municipalities in Canada, the federal government sets levels of immigration, with major implications for urban growth (Rosen and Walks 2015). Toronto has a growing population, being the primary settlement city for at least 55,000 immigrants each year.36 But Toronto municipal boundaries are fixed (being enclosed by independent municipalities to the North, East, and West, and by Lake Ontario to the South) and most of the land area is already developed. Steady demand for housing in Toronto has therefore been met by increasing the density of existing residential areas (e.g., through infill townhouses) and the construction of condominiums—often through the conversion of industrial land. As part of its mandated 5-year comprehensive review of the Official Plan, the City of Toronto received 146 requests to convert lands currently designated for employment uses into non-employment uses—mostly residential (City of Toronto 2014b). The City of Toronto's policies towards industrial lands over the past twenty years have been contradictory. The local state has made coalitions with competing fractions of capital, labour and other societal interests, sometimes facilitating, and other times protecting against, the conversion of industrial lands, depending on the area of the city being contested. Intensification policies developed by both municipal and provincial governments facilitated the conversion of Toronto's downtown industrial lands into other commercial and residential uses. This land conversion supported the interests of real estate developers and business interests in the growing “knowledge-based economy”--i.e., the financial and insurance services sector, the post-secondary education sector, as well as the cultural industries (e.g., film and TV production, the arts, and sports entertainment), which the government see as future growth sectors:
the 2003 Central Waterfront Secondary Plan was adopted to "unlock" the potential of the waterfront area as it gradually deindustrialized. The creation of Waterfront Toronto to facilitate this transition has successfully opened up new areas for business and residential development in the East Bayfront and West Donlands. Corus Entertainment [a Canadian media and broadcasting
36 Between 2001 and 2006 a quarter of all immigrants coming to Canada settled in Toronto (i.e., 55,000 of 267,855) (City of Toronto 2007). 99
company] and George Brown College have brought a significant number of jobs to the Waterfront while Waterfront Toronto and staff in Parks, Forestry & Recreation have created Canada’s Sugar Beach, Sherbourne Common and Corktown Common as major additions to the Downtown network of parks (City of Toronto and Ostler 2014).
High commercial vacancies that followed the recession of the early 1990s, and the presence of abandoned “brick and beam” industrial buildings in the downtown core, prompted the City to relax exclusionary zoning policies and restrictions on building heights (Heath 2001; De Sousa 2002). Industrial and commercial buildings in Toronto's downtown core were converted into residential lofts and condominiums during the mid-1990s, followed by a condominium boom in the 2000s that continued the conversion of industrial lands in the city's downtown and waterfront areas (Rosen and Walks 2015). Industrial buildings and brownfield sites in the vicinity of the central business district (CBD) were rezoned to accommodate new office towers, entertainment venues, waterfront recreational spaces, and condos to house a new generation of downtown workers and consumers (Rosen and Walks 2015). All levels of government (though primarily the local and provincial governments) helped subsidize the downtown real estate boom by building necessary public infrastructure. The provincial government supported intensification and land-use conversion across Toronto, by passing the Places to Grow Act (2005) and the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe (2006), which were aimed at redirecting regional growth in the Greater Toronto Area to existing downtown centres. These provincial land-use policies were further supported by the government of Ontario's regional transportation strategy (discussed in the following chapter). New and expanded rapid transit lines have made it easier for commuters from the exurbs to work in downtown Toronto, thereby facilitating the development of Toronto's commercial and institutional sectors. To create a more vibrant and “livable” downtown core, all three levels of government have played a major role in the remediation of brownfield sites along the waterfront into green spaces, and have financed the construction or renovation of downtown arts performance buildings, museums and post-secondary educational institutions. A wave of office development during the 2000s saw brownfield sites in the downtown core redeveloped into office buildings (Dobson 2013; Marr 2013; Pigg 2015). The conversion of industrial lands across the city has been directly supported by tax incentives offered by the City of Toronto and the Government of Ontario that offset the costs of remediating brownfield sites for non-retail employment uses (City of Toronto Office of the Treasurer 2015; Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing 2015). In addition, the City of Toronto rolled out the Imagination Manufacturing Innovation Technology Property Tax Incentive Program in 2008, following 100 a pilot project that started in 2003. This program offsets increases in taxes for ten years that a property owner would otherwise have paid as a result of redeveloping a property for industrial and commercial sectors, and can be used in conjunction with the Brownfield Remediation Grant. Besides brownfield remediation policies, the City of Toronto has charged relatively low development levies in comparison to neighbouring municipalities in order to attract investment. Land-use planning policies, together with government investments in public infrastructure and cultural sites, have not only converted Toronto's industrial land directly, but have driven gentrification which has indirectly encouraged land-use conversion. A substantial rent gap between industrial and non-industrial land anywhere close to the downtown core and along rapid transit corridors increased the financial incentive for manufacturing companies to sell their industrial lands to real estate developers. Rather than be alarmed by the loss of industrial lands, the Planning Department and councillors from across the political spectrum seem to have naturalized industrial decline as an inevitable, if not a progressive, trend both nationally and globally. The acceptance of this logic is seen as a taken-for- granted truths in staff reports, such as the City of Toronto's 2010 Toronto Employment Survey which argues that:
The number of manufacturing firms declined in 2010...continuing a trend which has been recorded almost every year since 2000. A similar decline has been evident nationally as the North American economy has continued to shift from a goods-producing economy to a service- based economy. This progression reflects an evolving urban economy which remains competitive in a changing regional and global market (City of Toronto 2011, 3; emphasis added).
Conversions of industrial land have even occurred within Employment Districts spread across the city. Employment Districts were created by the City's Official Plan to protect industrial activity, and accounted for no less than 83.2% of all manufacturing sector establishments in 2014, representing 92.1% of all manufacturing jobs in Toronto (City of Toronto 2015). Although statistics are patchy, over 75 hectares of land in Employment Districts were lost to conversions between 2000 to June 2005, carrying on a trend that saw the conversion of at least an additional 300 hectares during the 1990s (Hemson Consulting Ltd. 2006).37 Industrial establishments have had to compete increasingly with retail establishments on Toronto's Employment Districts. Compared with other zoning categories (such as Avenues and Centres), Employment Districts are now home to the highest concentration of retail
37 Conversions of industrial to residential lands have also occurred in cities adjacent to Toronto (Cogliano 2014; Persico 2013). 101 employment in the city, increasing to 26% in 2011 from only 10% in 2001 (Malone Given Parsons Ltd. 2012b).38 Since the mid-2000s, the City of Toronto has become more protective of industrial land, particularly within designated Employment Districts, siding with industrial capital, community and labour groups against developers that are eager to convert industrial properties into “big box” retail centres and condominiums (Alcoba 2012; Atkins 2014; City of Toronto 2013g; Napier 2009). Legal battles over these conversions have fallen both ways at the Ontario Municipal Board—an appointed, quasi-judicial, provincial tribunal that oversees appeals of land-use decisions made by municipal governments (Napier 2009; Ontario Municipal Board 2006). In response to these land-use conflicts, the City of Toronto made amendments to zoning by-laws in 2013 that now more clearly distinguish between Core Employment Areas (i.e., non-retail, non-residential) and General Employment Areas (City of Toronto 2013a). But the Toronto Industry Network still worries that the changes do not go far enough in protecting land for manufacturing since office use and some other uses are included as part of “Core Employment Areas” (City of Toronto 2013a; The Toronto Industry Network 2013).39 The loss of manufacturing jobs, and conversion pressures on industrial lands, are therefore not contained to York South-Weston, but rather part of a much broader trend across Toronto.
The Uneven Consequences of Deindustrialization and Urban Renewal
The consequences of Toronto's deindustrialization, and subsequent “urban renewal,” have been uneven. The loss of manufacturing jobs and industrial lands in downtown Toronto, coupled with intensification policies, has contributed to a growing socio-spatial polarization in the city that motivates and guides labour-community coalition-forming. At the same time, deindustrialization and land-use conversions is part of a broader socio-ecological fix that has restructured and re-scaled flows of energy and pollutants through the city and around the world. First, locational data used to map out where people who are working in Employment Districts
38 These categories come from a 2012 consultant report commissioned by the City of Toronto entitled, “Sustainable Competitive Advantage and Prosperity – Planning for Employment Uses in the City of Toronto” (Malone Given Parsons Ltd. 2012b). The report compares employment sectors across nine land-use and geographic categories, based on Toronto's Official Plan: Downtown and Waterfront Area; Centres; Employment Districts - “Industrial”; Employment Districts - “Business Park”; Employment Areas Outside of Districts; Avenues; Mixed Use Areas Outside of Avenues; Institutional Areas; All Other Areas. 39 These by-law changes could end up reducing the overall space for manufacturing by encouraging the encroachment of a broad range of businesses into General Employment Areas now designated on the periphery of former Employment Districts where they were not previously allowed. 102 reside demonstrate that the city's industrial employment areas are an important source of employment for those living in Toronto's low-income, under-serviced, highly racialized, Priority Neighbourhoods (now called Neighbourhood Improvement Areas) (Malone Given Parsons Ltd. 2012b). For residents who have lower levels of educational credentials, or who are less versed in English (typically recent immigrants), manufacturing jobs remain the best chance at a full-time, relatively well-paid job (City of Toronto 2013e; Malone Given Parsons Ltd. 2012b).40 Manufacturing jobs are characterized by the highest percentage of full-time jobs (93%) across all sectors (with retail and service sector jobs only providing 53% and 64% full-time employment, respectively)(City of Toronto 2013e). Manufacturing jobs are also relatively better paid than other low-skilled sectors in Toronto, offering an annual average wage of $42,617 compared with jobs in the retail, arts, entertainment, recreation, accommodation and food services sectors, which all on average pay below $30,000 annually (City of Toronto 2013e). The loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs has therefore contributed to growing income inequality and precarity that is being felt disproportionately by racialized residents and women (OECD 2011; Stapleton, Murphy, and Xing 2012; A. Walks 2013). Second, growing income inequalities and urban intensification policies have also driven the gentrification of former blue-collar neighbourhoods, forcing many low-income residents to relocate or settle in Toronto's inner suburbs, including York South-Weston, away from rapid transit and an increasingly unaffordable downtown core (Hulchanski 2010; R. A. Walks 2001; A. Walks 2013). Mapping how income levels have changed in neighbourhoods across the city between 1970-2005, Hulchanski (2010) identified “three cities”: an increasingly wealthy and white city core; an increasingly impoverished and racialized inner suburbs; and dwindling mixed-income neighbourhoods in between. Higher rates of violent crimes are also experienced in low-income and racialized neighbourhoods in Toronto (Charron 2009). These inequalities and socio-spatial correlations help explain why a labour-community coalition aimed at protecting industrial land, and fighting for good-paying, equitably accessible, jobs emerged in York South-Weston—a deindustrialized, poor and racialized area, where concerns over crime run high. Through struggles over urban planning and living wages, labour-community coalitions seek to regulate, if not reverses, deindustrialization and socio-spatial polarization. At the same time, the uneven impacts and benefits of deindustrialization and urban renewal create challenges for organizing cross-class, cross-race, social movement alliances.
40 In 2012, thirty-nine percent of Toronto residents working in manufacturing had only obtained either a high school diploma (24%) or less (15%) (City of Toronto 2013e). 103
Third, deindustrialization and urban renewal have many uneven consequences as part of a socio-ecological fix, as the urban metabolism is reorganized across multiple scales. Toronto's deindustrialization has changed how pollutants circulate through the city and impact residents. Air and water pollution within the city have been reduced as a result of manufacturers relocating into adjacent municipalities and overseas.41 Toxic brownfield sites have been remediated (often using public funds) and converted into office space, green spaces, and restored ecosystems, helping to “unlock” profits for real estate developers. Trade liberalization has raised environmental justice concerns of heavily polluting industries being relocated to the Global South. Meanwhile, free trade agreements have been criticized for making it easier for corporations to sue governments party to the agreement that have implemented higher environmental regulatory standards (Mann and von Moltke 1999; Sinclair 2015).42 Free trade agreements have also increased the distance over which commodities (including inputs) are transported, increasing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions embedded in goods being consumed in wealthy cities like Toronto (Arto et al. 2014). More generally, neoliberal competition has driven an “ecological treadmill” (Allan Schnaiberg, David N. Pellow, and Adam Weinberg 2002, 19). To increase profits and respond to global competition, industries in rich countries have invested in technological “efficiencies” that reduce labour costs (i.e., manufacturing jobs) and increase overall productive capacity. But these so-called efficiencies increase overall inputs of natural resources into the production process (i.e., greater scales of extraction), and require greater inputs of energy and chemicals (Prudham 2004).
“Green Jobs” as Industrial Policy
Deindustrialization left a space—both physical and discursive—as to what would replace manufacturing as the engine of job creation and economic growth for Toronto, let alone as a solution to growing inequality and poverty. During the 2000s, governments in the United States, Canada, and Europe responded to struggles over the loss of manufacturing jobs, and growing concerns around climate change, through promises and programs to create “green jobs” within the renewable energy 41 For an example, see Lin et al.'s (2014) empirical study of how the relocation of manufacturing from the United States to China has redistributed air pollution to China, and from the eastern to western seaboards of the United States (due to overseas atmospheric currents). 42 On the other hand, environmental regulations have been so weakened by the Canadian government that some activists have tried to argue this puts Canada in violation of NAFTA, since it provides Canadian companies with an unfair competitive advantage (Hume 2013). In this sense, NAFTA has become a legal tool used by activists to create a floor for environmental regulation. Similarly, Vogel (2009)has argued that trade agreements have raised, rather than lowered, environmental regulatory standards internationally. 104 sector and, to a lesser extent, through energy conservation (e.g., energy retrofits) (Nugent 2009; Hess 2012). This section examines the Province of Ontario's Green Energy and Green Economy Act (2009) which was the governing Liberal Party's flagship program to create manufacturing jobs and address climate change through subsidizing renewable energy production. In generating hope that the green economy would drive the next wave of job creation, the Green Energy and Green Economy Act had important implications in shaping the formation and orientation of labour-community coalitions in York South-Weston. I will first discuss how the Green Energy Act aligned with the government's industrial policy. I then argue that the Green Energy Act was a socio-ecological fix that responded to political pressure from social movements regarding employment and environmental degradation, but in ways that deepened the neoliberal governance of the energy sector, and re-scaled socio-ecological crisis tendencies. Overall, the Ontario and Canadian governments have adopted a laissez-faire approach to the loss of manufacturing jobs, in contrast to the type of import substitution policies that historically drove Canada's industrialization (e.g., protectionist trade policies, direct government ownership, and public control of strategic industries) (Ciuriak and Curtis 2013; Isfeld 2014). For example, the government failed to block the takeover and subsequent shutdown of Stelco's steel production plant (in Hamilton, Ontario) by the American company U.S. Steel, even though U.S. Steel reneged on its promise to create jobs in exchange for government approval of the foreign takeover (Arnold 2015; USW Local 1005 2014). To the extent that governments have implemented industrial policy, it has been ad-hoc, and centred on increasing corporate loans, grants, wage subsidies, and targeted tax credits (Ciuriak and Curtis 2013; Isfeld 2014).43 Government subsidy programs are driven by the logic of neoliberalism, as government seek to attract international capital investment, or support existing corporations to become more globally competitive. Worth billions of dollars, the Ontario Government's subsidies have targeted high-tech venture capital (research and development), clean-tech companies in the “knowledge-based economy,” or capital-intensive industries that the government is trying to attract or retain in the province (McMillian LLP 2012; Walkom 2013). The assumption is that supporting these companies' investments in innovation and productivity will create economic growth that will, in turn, generate jobs and tax
43 An notable exception to the current model of government industrial policy was direct interventions by the federal and provincial governments during the 2008 financial collapse to save Canada's long-protected auto-industry through a $13.7 billion partial nationalization of General Motors and Chrysler (i.e., purchasing company shares to prevent bankruptcy). But even here the government did not use its leverage to make demands around domestic job creation and production (Panitch and Albo 2013; Walkom 2013). 105 revenue. Reform-oriented labour-community coalitions have often accepted the neoliberal logic of corporate subsidies, hoping to attract capital into particular cities or neighbourhoods. Although targeted corporate subsidies give media-savvy politicians numerous campaign-style photo-ops on factory floors, they have been criticized for failing to create jobs or provide significant financial return to the public (Morrow 2014). For one thing, technological innovations and productivity gains often means the elimination of jobs. Moreover, without any contractual requirements to keep production facilities in the province, some firms have collected public subsidies only to then shutdown and move production other regions or countries offering higher subsidies (Chung 2010; Ferguson 2012; Morrow 2014). The Ontario government's Green Energy and Green Economy Act (2009) was the ruling Liberal Party's signature policy response to the ongoing loss of manufacturing jobs—and its most expensive single program for generating manufacturing jobs. The Green Energy Act was highly profitable for energy companies, and reflected a more general shift by Canada's major business associations to embrace an ecological modernist approach to climate change policy following Canada's ratification of Kyoto in 2002—which they had steadfastly opposed up to that point (Nugent 2009). Climate change policy became increasingly viewed as a way to create new markets for environmental goods and services such as green energy, carbon credits, green buildings and flood control systems. The government's feed-in tariff program provided private solar and wind energy companies with twenty-year contracts for energy generation, at guaranteed prices that ranged from 13.5¢ per kilowatt hour (for onshore wind) up to 80.2¢ per kilowatt hour (for rooftop solar). In comparison, ratepayers in Ontario were paying around 8¢ per kilowatt hour for electricity. The feed-in tariff subsidies guarantees private wind and solar power companies 11% to 24% after-tax returns on equity for twenty-year electricity generation contracts (Auditor General of Ontario 2011). These subsidies will cost the Ontario treasury approximately $2 billion in subsidies per year—a level of subsidies criticized by the Auditor General of Ontario (2011) as unnecessarily high for the government to reach its policy objectives. In addition to the feed-in tariff program, the government has signed multi-billion dollar, sole-sourced, contracts with multi-national corporations to build renewable energy projects in Ontario.44 The Auditor General (2011) reported that annual electricity bills for a typical household 44 In 2010, the Ontario Government signed a separate single-source contract with a South Korean consortium, led by Samsung. The province was to pay the consortium $9.7 billion to produce 2,500 MW of wind and solar energy for 20 years (at subsidized feed-in tariff rates of 13.5 cents and 44.3 cents per kilowatt hour for wind and solar, respectively, as well as preferential access to limited transmission lines). In return Samsung promised to invest $7 billion supplying components from four new manufacturing plants it would build in Ontario. After significant delays and political backlash, in 2013 the Ontario government reduced the electricity generation contract to 1,369MW, worth $6 billion, and only $5 billion investments in supply. The government also reduced its original projection of 1,400 manufacturing jobs being created through the deal, down to 900 jobs (Hamilton and Benzie 2010; Ministry of Energy 2013). 106 would increase 46% between 2009-2014 (from $1,250 to $1,820), with over half of this increase owing to renewable energy contracts. The Green Energy Act directly responded to organized labour's advocacy over the loss of manufacturing jobs and a wave of public support for climate change regulations during the mid-2000s as greenhouse gas emissions surpassed Canada's Kyoto targets (Nugent 2009).45 During the 1990s, national unions and labour organizations proposed addressing climate change through “green job” creation policies (Nugent 2009, 2011). Green job creation policies, together with the concept of “just transition,” were developed by the labour movement to counter the anti-Kyoto business alliance's efforts to pit “workers” against “environmentalists” and to promote the belief that there is an inherent trade-off between “the economy” and “the environment.” In contrast to other government subsidy programs, the Green Energy Act imposed protectionist measures to support domestic manufacturing. Government subsidies were contingent on projects using a certain percentage of made-in-Ontario materials and labour, referred to as “domestic content.” In widely circulated press releases and speeches, the government claimed that the Green Energy Act would position Ontario to win a “global race to...become the preferred destination for green jobs, green investment and green energy,” creating 50,000 jobs over three years (Ministry of Energy & Infrastructure 2009). The United Steelworkers (USW) union, representing workers in the troubled manufacturing sectors of both Canada and the United States, took the lead in advocating for the inclusion of domestic content conditions into the 2009 Green Energy Act's feed-in tariff program in hopes that this would create green manufacturing jobs. In the United States, the USW had already joined with the Sierra Club to form the BlueGreen Alliance in 2006 to promote the creation of clean energy jobs. The BlueGreen Alliance, together with interested fractions of capital in the renewable energy sector, successfully lobbied for over $40 billion (USD) towards energy efficiency and renewable energy programs as part of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment. This $831 billion (USD) stimulus package also included $500 million (USD) for the training of “green-collar workers” and was subject to protectionist “Buy American” conditions requiring that only iron, steel, and other manufactured goods produced in
45 The Canadian government ratified the Kyoto agreement in 2002 but became increasingly criticized at home and abroad for failing to reduce emissions and for obstructing international climate change negotiations. Climate activists, including environmental organizations, some sub-national government administrations, and certain opposition parties, worked hard to keep Canada’s embarrassing performance in reducing emissions in the public spotlight. The political significance of the climate crisis was reflected in the 2008 federal election campaign which was largely fought over climate change policy and the economy. During the campaign, the federal Liberal Party (which was the Official Opposition) bet heavily, and unsuccessfully, on its “Green Shift” carbon tax platform, which Prime Minister Stephen Harper of the Conservative Party undermined by threatening it would “plunge Canada into recession” (Campion-Smith 2008). 107 the United States be used for public works and public building projects (Hess 2012).46 In light of the lobbying success of the BlueGreen Alliance in the United States, and growing public investments in renewable energy in the United States, Europe, and China, the Canadian USW formed a strategic alliance with Environmental Defence in 2008 called Blue Green Canada. The USW and Blue Green Canada promoted the Green Energy Act through a broad coalition, called the Green Energy Act Alliance, that included wind and solar energy producer associations, environmental organizations and unions. As an industrial policy, the Green Energy Act fell short on its promise to create 50,000 jobs over three years—with the Auditor General (2011) criticizing the government for never explaining how its jobs projections were calculated in the first place. The government's projections included both direct versus indirect jobs, and did not specify whether the 50,000 jobs figure was net new jobs or gross jobs (e.g., it did not include the number of jobs lost in other sectors from higher electricity prices, or from the closure of coal power plants that new renewable projects were helping to replace). The Auditor General reported that seventy-five percent of the projected jobs in the renewable energy sector would be short-term (1-3 year) jobs in construction (e.g., installing wind turbines and solar panels), with only 10,000 jobs expected to be long-term. In its two-year review report, the government estimated that the feed-in tariff program had created “almost 2,000 direct manufacturing jobs” (Amin 2012, 6). But these estimates were based on economic modelling, rather than direct surveys (Winfield and Dolter 2014). In 2013, the government promised that an additional sole-source renewable energy contract with Samsung (originally valued at $9.7 billion but later reduced to $6 billion) would create another 900 direct manufacturing jobs across four Southern Ontario manufacturing plants (including one in Toronto). However, by 2012, other solar and wind energy manufacturing plants were already closing across Ontario, citing a lack of demand (D’Aliesio 2012). Because domestic content requirements were only set at 25%-60%, depending on the type of the project and year of construction, many high-value components could still be imported rather than manufactured in Ontario. Following a 2010 complaint to the WTO against Canada by Japan, the Government of Ontario was forced to phase out the domestic content requirements starting in 2014, further reducing the job creation impacts of the Green Energy Act. In brief, the Green Energy Act failed in its original promise to drive job creation in Ontario's manufacturing sector.
46 Any public building or public works project funded through the $831 billion stimulus package was subject to “Buy American” provisions that required only iron, steel, and other manufactured goods be used that were produced in the United States. 108
The Green Energy Act did increase Ontario's production of renewable energy—albeit far short of its original objective to “ensure Ontario's energy supply mix is one of the cleanest anywhere” (Ministry of Energy & Infrastructure 2009). By 2013, wind power had increased to 3.4% (5.2TWh) from less than 1% in 2003 (Government of Ontario 2010; Independent Electricity System Operator 2014). But the Green Energy Act was also used by the provincial government as a green “fig leaf” in order to downplay its increase in nuclear energy generation and the neoliberal restructuring of the energy sector.47 As the Liberal administration trumpeted the environmental and job-creating benefits of the Green Energy Act, the entire energy sector became increasingly privatized. Throughout the 2000s, the Ontario government, which is still responsible for selling and distributing electricity to most consumers in Ontario, signed long-term public-private (P3) contracts with private power companies worth billions of dollars to build generation stations and to generate electricity. In an act of creative destruction, the Liberal government replaced seventeen of nineteen public coal-power plant units (producing 22% of Ontario's electricity) with privately-operated nuclear, natural gas, biofuel and renewable energy facilities. Nuclear power generation rose to 59% (91.1TWh) by the year 2013 up from 42% (62.2TWh) in 2003, hydroelectric declined slightly to 23% (36.1TWh) from 24% (35.5TWh), and natural gas increased to 11% (17.1TWh) from 8% (11.9TWh). Bruce Power, a privatized nuclear company setup by the Ontario Conservative government in 2000, was subsidized by the Liberal government with at least $1.7 billion in return for refurbishing idling public nuclear reactors units (Auditor General of Ontario 2007). Bruce Power was guaranteed long-term electricity generation contracts to operate these reactor units that provided a 10.6% to 13.8% after tax return on investment (Auditor General of Ontario 2007). All new renewable energy facilities brought on-line through the Green Energy Act were also privately-owned. Incredibly, the publicly- owned Ontario Power Generation was forbidden from building renewable energy projects. By presenting the Green Energy Act as progressive environmental and labour policies, the Ontario government insulated itself against criticism over the neoliberal restructuring of the province's energy infrastructure. The ruling Liberals strategically co-opted labour unions, who might otherwise have criticized the shift towards privatized energy production and corporate subsidies paid for by the working class through higher electricity rates. At the same time, the Green Energy Act allowed the government to co-opt environmental groups that might otherwise have criticized the government’s growing dependence on nuclear energy.
47 I draw here on Gavin Fridell's (2004, 424) critique of how the support for fair trade coffee within public institutions has become an “'ethical fig leaf' to mask their devotion to a broader neoliberal agenda.” 109
Consequences of the Socio-ecological Fix
New political contestations emerge from the reorganization of flows of energy, materials and waste that are associated with socio-ecological fixes. Socio-ecological fixes only temporarily displace crisis tendencies, producing contradictions and struggles at other spatial and temporal scales. The government justified P3 contracts and subsidizing private energy companies as a way to quickly transition away from (publicly-owned) coal power and win the “global race”48 to attract renewable energy capital (Ministry of Energy & Infrastructure 2009). Feed-in tariff programs increased renewable energy generation a small amount, but heavily subsidized, twenty-year, contracts will increase the costs of energy production for years to come. Low-income residents will especially feel the burden of increased electricity rates since a higher proportion of their income is spent on energy. Already, rising electricity bills have become a political hot button issue that is shaping the 2018 election campaign (S. McCarthy 2017). Meanwhile, by privatizing energy production, the government is forsaking revenue, thereby deepening struggles over neoliberal austerity. Ironically, the government of Ontario has used higher electricity bills to justify the further privatization of electricity distribution systems across Ontario, promising to “find efficiencies” (Benzie 2016). The Ontario government has also justified the privatization of Ontario Hydro as a way to finance new transit infrastructure—responding to related socio-ecological crisis tendencies discussed in the following chapter. The restructuring of Ontario's energy sector reorganized metabolic conditions in ways that deferred and rescaled socio-ecological crisis tendencies. Ontario's increasing reliance on nuclear energy —in the name of reducing global greenhouse gases and cleaning Toronto's air of smog—has shifted socio-ecological crisis tendencies onto communities living “downstream” from nuclear plants and uranium mines as well as onto future generations who will confront a legacy of nuclear waste (see e.g., Lands and Environment Unit Kichenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug 2008). Farmers in Ontario have worried that solar farms are occupying prime agricultural land (Miner 2015). Meanwhile, the production of solar panels can release highly potent greenhouse gases that are not well understood or monitored, as well as toxic waste that, until recently, was simply being dumped in fields near production facilities in China (Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition 2009; Parkinson 2009; Yakabuski 2015). Those opposed to wind farms in Ontario argued these projects had adverse local health impacts, although without any
48 (Ministry of Energy & Infrastructure 2009) 110 scientific evidence in support of such claims (Knopper and Ollson 2011). Residents in the Greater Toronto Area also halted the construction of two natural gas power plants being built to replace coal- fired generators, arguing the plants would negatively impact people's health and property values. Analyzing the reorganization of metabolic conditions through socio-ecological fixes helps us anticipate and evaluate the environmental justice implications of these fixes—i.e., the redistribution of harmful impacts as well as benefits.
Conclusion
This chapter has analyzed Toronto's deindustrialization and the Ontario government's green economic policies as parts of a multi-scalar, neoliberal socio-ecological fix. I have demonstrated how this fix was organized by the hegemonic bloc to increase rates of capital accumulation while responding to social movement concerns over job losses and the environment. I first described how deindustrialization was deliberately planned, facilitated by neoliberal policies and practices at all levels of government. Toronto's deindustrialization has meant the loss of manufacturing jobs and the conversion of industrial lands, the consequences of which have been highly uneven. The politics of deindustrialization are shaped, not only by its uneven socio-economic and socio-spatial consequences, but more broadly by its reorganization of Toronto's urban metabolism. In the following chapter I analyze how “urban renewal” as a socio-ecological fix has been supported by deindustrialization. Deindustrialization has reduced or spatially displaced Toronto's air and water pollution thereby creating a more livable and marketable “global city.” As a strategy for urban capital accumulation, urban renewal has been facilitated through deindustrialization by its production of vacant industrial lands that real estate developers could then try to convert into residential developments (often with financial incentives offered by governments for brownfield site remediation). Canadian governments at various level have generally adopted a laissez-faire approach towards deindustrialization over the past thirty years. While supporting free trade policies, both the provincial and municipal governments have offered subsidies to attract or retain manufacturing companies in certain targeted sectors. More recently, the City of Toronto has become increasingly protective of its remaining industrially-zoned land—at least those within designated employment areas. Social movements have played an important role in negotiating the character of these government responses. The Green Energy Act, which was the Ontario government's signature policy response to the loss of 111 manufacturing jobs, arose out of the convergence of advocacy by industrial unions, the environmental movement, and fractions of capital ready to capture heavily subsidized profits in the renewable energy sector. I argue that the Green Energy Act was a neoliberal socio-ecological fix that generated massive profits for capital while offsetting political pressures around a dual crisis of climate change and the loss of manufacturing jobs. The government's co-option of labour and environmental groups in support of the Green Energy Act, silenced potential resistance to the privatization of energy generation in Ontario and an increased reliance on nuclear energy (and growing energy consumption in general). The Green Energy Act was used by the provincial government as an green “fig leaf” in order to downplay its increase in nuclear energy generation and the neoliberal restructuring of the energy sector. Meanwhile, the underwhelming job creation results of the Green Energy Act, despite its high price tag, reflects the incredible challenge of the state—let alone labour-community coalitions—to direct economic development within a neoliberal context. 112
Chapter 5
Toronto's Urban Renewal as a Socio-ecological Fix
This chapter analyzes so-called urban renewal as part of a neoliberal, contested, socio- ecological fix. I analyze urban renewal as a set of policies and projects as well as a narrative about the city that seeks to legitimize a deepening of neoliberal urban governance. I argue that by analyzing urban renewal as a socio-ecological fix, which reorganizes the urban metabolism, we are better able to relate its timing, character, and consequences to both the logic of capital and a wider range of socio- ecological struggles. This allows us to better understand urban renewal as part of the establishment and contestation of hegemony. My analysis emphasizes how consent for a socio-ecological fix in a given locale is organized, in part, by geographically displacing or externalizing the social and environmental costs associated with the fix onto less powerful social groups and/or future generations. Toronto's “urban renewal” is a strategy to increase capital accumulation through: real estate development, often by land use rezoning and demolishing existing buildings (i.e., “creative destruction”); speeding up the circulation of capital through the construction of more efficient consumption and transportation networks (i.e., time-space compression); and marketing Toronto as an entrepreneurial, “global city” (T. Hall and Hubbard 1996; Kipfer and Keil 2002; Harvey 1990). As an urban accumulation strategy, urban renewal responds to as much as facilitates deindustrialization. Toronto's urban renewal has been organized by the state through provincial and municipal “smart growth” planning policies as well as public infrastructure investments, both of which are aimed at intensifying growth within Toronto's downtown core and along its major transit lines. This chapter first examines urban renewal as the “greening” of Toronto's deindustrialized landscape, or what While et al. (2004) refer to as the “urban sustainability fix” aimed at “safeguard[ing] growth trajectories in the wake of industrial capitalism's long downturn, the global 'ecological crisis' and the rise of popular environmentalism” (While, Jonas, and Gibbs 2004, 551). The urban sustainability fix selectively incorporates environmental goals into urban governance according to struggles between economic imperatives, regulatory drivers, social movement political pressure, intensified interurban competition, and neoliberal state restructuring (While, Jonas, and Gibbs 2004). I argue that Toronto's urban sustainability fix has had conflicting meanings and consequences for real estate developers, environmentalists, homeowners, and low-income renters in York South-Weston. The second half of this chapter examines public infrastructure investments as part of a socio- 113 ecological fix. I explain how the construction of two, multi-billion dollar, rail transit projects through York South-Weston was a response by the Ontario government to political-economic crisis tendencies caused by air pollution, traffic congestion, and urban sprawl. Social movement coalitions in York South-Weston (including the Mount Dennis Weston Network, and the Toronto Community Benefits Network, both discussed in the following chapters) have formed to contest the distribution of benefits and costs associated with these projects such as jobs, air pollution, and access to public transit. Throughout the chapter I argue that Toronto's urban sustainability fix and the Ontario Government's “green” investments in rapid transit infrastructure have both constituted a deepening of neoliberal governance. The state is using so-called “public-private partnerships” to build rapid transit infrastructure in Toronto while an entrepreneurial municipal government has celebrated the “rejuvenation” of brownfield industrial sites into greenspaces, condos, and gentrified commercial areas as a strategy for transforming Toronto into a more “liveable” and “global” city that can attract international talent and capital. An appeal to a seemingly progressive environmentalist discourse (e.g., “green energy,” “green transit,” and a “sustainable city”), together with (unrealized) promises of job creation (e.g., “green jobs”), have been critically important for the state to foster popular consent for this neoliberal restructuring.
Toronto's Urban Sustainability Fix
Conflicts over gentrification and the conversion of industrial lands are struggles over how different groups envision the urban environment, and how different groups are experiencing changes in the urban metabolism associated with deindustrialization. For real estate developers, the toxic legacy of industrialization fetters the conversion and redevelopment of industrial lands, because of regulatory restrictions and the real estate market. Toronto's industrial legacy remains engrained in the toxic soil of brownfield sites that are concentrated along the waterfront and land along the rail corridors that formed the city's early industrial skeleton (De Sousa 2002; Laidley 2007). Soil remediation of brownfields is expensive, especially when trying to remediate to levels safe for residential development. Housing developments built on former industrial sites—even where top soil layers have been remediated—have lower market value (and so are less attractive to developers) because they are not permitted to have basements due to the risk of volatile organic compounds seeping into the basement from contaminated soils further below. 114
Existing residents of industrial areas experience first hand the toxic legacy of industrialization. For example, soil and groundwater flowing through and around the Mount Dennis-Weston Employment District in York South-Weston is contaminated with trichloroethylene (TCE) —a volatile organic chemical that was used as an industrial solvent and that is toxic for humans (Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment 2007; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 2011). TCE has surfaced in some residents' basements who live downstream from the Employment District. The City of Toronto has spent at least $5.5 million dollars to simply map and monitor the TCE plume (Toronto Transit Commission 2011). Despite a toxic industrial legacy left in Toronto's soils and groundwater, the decline in industrial activity in Toronto over the past forty years, coupled with more stringent pollution controls and technological changes, have led to much healthier air, rivers and lakefront, encouraging the redevelopment of post-industrial neighbourhoods (Gee 2013; Nichols 2009; Toronto Public Health 2014). Meanwhile, the state has converted hundreds of hectares of brownfield sites across the city into green spaces for recreation and ecosystems habitat restoration (De Sousa 2002). New environmental policies and programs were implemented by a growing environmental bureaucracy at all levels of government, pushed along in Toronto by environmental groups such as Pollution Probe, “Bring Back the Don [River],” and the Toronto Environmental Alliance (R. E. O’Connor 2010; Desfor and Keil 1999; Keil and Boudreau 2006). The “greening” of Toronto has therefore been both a planned and unplanned outcome of deindustrialization. Toronto's environmental clean-up has opened-up former industrial spaces for development and supported the “revitalization” of economically depressed neighbourhoods, supporting an urban growth regime increasingly driven by real estate capital. Kipfer and Keil (2002, 246) argue this urban sustainability fix has been driven foremost by the imperatives of neoliberal economic competition:
“Removing obstacles” to reinvestment, “liberating land-use,” and discarding “unattractive,” “outdated,” or “derelict” land uses through discretionary zoning, tax incentives, and centralized infrastructure investments are seen as the best ways to emulate aggressive neoliberal revitalization strategies in other cities (City of Toronto 2000d:27, 32). Proposed initiatives for public transit, environmental restoration, and affordable housing, are subordinated to this imperative of competitiveness, while quality of life is instrumentalized as a tool for “reinvestment.”49
49 Similarly, (Keil and Boudreau 2006) argue that Toronto's environmental clean-up first occurred through a reformist, then a neoliberal ecological modernist approach; sustainability as an avenue for Toronto's economic growth and improved global competitiveness. 115
The “greening” of Toronto has been integral to raising its global city status, directing investments towards international mega-events (e.g. the Pan Am Games; Caribana; World Pride Festival; the Toronto International Film Festival; etc.), and marketing itself as a safe, “livable” city with a high quality of life that offers an ideal location for national and global corporate headquarters and for the coveted “creative class” to live and work (Desfor and Keil 1999; Keil and Boudreau 2006; Kipfer and Keil 2002; Laidley 2007; Florida 2002; Todd 1995). A reduction in the smells, noise, and sights of slaughterhouses, factories, auto body shops, and other industrial activities have allowed developers, real estate agents, and ratepayer associations to more easily market former industrial neighbourhoods as desirable locations. The conversion of brownfields into parks and ecological habitat—most often through public money—significantly raises the value of surrounding housing prices (Sousa 2008; Sousa, Wu, and Westphal 2009; Laidley 2007). While the conversion of brownfields to green spaces is most pronounced along Toronto's waterfront, several former gravel pits, brick-making pits, and landfill sites in York South-Weston have similarly been converted into parks.50 Creating new greenspaces is part of a suite of public investments that facilitate gentrification through “streetscaping” or city “beautification.” These projects seek to “revitalize” neighbourhoods by planting trees, landscaping parkettes, hanging flower boxes, increasing street lighting, upgrading store front facades and sidewalks, commissioning art installations and murals, and installing public benches. Official City of Toronto plans and strategies promote these environmental projects ostensibly as ways to revitalize poor, deindustrialized, priority neighbourhoods, and yet have little to no discussion about how such measures and real estate redevelopment impact access to affordable rent and employment opportunities for marginalized residents currently living in the area (Urban Land Institute Toronto 2012; City of Toronto 2012a, 2010c). Grassroots environmental and heritage organizations have played an important role producing Toronto's urban sustainability fix. Because York South-Weston is bounded by the Humber Valley to the west and Black Creek to the East, the area has a wealth of urban greenspace used for recreation (biking, picnics, bird watching, fishing, etc.) and flood control. The Humber Watershed Alliance was formed in 1997 to improve the ecological health of the Humber River and to designate it as one of only thirty-seven heritage rivers in Canada. The Toronto Regional Conservation Authority (founded in 1946) is active in the area, going well beyond its original mandate of flood control to include
50 In some cases, an area's industrial legacy itself is commodified through marketing that plays on the area's industrial heritage—albeit always in a sterilized, romanticized way (e.g.,“The Candy Factory Lofts,” “The Distillery District,” “The Stockyards”). 116
“sustainable community development.” The Weston Heritage Conservation District, formed in 2004, also govern the aesthetic of Weston's built landscape by preserving historical buildings, promoting public gardens, and erecting historical plaques. The socio-ecological changes associated with deindustrialization in York South-Weston can be seen in the Black Creek which runs through former industrial areas. An interview participant who grew up in the area in the 1950's remembered the water in the creek flowing “red, blue, black, white” due to the chemicals coming from the Kodak film processing plant.51 Another long-time environmental advocate in York South-Weston similarly recalled how, by the 1970s, industry had taken its toll on the area's waterways, creating:
...a landscape of macabre fascination...So unregulated was the land use that the backs of some of the industrial buildings hung over the edge of the ravine on stilts. Part-way down the slope, tucked below the industry, was an abandoned railway line with ties and a few rails still visible. Metal barrels and a tar-like substance tumbled down the bank from the Universal Drum Reconditioning Company. On the opposite side, the ravine had been graded into a terrace for use as a snow-dump. A concrete-lined ditch ran along the bottom of the ravine. Further investigation revealed a couple more short unpiped sections of creek, milky and malodourous with bacterial growth, behind ABC Lumber on Weston Road and a short distance further east across the railway tracks. Over all, the heavy odour of the stockyards and meat-packing plants mingled with the toxic sweetness of various chemical exudates. That was my introduction to Lavender Creek [a tributary of the Black Creek]. Here, I thought, was Toronto's very own Love Canal (G. C. Miller 2007).
These conditions motivated area residents to form the Black Creek Conservation Project in 1982, initiating a tradition of environmental advocacy in York South-Weston area that continued over the next three decades.52 Stronger environmental regulations, flood control measures, and the ecological restoration work by the Black Creek Conservation Project and the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority have improved the water quality of the Black Creek, although there continues to be high levels of E.coli from antiquated sewers, as well as heavy metals and toxins from contaminated soils (Toronto and Region Conservation Authority 2008). In addition to the conversion of brownfields into green spaces, York South-Weston has seen grasses, shrubs, and trees reclaim abandoned factories, unused railway spurs, and public baseball diamonds where teams from local companies used to play. These green spaces and the restored
51 Interview participant, ID016, October 26, 2013. 52 Similarly, other conservation projects along the Don River (“Bring Back the Don”) and Rouge River (Save the Rouge Valley System) formed around the same time. 117 waterways have not only created new habitat and corridors for animals, but have also helped the Mount Dennis Community Association (MDCA) and real estate agents market the area as “Toronto's Greenest Neighbourhood” (the slogan of the MDCA). That Mount Dennis can be marketed as a post-industrial “green neighbourhood,” despite persistent—albeit largely unseen—soil and water contamination issues, speaks to the way that the urban sustainability fix facilitates accumulation through a green image that belies deeper socio-ecological problems. Deindustrialization and the conversion of industrial lands into new houses and condos, has only heightened neighbourhood environmental conflicts between the remaining industrial companies and surrounding residents, putting further pressures on these facilities to close down. Several factories that remain along Toronto's northwestern rail corridor have been at the centre of neighbourhood environmental conflicts, including a slaughterhouse (Atkins 2014), bread and rubber factories (Ontario Municipal Board 2008), a uranium processing plant (Scallan 2012), and a salvage metal recycling yard (City of Toronto 1998). The railway itself has been at the centre of controversy over the transfer of hazardous materials throughout the city (Gallant and McDiarmid 2014; McDiarmid 2014). Rising land prices across the city, but especially in downtown Toronto, have placed increasing pressures on industrial properties along the rail corridor to convert into residential and commercial developments. Not only has it become more profitable for manufacturing companies along the rail corridor to sell to real estate developers, but home buyers coming into the area have paid such a high price for their new homes that they expect their neighbourhoods to be free from environmental problems. The neighbourhoods surrounding industrial lands used to be home to more factory workers who were likely more tolerant of the pollution and environmental hazards associated with their own workplaces (see e.g. Adkin 1998; Rose 2000). This is not the case for the next generation of service-sector workers who have moved into deindustrialized areas and would rather see the remaining factories shut down and replaced with retail, housing, or recreational facilities. Some of these socio-ecological conflicts have arisen as a result of intensification: condo dwellers living at higher altitudes are more exposed to air pollution coming from factories' smokestacks compared with those living in one or two-storey houses (Atkins 2014; Ontario Municipal Board 2008). In deindustrialized neighbourhoods where disinvestment rather than gentrification is occurring, environmental conflicts have taken on a different form. Poor (and disproportionately racialized) residents living in low-income apartment buildings with absentee and profit-maximizing landlords have had to contend with cockroaches, bed bugs, mould, mice, lead paint, and smells of urine in the stairwell 118
(Paradis, Wilson, and Logan 2014). ACORN Canada, a low-income tenants' rights organization, mobilized a chapter in York South-Weston to force landlords, including the City of Toronto who manages Toronto Public Housing, to address these environmental problems (Fumia and Duncan 2013). But the environmental struggles of low-income residents in deindustrialized spaces contradict some of the environmental concerns of wealthier homeowners. For low-income (and disproportionately racialized) residents, revitalization projects aimed at increasing land values and middle-class consumption can undermine access to low-cost rental housing and services. Gentrification is also mobilized through oppressive environmental discourses that portray the poor and racialized residents, who live in deindustrialized spaces, as themselves part of a degraded nature needing to be “purified”:
[U]rbanist discourses naturalize power-laden social relations by constructing Social Darwinist images of the "inner city" as a "wild" and "polluting pathology" of "dangerous races and classes" to be "revitalized" by the pioneers of gentrification. (Kipfer, Hartmann, and Marino 1996, 12)
These types of environmental narratives not only facilitate gentrification but also more authoritarian governance of urban space—a process Smith (1996, v) refers to as “revanchist antiurbanism”: “a revengeful and reactionary viciousness against various populations accused of “stealing” the city from the white upper classes.” For example, in one of my interviews in York South-Weston, a representative of a (predominantly white) ratepayers association complained about the area being a “dumping grounds” for low-income housing and industry.53 Other white homeowners also complained about “partiers” in the nearby park in the ravine (far from any houses)—who most likely were simply the groups of Caribbean men I saw congregating regularly in the park to play lively games of craps or dominoes.54 As these examples demonstrate, conceptions of the (urban) environment reflect and reproduce power relations. Social movement alliance-forming around “environmental issues” is frustrated by people's contradictory understandings of “the environment,” always shaped through relations of class, race, gender, and physical ability.
53 Interview participant ID023, August 12, 2012. It should be noted that this negative attitude towards those living in rental units contrasted with representatives from another homeowner association in the area who have tried to build coalitions with renters. 54 Similarly, one local councillor tried to revoke the liquor licence of a Somali bar because of “complaints” about the men who congregating out in front of the bar on the street. Another local councillor supported a petition by largely white homeowners to shutdown a flea market where large numbers of Caribbean immigrants go each weekend to recreate a familiar open-air market. 119
Toronto's sustainability fix has re-configured and re-scaled socio-ecological crisis tendencies, creating uneven consequences. In organizing an urban sustainability fix, the local hegemonic bloc has made compromises with some groups (such as real estate developers, home owners, and middle class environmentalist groups) while neglecting others (e.g. low-income renters). Environmental conflicts have been heightened at the neighbourhood scale in Toronto's deindustrialized spaces, either because remaining pockets of industry are facing gentrification pressures, or conversely, because disinvestment is undermining the environmental health of low-income residents who have moved into these spaces seeking cheaper rent. City-wide, Toronto's air, rivers, and lakefront have been significantly cleaned up over the past thirty years due to the shutdown of polluting industries, or thanks to environmental regulation and abatement technologies (e.g. watershed protection; pesticide bans; stricter vehicle emissions standards; shutdown or conversion of coal-powered energy generation; waste diversion vs. incineration; etc.) (City of Toronto 2014c; Keil and Boudreau 2006; Keil and Desfor 2003). But deindustrialization has not brought about dematerialization of the economy: resource consumption has continued to increase in Toronto (Sahely, Dudding, and Kennedy 2003). The environmental impacts of Toronto's consumption are being spatially displaced rather than simply eliminated, raising environmental justice concerns at regional and global scales—e.g. the trucking of Toronto's garbage to Michigan, U.S., and London, Ontario; the release of globally-circulated greenhouse gases; the international dumping of toxins; and heavy pollution in industrial cities in the Global South where many consumer goods are now produced (Giljum and Eisenmenger 2004; S. Harris 2015; Roberts and Parks 2009).
Transit Infrastructure as a Socio-ecological Fix55
Public infrastructure projects are critical to socio-ecological fixes. After succeeding to drive down labour costs in post-Fordist states, capital is now championing investments in public infrastructure to increase productivity and profits (Brox 2008; Conference Board of Canada 2010; Ernst & Young and Urban Land Institute 2013). Faster transportation corridors, improved communication networks and greater access to water, energy and other materials create conditions for quicker and larger rounds of accumulation, yet potentially larger crises of overaccumulation in the future. Public
55 This section has been reproduced, with several revisions, as: Nugent, James Patrick. 2015. “Ontario’s Infrastructure Boom: A Socioecological Fix for Air Pollution, Congestion, Jobs, and Profits.” Environment and Planning A 47 (12): 2465–84. doi:10.1068/a140176p. 120 infrastructure drives or supports real estate development. Public transit projects raise nearby land values, essentially subsidizing the profiteering of real estate capital, yet fuelling gentrification, land- speculation, and related financial crises. The financing and construction of infrastructure projects themselves become huge outlets for surplus capital, thereby invoking so-called productive as well as finance capital. But the timing, character, and impact of infrastructure projects is historically contingent, being negotiated between the state, capital, labour, and other social movements. This section discusses the expansion of Toronto's transit infrastructure, and related “smart growth” intensification planning policies, as part of a socio-ecological fix. I explain the timing, character, and impact of these transit projects in terms of the growing socio-ecological crisis tendencies surrounding air pollution, traffic congestion, and urban sprawl in the Greater Toronto Area. I focus on transit infrastructure because two, multi-billion dollar, rapid transit projects were being built through York South-Weston, with social movement coalitions active in negotiating the distribution of associated costs and benefits. I argue that this socio-ecological fix took on a neoliberal character, with the state implementing a public-private partnership (P3) model for building and operating transit infrastructure. Between 2003-2013, Ontario experienced an $85 billion public infrastructure boom. The number of hospitals, schools, airports, roads, transit and energy facilities being built by the Ontario government was unprecedented since the the 1960s (figure 5.1)(Government of Ontario 2011; Roy 2008).56 After public infrastructure procurement was restructured to maximize private sector profits through so-called public-private partnerships (P3's), Ontario's “infrastructure gap” emerged as an urgent problem that was widely circulated within the media, trade journals and policy circles (Golden 2007; Government of Ontario 2005b; MacKenzie 2013; Residential and Civil Construction Alliance of Ontario 2006). Long-standing political lobbying by local and regional construction firms and real estate developers aimed at increasing infrastructure funding, was now conducted by multi-sector international consortia interested in benefiting from all-aspects of P3 projects including their finance, design, construction, maintenance and operation.57
56 In the years immediately following the 2008 financial crisis, G20 countries invested over two trillion dollars in public infrastructure projects as part of economic stimulus programs (Gerritsen 2009). This increase contrasted with the trend of the 70's, 80's and 90's when deficit-cutting governments in all OECD countries failed to keep infrastructure spending on par with economic growth or population growth (OECD 2007). In Canada, government spending on infrastructure began to rise in the early 2000s, even before stimulus programs created further increases in 2009 and 2010 (Roy 2008). 57 The construction industry was the single largest political donor for both the ruling political party and the official opposition, donating more money than the combined donations of the industries giving the second and third largest amounts, and more than thirteen times as much as the industry donating the tenth largest amount (McMahon 2011). Benzie (2013) provides an example of how infrastructure policy is shaped by corporations through closed-door political fundraising dinners. 121
Figure 5.1 Ontario's average annual change in per capita public infrastructure stock, 1955-2009 (constant 2002 Canadian dollars). Source: Government of Ontario 2011, iii.
This wave of infrastructure spending was not only driven and shaped by capital's need for economic growth, but also by class struggles around job creation as well as broader struggles around the underproduction of the conditions of production. I argue that construction and building trade unions helped elect a government that was willing to make major infrastructure investments. Meanwhile a growing legitimacy crisis around air pollution, traffic congestion, and urban sprawl in the Toronto region, led the Ontario government and the City of Toronto to develop “smart growth” intensification policies and to make major investments in rapid transit infrastructure. Urban sprawl in the Greater Toronto Area was eliminating prime agricultural land, contributing to traffic congestion, and lowering residential densities which increased infrastructure costs. Congestion was increasing costs for businesses, but also reflected the degradation of the conditions of production: labour power; the environment; and urban infrastructure. Traffic gridlock contributes significantly to smog and greenhouse gas emissions while increasing the stress, and extending the working day of, commuters. The intensity of the problem is reflected in the political arena where public transit has dominated 122 political debate since the mid-2000s, with all three levels of government taking credit for planning grand new schemes (although passing the buck whenever questions of funding arise) (Lorinc 2014; Melanson 2013). This political jockeying speaks to the political opportunities borne out of everyday frustrations experienced by commuters in the Greater Toronto Area—which, by 2011, had the longest commute out of nineteen metro areas surveyed by the Toronto Board of Trade (2011), ahead of Los Angeles, New York and London. The City's 2006 Official Plan directed population growth to higher building densities along major avenues across the city where existing rapid transit already existed or where the construction of future rapid transit lines could thereafter be justified. In 2006, the Ontario government formed an arms- length regional transportation authority, called Metrolinx (formerly the Greater Toronto Transportation Authority). Metrolinx (2008a) developed The Big Move—a twenty-five year, $50 billion transportation plan to build 1,200 kilometres of rapid transit across the greater Toronto and Hamilton region. Two of the first rapid transit projects that are part of this wave of investment cut through York South-Weston, where they became the target of social movement coalitions. The first project was a $1.6 billion heavy rail expansion and grade separation along the Georgetown South rail corridor that runs northwest out of the downtown core.58 The project allows for more frequent regional commuter trains to come in and out of the city and also creates an express rail service, named the UP Express, between the recently expanded international airport and Toronto's downtown central business district. Echoing neoliberal economic growth plans, the express line was marketed as a way to “enhance the city’s status as a globally competitive economic hub, helping it join the ranks of leading global financial centres that have similar links between downtown and their airports, such as London, Tokyo and Hong Kong” (Metrolinx 2014a). The second transit project is the $6.6 billion Eglinton (Avenue) Crosstown Light Rail Transit line which has its western terminus in York South-Weston (in the Mount Dennis neighbourhood) and runs 19-kilometres east-west across Toronto's mid-town. Construction began in 2011 and will be completed in 2020.
Congestion as a Cost and Opportunity for Capital Funding for these two transit lines was announced four months in advance of the 2007 Ontario election when the provincial government launched MoveOntario 2020—a 12-year, $17.5 billion plan to
58 The Georgetown South Project accounted for $1.2 billion and included grade separations for cross-cutting rail lines and roads, as well as the addition of new commuter rail tracks. An additional $456 million as part of the rail extension to the airport for the the UP Express. 123 build or renew fifty-two rapid transit projects (902km) across the Greater Toronto Area. The Government of Ontario (2007b) government argued this would reduce commute times, reduce carbon dioxide emissions by ten megatonnes by 2020, and create 175,000 jobs. Quality of life concerns and environmental benefits have been widely used to justify massive investments in public transit infrastructure and new highways. But the local hegemonic bloc has been mostly motivated by the rising economic costs of congestion for capital, and the rise in land values that public transit investments offer to land developers. Improved rapid transit helps overcome spatial barriers to capital accumulation by increasing the speed at which capital circulates through the economy and realizes profit—what Marx (2005) referred to as the “annihilation of space by time.” The way that new rapid transit infrastructure reduces congestion and speeds up the turnover rate of capital was clearly articulated in the Ontario Government's (2007b) press release announcing MoveOntario 2020:
As businesses increase their speed and efficiency and develop faster production cycles, delivering goods "just in time" has become more critical than ever -- but battling traffic results in lost time and productivity.
The government argued that the economic cost of congestion was $2.2 billion per year and would rise to $4.1 billion per year by 2031 if action was not taken. A year later, Metrolinx (2008b) commissioned a now frequently-cited impact and cost-benefit analysis that calculated the annual cost of congestion to commuters to be $3.3 billion and the annual cost to the economy to be $2.7 billion, rising to $7.8 billion and $7.2 billion by 2031, respectively. The cost to commuters is mostly associated with the opportunity cost of time delays, increased vehicle operating costs, and greater accidents. Congestion also leads businesses to experience higher costs associated with logistics, greater fuel use and higher wages as workers' demand compensation for longer commutes (Metrolinx 2008b). This cost-benefit study was used to justify The Big Move—Metrolinx's 25-year plan to invest fifty billion dollars to build 1,200 kilometres of rapid transit across the greater Toronto region (Metrolinx 2008a). The costing exercise also helped win the support of Ontario's corporate elite. All of Toronto's major power brokers—including CEOs of banks and consulting firms, business associations, former politicians, editors of major newspapers and charitable foundations—came together in 2002 to form the Toronto City Summit Alliance (now called the Greater Toronto CivicAction Alliance). Although presenting itself as a nonpartisan, multi-stakeholder organization, the Alliance has actively 124 promoted the interests of business within debates around urban infrastructure, and transit in particular. The Alliance's aggressive support of The Big Move is therefore telling of capitalists' interest in expanding transit infrastructure, even as they manoeuvre to avoid paying any of the bill. Members of the Toronto Board of Trade have identified traffic congestion as their top issue for five years running, warning that “Toronto’s infrastructure is quickly becoming the biggest drag on our global competitiveness” (Toronto Board of Trade 2011). The C.D.Howe Institute, a right-wing think tank directed by Canada's biggest corporations, commissioned a study that argued that previous analyses have grossly underestimated the costs of congestion. The C.D.Howe Institute report argued that congestion in the Greater Toronto Area could actually cost an additional $1.5 billion to $5 billion per year due to forgone urban agglomeration benefits including: “people accessing jobs that better match their skills, sharing knowledge face-to-face, and creating demand for more business, entertainment and cultural opportunities” (Benjamin Dachis 2013, 2). The staggering costs attributed to congestion, and the high-powered mobilization effort on behalf of the capitalist class, demonstrate how economic crisis tendencies caused by the degradation of the conditions of production become manifest as a growing political crises for the state. The province and federal governments responded to these political-economic crisis tendencies with a neoliberal institutional fix that made transit funding conditional on the use of public-private partnerships (P3).59 Through this P3 model, large (and politically well-connected) multinational consortia finance, design and build an infrastructure asset and often have a lucrative monopoly contract for its maintenance or operation over a period of twenty years or more (Government of Ontario 2004; Siemiatycki 2005). A new crown corporation called Infrastructure Ontario was setup specifically to roll-out the P3 model for all large infrastructure projects. Between 2007-2013, seventy-nine P3 projects valued at $30 billion were implemented allowing the Minister of Infrastructure to boast that Ontario had become “one of the most dynamic markets for infrastructure in the world” (Government of Ontario 2011). The Eglinton Crosstown is the first P3 public transit infrastructure project in Toronto. The UP Express was supposed to be a P3 project with a forty-six year agreement but the consortium walked away from the project after the government refused to give it an operating subsidy (Lorinc 2010). The government has sold the idea of P3s to the public using repeated claims that they generate
59 In developed countries, public infrastructure has historically been entrenched within the domain of the [Welfare] state, preventing it from being part of a more profitable spatial fix (Schoenberger 2004, 2003). This was particularly true in Ontario where almost all major infrastructure projects such as roads, mass rapid transit, energy generation, hospitals, prisons, water and sewage services, etc. were by the mid-1990s still publicly financed, designed, owned and operated. Capital therefore eagerly sought a neoliberal “institutional fix” (Peck and Tickell, 2008) that would deepen market relations into the infrastructure sector (Buitenhuis 2013). 125
“value for money” and all-round certainty through contractual agreements that create financial incentives for ensuring projects are built “on time, on budget,” and that supposedly transfer risk to the private sector (Government of Ontario 2004). Moreover, the fact that, technically, the government retains ownership of P3 assets has been used to deflect public concerns about privatization. But critics have argued that P3 projects end up costing the public more, are anti-union, and cede public control of critical infrastructure to the private sector (Fussell and Beresford 2009; Loxley and Loxley 2010). The value-for-money analyses done by the government to commodify “risk transfer” and justify P3 projects are often covered by commercial confidentiality clauses that make critical assessments difficult if not impossible (Siemiatycki and Farooqi 2012). The shift to P3s has important implications for labour- community coalitions which must try to negotiate with a private consortia rather than a crown agency or the elected government itself. Since P3 projects are financed through (high-interest) private bond sales or senior debt rather than using (low-interest) government-backed debt, finance capital earns much higher rates of return on P3 projects. Banks and investment funds also became increasingly interested in infrastructure projects for their long-term, low-risk returns on investment, in stark contrast to the volatile and risky returns associated with the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the speculative dot-com bubble, and the U.S. housing bubble. Another way that both financial capital and the managing consortiums of P3 projects secure greater profits is by side-stepping union collective agreements that traditionally protected workers in both the public and private sectors who were involved with infrastructure projects. Overcoming union wages and working conditions through the use of P3s is a major victory for capital in Canada where union density is 74.6% within the public sector (71.0% for Ontario) and 32.6% within the construction sector (31.7% for Ontario).60 Transit projects therefore provide a spatio-temporal fix, not only by reducing congestion to restore economic growth more generally, but also by acting themselves as a long-term, stable, sites of accumulation.
Shovels in the Ground: Labour's Spatial Fix
Ontario's infrastructure boom not only emerged from capital's need for a spatio-temporal fix but also through class struggles around job creation. The Liberal Government promoted infrastructure spending as its major job creation policy and to solidify political support from construction and
60 Author's calculations using Statistics Canada CANSIM database, Table 282-0077. 126 building trade unions. Almost every government press release, report, and election campaign speech about infrastructure projects highlighted the number of jobs they created. If we believe the government's econometrics, infrastructure investments between 2003-2012 “preserved and created” 100,000 jobs annually, keeping the employment rate a full percentage point higher than it would have otherwise been without these investments (Conference Board of Canada 2013; Government of Ontario 2011). The job impacts of infrastructure funding was particularly important during the 2008-2010 recession and recovery when $6 billion of provincial and federal infrastructure stimulus money was used to quickly “put shovels in the ground” to create or preserve 70,000 jobs (Legislative Assembly of Ontario 2011). Concern around job creation led the construction and building trade unions (and organized labour more generally) to significantly increase their political support to the Liberal Party in the early 2000s following discontent with the austerity budgets and anti-union policies implemented by the social democratic (New Democratic Party) and Conservative administrations throughout the 1990s. Unions developed policy positions, launched media campaigns and lobbied politicians directly and indirectly (e.g. through campaign donations) to try to shape the government's infrastructure policy—a good example of “labour's spatial fix” (Herod 1997a). Most significantly, during the past three Ontario general elections the construction and building trade unions channelled millions of dollars into the Working Families Coalition to pay for attack ads against the Conservative Party largely to the benefit of the ruling Liberals.61 This comes in addition to hundreds of thousands of dollars in direct donations given by the construction and building trades to the Liberal Party during general elections and leadership races.62 This level of political support is certainly not inconsequential, especially in tight elections races like the 2011 general election when the ruling Liberals lost majority power by a single seat.
61 The Working Families Coalition spent approximately one million dollars on advertising in each of the 2007 and 2011 elections (Election Ontario, 2014). Financial statements for 2003 was not collected by Elections Ontario. The construction and building trade unions accounted for 77% and 64% of the money raised by the Working Families Coalition during these two campaigns, respectively. By comparison, all registered political parties combined spent eleven and twelve million dollars on advertising during these elections, respectively. 62 Unions are increasing their spending on direct advertising accounting for about one third of the eighteen million dollars spent on direct advertising during the 2011 election (Elections Ontario, 2014). But standard donations given to political parties is still dominated by corporations. Between 2004-2011 (which includes fundraising periods for two provincial elections), Ontario's three major parties raised and spent more than $162 million of which corporations contributed 39.4% and unions contributed only 5% with the balance contributed by individuals. During this period, 46% of union political donations went to the Liberals compared with 45% to the New Democratic Party and under 4% to the Conservatives. Construction unions donated disproportionately (84%) to the Liberal Party (Macdermid, 2011). 127
Non-residential Construction Jobs in Ontario (1991-2012) 300000
250000 d
e 200000 y o l p 150000 m E
s
r 100000 e k r o 50000 W
0 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 1991 1993 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003 2005 2007 2009 2011 New Progressive Liberals Democratic Conservatives Party Figure 5.2 Non-residential Construction Jobs in Ontario (1991-2012) organized according to governing political party (Source: Author's calculations using Statistics Canada CANSIM database, Table 281-0051).
The pay-off has been good for the building and construction trade unions. In Ontario, employment levels in construction have risen following a full decade of depressed employment rates in the construction sector during the 1990s (figure 5.2). Card check, which had been completely eliminated in 1995 by the Conservative government, was restored by the Liberals exclusively for the construction sector in 2005. The Liberals have also resisted pressure from employers to significantly raise apprenticeship ratios, instead ceding greater control over apprenticeship ratios to unions appointed to the Ontario College of Trades. But the close ties between the Liberals and the building and construction trades has also come at a cost, preventing municipal labour councils and the Ontario Federation of Labour—of which the construction and building trade unions are influential members—from taking a harder political stance against the Liberal's use of P3s to drive their long-term infrastructure plans (public sector unions have been more vocally opposed to P3s). The government's press release in 2005 that announced a five-year plan for infrastructure investment based on public-private partnerships even featured endorsements from the construction and building trade unions (Government of Ontario 2005b)(Government of Ontario 2005b).63
63 The Business Manager of the Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council provided an endorsing quote, saying that “Ontario building trades are supportive of this revised process which will get much needed services and 128
The cozy relationship between the Liberals and the construction and building trades also inhibited these unions from publicly resisting the provincial government's move to allow anti-union, open-shop contractors to bid on transit projects in Toronto. The $6.6 billion Eglinton Crosstown light rail transit project, which has its western terminus and maintenance yard in York South-Weston, was originally supposed to fall under the purview of the City of Toronto Transit Commission (TTC). This would have left contractors subject to a collective agreement condition negotiated by trade unions with the TTC in 1959 that requires tradespersons working on projects to be affiliated with local trade unions. Similarly, the City's Fair Wage Policy has been in place since 1893 to ensure that contractors hired by the City pay their workers prevailing union wages and benefits. But the role of the municipal government in transit infrastructure was usurped by Metrolinx—the new arms-length provincial crown corporation that took over the project. Unlike the TTC, Metrolinx's board is not comprised of elected representatives, does not permit public deputations, and as a provincial agency is not required to follow municipal labour policies. Metrolinx announced that it would be using an “open bidding” process for the P3 light rail projects. There was no public political opposition launched by the Construction and Building Trades Council even as the first major tunnelling contract for the Eglinton Crosstown project was awarded to Kenaiden—a non-union contractor and board member of the anti-union Merit Contractors Association. Moreover, maintenance contracts will be privatized and the existing unionized train operators currently employed by the Toronto Transit Commission are only being given 10 years protection before all the operation of the new facilities will be vulnerable to outsourcing (Metrolinx, City of Toronto, and Toronto Transit Commission 2012). In implementing its infrastructure program, the ruling Liberal Party has weighed its relationship with unions carefully against the interests of the construction industry (an even larger political donor).64 Ontario's infrastructure boom emerged as a spatio-temporal fix for surplus capital and out of class struggles over job creation—what O'Connor (1998) refers to as the first contradiction of capitalism. But the role of unions, construction corporations, and finance capital coming together as part of a local hegemonic bloc that mobilized public infrastructure spending is only part of the story. The particular form, timing, and consequences of urban infrastructure investments, and related
infrastructure online sooner with the added bonus of creating many construction jobs across Ontario” (Government of Ontario, 2005b). Similarly, the spokesperson for the labourers union (LIUNA) Local 183 offered their endorsement: “Our construction union is very supportive of efforts to expedite infrastructure investment and this plan shows the way” (Government of Ontario, 2005a). 64 See footnote 57. 129 planning policies, were also shaped by other political actors, including community, health and environmental groups and their growing concerns around the degradation of the conditions of production—i.e. O'Connor's second contradiction of capitalism. These groups pushed the state to make investments in transit infrastructure (as well as to shut down coal-fired power plants) in order to address air pollution (i.e. smog and climate change), traffic congestion, and urban sprawl. This demonstrates how socio-ecological fixes are contested and negotiated processes, and points to potential opportunities and challenges for counter-hegemonic social movement alliance-forming.
Congestion as a Metabolic Rift
The $50 billion Big Move transit plan was part of a response by the Ontario government to a broader legitimacy crisis it faced caused by a “metabolic rift” between the countryside and the city (Foster 1999). Concerns around traffic congestion in the city and urban sprawl into the countryside grew in parallel and sparked a political crisis for the ruling Conservative Ontario government during their second term of office (1999-2003). Urban sprawl was both an effect of congestion, as people tried to move away from traffic and high-density neighbourhoods within Toronto's city limits, as well as a cause of congestion since suburban commuting patterns only worsened traffic gridlock. In 1999, community battles against residential developments on the environmentally sensitive and picturesque Oak Ridges Moraine boiled over. The Moraine covers 1,900 square kilometres of rolling hills, forests and river valleys surrounding the Greater Toronto Area. It is the source of the city's aquifers and feeds its major rivers. A coalition of community groups and individuals called Save the Oak Ridges Moraine (STORM) lobbied the government unsuccessfully throughout the 1990s to restrict development on the Moraine. In 1999, STORM and other environmental groups launched an effective media campaign against developers who were planning to build subdivisions on the Moraine that would house 100,000 people. The activists effectively scaled-up the issue from a local environmental concern into a political discussion at the provincial level around problems with greenfield development and the need for regional planning to address urban growth (Edey, Seasons, and Whitelaw 2006). This mobilization forced the Conservative government to place a six-month moratorium on development in the Moraine. A land-use plan was developed, and the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Act (2001) was passed that placed restrictions on development. Leading up to the 2003 election, the Conservative government also introduced a new “smart 130 growth” planning model that tried to link environmental protection with urban economic growth (Bunce 2004). Although the idea of smart growth initiated a new wave of policy debates around regional planning and urban sprawl, the Conservative's ideological resistance to government intervention was exploited by the Liberals who won the traditionally Conservative electoral ridings surrounding the City of Toronto during the 2003 election. The Liberals’ election campaign more effectively linked environmental concerns around urban sprawl with everyday frustrations over traffic congestion, arguing successfully that greater regional planning and investment in transportation infrastructure was necessary to solve both problems (Bunce 2004; Eidelman 2010). Once in power, the Liberals used their strong majority to pass the Places to Grow Act (2005c) (2005c) and the Greenbelt Act (2005a). The Greenbelt Act protected 1.8 million acres of environmentally sensitive and agricultural land surrounding Ontario’s urban centres from development pressures. The Places to Grow Act authorized the development of regional growth plans across the province aimed at halting urban sprawl by increasing population densities and economic activity within existing urban areas. Provincial smart growth policies took up the planning direction articulated by the City of Toronto since the early 1990s for “re-urbanization” through intensification of the city's downtown core, and a growing vision of Toronto as a global “competitive city” (Bunce 2004; Kipfer and Keil 2002; Desfor et al. 2006). Public infrastructure investments became central to these policies. Notably, the Places to Grow Act was implemented by the Ministry of Public Infrastructure Renewal and came the same year as the Ministry launched its first five-year $30 billion infrastructure plan. The preamble to the Places to Grow Act clearly ties together regional planning efforts and environmental concerns around urban sprawl with investments in infrastructure and the production of neoliberal cities:
...identifying where and how growth should occur will support improved global competitiveness, sustain the natural environment and provide clarity for the purpose of determining priority of infrastructure investments. (Government of Ontario 2005c) (Government of Ontario 2005c)
The purported environmental benefits of urban intensification were used strategically to win-over existing residents of Toronto who Bunce (2004) argues would have otherwise viewed and resisted intensification plans as straightforward attempts at economic revitalization. Public infrastructure projects were viewed as driving a “rejuvenation” of the downtown urban landscape, in line with neoliberal visions for urban economic growth. Expensive downtown cultural 131 infrastructure projects, such as museums, theatres, and the revitalization of the waterfront were heralded by neoliberals for their ability to attract a new “creative class” to Toronto's city core (Desfor et al. 2006; Florida 2002). Investments in rapid transit infrastructure were marketed by the provincial government as not only necessary to “protect our environment, and improve our quality of life” in the face of higher population densities, but also as a strategy that “will not only reclaim our region’s traditional transportation advantage, but also bolster our global competitiveness” (Metrolinx 2008a). Rapid transit projects are therefore key aspects of a neoliberal socio-ecological fix that responded to both a changing country-city metabolism and the post-Fordist crisis of accumulation. The Ontario Government's transit investments were also responding to growing concerns around smog and climate change. Smog was a major election issue of the 2003 Ontario election that led to the phased-in closure of Ontario's public coal-fired power plants. A wave of public concern over climate change grew during the mid-2000s (Nugent 2009). The Premier of Ontario acknowledged these political concerns in announcing MoveOntario 2020 (the precursor to The Big Move), noting: “this project will remove 300 million car trips off our roads. And that's good news for the air we breathe -- and the fight against climate change we're waging together” (Government of Ontario 2007a).
Consequences of the Socio-ecological Fix
If urban intensification and the expansion of rapid transit infrastructure helped resolve certain socio-ecological crisis tendencies, it created others ones at different spatial and temporal scales. Trying to analyze or anticipate how socio-ecological fixes displace or redistribute contradictions rather than eliminate these contradictions, is critical for drawing attention to the systemic causes of socio- ecological crises (e.g. the way capital accumulation degrades the conditions of production), and for trying to form cross-class, multi-racial, social movement alliances. The Big Move may end up increasing urban sprawl and congestion across the greater Toronto region, known as “The Golden Horseshoe.” New commuter rail and heavy rail systems will encourage firms to profitably locate further from consumer and labour markets since workers and goods will be able to move longer distances in the same amount of time. People may also buy houses in commuter towns that are connected to the city through new rapid rail lines. Of course, many factors besides transportation times determine where a firm or household locates (e.g. property markets, tax incentives, lifestyle preferences, etc.). But without addressing the way that urban and economic planning under 132 capitalism causes long commutes in the first place, regional rapid transportation plans will only increase the scale at which future congestion problems unfold. Even if expanding transit infrastructure succeeds in making the daily commute more bearable, it does not address capitalism's chaotic labour market and lack of housing coordination that leaves workers commuting from opposite ends of the city to work very similar jobs. Capital tends to assume (and tends toward creating) an infinitely flexible workforce, abstracted from needs of social reproduction—which are always geographically contingent in particular places. Consequently, workers who command little negotiation power in the labour market (e.g., low-skilled, service sector workers), see their desire to live near their workplace devalued, and it is usually the worker and not individual capitalists who pay the cost of longer and more stressful commutes. Transit infrastructure projects and “smart growth” policies can drive or exacerbate gentrification, deepening socio-spatial polarization. For low-income families, public transit “improvements” may be short lived (or never realized) as landlords raise rent around new (or planned) subway and light rail transit lines. Rather than see transit-induced gentrification as a problem for low- income families, policy-makers celebrate it as a way to pay for transit. Both Left-leaning Mayor David Miller's administration and Right-leaning Rob Ford's administration began to study and promote “land- value capture revenue streams” that seek to finance transit infrastructure projects by leveraging the value of future development around transit lines (e.g. through development fees on private developments; tax-increment financing; or by the government acting directly as the developer of property appropriated for stations and construction) (Doolittle 2012; Wickens 2015). But these transit financing models, which are largely untested in Ontario, embrace real estate market dynamics and development oriented towards “highest and best use,” rather than challenge the way that the market underproduces affordable housing and leads to gentrification. These contradictions point to the importance and challenge of aligning middle-class environmental concerns (e.g. regarding urban sprawl and climate change) with the housing needs of low-income residents. Winning affordable housing provisions as part of urban development projects has been a major objective of community benefits agreements negotiated by labour-community coalitions in the United States. But organized social movement resistance to gentrification has not yet taken root in Toronto, although some organizations such as ACORN and the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty have fought against low-income housing conditions, rent increases by landlords (on a case-by- case basis), and the closure of homeless shelters. 133
Urban intensification and regional transportation projects have also generated struggles for environmental justice at the neighbourhood scale. The first major transit project rolled-out by Metrolinx in Toronto was the UP Express—a $456 million express rail line connecting the international airport located outside the city with the financial and entertainment districts in the downtown core. Echoing neoliberal growth plans, the express line was marketed as a way to “cement Toronto's place as an important global centre” (Metrolinx 2014a), while “remov[ing] 1.2 million car trips from Ontario's roads in the first year” (Chin 2012). But the express rail line was popularly viewed as a subsidy to the business traveler with fares still out of reach for most residents compared with the existing express bus service operated by the city. The UP Express was originally supposed to be a P3 project, but after nearly seven years of negotiations and millions of dollars wasted in consulting fees the multi-national consortium that had won the contract for the project, SNC-Lavalin, pulled out. Although the official reason given for this failure was “financing difficulties,” it is clear that well-organized opposition to the project from communities located along the rail tracks had added considerable risk to the investment (Kalinowski 2010b). Community groups made numerous demands on the government: above all, that the express rail line use electric “clean trains” rather than carcinogenic diesel-powered trains; that station stops be added in communities located along the express line; that the new rail line not permanently close streets that kept neighbourhoods connected; that fares be affordable to everyday commuters; and that local residents have access to construction jobs. Calling themselves the “Weston Community Coalition,” and later the “Clean Trains Coalition,” residents along the tracks effectively framed the issue in terms of environmental health to appeal to a sense of environmental justice rather than be seen as anti-public transport or simply a NIMBY group. These coalitions tried to build a cross-class, multi-racial coalition. As the Chair of the Weston Community Coalition wrote in 2009 to the Minister of the Environment:
the province should be careful that a form of ‘environmental racism’ isn’t taking place, whereby already at risk citizens, primarily recent immigrants in poorer neighbourhoods are exposed to more pollution and more disruption and weakening of their neighbourhoods so that citizens from more affluent areas can have quicker trips into the big city.65
Through persistent mobilization that included petitions, protests, a media campaign, festivals and a court challenge, the communities made significant progress on most of their demands: the community 65 Letter from Mike Sullivan, Chair of Weston Community Coalition, to the Honourable John Gerretsen, Minister of the Environment for the Province of Ontario. August 31, 2009. 134 of Weston won a new station and a stop along the UP Express; cut and cover construction methods were used to prevent roads connecting the community from having to terminate at the tracks; and the provincial government eventually promised to electrify the corridor (and an environmental assessment was completed in December 2014). The organized resistance in York South-Weston contributed to the Liberal Party losing three electoral seats in the area (two federal and one provincial). The momentum and community leadership development out of this campaign led to the formation of the Mount Dennis Weston Network and the Toronto Community Benefits Network, which would later challenge the government to equitably distribute the economic benefits stemming from transit investments. The struggles waged by these coalitions reveal the way that socio-ecological fixes displace and rescale crisis tendencies, but also how socio-ecological fixes are established through negotiations and compromise-making between the local hegemonic bloc and social movements.
Conclusion
Deindustrialization and urban renewal must be understood as more than simply a spatio- temporal fix that is produced according to the needs of capital, or arising out of the demands of organized labour (i.e., labour's spatial fix). Deindustrialization and urbanization constitute changes in the urban metabolism, significantly reorganizing socio-ecological relations and the conditions of production. Understanding deindustrialization and urban renewal projects in this way, as part of a socio-ecological fix, is important for appreciating these processes as contested or negotiated. A multitude of social movements are involved in shaping the timing, character, and consequences of a given fix. This approach highlights how the production of urban space is historically contingent upon an urban regime organizing consent through alliance-forming between the state, capital, labour, and other social movements. Land use planning, public infrastructure investments, and what I have discussed as the “urban sustainability fix,” are physical but also ideological projects. The local hegemonic bloc responded to socio-ecological crisis tendencies through a neoliberal institutional fix, fostering consent by promising jobs and improved environmental conditions. Neoliberal discourses used by the hegemonic bloc, which appeal to “economic growth,” “finding efficiencies,” “competitiveness,” “innovation,” and “job creation” (as well as job blackmail), have become increasingly articulated through environmentalism— e.g, “urban sustainability,” “the green economy,” “green competitiveness,” “green jobs,” and 135 environmental health. Official growth strategies restructured and framed Toronto as a “global city,” a “sustainable city,” and a “livable city” (for those who can afford it). Restructuring Toronto as an entrepreneurial neoliberal city was accomplished, in part, through regional “smart growth” intensification policies ostensibly aimed at curbing urban sprawl (Bunce 2004). The UP Express line was seen as a way of increasing efficiencies for international and national businessmen travelling from the airport to the central business district as well as delivering world travellers to newly renovated sites for “high culture” consumption. But the government also justified this spending in terms of fighting congestion, reducing air pollution, and creating construction jobs. Similarly, the massive loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs in Toronto, coupled with the toxic legacy of industrialization, was reconstructed as an opportunity to “green the city” and “revitalize the economy” through brownfield remediation and the conversion of industrial lands into “rejuvenated” real estate, commercial developments, and green spaces. Urban renewal policies have devalued Toronto's manufacturing sector in favour of the “knowledge economy” and service sectors (e.g., tourism, entertainment, fine dining), which are oriented toward an elite class, but predicated on an unacknowledged, low-paid, and precarious workforce. To be sure, urban renewal and ecological modernist reforms may bring about some welcomed improvements in environmental quality (e.g., reduced smog, cleaner soil and water at a local scale, a small increase in renewable energy generation, slowing the rate of increase in greenhouse gases, etc.), and may also create some “green jobs.” Nevertheless, I have shown how these reforms provide a green “fig leaf” that serves to facilitate or deepen neoliberal governance rather than fundamentally challenge the socio-ecological contradictions of capitalism.66 I have argued that in promising that renewable energy and transit infrastructure investments would create jobs and address environmental problems, the government of Ontario subverted social movement alliance-forming that may have otherwise fought against policies to privatize energy production and infrastructure procurement. Moreover, I have demonstrated how socio-ecological fixes only temporarily defer, or geographically displace, socio-ecological contradictions and struggles, often redistributing negative impacts or risks unevenly onto marginalized groups and future generations (e.g., via gentrification pressures; nuclear waste; replacing accessible manufacturing jobs paying living wages with precarious and low-paid work; etc.). The government's UP Express transit project, which aimed to make Toronto a “global city” and reduce urban sprawl and congestion at the regional scale, increased the use of “dirty
66 I draw here on Gavin Fridell's (2004, 424) critique of how the support for fair trade coffee within public institutions has become an “'ethical fig leaf' to mask their devotion to a broader neoliberal agenda.” 136
(diesel) trains” sparking claims of environmental injustice at the neighbourhood scale. Rapid transit projects, such as the UP Express and the Eglinton Crosstown, are exacerbating gentrification pressures for low-income households. Meanwhile, the government of Ontario's “Big Move” transportation plan could end up encouraging urban sprawl at even greater scales because it fails to address the logic underpinning increases to work commutes—i.e. the ad-hoc, market-based, geographical organization of affordable housing and workplace locations under capitalism, and the ability of corporations to externalize the costs of the commute onto individual workers (especially unskilled workers) and society. The distribution of costs or impacts associated with socio-ecological fixes should be understood as a move by the hegemonic bloc to strategically facilitate or undermine alliances between various social groups (and fractions of capital) in order to win consent for a particular neoliberal fix and to maintain its legitimacy as a ruling regime more generally. The hegemonic bloc coopts social movement groups or constituencies by only selectively accepting some demands or reforms thereby instigating antagonisms or strategic divisions within a particular social movement organization or between social movements that might otherwise join to form a counter-hegemonic coalition. In this sense, the uneven consequences of socio-ecological fixes reflects the success of the hegemonic bloc in undermining cross-class, multi-racial, multi-scale, social movement alliance-forming. For example, in this chapter I demonstrated why white environmentalists and middle-class homeowners fighting against urban sprawl on the outskirts of the Greater Toronto Area, or advocating for the conversion of toxic industrial sites into green spaces, must account for how these policies facilitate gentrification that is displacing marginalized renters. Similarly, construction and building trade unions that put their support behind the government's infrastructure policies, must account for how so-called public-private partnerships threaten to increase costs for users (e.g., higher transit fares, or higher electricity prices in the case energy infrastructure), while ultimately jeopardizing unionization of the infrastructure sector. Neoliberal urban governance undermines social and environmental justice across multiple scales. A key challenge then is for social movement groups to resist cooption and find common cause across multiple scales, and across their particularist needs for jobs, equity, and improved socio-ecological conditions. 137
Chapter 6
The Mount Dennis Weston Network (2004-2010): Resisting Deindustrialization in Toronto's Inner Suburbs
This chapter relates neighbourhood-based alliance-forming to broader socio-ecological processes discussed in the previous chapters. In contesting the policies, projects and effects of deindustrialization and urban renewal, labour-community coalitions demonstrate how socio-ecological fixes are constituted through social and political struggles. I examine the emergence, development and efficacy of the Mount Dennis Weston Network (MDWN), and appraises its impacts. The MDWN was a labour-community coalition based in the Toronto electoral riding of York South-Weston. The MDWN was established in 2007 to fight against the land use conversion of a 57-acre industrial site into a big box retail centre. This industrial site was the former headquarters and production facility for Kodak Canada that, for almost a century before it was closed in 2005, had provided thousands of stable, good-paying jobs to the Mount Dennis and Weston neighbourhoods. The MDWN rejected a developer's proposal to create low-paying retail jobs on the site, instead promoting the creation of “green” manufacturing jobs. This was an attempt to ground a socio-ecological fix into a particular neighbourhood. Drawing on my theory of coalitions and alliance-forming outlined in chapter two, I explain the formation, transformations, and effectiveness of the MDWN, as well as its eventual hibernation in 2011, in terms of: changing political opportunities and threats at various scales; the strategic framing of these opportunities and threats by organic intellectuals in ways that motivated collective action, and elicited a response from the state; and the mobilization of resources. I assess the impact of the MDWN both in terms its struggle to resist and reverse industrial decline, but also in terms of internal transformations through a process of social movement learning. Alliance-forming involves a two-way shift in scale: an institutional broadening that scales-up coalition activity; and an ideological deepening for overcoming sectionalism or militant particularism. I evaluate the successes and challenges of the MDWN at linking together and re-scaling the community's concerns over job creation, equity, poverty alleviation, environmental conditions and the redevelopment of the Kodak brownfield site. While emphasizing activities at the neighbourhood scale, one of my objectives is to demonstrate how neighbourhood struggles and socio-ecological conditions in York-South Weston relate to the development and delivery of policies or programs developed by municipal and provincial governments, as well as by a labour movement operating municipally, 138 nationally, and internationally. I discuss how the MDWN strategically developed and transformed through several phases. First, I argue that the MDWN grew out of pre-existing social movement activity in the area including the revival of the Mount Dennis Community Association (MDCA) in 2004 as well as the formation of the Weston Community Coalition in 2005. These groups raised concerns about heritage preservation, the threat of proposed big box retail to small businesses, urban planning decisions associated with transit projects and local environmental quality. These concerns would shape the MDWN's original strategic direction, while their “door-to-door” neighbourhood organizing offered the MDWN political strength (particularly amongst white, middle-class homeowners). Second, I argue that organized labour played a key role in establishing the MDWN and in reorienting (or reframing) social movement activity in the area, linking and deepening concerns over class, race and ecology. The MDWN was confronted with a contradiction or trade-off in wanting to champion land use policies that secured the creation of good-paying (unionized, manufacturing) jobs, while still wanting to orient the coalition towards helping low-income residents who were desperate for any job—even if this meant supporting land use conversions that forwent the possibility of better jobs in the future (e.g., big box retail developments). I discuss efforts by real estate developers and local politicians to try to divide organized labour and low-income residents according to their respective demands for “good jobs” or “any job” as an example of the type of political manoeuvring undertaken by the hegemonic bloc to organize consent for socio-ecological fixes. Union activists living in York- South Weston, together with the Toronto and York Region Labour Council, led the MDWN into struggles to resist and reverse the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs through land use conversions, while supporting a province-wide campaign to raise the minimum wage. By connecting struggles over deindustrialization with anti-poverty activism, organized labour scaled-up the activity of the MDWN and attempted to deepen it into a cross-class, multi-racial coalition. Third, I explain the environmentalist orientation of the MDWN. I argue that the MDWN drew support from local environmental activists, and tried to take advantage of ecological modernist polices embraced by the state—namely, the government of Ontario's Green Energy and Green Economy Act (2009). But as I argued in chapter four, social movement struggles, such as those in York South- Weston, not only respond to socio-ecological fixes, but help constitute them. One thing this means is that environmental policies are produced through the politics of labour and livelihoods, and vice-versa. The Green Energy Act itself must therefore be understood, in part, as a response by the state to social 139 movement struggles, waged by groups like the MDWN, over the loss of manufacturing jobs and socio- ecological conditions. Finally, I discuss how the MDWN began to negotiate a community benefits agreement with the City of Toronto for the construction of a maintenance and storage yards on the former Kodak site that would service the Eglinton Avenue light rail transit system. This initiative stalled after the provincial government “scaled-back” (by scaling-up) control of the project from the City of Toronto, demonstrating how the hegemonic bloc can use a politics of scale to undermine counter-hegemonic mobilization. The MDWN—particularly with the help of Labour Council—was able to mobilize resources from across multiple scales to institutionally broaden the work of the MDWN. The MDWN had access to a sympathetic Left-leaning Mayor of Toronto who had made equity and the environment part of his political agenda. The MDWN drew support from national and city-wide labour-environmental “green job” coalitions. The provincial government's increasingly tenuous political rule made the ruling party more responsive to social movement pressures, especially those coming from swing ridings such as York South-Weston. Nevertheless, the MDWN failed to “scale down” the government's green economy policies into tangible green manufacturing jobs for York South-Weston. This demonstrates the incredible challenge faced by grassroots activists to ground a provincially-driven socio-ecological fix into concrete projects at the neighbourhood or factory level. Despite this failure, coalition-building had positive effects for participants through cognitive praxis (i.e., social movement learning). Participants gained a better appreciation for how their neighbourhood is shaped through inter-related problems of class, race, gender and ecology. Participants became better versed in urban planning policies and procedures, as well as the importance and challenges of building political power through cross-class, multi-racial alliance-forming. Meanwhile, the persistence and partnerships formed through these early phases of the coalition would allow the MDNW to be revived in 2012 after a year of inactivity, and eventually scale-up into the city-wide Toronto Community Benefits Network to negotiate for a community benefit agreement for the Eglinton Crosstown. The MDWN had helped raise expectations in the community for greater democratic participation, supporting a new common sense that ordinary residents had the right to be informed and to participate in decisions about urban planning and economic development in the neighbourhood. 140
Building a Labour-Community Alliance in York-South Weston
In fighting the potential conversion of the Kodak lands, the MDWN drew support based on the neighbourhood's industrial legacy—a nostalgia for stable, blue collar jobs, coupled with disaffection over the impacts of industrial decline. As late as the 1990s, two thousand workers were producing chemicals and photographic film at the Mount Dennis plant. Eight hundred jobs were lost in Mount Dennis in 2005 after the advent of digital photography and a series of poor management decisions forced Kodak's parent company to consolidate operations at its headquarters in Rochester, New York. The initial organized response to the closure of the Kodak plant came from the community, rather than from organized labour, which had been driven out of Kodak in the 1970s. There was a bitter strike at Kodak in the mid-1970s that saw the United Steelworkers raid the International Chemical Workers Union that had been representing the workers since 1945. After the strike, workers who had been opposed to the strike and the union raid got rid of the Steelworkers and formed a new Kodak Employees Association that effectively silenced any further radical union activity in the decades that followed. Not surprisingly, the Association that had represented workers at the Kodak site did not play any role in the labour-community coalitions that formed to take control of the planning of the site following the plant's closure. The 57.3-acre Kodak site was bought in August 2006 by Zeehan Capital Inc. through the well- known Toronto land development company called Metrus.67 The developer's hope was to build a big box retail and office space complex of 75,100 square meters anchored by a Wal-Mart or Zellers (urbanMetrics inc. 2008). Metrus commissioned two self-serving reports that both concluded that “rejuvenating” the Mount Dennis neighbourhood—and Toronto's economic growth more generally— hinged on the proposed retail development. The first report, a “Retail Market and Impact Analysis,” argued that a big box retail complex would not “adversely affect the economic health of the nearby shopping districts, including the retails strips in the local area” (a requirement of the City of Toronto's Official Plan under section 4.6.3)(urbanMetrics inc. 2008, 62). The second report commissioned by Metrus, entitled “Economic Analysis for Redevelopment Proposal,” tried to justify the retail use of the Kodak site over other industrial uses (Altus Group Economic Consulting 2008). The report argues in a circular way that zoning for manufacturing jobs is no longer important, or desirable, since Toronto's employment growth has been concentrated in the service sector:
67 Metrus' rezoning application to the city included an adjacent 5-acre industrial site at 55 Ray Avenue that had been owned by Eastman Chemicals Canada Inc. 141
Economic Growth in Toronto and Ontario is not dependent on employment growth in the manufacturing sector. Toronto employment in Ontario has continued to grow over the last two decades, despite the lack of employment growth in the manufacturing sector. Manufacturing employment in Toronto has fallen sharply, while total employment in the City has remained stable. Even in Toronto's designated Employment Districts, the service sector (including offices, retail stores and other service uses) accounts for most new businesses. These trends are expected to continue, with the service sector driving employment growth in Toronto (Altus Group Economic Consulting 2008, 16).
This analysis failed to discuss the strategic importance of a manufacturing sector to a regional or national economy, nor did it compare the quality of jobs in Toronto's manufacturing sector with those in the service sector. The Metrus proposal also drew on a “rejuvenation” plan for the Mount Dennis area from the early 1990s developed by the former City of York. The City of York rezoned a 11.7 acre industrial site, located just south of the Kodak site, for mixed-use development so that it could become the City of York's downtown core (or “City Centre”) and rapid transportation hub. This plan was shelved after the Ontario Government amalgamated the City of York with the City of Toronto in 1998, and also cancelled a subway project along Ellington Avenue in 1995 after it had already broken ground. The City of York's plan for a City Centre and subway was spearheaded by, then Mayor of York, Frances Nunziata who would become the local councillor following amalgamation. Nunziata's vision for the state-led gentrification of the area would run up against the MDWN's efforts to protect against the conversion of the Kodak lands. After buying the property in 2006, Metrus quickly demolished approximately one million square feet worth of factory buildings on the Kodak lands. The city's economic development agency, called TEDCO, had made an unsuccessful bid to buy the site that would have preserved the factory buildings for future industrial development. Given Metrus' deep pockets, and their plan to redevelop and sell the site as retail and office space, it was difficult for TEDCO to offer a competitive bid since it was using a much less profitable business plan based on keeping the site productively zoned as industrial land. Although other nearby industrial sites had been closed or converted into block housing without any organized community resistance, the demolition of the Kodak plant in 2006 triggered an organized community response. The initial phase began with the MDCA's concerns over heritage preservation 142 and the protection of small businesses from big box retail. The involvement of Labour Council helped the MDCA institutionally broaden into the MDWN while deepening the coalition's concerns over class, race, and ecology, giving support to a city-wide living wage campaign and the creation of green manufacturing jobs on the Kodak site. The final phase of the MDWN centred on winning a community benefits agreement linked to the public transit development that ultimately took over the site. The MDWN changed its strategic objectives as it was able to mobilize new resources, as new political opportunities opened within the state, and through cognitive praxis that lead to an ideological deepening.
Protecting Heritage and Small Businesses
The initial phase of community organizing around the Kodak lands centred on heritage preservation after buildings started to be demolished on the site in 2006. Active members in the Mount Dennis Community Association (MDCA) petitioned to preserve at least one building (the four-level “Employee's Building”) to symbolize the legacy of Kodak in the community and because “there are very few buildings of architectural merit in Mount Dennis.”68 The resident leading the preservation effort explained how the demolition of the Kodak buildings stirred emotions even for those who had never worked at the facility:
I mean, everything I’d heard since living in the community was that Kodak—this is a Kodak-built, it was a Kodak company town practically when it was built. I mean, Kodak was the primary employer. All of the houses, our house and all of the houses immediately around us were built for Kodak management and employees... And there’s a very strong sense of identification of Mount Dennis with Kodak... So to see this employees' building go as well as everything else was a huge symbolic loss...69
Mount Dennis' industrial golden era produced a symbolic landscape in the form of the Kodak lands that was increasingly looked to for inspiration as the community suffered through industrial decline. Despite, or perhaps because of, the symbolic power invested in the Kodak Employee's Building, the Etobicoke York Community Council sided with the developers and voted against the MDCA's petition. But the MDCA persisted and the Community Council's decision was later overturned by City Council
68 Research participant (ID003b), interview by author, August 10, 2012. 69 Research participant (ID003a), interview by author, August 10, 2012. 143 with support from the Toronto Preservation Board.70 Winning the struggle for heritage preservation of the Kodak Employee's Building gave the MDCA confidence in their ability to participate in the planning of the Kodak site and the Kodak lands became a standing item at future MDCA meetings. The MDCA had revived itself in 2004 with a new leadership and well-attended monthly meetings and social events attended by residents, small business owners and some agencies located in the area. The MDCA wanted to go beyond the role of a traditional ratepayers association and was self-aware that it was a group of primarily Caucasian, middle-class home-owners. So, with mixed results, the MDCA advertised its meetings to (largely racialized) residents renting in the nearby apartment buildings. The MDCA also successfully ran community events for everyone to participate in (e.g. building a skating rink in a local park and organizing free rental skates to assist low-income families).71 A survey conducted by the MDCA indicated that the top priorities for residents were: local environmental issues (garbage, beautification of the main street); the need for recreation facilities or other opportunities for youth; and crime.72 As the unofficial political voice of the community on a variety of issues, mostly municipal, the MDCA met regularly with the local political representative and city staff. The MDCA also hosted all-candidate debates for provincial, federal, and municipal elections. The MDCA was in contact with active members of the Weston Business Improvement Area (BIA) who would help found the Mount Dennis Weston Network. When rumours surfaced that Metrus was going to build a big box retail development on the Kodak lands, opposition was raised mainly from local small business owners within the Weston BIA who worried that a Walmart would put them out of business. As one community organizer involved with the MDWN recalled:
70 A strong environmental and heritage movement in York South-Weston helps explain why these residents and organizations are both actively engaged in questions of urban planning and why they have adopted a green economic agenda. Bounded by the Humber Valley to the west and Black Creek to the East, the area has a wealth of urban green space used for recreation (biking, picnics, bird watching, fishing, etc.) and flood control. The Toronto Regional Conservation Authority is an active player in the area, going well beyond its original mandate of flood control to include “sustainable community development.” Over the past fifteen years, community members have also formed a number of social movement coalitions to address specific environmental issues. The Humber Watershed Alliance was formed in 1997 to improve the ecological health of the Humber River and to designate it as one of only thirty-seven heritage rivers in Canada. The Weston Heritage Conservation District is another organization, formed in 2004, that helps govern the aesthetic of Weston's built landscape (e.g. through the preserving of historical buildings and promotion of flower gardens) while also engaging in research and writing on Weston's history. 71 Leaders of the MDCA pointed to logistical challenges of reaching renters in apartment buildings, since some buildings would not allow unsolicited mail or flyers from being delivered to residents' mailboxes. 72 The MDCA setup ballot boxes around the community, in doctors' offices, banks, bars, churches, and wherever else they could put them. Paper was set next to the ballot boxes with the question “What are the issues that concern you?” These answers were then collected and posted on the wall during a meeting. Everybody at the meeting had ten dot stickers that they could stick next to any of the issues to indicate the level of importance of that issues, allocating their dot stickers however they wished. The issues with the most dots at the end of the exercise were considered to be the most important. 144
it was really coming more from the small business people. [One leader], he’s a local resident but I think he was active in one of the business associations or community associations. You know [the leaders] were both Weston people [who] were all concerned about the potential of big box on the site. ... But it did not start as a campaign that was labour based at all. It was—people were motivated to do something as a neighbourhood. And you know, it was locally-based and anti-big box, to essentially protect local independent business.73
After being stonewalled for almost a year, in May 2007 the MDCA finally got Metrus to come to a community meeting that was attended by over seventy-five residents. In a failed move to take control of the bubbling situation, the local councillor for Ward 11, Frances Nunziata, announced she would strike a Kodak lands committee.74 But rather than put their confidence in a bureaucratic planning process, of the type that had so far failed the community on other issues—e.g. a long-promised recreation centre, the City Centre plan, and the Eglinton subway—community leaders came together to form the Mount Dennis Weston Network. The MDCA's cognitive praxis from fighting Metrus and the local councillors encouraged it to institutionally broaden into a neighbourhood labour-community coalition.
The Demand for Participatory Planning
The decision of residents to take urban planning matters into their own hands regarding the Kodak lands also stemmed from their ongoing fight against the provincial transit authority over the UP Express project—an additional rail line running through the Weston and Mount Dennis neighbourhoods that would create an express service between the airport and downtown Toronto. Following a lack of public consultation, the Weston Community Coalition (WCC) formed in 2005 by residents to voice several demands regarding the UP Express: that no roads in Weston be permanently closed; that the new line be used as an affordable commuter line with multiple stops rather than as an express “business class train”; that trains run on electricity rather than polluting diesel; that the
73 Research participant (ID007), interview by author, July 23, 2012. 74 The committee was to be hand-picked by the councillor for Ward 11 and the councillor for Ward 12 and was to meet in private so as to avoid an angry public. Neighbourhood leaders in Ward 11—including the MDCA and the Weston Business Improvement Area—were generally opposed to a big box development. The leadership of the Greenhills Community Association in Ward 12, viewed by participants as a wealthier neighbourhood less concerned with blue- collar jobs, welcomed some kind of commercial development and would later be vigorously opposed to keeping industrial activity on the site. 145 proposed public-private contract be dropped in favour of a full public ownership and operation; and that a full, rather than expedited, environmental assessment be undertaken for the project. The organizing of the Weston Community Coalition was very successful. After the WCC mobilized three thousand residents to attend one of the environmental assessment meetings, the provincial government was forced to issue a comprehensive environmental assessment, and Weston would get a new station stop along the UP Express. The government also kept the project public rather than use a P3 model (although this was most likely due to the private developer asking for a subsidy to operate the express service). In 2009 the WCC united other communities all along the rail corridor under a new name, the “Clean Trains Coalition,” scaling-up resistance to increase political pressure on the provincial government to electrify the UP Express.75 The experiences and successes of the WCC directly fed into the establishment of the MDWN. Leaders coming into the MDWN from the Weston Community Coalition brought with them: organizing skills (e.g. how to run meetings, connect with the media, circulate petitions, etc.); knowledge of the political process (e.g. skepticism of mandated public consultations, knowing who is “really” making final decisions, knowing how to leverage local political representatives); new social connections (e.g. trusting relationships with other community activists, contact lists of residents); and feelings of anger against the state coupled with a confidence that collective action can successfully bring about change. The Weston Community Coalition's desire to participate in urban planning decisions, and concerns over local environmental quality, would go on to shape the mission and work of the MDWN. In addition to bringing together representatives from the MDCA, the Weston BIA, the WCC, and the Toronto and York Region Labour Council, the Mount Dennis Weston Network also included the minister and parishioners from the Mount Dennis United Church, directors and staff from two social service agencies serving the area (the Learning Enrichment Foundation, and Action for Neighbourhood Change), a representative from Social Planning Toronto, a low-income tenants' rights organization called ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), and other active residents. About twenty people attended meetings. The founders of the MDWN had hoped to bring all stakeholders in the area to the table to better coordinate activities and “to affect decision making in the York South-Weston area of Toronto” (MDWN, n.d.). This was a direct challenge to the
75 The government ended up buying diesel trains, but agreed to undertake an environmental assessment for electrification in 2013 and in 2014 promised that the commuter rail lines going through York South-Weston as well as along the Lakeshore would be electrified within a decade. 146 type of top-down and “divide-and-conquer” politics of the local right-wing councillor as well as the complacent, laissez-faire approaches of the local MP and MPP. The founding vision of the MDWN tied together economic development and environmental concerns with the need for a politically engaged community: “Through the policy and practice of sustainable development, York South Weston develops a strong economy in which all people can live to their potential, are engaged, are respected and can prosper within a clean and healthy environment” (MDWN, n.d.). The MDWN called for participatory democratic planning surrounding the area's economic development and environmental governance.
Any Job Now, or Good Jobs Tomorrow? Labour's Campaign for Manufacturing Jobs, Minimum Wage, and Equity
A key challenge in establishing the MDWN and with carrying out its work in the community was addressing the tension between organized labour's push for good-paying (unionized) job creation on the Kodak site and the immediate need by those residents living in poverty for any job. This tension led an ideologically deepening within the MDWN that transformed its strategic demands and activities. The MDWN's formation and strategic direction was motivated by a desire to address entrenched poverty and crime in the area, and a lack of social services, which had led the City of Toronto to designate the area one of thirteen Priority Neighbourhoods.76 The City identified Priority Neighbourhoods following a highly-publicized surge of gun violence by racialized youth in 2005, and in response to the United Way's (2004) “Poverty by Postal Code” report. The median after-tax household income of the Mount Dennis-Weston Priority Neighbourhood is amongst the lowest in the City at only $38,900 (compared with a City-wide average of $46,240), with one in four households struggling below Statistics Canada's low-income cut-off line (City of Toronto, 2006).77 The uneven and gendered experience of poverty in the area is also evident, having the second highest percent of lone- parent families (30.1%) amongst all thirteen Priority Neighbourhoods. The lack of jobs, stores, and services has kept rent relatively low, attracting low-income households, and turning the area into an entry point for many immigrants particularly from Jamaica, the Philippines, Portugal, Italy, Somalia,
76 Although Weston and Mount Dennis are two distinct neighbourhoods, they were joined together geographically for the purposes of being designated a Priority Neighbourhood by the City of Toronto. Together, they make up about one third of York-South Weston's geography, but approximately two-thirds of the population (39,842 of 60,325, for the year 2006). 77 For an explanation of how Statistics Canada determines the low income cut-offs, see: Statistics Canada, 2011, Table 1, Low income cut-offs (1992 base) after tax, http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/75f0002m/2011002/tbl/tbl01- eng.htm. 147
Vietnam, and various places in Latin America. The factories that provided earlier waves of (European) immigrants with family-supporting jobs no longer exist, helping to create a situation where any job was viewed as a good job. Many of the organizations represented in the MDWN worked closely with residents living in poverty. The Mount Dennis United Church ran a “community kitchen” in the church basement so that low-income residents could cook healthy, affordable, meals, in addition to having computers setup for the community to use. ACORN, which had a chapter in both Weston and Mount Dennis, helped low- income tenants organize against absentee landlords to protect the affordability, and improve the living conditions of, apartment buildings. The Learning Enrichment Foundation (LEF) offered employment counselling and support services, basic skills training and language programs, immigration resettlement services, youth programs, childcare services, and other supports for families. The United Way also established its first Action for Neighbourhood Change project in Mount Dennis and Weston neighbourhoods in 2006 to address the area's poverty and lack of social services. The goal of the ANC was to coordinate existing activities, programs, and resources in the community, as well as strengthen the capacity of residents to direct a “locally-driven neighbourhood revitalization”(ANC 2015). Despite these organizations' work to address poverty and—in the case of LEF—training and employment services, they were not coordinated in a political way to influence the area's urban planning and economic development. The formation of the MDWN provided this political coordination, by bringing charity-oriented organizations and politically cautious social service agencies, together with outwardly political grassroots groups like the Weston Community Coalition and ACORN. The labour movement played a critical role in establishing the MDWN, and framing anti- poverty and anti-racism work in terms of creating green manufacturing jobs. Key organic intellectuals and other resources that supported the MDWN came from the labour movement. Mike Sullivan, a resident of York South-Weston and national staff rep with the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union, was the MDWN's first co-chair. Katie McGovern, who was an Executive Member of the Toronto and York Region Labour Council, lived in Mount Dennis and was active in the Mount Dennis Community Association. The United Steelworkers provided ten thousand dollars to help pay for a part-time organizer from the community to support the MDWN's activities while the Toronto and York Region Labour Council also contributed staff resources to help with the day-to-day organizational needs of the MDWN (scheduling meetings, printing out agendas, sending out minutes, booking halls, etc.). 148
In the 2000s, under the leadership of John Cartwright, the Toronto and York Region Labour Council turned increasingly towards building coalitions with community groups, strategically organizing through an equity lens. Successful labour-community struggles against the privatization of water in Toronto and cut-backs to education had demonstrated to Labour Council the potential of building stronger social movement alliances (Cartwright 2007). The participation of the Toronto and York Region Labour Council in the MDWN reflects both an institutional scaling-up of social movement activity in the area, but also an ideological deepening in terms of strategically linking equity, poverty alleviation, urban planning, and (later) “green job” creation policies. The Labour Council placed equity at the centre of its organizing strategy, building on a growing sensitivity to equity within the Canadian labour movement (e.g. the Canadian Labour Congress' 1997 Anti-Racism Task Force), and holding the first Aboriginal/Workers of Colour Conference in 2003 (Briskin 2003; Rayside and Hunt 2007). The Toronto and York Region Labour Council's Executive Board statement in 2002 entitled “Organizing for strength in Toronto's diverse communities,” signalled both a new political as well as geographical shift for organizing:
The next step is in forming solid links in the diverse communities across Toronto. Labour Council has been involved for many years with community organizations and activists on issues of equity, anti-racism, and social justice. It's time to make those links stronger, and broaden our focus from dealing with cases of injustice to reflecting the wider aspirations and priorities of the entire community. ... The lesson we learned from the Rexdale by-election is that victories are possible if progressive activists who are rooted in diverse communities come together, and provide the base for an authentic partnership of equals. While the bulk of civic activists traditionally live in the older city, there is a new reality in the suburbs, particularly north of St. Clair and Eglinton Avenues [e.g. Weston-Mount Dennis].
The Labour Council's new focus on poor and racialized inner suburbs came years ahead of their designation as Priority Neighbourhoods by the City, and before landmark academic studies documented the shifting geography of poverty within Toronto since the 1970s (Hulchanski 2010). One of the key orchestrators of the MDWN was Julius Deutsch—an executive assistant with the Labour Council, as well as an organizer for the New Democratic Party and Mayor David Miller's successful 2003 election campaign. Many interview participants recalled with admiration Julius Deutsch's ability to build consensus. Deutsch was critical in shifting the community's struggle over the Kodak lands from a focus on heritage preservation and small-business concerns towards a broader 149 struggle for the protection of industrial employment lands and green economic development. Deutsch, together with another labour organizer, also brought to the MDWN lessons learned from two other labour-community coalitions that had recently formed in Toronto to shape urban planning and mediate economic development projects: one coalition was launched in 2006 to win a community benefits agreement for an entertainment and hotel development planned in Rexdale—also a Priority Neighbourhood (Tufts 2008; Edelson 2011); and another coalition formed to block the rezoning of employment lands—home to Toronto's film industry—into a big box development (Wieditz 2017). Through the coordinating work of Deutsch, Labour Council strategically aligned the struggle over the Kodak lands to its city-wide campaign for a $10 minimum wage. Anti-poverty groups outside the labour movement had long been advocating for increases to Ontario's minimum wage. But a rare political opportunity was created when, just before the 2006 Christmas break, Ontario Liberal and Conservative provincial legislators voted to give themselves a 25 percent pay raise and effectively index their salaries to inflation (which would lead to another 2 percent raise only a few months later). The Ontario New Democratic Party tabled $10 minimum wage legislation that—to the surprise of everyone—reached second reading. The Labour Council quickly formed a broad coalition across the city amongst agencies serving immigrants, student unions, worker centres, ACORN and many other agencies. In early 2007, town hall meetings on the $10 minimum wage legislation were held in four neighbourhoods across the city, including Mount Dennis. The MDWN was officially non-partisan with politicians and party candidates of all stripes attending meetings. But participants recall meetings becoming quite heated at times, especially during elections. Dissatisfaction with the provincial government's response to the $10 minimum wage issue gave the labour-backed NDP candidate, Paul Ferriera, a narrow victory in the February 8th, 2007 provincial by-election for York South Weston. Paul had been an active member of the MDWN and his campaign and win turned the MDWN into a political sparring ring and gave the MDWN a “left-wing” reputation (even though many members of the MDWN who I interviewed based their vote on a candidate's individual merits, including past work in the community, as much as party affiliation). It was not long after Ferriera's win before the ruling party announced that it would give in on the $10 minimum wage demand, albeit phasing in the raise over three years. After the province agreed to the raise, Labour Council tried to use the momentum of the $10 minimum wage campaign to launch a broader “RESPECT” campaign that included demands for full-time work, unionization and better housing, childcare, education and social assistance. Again, town halls were setup across Toronto 150 including Mount Dennis. Other unions such as the CAW and UFCW also put staff resources into the RESPECT campaign but it failed to regain momentum after the government had conceded the minimum wage raise in the spring budget. Still, the fact that York South-Weston became a flashpoint for the provincial minimum wage struggle, largely through the election of Ferriera, demonstrates the broader significance that neighbourhood politics and organizing can have. In Mount Dennis the RESPECT campaign also helped organize opposition to the big box retail development on the Kodak lands. At the Mount Dennis town hall meeting in June of 2007, the Co- Chair of the MDWN, Mike Sullivan, gave an effective powerpoint presentation that illustrated the disturbing loss of manufacturing lands and full-time jobs in York South-Weston over the past few decades. Even five years later, an interview participant recalled how this presentation effectively drew a “line in the sand” for resisting any further deindustrialization through the rezoning of the Kodak industrial lands:
When we had our own town hall, not a political one called by the councillors, I guess that was the first big meeting. We’d had a formative meeting beforehand, but then there was a wider town hall. And Mike put together a Power Point which I think is still on You-Tube, which just showed the job loss in the area. Over ten thousand jobs from the different factories that had closed in the last fifteen years as a result of the de- industrialization along the rail corridor. And essentially it was a drawing of the line.78
The principles of the RESPECT campaign were endorsed in the MDWN's founding document and promoted by its members. For community activists, the RESPECT campaign was more than simply a call for the government to provide a living wage, union rights and other benefits: it was also a demand to be part of the planning and decision-making process. Speaking on CBC Radio's Metro Morning, the Minister of the Mount Dennis United Church tied together the RESPECT campaign with democratic planning around the Kodak lands: “...the opportunity with the RESPECT campaign really is an opportunity for the person who doesn't believe they have a voice, to have a voice in consultations with a company like Metrus.”79 The fact that a local minister was talking on radio about the importance of a living wage campaign initiated by organized labour also signals the success of labour-community alliance-forming in Mount Dennis. To be sure, there was still a strong contingent of people in the community, and some within the MDWN, who supported the development of retail development because they either wanted more
78 Research participant (ID002), interview by author, November 27, 2012. 79 Louise Mahood, interview by Andy Barrie, Metro Morning, 99.1FM, June 22, 2007, recording from CBC Archives. 151 shopping opportunities nearby or thought that any job creation on the Kodak site would be better than waiting for an investor to create good-paying manufacturing jobs that might never materialize. A former Kodak employee, whose family had lived in Mount Dennis for three generations and who had lost their job at age fifty when Kodak closed, appreciated the need for good-paying jobs but was resigned to the argument that manufacturing was not going return to Mount Dennis:
The Mount Dennis Community Association, and I’m not sure who else was part of that —that wanted higher paying jobs for people in Mount Dennis. I buy that. I understand that it would be really nice to have higher paying jobs. But the reality is, it was never going to happen. So any kind of a job [is better than no job]. Certainly, many people are against Walmart and what Walmart does. But Walmart hires a lot of people. Many people live because Walmart hires them.80
Similar views were also articulated consistently by Councillor Frank Di Giorgio in whose ward the Kodak lands fell. At a public meeting Di Giorgio argued in favour of Metrus' big box development plan for the Kodak lands: “There are a lot of benefits and a lot of costs. It is office and retail jobs, but there are all sorts of people needing jobs. We don’t have many people skilled enough to fill high tech jobs and nobody is coming forward to provide those kinds of jobs” (quoted in Dillon 2009). In many ways, Councillor Di Giorgio's statement reveals the way in which the state is complicit, if not key, in planning industrial decline. The councillor's remarks worked to strengthen the hegemonic common sense that framed industrial decline and land use conversion as inevitable. But the remarks by the former Kodak employee and the councillor also hint at some of the uneasy politics of class, race and gender that complicate any simple reading of grassroots planning and social movement building in Mount Dennis. On the one hand, organized labour was helping to ensure the potential for higher-skilled, better paying jobs in the future by trying to protect the conversion of Employment Districts like the Kodak lands into retail or residential land-uses. This strategy sees organized labour acting on behalf of manufacturing capital to protect the conditions it needs for future rounds of accumulation. The manufacturing sector is favoured by organized labour because it has historically given way to higher rates of unionization and better wages than the retail sector. But this more abstract potential, while helping unionized industrial workers, may be at odds with the apparent needs and desires of other marginalized members of the working class who could immediately benefit from retail sector jobs.
80 Research participant (ID009), interview by author, February 22, 2013. 152
Women, youth, racialized and disabled workers disproportionately fill lower-paying retail jobs and might also be more likely to favour big box retail stores for the cheap consumables they offer. Taking advantage of this sentiment, Metrus' “Economic Analysis for Redevelopment Proposal” emphasized the potential of a retail development on the Kodak lands to meet the employment needs of a Priority Neighbourhood—namely, for youth, low-income, and unskilled workers (Altus Group Economic Consulting 2008). As I argued in chapter four, manufacturing jobs still remains the best chance at a full-time, relatively well-paid job for many recent immigrants and those with lower levels of education. But the pressing demand of many marginalized residents in York-South Weston for “any job now,” rests in tension with the more abstract demand by organized labour for “good jobs tomorrow” realized through the protection of industrially-zone lands for potential future investments by industrial capital. Convincing local politicians about the value of protecting the Kodak lands for manufacturing employment was not only hard because of politicians' ties to developers (Javed 2016), and their support for gentrification, but also because they knew that many marginalized residents (and voters) of York- South Weston would be attracted to Metrus' offer for retail jobs. Moreover, although the Mount Dennis Community Association in Ward 11 came out in favour of manufacturing jobs, the adjacent Greenhills Community Association in Ward 12 was a more traditional ratepayers association that embraced conversion and gentrification. In making the case against conversion of the Kodak industrial lands, organized labour worked politically at multiple scales: navigating political tensions at the neighbourhood scale around jobs and gentrification through coalition-building, while at the same time trying to influence the City of Toronto to strengthen the legal protection of industrial lands at a city- wide scale. Through the $10 minimum wage campaign, organized labour demonstrated genuine solidarity with those making minimum wage in service or retail jobs thereby deflecting accusations that it was being narrow-minded or elitist in wanting to protect the Kodak employment district for good-paying industrial jobs given the high levels of unemployment and poverty in the area. Labour Council also developed a working relationship with, and provided some financial resources to, the ACORN chapters in Weston and Mount Dennis that were organizing low-income residents living in apartment buildings. ACORN used a door-to-door organizing model that started with trying to solve the pressing needs identified by members, in the process building-up the consciousness, confidence, and financial resources to challenge the underlying sources and systems of power that were causing members' 153 problems. An ACORN organizer explained this model of organizing:
...what ACORN organizers do is build organization. And so they do it by knocking on doors and asking people you know what do you want to see changed in the neighbourhood. They ask very detailed questions about the changes that people want to see. And they ask about, you know, who they consider responsible for making those changes? What will it take to get that person to make the changes we need to see in the neighbourhood? Those are really hard questions right. Like nobody ever asks those questions. So it’s really hard to do that work. Like to be an effective ACORN organizer. Because you’re having to get people to think—like five times a day—you’re having to do this, you know, get people to think creatively about challenging existing power structures.81
Labour Council provided some financial support to ACORN and invited members to MDWN meetings. As a matter of policy, ACORN had taken a stance against Walmart in both Canada and the United States. But as one of the organizers with ACORN recalled, supporting the MDWN was not simply about whether or not a Walmart would be built on the Kodak lands; rather, it was part of a long-term strategy to build-up grassroots political power more generally:
I think ACORN members, leaders, organizers recognize that—it’s a multi-issue organization—so people recognize that campaigns are a vehicle to building power. So like not every campaign has to be...the silver bullet that’s going to make all of the improvements that need to be made in the community. But every campaign does need to get more people involved, to help us, you know, raise money, hopefully, get some momentum, like win some stuff you know? Make it easier for us to run the next campaign. So not a lot of naivety. Like not a lot of people with like sort of grand illusions about like “CBA [community benefits agreement],” [snaps fingers], like whatever [just like that]. ... So you know that’s what we’re doing is like just building vision right, like asking questions that aren’t often asked like what sort of changes need to be made in the community and then trying to have a conversation about making it real. You know a conversation that seems so real that people are going to commit to being a part of it, with money right, with their dues, with time and energy, and emotional energy. So like when ACORN, when an ACORN chapter, has its very first meeting it would probably be impossible to have a conversation about you know like getting rid of Walmart. But by the time the organizing drive is done, like three months later, it’s probably the case that like there has been a collective process where the vision has been developed for you know changes in the neighbourhood that would be beneficial. And also a vision around like organizing, like actually getting where it would be...possible to have, like actually talk about, improving the neighbourhood. Not just like, you know, Walmart being cheap
81 Research participant (ID015), interview by author, May 16, 2013. 154
and convenient because it is convenient, that’s true.82
Through door-to-door organizing and membership meetings over a couple of years ACORN built the capacity for poor residents in Mount Dennis and Weston to understand the fight for good jobs on the Kodak lands as part of their fight. This is not to say that the MDWN created a space where ACORN members always felt comfortable or understood. The MDWN still struggled to frame its mission in ways that resonated with ACORN members, to appreciate and attend to different collective identities within the community, and to create (what I discussed in chapter two) as a learning space of equal status. Interview participants recall MDWN meetings being too much of a “high level policy conversation” that was “needlessly complicated” in ways that turned away a number of nearby residents from sustained participation:
There were a series of meetings, I guess like some of the early meetings of the Mount Dennis Weston Network that were really not accessible to a lot of low income people. ... They were just like long complicated conversations about policy, you know not any one policy in particular but it was just like really, really involved, kind of run by or intended for like you know people who are like able to come to everything, people with regular email access...... And then that takes a lot of energy to get 15 people out from you know a high rise in Weston to a library in Mount Dennis or a church basement and then they would just -- like the meeting would just happen the way it was going to happen and those people would leave pissed off and so then there was no way we were going to get them to the next meeting you know.83
Another member of the MDWN recalled how mistrust, racism, and differences over strategic objectives (e.g. whether or not the MDWN should address affordable housing) led some ACORN members to stop participating:
Ah there was, there was a little bit of that [racial tensions] and I know that some people withdrew on those grounds because they told me. ... You know amongst some people there was a genuine sense that their views were not seen as being as valuable as others. ... Because of the reaction to what they were saying. Because of the way they felt, they perceived the way they were being treated. I consider those growing pains. 82 Research participant (ID015), interview by author, May 16, 2013. 83 Research participant (ID015), interview by author, May 16, 2013. 155
... They weren’t being listened to in terms of what they needed right. And part of it was that, and I call it bundling. They would bundle their concerns, specifically around things like housing, into the aims of the specifically the Kodak lands’ aims. Someone who doesn’t live in that environment on a daily basis is more apt to dismiss it intentionally or unintentionally. And so that you know that rubs, and it is much better than is was five years ago but there was also that level of mistrust. You know what is your real agenda? Amongst small business folks, well what’s the union guys, what’s their real agenda right? You know, the tenants, the single black woman living on Weston Road, you know, hang on a sec,what’s her real agenda? Does she get it? Does she? So this is as I’m sure you guys have realized, this is a real complex community. It’s a microcosm. ...84
The failure here of MDWN members to “bundle” the demands by low-income and largely racialized residents' around housing together with the MDWN's work around the Kodak lands, is an example of an internal frame dispute that undermined consensus mobilization and alliance-forming. The experience of ACORN members within the MDWN was shared by marginalized residents who had been organized to come to MDWN meetings through Action for Neighbourhood Change (ANC). A former organizer with ANC saw the political importance of the MDWN but also recalled the some of the ways that resident-participation became frustrated:
it became clear that being part of that network was an obvious thing to do, because it was political. We were told that we were there in a supportive role. And my major focus was trying to actually get a more diverse group of people, a more broad-based group of people at that table and make it not so much a table, not all this talking heads stuff. Because then even, I’d go to a lot of work to talk to some, as you said, marginalized, racialized people about coming to it, and then it’s this kind of, I don’t want to call it high level, but people going on and on with technical stuff, and not just technical but just very adversarial. You know? And people just going “Why would I take a night away from my home life to come and watch politicians and other people sort of bash each other?” So that was certainly tough.85
As this quote suggests, the partisan wrangling and policy-focused discussions at MDWN meetings was one factor inhibiting the MDWN from attracting members and growing into a larger, broad-based coalition. The MDWN failure to create a more relevant or inviting meeting space for more marginalized residents, by incorporating concerns around housing and charting out in detail how these residents
84 Research participant (ID029), interview by author, August 17, 2012. 85 Research participant (ID006), interview by author, August 29, 2012. 156 would be able to access good-paying manufacturing jobs if they ever did get created, undermined the lasting political influence that this cross-class, multi-racial alliance could otherwise have had. Still, the involvement of ACORN gave the MDWN an appearance of broad-based support that pushed reluctant local politicians towards accepting—or at least not actively resisting—the MDWN's demand to protect the Kodak lands for industrial activity.86
Green Manufacturing: The MDWN's Socio-ecological Fix
As the struggle for protecting good-paying jobs on the Kodak employment lands gathered strength, the idea of using the site for green job creation took root. A key organizer recalled how the group came to champion green manufacturing:
Now, in the preliminary discussions, it was not just, “We want to retain Kodak for industry because we see this as a place where industry—industry is a place where you can get a job that you can raise a family on,” (so the salary issues and the RESPECT campaign merged in), but the green issues came forward because people were saying, “Well factories are closing.” And the response was, “Well, there’s a green economy. The city needs to get more sustainable. This is a place where those industries can be landed.” So that became an anchor point for “We want green manufacturing here, we don’t want a big box mall.”87
The fact that organizers in Mount Dennis could point toward a green economy and the need for a more sustainable city should not be taken-for-granted. As discussed in chapter four, green economic policies were used by the state to organize consent around a neoliberal socio-ecological fix. In proposing that the Kodak lands be redeveloped for green manufacturing, the MDWN drew on a green jobs discourse advanced by organized labour, the state, and fractions of capital in North America in response to the deepening manufacturing crisis throughout the 2000s, the growing climate change crisis, and the 2008 financial collapse (Nugent 2009, 2011; Hess 2012). The above quote demonstrates the how organic intellectuals within the MDWN articulated the “green economy” and gave it relevance as part of a popular collective will at a neighbourhood scale. The MDWN's vision for green economic development on the Kodak site was primarily
86 Local politicians were also well aware that ACORN's organizing had contributed significantly to the upset by-election win by Paul Ferriera during the February 2007 by-election, as well as the win by Anthony Perruzza in Ward 8 (the Jane- Finch Priority Neighbourhood) during the 2006 municipal elections. 87 Research participant (ID002), interview by author, November 27, 2012. 157 developed through the influence of Labour Council, the part-time organizer who was hired to work for the MDWN, and the City's Economic Development Office. The MDWN was also later joined by the Toronto Environmental Alliance—an environmental organization that focuses on municipal environmental problems and policies. The original proposal from these groups was to build a “green centre of excellence” or “incubators” that could develop and commercialize a range of green enterprises for the whole city, not just on the Kodak lands. In many ways this followed the neoliberal discourse of embracing the knowledge economy and making Toronto a globally competitive “creative city.” While the idea of a “green innovation campus” remained on the table, the MDWN soon began to identify more specific types of green manufacturing that could be attracted to the site. A former chair of the MDWN described the struggle, and the trial-and-error process, for identifying and attracting green investment into Mount Dennis:
We went to meetings and met with organizations and talked with universities, colleges, who were developing a kind of green economic training, education and also services. So that if we heard of a green industry that was looking for a spot [laughing] we perked up our ears. Because basically what we were trying to do, and this is trying to work with the city as well, is draw jobs and industry into this particular area. And we were told through various means that this was nigh impossible for this to happen. But that didn’t stop us from looking and envisioning what might happen there. We looked at wind power, we looked at solar energy, we looked at things like retro-fitting the neighbourhood.88
The laugh in this quote speaks volumes: the MDWN knew they faced difficult odds in trying to operationalize their vision for a green economy; but, despite being told that attracting green investment was “nigh impossible,” they persisted anyways. In June of 2007, the Labour Council's Executive Board gave a report to the General Membership concluding with three recommendations connecting the protection of employment lands, the creation of manufacturing jobs, and environmental sustainability:
1. Labour Council work with affiliates, the City, community activists, and local manufacturers to establish clear policies defending the integrity of employment areas in Toronto. 2. Labour Council advocate for linking issues of good jobs and environmental sustainability with urban planning decisions being made by Toronto and other municipal governments in our jurisdiction. 3. Labour Council work with community and environmental activists to develop a
88 Research participant (ID002), interview by author, November 27, 2012. 158
comprehensive policy around the various planning tools that could be utilized under the new powers found within the City of Toronto Act.
These objectives influenced the strategic direction the MDWN around green manufacturing. In March of 2008, the Labour Council and USW sent representatives, including two organizers involved in the MDWN, down to Pittsburg for the first annual “Good Jobs, Green Jobs” conference held by the BlueGreen Alliance (a formal, organizational partnership in the United States between several unions and environmental organizations, but originally founded by the United Steelworkers and the Sierra Club). The BlueGreen Alliance, formed in 2006, emerged in the United States out of a convergence of organized labour's response to the manufacturing crisis, an ongoing push for “energy independence” spurred by renewable energy investors and the Iraq War, and a wave of climate change activism leading up to the 2007 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali (Nugent 2011). Labour Council representatives sent to the BlueGreen Alliance conferences brought back international experiences and motivation for building labour-environmental alliances both in Toronto, as well as nationally. The green economy was promoted by organized labour as a possible solution coming out of the 2007-2008 financial crisis, opening up new partnership opportunities between labour and social movement actors, as well as between labour, capital and the state. Directly in response to the financial crisis, the Toronto and York Region Labour Council spearheaded a labour-community coalition called the Good Jobs for All Coalition comprised primarily of unions and social service agencies, along with some community organizers. More than 1000 labour and community activists, including representatives of the MDWN, came together at the “Good Jobs For All Summit” held on November 22nd, 2008 at the Toronto Metro Convention Centre. From the onset, the Good Jobs for All Coalition saw the green economy as a way out of the recession. The keynote speaker at the Summit was Dave Foster, the Executive Director of the BlueGreen Alliance. In his speech, Foster, who was formerly the Director of the USW District 11, called for a Green New Deal:
Unemployment is rising faster than at any time in my life. Budget deficits are exploding. We don't need incremental change. We need profound transformative change and we need it now [lots of clapping]. Governments, governments around the world are being compelled to step in and invest in massive restructuring in the global economy. And they should. But make no mistake we have a choice. Either we'll finance the recovery of all our old problems, high energy costs, declining resources, unsustainable trade deficits and a global warming crisis. Or, we’ll adopt a Green New Deal for the global economy 159
(emphasis mine).89
This call for a Green New Deal was increasingly echoed in various union communications by Foster, Leo Gerard (the International President of the United Steelworkers) and other popular advocates for “green collar jobs,” such as Van Jones (2008) and Majora Carter. Taking inspiration from Jones' Green For All initiative, and Carter's “Greening the Ghetto,” which created green jobs programs as a pathway out of poverty and jails for racialized, inner city youth in America, the Good Jobs for All Coalition established a “Green Economy for All” sub-committee in early 2009. Comprised of Labour Council staff, other union activists, and community organizers from poor racialized neighbourhoods in different regions of Toronto, the sub-committee spent its first year listening to one another, forming a consensus on the rationale (i.e., diagnostic framing) and vision (i.e., prognostic framing) for the sub-committee, and brainstorming campaigns (and motivational framing) that would at once address equity, unemployment, poverty and the environment.90 This culminated in a Good Green Jobs for All conference held at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre in November 2009, with an at-capacity attendance of over 600 people (Hogarth and Ireland 2009). Labour Council's support for green manufacturing on the Kodak site was an attempt to operationalize the “Framework for Action” developed from the 2009 conference.91 Activists from the MDWN who went to the Pittsburg BlueGreen Alliance conference and who participated in the Toronto Good Green Jobs for All Conference were motivated with numerous ideas for how the Kodak lands could become a site for green manufacturing: 89 Dave Foster, Plenary Speech, Good Jobs for All Summit, Toronto, Metro Toronto Convention Centre, 22 November 2009. 90 The author was a member of the Green Economy for All sub-committee. Meetings were every month and often twice a month. The committee also tried unsuccessfully to create apprenticeship and job opportunities for marginalized residents through a pilot project to install solar panels on the roofs of municipal buildings. 91 See, Good Jobs for All Coalition, (undated), “Good Green Jobs for All Framework for Action Developed from the November 2009 Conference,” 3pp. Following the successful conference, the Green Economy for All sub-committee met regularly and a campaign was launched in June of 2010 to push Toronto Hydro to “expand its role to fill the new potential for green energy, including solar panels on public buildings across the city, while helping to create jobs for youth, new immigrants, and people of colour”(Good Jobs for All Coalition 2010). The idea was for the City to take advantage of the Ontario Government's feed-in tariff program in order to create training and job opportunities for historically disadvantaged residents. The campaign led to a motion being passed by Toronto City Council for an $8 million pilot project that would have the City- owned hydro company install solar panels on City-owned facilities which included “a training and employment pilot program, and an engagement program for local solar manufacturers”(Toronto City Council 2010). As a result of this motion, the city did install seven photovoltaic projects, totalling 800W (Powell 2013). But the training and employment program never materialized. The campaign struggled to take-off partly because the sub-committee itself failed to build capacity and the campaign did not implement an outreach and mobilization strategy. The election of a conservative city administration under Mayor Rob Ford in the fall of 2010 also frustrated the implementation and city-wide expansion of the solar energy pilot project. The Ontario government also prioritized which municipal projects would have access to the Green Energy Act's feed-in tariff program, with schools and hospitals getting first priority. 160
...we went through a process where we established an understanding that was, for us, green manufacturing could relate to anything that makes the city more sustainable. So green building developments happening, materials and supplies related to green building, fixtures, anything related within the green design world. Transit, transportation. Transit is the most green form of transportation, so things related to transit. The water purification. Green chemistry where you’re taking a look at how, instead of oil-based plastics, you an come up with other kinds of materials for use in production. And then into the waste and recycling and energy and efficiency side of things.92
But although many ideas for green manufacturing were discussed by the MDWN, it does not seem as if any concrete proposals were made or interest was ever taken by any companies. Representatives from the MDWN did join executives of the Labour Council in meeting with representatives from the USW and the business development firm that facilitated a multi-million dollar investment in Pennsylvania by Gamesa—the Spanish wind turbine manufacturer. A connection was also made with Green Enterprise Toronto and a community college showed some potential interest in setting up a satellite campus in the area. But nothing ever materialized from these discussions. Ultimately, the MDWN was limited by its lack of business connections and insufficient capacity to conduct extensive outreach to potential green investors. This type of entrepreneurial activity was new for the MDWN and required resources of time and energy that went beyond the capacity of the coalition—although the MDWN did manage to engage with the City's economic development offices as I discuss below. Moreover, labour-environmental alliance-forming in Toronto led by the Labour Council and the Green Economy for All sub-committee of the Good Jobs for All Coalition, encouraged a formal partnership between the USW (Canada) and Environmental Defence, called Blue- Green Canada (Nugent 2009, 2011). Operating a national scale, Blue-Green Canada would later financially support the MDWN in pursuing neighbourhood-scale green economic development initiatives, as I discuss in the following chapter. Promoters of green manufacturing on the Kodak lands were also directly supported by the City's bureaucracy during a period when organized labour enjoyed favourable access to the City's left-leaning and “green” administration led by Mayor David Miller (between 2003-2010). With a broom as his election campaign prop, Miller's first mayoral campaign emphasized the “clean up” of the city—both in terms of corruption as well as litter. Once elected, Mayor Miller allocated between $3-7 million a year
92 Research participant (ID001), interview by author, August 7, 2012. 161 for a “clean and beautiful” city initiative. Under the Miller administration, the City of Toronto adopted ambitious waste diversion and emissions reductions targets and in 2008 would go on to become the second Chair of the C40 Cities: Climate Leadership Group. Municipal governments around the world were starting to lead efforts to address climate change especially in countries like Canada where only regressive measures were being taken by the federal government. In their July 2007 meeting, the Economic Development Committee passed a Green Economic Sector Development Strategy with Labour Council, the USW and the Toronto Environmental Alliance all making supportive deputations. Part of the strategy included the formation of a Green Manufacturing Action Team that was to “be tasked with outlining a path forward to match the emerging boom in demand for green products worldwide with green manufacturing opportunities in Toronto, as well as identifying tools for promoting pollution prevention activities in Toronto’s Manufacturing sector” (City of Toronto 2007a). Despite an ambitious program, the Team had not even met once within the year following the launch of the strategy (Toronto Environmental Alliance 2009). Perhaps looking for a good news story on this file, the City's Director of Business Development and Retention attended some MDWN meetings and invited the MDWN to participate on the Green Manufacturing Action Team. But even with the support of the Mayor and the City's Economic Development department the MDWN ultimately struggled to find a willing green investor for the site. The hope for green manufacturing on the Kodak site was also encouraged in the mid-2000s as the state and certain fractions of capital began to embrace an ecological modernization approach to climate change. Corporate lobby groups, which had weakened the Kyoto Protocol during the 1990s and then fought against its ratification and implementation by the Canadian government through the early 2000s, were now ready to accept limited emission targets and state subsidies to increase the global competitiveness of green technology firms (Nugent 2009). Following the 2008 recession, the ruling Ontario Liberal Party promised renewable energy companies massive state subsidies through the Green Energy and Green Economy Act (passed in May 2009) in return for using made-in-Ontario materials that would create 50,000 direct and indirect jobs according to government projections (see chapter four). One long-time resident of Mount Dennis explained how green economic policies at the municipal and provincial levels, and the growth of the renewable energy sector in North America, encouraged the MDWN's belief that a green manufacturer could be found for the Kodak lands: 162
That developed because we’re looking at jobs, and when you’re looking at jobs, it was pretty bleak. The only jobs that were being created, as we saw it, were in the green economy. So that’s one of the reasons why we went down this particular [green] route, is because that was the only route that was showing us that had potential for developing a significant number of jobs.93
This quote suggests that the MDWN's embrace of green jobs stemmed from a pragmatic environmentalism—i.e. support for environmental policies because of the immediate economic opportunities they offer rather than due to pre-existing environmental values or commitments to long- term sustainability. For example, interview participants involved in the MDWN did not raise climate change as a reason for supporting green manufacturing. But as I will argue, many MDWN members did hold environmental values and had historical experiences with environmental activism—even if these were not articulated in terms of “green jobs.” In this sense, the MDWN's “pragmatic environmentalism,” which centred on “green jobs,” must be understood as an example of alliance- forming, or ideologically deepening, in which organic intellectuals tried to ideologically and materially connect multiple strands of environmentalism. This ideological work has long been done by organic intellectuals within the labour movement, articulating an environmentalism that centres on workplace and livelihood concerns (Nugent 2009). So while organized labour was central in framing the MDWN's vision in terms of green manufacturing, a vision of sustainable community economic development (as stated in the MDWN's mission statement) resonated with other MDWN members because of their pre-existing environmental consciousness. A member of the clergy involved in the MDWN traced their environmentalism to eco- feminism and eco-theology. As mentioned, members of the MDWN from Weston had helped found the Clean Trains Coalition in order to force the provincial government to electrify the polluting diesel commuter trains passing through Weston and Mount Dennis. The Weston Community Coalition framed their battle against Metrolinx's plan for the UP Express in terms of environmental justice and environmental racism.94 Meanwhile, the Mount Dennis Community Association's was revived in 2004 after a successful neighbourhood garbage clean-up day. Residents came together into the nearby ravine and streets to pickup garbage and afterwards talked about other community issues over coffee. City
93 Research participant (ID001), interview by author, August 7, 2012. 94 For example, in a twenty-one page letter from the Chair of the Weston Community Coalition to the Minister of the Environment, the WCC concluded by warning that: “the province should be careful that a form of ‘environmental racism’ isn’t taking place, whereby already at risk citizens, primarily recent immigrants in poorer neighbourhoods are exposed to more pollution and more disruption and weakening of their neighbourhoods so that citizens from more affluent areas can have quicker trips into the big city.” August 31, 2009. Letter from Mike Sullivan to the Honourable John Gerretsen. 163 beautification (including heritage preservation and street improvement) remained high on the MDCA's agenda. The MDCA drew on the fact that Mount Dennis is located between two major river valleys to proudly rebrand the neighbourhood as “Toronto's Greenest Neighbourhood.” Residents valued the large tracts of green space in the area and some were also involved in conservation projects along the
Humber river. The environmental consciousness of members in the MDWN, although arrived at in different ways, meant that it was relatively easy for the group to collectively support the idea of green manufacturing for the Kodak lands. Framing the struggle in terms of green jobs resonated with the environmentalist collective identities of MDWN members. Some members of the MDWN saw green manufacturing as a way to increase access to solar panels for their homes. For others, having manufacturing jobs in the community meant that people could walk to work rather than having to drive a car. The MDWN's framing of manufacturing in terms of “green” jobs also keyed into the hegemonic urban planning discourse of “revitalization” (an ecological metaphor). Similar to Metrus' plans to “rejuvenate” the area through gentrification, the MDWN's vision promised a physical, economic, and social transformation of the area. Streets would be better maintained, economic activity would become environmentally sustainable, and economic prosperity would cleanse the area of its perceived social ills, namely violent youth crime. Of course, whether or not a single green manufacturer could ever fulfill these fantasies, this vision of revitalization was useful to the MDWN in its efforts to mobilize a labour-community-environmental coalition. The MDWN's environmentalist orientation can therefore be understood as an effort by organic intellectuals to relate and ground green economic policies developed by the provincial and municipal governments, and green job creation proposals supported by national and international labour- environmental coalitions, with pre-existing environmental values already existing in York-South Weston. This pre-existing common sense view on the environment was expressed in terms of heritage preservation, “clean” and “beautiful” neighbourhoods, “green neighbourhoods,” and neighbourhood “revitalization.” Labour activists within the MDWN engaged in effective prognostic framing: proposing green manufacturing jobs on the Kodak site as a way of bringing together these environmental concerns and concerns over equity. 164
From Green Manufacturing to Transit Jobs
The fact that Metrus was still the owner of the site and was pushing ahead with required market studies, architectural plans and rezoning applications never dissuaded the MDWN from actively trying to plan and realize their own vision. Throughout 2007 and early 2008 the MDWN felt itself growing in strength. The MDWN was holding regular meetings, public town halls organized by the MDWN were very well attended, and the MDWN was receiving positive media coverage. In November 2007, the growing power of the MDWN even led (Right-wing) Councillor Nunziata to pass a motion at City Council to develop an “employment growth strategy for Mount Dennis/Kodak area.” The motion noted that “the manufacturing sector is vital to the Toronto economy,” and identified “the Green/Environmental industries sector...as significant growth sectors,” and firmly accepted that the “Mount Dennis/Kodak Employment District has been a viable employment district within the City of Toronto and has tremendous potential to accommodate new manufacturing companies and jobs” (City of Toronto 2007b). The MDWN's fight against Metrus was also buoyed by the victories of a separate labour-community coalition in Toronto's east end film industry district that successfully fought against a big box development in 2007-2008 with Mayor Miller's support (Wieditz 2017). Ultimately, the debate over big box retail on the Kodak lands was put to rest in the fall of 2009 when the City authorized its Real Estate Services to begin negotiating the purchase or expropriation of part of the Kodak lands for use as a maintenance and storage facility as part of Toronto's “Transit City” public transit expansion plan. The maintenance and storage facility would service trains operating on a new light rail transit line along Eglinton Avenue (passing through Mount Dennis). The City's planned purchase of the Kodak site avoided a potentially protracted legal battle over Metrus' rezoning application. Throughout the MDWN's struggle against Metrus, it became clear that the City's planning department was preparing to contest the legal right of Metrus to build big box retail on the site. A shift in strategic planning policy in the mid-2000s meant that both the province and the city were being increasingly protective of Employment Districts. In response to a June 2009 written request by Councillor Nunziata, the Chief Planner indicated that Metrus' application for retail use on the Kodak lands was flawed both in design and purpose (City of Toronto 2009b). Although big box retail, or “power centres,” could technically be allowed within Employment Districts, the Metrus proposal had three faults: 1) the location of the retail buildings were not properly situated; 2) there was too much small-scale retail for what is allowed in an Employment District; and 3) overall the proposal did not 165 include a “critical mass” of non-retail employment uses that would be in-line with “the continuing functioning of the remainder of the Employment Area/District” (City of Toronto 2009a). It therefore seemed clear that Metrus would not have received a stamp of approval from the City's planning department. Metrus could have still decided to launch a legal battle to allow for rezoning. But the MDWN made it clear to Metrus that the community was well-organized and would not stand by passively. One participant recalled the first public meeting at which Metrus confronted residents:
I remember there was a meeting at the Legion Hall and there was somebody there from Metrus and you could just tell the guy was just—he was overwhelmed. He was like “holy shit” these people are serious you know. And you see by the fact that the offer came from TTC and they sold. They took their money and went away. And this was after they had sunk significant money into the land in terms of remediation and studies and everything else. And they submitted plans to the City. Because they realized these folks are determined and they’re not gonna back down. And if we want to build big box on that site, we’re gonna have a protracted [battle] …95
Rather than discourage the coalition, the expropriation plans of the Kodak site by the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) opened up new opportunities. Thanks to a friendly relationship between Labour Council and Mayor Miller—whom Labour Council had first helped to get elected—the MDWN was able to directly approach the TTC Chair and Vice-Chair with their planning vision. The City and TTC agreed to expropriate the entire Kodak lands with any land not needed for the maintenance and storage facility being given to Build Toronto.96 Build Toronto was —a city real estate and economic development corporation that replaced TEDCO in 2008 with a mandate “to unlock the value in under- utilized [publicly-owned] lands and use the available land base to attract targeted industries, stimulate the creation of desirable employment, and regenerate neighbourhoods” (City of Toronto 2013a). The MDWN would then work with Build Toronto to attract green economic development onto the surplus land. The City Council also passed a motion that directed the City Manager to “consult with the community and stakeholders on a strategy for maximizing green sustainable economic development, local procurement, and community employment in the development, operation and maintenance of the Kodak site” (City of Toronto 2009d). The same motion also called for the TTC to work with Labour
95 Research participant (ID029), interview by author, August 17, 2012. 96 In April of 2009, the TTC estimated that they would need “about 28 acres” of the Kodak site, and in October of 2009 the City's Chief Corporate Officer recommended purchasing 46.8 acres of the 57.3-acre property (City of Toronto 2009a). 166
Council and the Amalgamated Transit Union (representing transit operators) in developing “an appropriate training, pre-employment and employment model for the Maintenance and Storage Facilities Yard on the Kodak site, that can be used for all other MSF yards, as well as Transit City...to ensure the ability to hire from local neighbourhoods, as well as priority neighbourhoods.” In many ways, this motion reflected an initial attempt at winning a community benefits agreement (CBA) for the Kodak lands.97 This was a victory for the Mount Dennis Weston Network who had been fighting for over two years to prevent a big box development, to promote green economic development, and to create good (union) jobs in a marginalized neighbourhood. Unfortunately, soon after these motions were passed, the Province pulled out funding that had been dedicated to the transit expansion project placing everything on hold. The province would later create an entirely new transit authority, Metrolinx, that took planning powers away from the TTC and City Council for the Eglinton light rail transit line. Metrolinx would finally purchase the Kodak lands in 2012. This move by the Province effectively killed the arrangement that Labour Council and the MDWN had made with the TTC and the City regarding the green economic development of excess space on the Kodak lands as well as local employment programs.
Conclusion
The timing, form and consequences of deindustrialization and urban renewal are necessarily mediated through particular placed-based struggles. The MDWN formed and developed in response to changing political opportunities and threats, the availability of resources and the strategic orientation and framing of organic intellectuals. Political opportunities and threats must always be framed as such, and I have shown how this was done by organic intellectuals in York South-Weston within a context of racialized and gendered poverty, crime, environmental concerns and through competing visions for “revitalizing” the community. Some of these threats to the community—e.g. the top-down imposition the UP Express; the rushed demolition of factory and heritage buildings on the Kodak site; the proposal for a big box retail complex; gun violence; etc.—were driven primarily by socio-ecological (including political economic) processes or logics beyond the scale of the neighbourhood, as I discussed in chapters three, four and five. But rather than analytically separate “neighbourhood politics” from
97 The focus on transit operations jobs contrasts with the future CBA proposed by the Toronto Community Benefits Network which was limited to the construction phase of transit facilities. This reflects the favourable access that Labour Council had at the time to the Mayor Miller administration and the Toronto Transit Commission. 167
“external” or “broader-based” processes, this chapter has related the multiple scales of activity through which urban space is produced and contested. I have highlighted the ways that labour-community alliance-forming sought to resist and reverse deindustrialization. Political opportunities are not only exogenous to social movement activity. Some political opportunities seized by the MDWN were created by other neighbourhood-based social movement organizations and by the MDWN itself. The formation and effective organizing of the WCC, MDCA, ACORN, and the MDWN tightened electoral races in York South-Weston at all levels of government forcing politicians to become much more responsive to the MDWN's issues (especially as the provincial government moved towards a minority rule situation). The wave of social-movement activity in York-South Weston helped get two MDWN members elected as representatives for the left- leaning New Democratic Party—one as a member of provincial parliament, and the other as a federal member of parliament. Similarly, organized labour contributed to the election of a Left-leaning municipal administration in Toronto, which opened doors to decision-makers and the bureaucracy at city hall for the MDWN. Organized labour mobilized necessary resources and provided organic intellectual leadership within the MDWN critical for alliance-forming, both in terms of ideologically deepening and institutionally scaling-up neighbourhood concerns. The participation of Labour Council helped to explicitly connect campaigns for “green jobs” to immediate problems of poverty and racism. Social movement activity around the Kodak lands began as a battle over heritage preservation and the concerns of small businesses about a potential big box retailer. The leadership of union activists shifted the MDWN's strategic focus towards reversing deindustrialization through the creation of green manufacturing jobs. Besides providing funding and staff resources to organize meetings, Labour Council leveraged its political connections within the City of Toronto's administration and bureaucracy to support the MDWN's struggles. Organized labour continues to hold political influence within large, liberal cities like Toronto, but this influence diminishes at the provincial scale especially in terms of shaping provincial economic development policies and programs that could benefit particular neighbourhoods. The takeover of the Eglinton light rail transit project by the province and the subsequent shutting out of the MDWN from planning of the Kodak site (as I detail in the following chapter) shows how a politics of scale can be used by the state to undermine neighbourhood-based struggles. If long-talked about plans to devolve control over land-use zoning from the province's Ontario Municipal Board to the City ever materialize 168
(Benzie 2013), labour-community alliances could find themselves in a position of much greater strength in zoning struggles and the production of urban space. The MDWN confronted several challenges and contradictions as it tried to articulate and implement its vision for the Kodak lands. High levels of poverty in York South-Weston created a tension between those needing “any job now” versus a long-term strategy to create “goods job tomorrow.” Those wanting to protect the Kodak lands for good-paying, unionized jobs were not only positioned in opposition to developers, right-wing councillors and the Greenhills Community Association but also poor, single-parent and racialized residents who needed work, or who could otherwise benefit from the low-price consumer goods offered by big box retail stores such as Walmart. Specific efforts were made by the MDWN, ACORN and Labour Council to address this tension: members of ACORN discussed and evaluated the pros and cons of Walmartization as well as the broader benefits of building-up neighbourhood political power by joining labour-community coalitions; Labour Council supported a successful campaign to raise the minimum wage; and together, the MDWN and Labour Council began discussions with the City for creating employment programs targeting Priority Neighbourhoods in relation to public transit expansion projects. Despite these notable efforts, the MDWN struggled to deepen and sustain a cross-class, multi- racial coalition. The MDWN failed to always frame the mission of the coalition in ways that resonated with the concerns of more marginalized residents, and to foster more welcoming meetings that were learning spaces of equal status—a problem that would continue on into future organizing efforts by the MDWN (see chapter nine). The consequences of a socio-ecological fix for differentially positioned social groups is difficult to predict. My analysis assessed how some of the competing interests and visions for the redevelopment of brownfield sites in Toronto challenged or worked to reproduce hegemonic social relations. Both the MDWN and supporters of retail development on the Kodak lands framed their positions in terms of neighbourhood “revitalization” and the need to create much-needed jobs in a Priority Neighbourhood. The competing visions had different implications for whether or how the area would be gentrified, although there was never any explicit discussions about gentrification. The MDWN's support of green manufacturing aimed to preserve the blue-collar character of the neighbourhood.98 But there was not always a consensus within the MDWN about what “green jobs” could mean, with some members more in support of white collar jobs (e.g. a “green innovation
98 The Network's attempt to revive the blue-collar character of the community contrasts with the labour-community coalition discussed by MacDonald (2011) that resulted in a “negotiated gentrification” (206). 169 campus”) than green manufacturing jobs. It's also not clear to what extent Metrus' proposal would have gentrified the area, especially given the distance of the Kodak lands from any residential properties and the continued industrial activity to the north of the site. How the Metrus development impacted property values would have depended upon the type of stores and offices that ended up as part of the development, as well as how the Metrus development impacted other small businesses and storefronts along Weston Road (the main road connected Mount Dennis to Weston). If, as small businesses feared, the opening of a retail complex led to the closure of the remaining businesses in Weston and Mount Dennis, then this arguably would have created a downward pressure on rent around those shutdown businesses. On the other hand, the Metrus development could have fractured the broader Employment Areas by making it more difficult for heavy industrial activities to take place on adjacent industrial properties (e.g. due to concerns around air and noise pollution) thereby supporting gentrification. Much more than the Metrus development, the new rapid transit lines and stations will push up land values. Mayor Miller's Transit City was motivated by the need to better connect marginalized inner suburbs with transit. But it failed to address the how transit development leads to gentrification and displacement of marginalized residents.99 More equitable access to jobs associated with transit projects—e.g. through a community benefits agreement—can only partially offset gentrification pressures faced by low income residents from transit-oriented development. The changing orientation of the MDWN's vision, which eventually became about green manufacturing jobs, raises questions about the type or depth of the MDWN's environmentalism. On the one hand, the MDWN's focus on green manufacturing was a type of pragmatic or opportunistic environmentalism: the MDWN saw the green economy as an emergent growth sector for job creation. This view was encouraged by growing investment in green industries, the Ontario government's Green Energy and Green Economy Act (2009), environmental policies of Mayor Miller's administration, and labour-environmental (“Blue-Green”) policy work in the United States and Canada. At the same time, I have argued that the MDWN became a space where these “high-level” green economic policies resonated with pre-existing socio-ecological struggles and environmental sensibilities at the neighbourhood scale (e.g. garbage in the ravine, local air pollution, neighbourhood “revitalization,”
99 Transit planning can also lead to land speculation which can exacerbate deindustrialization when developers abandon properties around future stations or transit lines, waiting to develop them after the transit project is approved. In Mount Dennis, land speculators bought properties around the future Eglinton subway station after it was approved and underway. After the Eglinton subway was abruptly canceled by the Conservative government in 1995, the speculators left properties undeveloped. 170 etc.). My analysis demonstrates how the meaning of “green” and “the green economy” coalesce in particular places through multiple scales of social movement activity, organized ideologically and institutionally through the work of organic intellectuals. Attracting green investors to the Kodak site was a major challenge for the MDWN. The MDWN lacked entrepreneurial experience and capacity.100 Investors were cautious following the financial crisis. And the state's rhetoric about the green economy proved much stronger than its actual material support for stimulating green job creation. The Ontario Government's Green Energy and Green Economy Act did not create as many green manufacturing jobs as originally promised. The City of Toronto developed a Green Economic Sector Development Strategy, but the Green Manufacturing Action Team that was agreed to never ended up meeting. The struggle over the Kodak lands points to some practical lessons for how labour-community coalitions can pressure the state to better protect industrial lands and create green jobs. If more resources had been given to the City's development agency, TEDCO (later named Build Toronto), it could have made a more competitive bid to buy and preserve the Kodak factory buildings before they were demolished by a speculative land development company. Of course, public ownership of the Kodak site would not have guaranteed green industrial uses for the site, but it would have allowed the MDWN to make a stronger argument in favour of green manufacturing and given the City's Green Manufacturing Action Team an intact factory facility to work with. After the City decided to expropriate the Kodak lands for the Eglinton light rail transit project, the MDWN was able to begin engaging the City's development agency around green economic development; however, by that time, the bulk of the Kodak site had been designated as the future light rail transit maintenance and storage facility. This suggests that labour-community coalitions should engage with municipal development corporations like TEDCO as early as possible, and politicize the use of these public corporations if need be, in order to protect industrial capital assets in the city from being demolished, so they can be retooled for sustainable production. There are many contradictions that the work of the MDWN could not, or did not, resolve. In trying to fix green capital onto the Kodak lands the MDWN was trying to simply regulate capital 100Another labour-environmental coalition formed during the early 1990s in the Greater Toronto Area faced some similar challenges as the MDWN in trying to create green manufacturing jobs. In 1991, the Caterpillar plant organized by the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) in the city of Brampton, Ontario, was shut down as a result of a Canada-US free trade agreement signed in 1989. Activists from the CAW and Greenpeace formed the Green Work Alliance and organized a plant takeover—hoping to convert the factory into a democratic worker's cooperative that produced energy-efficient windows (Keil, 1994). Ultimately, the plan failed due to a lack of technical know-how and an inability of the group to secure capital financing (Keil, 1994). With the onset of a recession, the Green Work Alliance found it difficult gaining political buy-in from the Left-leaning provincial government (Keil, 1994). 171 accumulation not advance an anti-capitalist politics that could more fundamentally address the creation of marginalized groups and the degradation of the environment. Even if the MDWN had been successful in attracting green investors into Mount Dennis it is often difficult to ensure that the most marginalized residents receive the training and supports they need to successfully get hired into green jobs. Still, the MDWN did try to assert its vision of revitalization. It advocated for the creation of manufacturing jobs, fought for a higher minimum wage, and for marginalized residents to have more equitable access to transit-related jobs. 172
Chapter 7
The Mount Dennis Weston Network (2011-2012): Struggling for Good Green Jobs in the Neighbourhood
The Mount Dennis Weston Network re-emerged in 2011 from a year in dormancy, and continued to press for a vision of neighbourhood economic development that connected struggles for jobs, justice, and the environment. This chapter explains and appraises efforts by the MDWN to frame and realize its vision for a “green economy,” to mobilize organizational resources, and respond to shifting priorities within the hegemonic bloc. Over the next two chapters I also detail political manoeuvring by those in power that undermined the MDWN's attempts at building a counter- hegemonic political force within the community to demand greater democratic participation in the production of urban space. Identifying these mechanisms of hegemony (e.g., employing a politics of scale; diffusing resistance through “public consultations,” etc.) should help social movement groups in considering future strategic and tactical responses. An analytical objective of this dissertation is to better relate the local and extra-local, by emphasizing the agency of social movements in the production of urban space. In this case, efforts by the MDWN to create green jobs in York South-Weston ultimately failed. I agree with Massey (1995, 7) that “the geography of industry is an object of struggle;” however, it is a struggle that is often lost by labour-community coalitions. The failure of social movements to shape socio-ecological fixes, as much as their successes, calls for explanation and strategic reflection so as to inform future counter- hegemonic struggles. I draw on social movement theories developed in chapter two to analyze the factors that frustrated the MDWN's efforts to realize green economic development within the neighbourhood, such as a lack of organizational resources and the closing of political opportunities within the state. Just because alliance-forming failed to directly shape a socio-ecological fix in this particular conjuncture does not foreclose the possibility of success by future struggles given different socio-ecological conditions and organizing strategies. The MDWN's struggle to materialize the green economy demonstrated in a general sense the political pressures that governments were under to reconcile demands for jobs, justice, and the environment (e.g., via a socio-ecological fix). More specifically, I argue that the MDWN's re-emergence and sustained activities through this period supported its future alliance-forming efforts by fostering relationship-building within the coalition and with state actors. This is an important reason to study and appraise the development of social 173 movement coalitions as a long-term process. In the case of York South-Weston, the MDWN's vision of linking job creation, justice, and the environment, faced significant resistance from the state. There was little support from local politicians for reviving manufacturing in the area (whether “green” manufacturing or otherwise). Senior municipal bureaucrats charged with economic development offered scant concrete plans for creating employment in York South-Weston's deindustrialized neighbourhoods. The MDWN's concern for alleviating poverty (much of it racialized) via the creation of good-paying jobs, clashed with mainstream real- estate led gentrification movements that were facilitated by the state through an often vague—but nonetheless potent—rhetoric of “neighbourhood revitalization.” Without buy-in from politicians or senior bureaucrats, the MDWN had insufficient capacity to solicit public or private investment. Meanwhile, those in power separated—or even put into opposition—economic development from environmental objectives endorsed by the MDWN, with all three levels of government having shifted away from earlier ecological modernist discourse. There was no consensus within the MDWN over the type of green economic development that should take place in York-South Weston. Some members of the MDWN were still interested in attracting green industries, continuing the coalition's previous attempts at scaling-down renewable energy policies promoted by the provincial government and national labour-environmental coalitions into concrete neighbourhood investments. Other members of the MDWN thought it was more pragmatic to engage with mainstream discussions on neighbourhood revitalization (i.e. urban renewal), trying where possible to introduce an environmental and social justice perspective. At least one member questioned why the MDWN's should focus on “green” job creation in particular, while others looked—not to private capital investment—but to re-purposing the area's endowment of public green spaces as a possible site for job creation (e.g., commercial gardening). Rather than view these frame disputes as a strategic weakness, I argue that they reflect the MDWN as an important neighbourhood space for visioning, social movement learning, and long-term relationship-building (i.e. ideological deepening). It also reflects “the green economy” (and socio-ecological fixes) as a deeply contested, being physically and discursively produced dialectically through concrete conditions and struggle across multiple scales rather than simply passed down from “high level” policy debates to the neighbourhood scale. 174
The Ebb and Flow of the MDWN
The Mount Dennis Weston Network went into a year of dormancy between the spring of 2010 and the summer of 2011. Labour-community coalitions often experience this type of “ebb and flow” as a result of membership and leadership turnover, the opening and closing of political opportunities and threats, and the availability of resources (Estabrook 2007). In February of 2010, Julius Deutsch—the organizer from the Toronto and York Region Labour Council who had been instrumental in driving the MDWN—passed away. There was also turnover of other staff at Labour Council who had worked with the MDWN. The 2010 municipal election and 2011 provincial and federal elections took away resources from the MDWN, as labour and community activists diverted their energy to candidates' election campaigns. In May of 2011, the Chair of the MDWN, Mike Sullivan, had to step down, after he was elected as the Member of Parliament for York South-Weston. The partisan activities of some MDWN members, as well as lingering internal disagreements over the merits of the Metrus proposal (see chapter six), had also strained relations between certain MDWN members. Shifting provincial government priorities, and the election of a new Right-wing municipal administration, also closed-off political opportunities that the MDWN had previously seized. Up to this point, the MDWN's activities had centred on re-envisioning the purpose of the Kodak lands. The Ontario government's spring 2010 budget restructured rapid transit planning for Toronto leaving the fate of the Kodak lands—which was still privately owned—up in the air. The Ontario government reduced and delayed its already promised funding for the City of Toronto's four light rail transit expansion projects, and announced that it would be taking ownership of these projects away from the Toronto Transit Commission.101 The province's take-over of the Eglinton LRT project, through the restructured provincial transportation authority named Metrolinx, squashed negotiations between the MDWN, Labour Council and the TTC over the local jobs agreement for the maintenance and storage facility that was being planned for the Kodak lands. Meanwhile, Rob Ford was elected Toronto's mayor in October of 2010, and immediately terminated Transit City. This ignited two years of fierce debate and renegotiation of transit plans both within city council and between the City and the province—a period that journalists following Toronto's transit beat would summarize as a “tireless transit saga” and
101The province originally promised $8.15 billion to fund four light rail transit lines in April 2009. The province reduced this commitment by $4 billion In the March 2010 budget, promising instead to provide this funding over a longer time- frame (i.e. delay original construction). This created a feud between the provincial government and the Mayor Miller administration (Benzie and Kalinowski 2010; Kalinowski 2010a). 175 a “transit mess” (Rogers 2013; Kalinowski 2012).102 Political uncertainty surrounding Toronto's light rail transit projects, including the future use of the Kodak lands, made strategizing difficult for the MDWN and contributed to its dormancy.
Re-establishing the MDWN
When the MDWN re-established itself, it continued to advocate for the creation of “green jobs” in the neighbourhood. Leaders within the MDWN were keen to connect livelihood struggles with environmental objectives, and the MDWN's “green” orientation was reaffirmed through a re-visioning workshop. Whereas the MDWN's previous focus had been on re-envisioning the Kodak lands as a site for green manufacturing, this time the MDWN explored a broader range of possibilities for green job creation. In the spring of 2011, a small group of the MDWN began meeting again every couple of weeks.103 The group planned a re-visioning workshop for the MDWN on January 27-28, 2012, that brought new people, ideas, and energy into the coalition. Thirty-five people participated in the workshop, including representation from: local social service agencies; residents; two different neighbourhood associations; academics; the local Member of Parliament (and former chair of the MDWN); the President of Labour Council; the Labour Education Centre; Blue Green Canada; one City of Toronto social services manager;104 and individual residents.105 The issues and tensions that arose at the workshop would continue to consume the work of the MDWN and its successor, the Toronto Community Benefits Network (TCBN), over the next three years: how to operationalize the green economy at a neighbourhood scale through concrete initiatives; how the green economy could benefit marginalized groups; whether, and how, to form political alliances by mobilizing across organizations, as well as ethno-racial, and socio-economic groups in the community. Following the January workshop, the MDWN re-examined its mission statement. Members
102Provincial Opposition Leader Tim Hudak also announced on October 17th, 2012, that he would cancel the light rail transit projects and replace them with subways if elected. 103This planning group was comprised of a few residents who had been previously involved in organizing both the MDWN and the Mount Dennis Community Association. They were joined by myself and Steve Shallhorn, the Executive Director of the Labour Education Centre. By December of 2011, the core group of MDWN members were meeting every couple of weeks to plan the January re-visioning workshop. 104The organizers believed that the local councillor's well-known dislike for the MDWN and desire for political control meant that she had discouraged city staff who had been invited from participating. 105Notably, the local Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP), and two city councillors did not come to this workshop. The MPP would later attend MDWN meetings, reflecting the growing legitimacy of the MDWN. 176 agreed to keep the original 2007 mission of the MDWN more or less unchanged, with the primary goal being to:
Enable sustainable employment opportunities within York South-Weston: • Develop local economies through a mixed strategy of small business, learning, training, social service agencies, manufacturing, recreation, urban transit, urban agriculture, interdependent upon each other • A resilient community that sustains a creative and green economy, • A balance between social, economic and environmental needs (Mount Dennis Weston Network 2007).106
Although job creation, social justice, and environmental objectives, are only integrated implicitly into its mission statement, these priorities were reflected in discussions, activities, and the membership composition of the MDWN, including organizations that offered the MDWN institutional support. The MDWN met regularly throughout 2012—at least once a month, and sometimes twice (see 9.1). Smaller delegations of the MDWN also set up meetings with other social service agencies, politicians and bureaucrats in-between general meetings. Participation at general MDWN meetings fluctuated, but included: executive members of the Mount Dennis Community Association and Weston Village Residents' Association (2-4 people); the local Member of Parliament and Member of Provincial Parliament, and/or their representatives (2-4); social service agencies operating in the neighbourhood (2-4); the Executive Director of the Labour Education Centre; academics (1-2); community researchers (2); and individual residents (2-4). In terms of social service agencies, the Learning Enrichment Foundation (LEF), which is by far the largest social agency in York South-Weston, provided the MDWN with meeting space and always had one or two representatives present at meetings (often the director). LEF provides employment counselling, various levels of job training programs and educational upgrading, immigrant resettlement services, and youth programs. For Youth Initiative (FYI), whose director also regularly came to meetings, provides programs and services to low-income, often racialized, teens and young adults. ACORN, a member-driven organization that advocates for low-income tenants and around economic justice issues, occasionally had representatives at MDWN meetings, but had weakened as an organization following the departure of some key organizers. The local MPP and MP either attended MDWN meetings themselves or sent representatives. Due to their past disagreements with certain
106This wording was changed only slightly from the original founding statement, dropping “entertainment” as one of the economic activities that the MDWN was interested in developing, while adding “training,” “urban transit,” and “urban agriculture” to reflect discussions that took place during the visioning workshop. 177 members of the MDWN, the local councillors did not attend MDWN meetings, although they were invited, and did receive regular updates either through meeting minutes or directly from those in attendance (sometimes by request). Some residents from the area attended MDWN meetings simply as individuals. Guests from other organizations operating within Toronto were invited to attend specific meetings. The labour and environmental movements supported the MDWN and influenced its organizational objectives. Labor-community-environmental coalitions have generally formed around four types of issues: environmental toxins in the workplace and community, with an emphasis on environmental justice (United Steelworkers 2006; Leopold 2007; Estabrook 2007); environmental degradation and long-term economic viability of resource extraction industries (Rose 2000; Moore 2002); lobby efforts aimed at changing environmental legislation or trade agreements (Adkin 1998; Nugent 2009; Gould, Lewis, and Roberts 2004); and attempts to “green” production or attract green capital into particular locations (Keil 1994; Hess 2012).107 The coalition-building of the MDWN formed around this last concern—hoping to attract green capital into York South-Weston that would create good-paying, green jobs. Steve Shallhorn, who was hired in 2011 as the new Executive Director of the Labour Education Centre, was adept at consensus-building and fundraising and would play a key role in the reboot of the MDWN. The Labour Education Centre is the training and employment services wing of the Toronto and York Region Labour Council. Notably, Shallhorn was also a long-time environmental advocate, having worked for Greenpeace between 1987-2010, including as the CEO of Greenpeace Australia- Pacific. This allowed him to resonate with the collective identities of both environmentalists and organized labour activists. Shallhorn's background reinforced a long-standing commitment by Labour Council, led by President John Cartwright, to bring together so-called “red” and “green.” Labour Council used prognostic framing to present environmental policy as a solution for job creation. In late 2011, the MDWN received new support from Blue Green Canada's “Making Green Work” project. Blue Green Canada was a formal partnership between Environmental Defence and the United Steelworkers (Canada) that formed in 2009 in order to replicate the successful “green jobs” advocacy of the BlueGreen Alliance in the United States (see chapter four and six). Just as labour- environmental coalitions like the BlueGreen Alliance have been a strategy for union renewal, they have
107Increasing public investment in mass transit has also been a long-standing concern of some manufacturing and transit service unions and other social justice organizations, sometimes leading to more formal labour-coalitions coalitions (Canadian Autoworkers Union 2007; Joe Grengs 2007; Mason and Morter 2009; Nissen 2004). 178 also been used by environmental NGOs to gain political relevance when confronting governments hostile to political strategies commonly used by large environmental organizations, such as lobbying. In Canada, the federal Liberal government adopted an ecological modernist approach during the early 2000s (e.g. culminating in their 2008 ill-fated “Green Shift” election campaign). But the Conservative government that was elected under the leadership of Stephen Harper, in alliance with several business interests, promoted a (false) choice for Canadians between saving jobs or addressing environmental problems such as climate change (Nugent 2009). The zero-sum logic of austerity that followed from the Great Recession further heightened this kind of “jobs-versus-the-environment” rhetoric. The formation of Blue Green Canada, and its support for the work of the MDWN, must therefore be understood (from the perspective of Environmental Defence) in terms of the Conservative government blocking environmental organizations from having policy influence through lobbying, and at the same time, a need to address public concerns over the impact of environmental regulation on livelihoods. The major focus of Blue Green Canada was promoting the creation of green jobs in the renewable energy sector by endorsing and tracking the impact of Ontario's (2009) Green Energy and Green Economy Act. In partnership with the Labour Education Centre, the Making Green Work project used Mount Dennis as a case study to explore how the green economy could be operationalized at the neighbourhood scale (Blue Green Canada n.d.). Blue Green Canada had a few staff members that worked with the coordinator of the MDWN on the Making Green Work project. The Making Green Work project provided short-term, part-time financial support for coordinator of the MDWN, allowing them to spearhead efforts in-between meetings, as well as funding to cover costs of the MDWN's January re-visioning meeting.
Envisioning Green Jobs in the Neighbourhood
The MDWN spent the first half of 2012 trying to initiate green economic development projects in the neighbourhood (including the Kodak lands). The areas that MDWN members discussed or took some level of action on (e.g., holding separate meetings with outside organizations, government bureaucrats, or politicians) included the following: green manufacturing; ecological restoration and recreational development of green spaces; urban agriculture; energy retrofits; and research and development related to low-emission transportation. These ideas were derived from the area's existing economic and environmental characteristics, as well as the interests and skills of individual members in the coalition. 179
The MDWN once again explored the possibilities for developing green manufacturing in the area. Members of the MDWN met with Partners in Project Green, a non-profit environmental organization coordinating businesses in the industrial area around Pearson International Airport to implement district heating and cooling, as well as a green roofs program. A survey of the remaining manufacturers in Mount Dennis area was initiated (though never completed) with the aim of identifying businesses that could adopt more sustainable practices or be converted to produce environmental products. In the spring of 2012, the MDWN learned that the former Kodak site had been purchased by the government to house the maintenance and storage facility for the Eglinton Avenue light rail transit line. A delegation of the MDWN met with the senior advisor at the City of Toronto's Economic Development Division who oversees the green industry sector, as well as a representative of the Ontario Centre of Excellence, to explore possibilities for creating a sustainable transportation “incubator” in Mount Dennis, potentially sharing the Kodak site. The hope was that transit research and design companies might want to locate in Mount Dennis because of its strategic location at the junction of several transit systems: the future station, and maintenance facility for the Eglinton Avenue light rail transit line; the new airport-to-downtown express train line (the UP Express); new and existing GO (commuter) transit rail lines; and the recently built municipal transit bus garage. In May 2012 , the MDWN wrote a letter to Metrolinx detailing no less than thirty-seven ideas for the green design of the future maintenance and storage facility for the Eglinton light rail transit, including: rooftop solar panels; district energy; green walls; rooftop gardens; innovative stormwater management; measures to reduce the heat island effect (e.g. shade trees and cool roofs); charging stations for future electric car use; bicycle path connectivity and bike storage facilities; selecting construction materials with closed-loop life cycles; and “green-scaping” the site (see appendix II). To try to maximize local economic benefits of transit construction projects, this proposal emphasized the use of local supply chains and local hiring. The MDWN also saw the renovation of the Kodak employees building (that the Mount Dennis Community Association had saved from demolition) as a “living laboratory for developing sustainable building technologies” (MDWN 2012b, 4). To this end, the MDWN developed a relationship with an architecture professor who got his university studio class to create possible new designs for the building The MDWN spent considerable time envisioning how to best use land on the Kodak site that might become surplus to the needs of the future maintenance and storage facility for the Eglinton 180
Avenue light rail transit line. Rather than surplus land laying unused for decades, the MDWN argued at public consultations that any surplus land on the Kodak site should be developed toward creating industrial or commercial jobs—preferably in the emerging green economy. The MDWN would later carry many of these proposals for the Kodak site into negotiations with Metrolinx for a community benefits agreement. Other environmental projects in the area were also discussed at MDWN meetings. A member of the MDWN, who grew up in the area, was a resident-appointment to the Board of the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority. He provided updates about developments along the two rivers that encompassed Mount Dennis (i.e., the Humber River and Black Creek), including new environmental policies (e.g., around stormwater management), ideas for developing new parks and bike paths, as well as measures to address illegal garbage dumping. Some members of the MDWN, recognizing the lack of jobs and high levels of food insecurity in the neighbourhood, wanted to develop commercial urban agriculture in the Humber floodplains, building on the community gardens that already existed in small sections of these floodplains.108 The degraded condition of the streetscape along Weston Road—the main street running between Mount Dennis and Weston—was also a frequent discussion item at many MDWN meetings. Residents discussed their desire for flower boxes, benches, and better street lighting, as well as the preservation of historical buildings. The breadth the MDWN's proposals could be critiqued as a weakness—indicative of a lack of consensus that prevented the coalition from using its scarce resources to more fully develop a concrete project. But the narrowing of peoples' visions and demands often works to reproduce existing power relations, as organizations try to present a set of “reasonable” demands to win over the acceptance of the ruling elite. In contrast, the MDWN's range of initiatives and frame disputes reveal the coalition as a participatory community space for envisioning and developing a shared meaning of “the green economy” from below. Anyone from the neighbourhood could come to the MDWN and strike a working group on what interested them the most. At the same time, the MDWN felt it was being pragmatic: with no decision-making power, and little political influence beyond York South-Weston, the MDWN hoped that by pursuing many different ideas, one of them might gain wider support by decision-makers (i.e., “throwing enough mud on the wall that some of it will stick”). But the MDWN's proposed projects were not without internal contradictions. One member's proposal to convert undeveloped or abandoned land in the Black Creek ravine into manicured parks
108The Mount Dennis Community Association also supported a fishing day for low-income households. 181 with bike lanes and sports fields, would have helped address problems with garbage dumping in the ravine. But it could also reduce habitat and protected corridors for animal movement—something that other members had raised concerns about in terms of Metrolinx clear cutting vegetation along the rail corridor.109 Contradictions within the MDWN's proposals reflect the ways that “neighbourhood revitalization,” “the environment,” and “the green economy,” are contested—often through a politics of class and race. Although the MDWN's proposals for green manufacturing challenged mainstream discourses facilitating deindustrialization and gentrification, other proposals overlapped or supported dominant visions of urban renewal. For example, there was very little discussion within the MDWN about how projects aimed at creating “clean and beautiful streets” and a “healthy environment” might facilitate gentrification and displacement pressures on low-income residents. The MDWN's difficulty attracting green manufacturing capital led it to begin looking at more mainstream approaches for revitalizing the neighbourhood through the creation of white collar jobs in the knowledge-based economy. The MDWN's support for a “clean tech incubator,” as well as its proposal for a satellite college campus to be setup on the Kodak site, demonstrates the MDWN's shift away from its earlier focus on green manufacturing jobs for blue-collar workers. At the same time as the idea of bringing a “clean tech” research and development incubator into Mount Dennis was well- received by MDWN members, the local scrap metal facility in Mount Dennis was overlooked as an existing source of “green jobs” in the neighbourhood, and was instead viewed negatively by residents, the local councillor, and some members of the MDWN (Gray 2008). Despite providing blue-collar employment and being critical to local energy and material recycling, the scrap yard's reputation as a loud and dirty operation did not fit into official “revitalization” discourses, nor the MDWN's conceptualization of “good green jobs.” The exclusion of scrap metal yards reflects a romanticized construction of the green economy that displaces industrial activities—and the people who work in them—as if they are no longer necessary. Neoliberalism has facilitated this displacement quite literally, as “dirty” industrial production and recycling of hazardous materials become the “comparative advantage” of poor countries and regions. At a neighbourhood level, we see how implicit support for such a neoliberal socio-ecological fix is organized through land use conversion policies and discourses
109Support for park development in the ravine came at the same time as a petition launched by the Mount Dennis Community Association to stop Metrolinx from clear cutting trees and dense brush all along the rail corridor running through Weston and Mount Dennis as part of the Georgetown South commuter rail expansion project. This vegetation provided adjacent residents with a visual barrier to the rail tracks, created shade and cleaner air, and provided habitat and corridors for birds and small mammals. One resident also took advantage the Black Creek ravine's dense vegetation and low levels of pedestrian traffic to secretly keep beehives. 182 of gentrification that rely on a seemingly progressive narrative of “cleaning up the neighbourhood.” Some members also questioned the environmentalist orientation of the MDWN's proposals. At the January visioning workshop, one member of the MDWN questioned how the political-economic conditions of Toronto made green manufacturing investment any more likely than any other colour of manufacturing:
I am curious when the fundamentals in Toronto are so wrong – and we have lost so much manufacturing – green, brown or otherwise—What is it about the green economy that makes those businesses more attracted to Toronto? See where I’m going with this – We are trying to attract the green economy – but really what we are dealing with is the systemic issues – about being able to attract any type of manufacturing to the city.110
Other members of the MDWN considered the concept of the “green economy” too abstract to serve as a basis for organizing politically around the need for jobs in the community. A key organizer pointed in frustration to a lack of awareness around the green economy for undermining the MDWN's organizing efforts:
With the business community they have [close ties to] the government. But at the grassroots level, nobody the fuck knows what the green economy means, excuse my language. So it's about building literacy, and [from that] a common agenda.111
During an annual general meeting where working groups (sub-committees) for the MDWN were being brainstormed and chosen, two different members of the MDWN identified the problem of using the term “green”:
MDWN Member A: “And since we want to use the term enterprise, can we call 'green enterprise,' 'social enterprise'? People understand social. When you say 'green' their eyes glaze over.” MDWN Member B: “Because it's so vague.”112
So while most members of the MDWN supported an environmental orientation, doubts were raised about whether a “green jobs” strategy (even a reformist one) was pragmatic given the level or type of environmental awareness in the community. Understood in terms of alliance-forming, the MDWN was able to scale-up (i.e. broaden) its
110MDWN Visioning Workshop, January 9th, 2012. 111Fieldnotes, May 2nd, 2012. 112MDWN Meeting Minutes, May 22nd, 2012. 183 institutional support, creating a partnership with a national labour-environmental coalition (Blue Green Canada). But the MDWN was unable to organize an ideological deepening within the community that framed everyday livelihood struggles in terms of the environment (and vice-versa). This ideological deepening was frustrated by the broader socio-ecological contradictions of capitalism that made it difficult to secure any type of investment into the neighbourhood, and that set up an opposition between job creation and environmental regulation.
The Challenge of Creating Green Jobs in the Neighbourhood
The MDWN was unsuccessful in operationalizing any of its ideas for creating green jobs in York South-Weston (even though it would later mediate the terms of jobs related to the Eglinton light rail transit project). The MDWN's proposals were reform-oriented and yet still faced several challenges: a limited capacity to solicit interest from investors; a shift in the government's framing of job creation, away from an ecological modernist discourse; environmental health regulations governing public green spaces; ideological resistance from local politicians; and conflicts with dominant discourses of “neighbourhood revitalization.” Attracting private investment into particular locations to create jobs has been a struggle for the state let alone for a grassroots coalition with much fewer resources. A leader of the MDWN, reflecting on his two years participating in the MDWN between 2011-2013, identified the incredible obstacles facing a small community organization attempting to attract investment into a particular neighbourhood or industrial site:
If you're a small community group such as the Mount Dennis Weston Network was, you have almost no influence over decisions that companies will make about whether or not to invest. ...And in the early days, I did put a lot of thought into well how can we even identify which companies might be interested? And then I sort of realized, well, actually, you probably can’t. And that the most you can do is to try to push this city bureaucracy into, you know—because it’s their job to market the city—is you can just kind of push to make Mount Dennis Weston that site, the Kodak land site in particular, at the top of their list. And that really, everything is just at too big a level, you know, unless you happen to read in a newspaper or something [comes up].
But again, you’re not going to read that. It’s unlikely you’re going to read that in the Globe or The Star [newspapers]. It’s more likely to appear in the trade press. And the ability to monitor that was almost zero. So I think in many ways that if Metrolinx had not bought the property, that the Mount Dennis Weston Network would probably still be 184
advocating for green jobs for that area without, you know. And that is in no way meant to denigrate the efforts of the local group. But really, the most the organization can do is to say, 'Well, there’s this land and it’s available.'113
This participant's feeling that “everything is just at too big a level,” speaks directly to the MDWN's struggle to scale-down provincial green job policies, or to attract global investors, for creating jobs locally. This quote reflects a growing sense within the MDWN that it needed to scale-up into a city- wide coalition to position itself better in negotiations with the state. Besides a lack of capacity to reach out to potential investors, neighbourhood efforts to find and attract green investment also became harder due to shifts in provincial, national, and international policies. In 2011, the “domestic content” clauses of the government of Ontario's Green Energy and Green Economy Act were challenged by Japan and the European Union through the World Trade Organization (WTO), alleging that the government of Ontario was breaking international trade agreements by favouring domestic manufacturers.114 The Auditor General of Ontario's (2011) report was also highly critical of the costs, and job creation estimates, of the Green Energy Act. With the government losing the WTO case in December 2012, and given the Green Energy Act's underwhelming performance in terms of job creation, the provincial government was already beginning to distance itself from its “green jobs” platform at the same time as the MDWN was attempting to attract renewable energy investment into the neighbourhood.115 Meanwhile, the failure of countries to reach a new binding international climate change accord at Copenhagen in 2009, coupled with Canada's federal government's withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol in December 2011, undermined global and national efforts to develop a green economy driven by policies to reduce greenhouse gas. This realignment of the hegemonic bloc, which deprioritized the interests of green fractions of capital such as the renewable energy sector, negatively affected the MDWN's efforts to fix green capital into York South-Weston. At a municipal level, interest within the MDWN of converting public lands in the floodplains into commercial agriculture, was met with regulatory constraints. It turned out that city regulations prevent commercial agriculture along the floodplain due to liability concerns about potentially
113Interview with participant ID012, November 28, 2013. 114World Trade Organization, December 19, 2012, “Canada – Certain Measures Affecting the Renewable Energy Generation Sector,” WT/DS412/R, and “Canada – Measures Relating to the Feed-in Tariff Program, Reports of the Panels,”, WT/DS426/R, https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/412_426r_e.pdf. 115The government's shift away from its green jobs policies would continue under a new administration starting in 2013 led by Premier Kathleen Wynne (Stinson 2013). 185 contaminated soil, even though gardens for personal use are allowed.116 A social agency reported to the MDWN that Toronto Public Health had been examining the issue for two years. This demonstrates one way that Toronto's toxic industrial legacy (i.e., the “negative externalities” of industrialization) fettered subsequent rounds of capital accumulation in York-South Weston, and the MDWN's efforts to create green jobs. One resident, who only attended one or two MDWN meetings, expressed both her concrete dream for transforming abandoned industrial lands into a nutrient recycling facility for expired grocery store produce, but also her frustration in coming up against bureaucratic “so many reasons why-not”:
I dream about those abandoned lots, turning it into an education centre where expired produce could be taken. I talked to the Loblaws guy [the local grocery store adjacent to the Kodak site] about turning their excess produce into compost to sell back to us. But there are always so many reasons why-not.117
Residents' frustration confronting bureaucratic obstacles to implementing their dreams, sometimes led them to withdraw from participating in the labour-community coalition. The MDWN realized that if it had any chance of influencing investment decisions, it needed to find support from the state—from politicians and/or from within the bureaucracy. But this type of support was not forthcoming from any level of government. The MDWN did successfully push the local councillors, the local Member of Provincial Parliament (whose party was in power), and Metrolinx, to co-sponsor a “Mt. Dennis Economic Development Workshop” on December 18th, 2012. City bureaucrats and Metrolinx officials were on hand to make presentations about the type of services offered by their offices and to record residents' ideas and concerns. The workshop allowed the MDWN to officially showcase its ideas for green economic development, with one of the five workshop “stations” devoted to “catalyzing green projects in Mt Dennis.” But no concrete economic development projects came out of this workshop. Residents who attended a follow-up two-hour meeting on May 29th, 2013 were frustrated that most of the time was taken up by one-way presentations by city staff on transit infrastructure plans that were already
116Ironically, urban agriculture has a long history in Mount Dennis. In the first half of the twentieth century, the Humber River floodplain in Mount Dennis was referred to as the “Market Gardens” because of the vegetable farms that provided tons of vegetables to the City of Toronto. These gardens were expropriated in the 1960s and 1970s as part of the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority's floodplain management, and have since been turned into recreational parks, restored ecological habitat, and roadways. In 1954 Hurricane Hazel destroyed many of the properties within the floodplain, giving rise to the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority which expropriated the farms lying within the floodplain. The rich dark soil and boundaries of these farm plots can be seen in aerial photographs until the mid-1960s. 117MDWN Meeting Minutes, May 22nd, 2012. 186 underway, with little vision or strategy for how to create jobs—which had been the point of the December workshop. Still, just getting the workshop to happen was itself a significant achievement for the MDWN. Although long-promised by the councillors, it is unlikely the workshop would have ever taken place without without pressure from the community through the MDWN.
Figure 7.1 An illustrative summary of the Mount Dennis Economic Development Workshop Summary held December 18th, 2012 (City of Toronto 2012b).
The Mount Dennis Economic Development Workshop provides a useful snapshot of how different levels of government responded to the MDWN's demands and proposals for creating green jobs. In general, the state adopted a laissez-faire approach to job creation and resisted grassroots demands for the right to the city. The two local councillors rejected the MDWN's vision of green job creation and did not attend or send representatives to MDWN meetings reflecting their distrust of the MDWN.118 One of the local councillors (for Ward 11, York South-Weston) was Frances Nunziata—the former mayor of the City of York before it was amalgamated with the City of Toronto in 1997, and the presiding Speaker of Toronto City Council. Despite not articulating any vision for job creation or economic development herself, Nunziata concluded the workshop with a defensive and disempowering statement assuring residents that she and the city were already addressing their pressing problems and proposals:
118MDWN members told me that the councillors saw the MDWN as being tied too closely to organized labour and the New Democratic Party, which they opposed. Councillor Nunziata was also angered after she was targeted by a flyer circulated by unions (under the name of a different labour-community coalition) during the 2010 municipal elections. 187
Now a lot of the suggestions that were made tonight, are in the works. We're doing it. So I appreciate your comments, but we are working on them. So when we have our next meeting, I will comment on all the things that the city is doing, and that I'm doing personally, and councillor Di Giorgio and [MPP] Laura (Albanese)'s doing, because most of the suggestions that were made, we were in the works, and we're doing it now.119
This type of speech works to undermine community groups like the MDWN by suggesting that their existence and efforts are unnecessary. But with little follow-up action taken by councillors and city staff on the ideas raised at the workshop, it was clear to the MDWN that more political pressure was needed to bring about changes. In his remarks to open the workshop, the other local councillor, Frank Di Giorgio (Ward 12, York South-Weston), stoked long-standing debates in the community, by (once again) arguing that vacant industrial lands should be “unlocked” and converted into other uses:
...for me problem avoidance is perhaps more important than saying let’s look at economic development. Like, one of the big, big problems we have in the city ... we’re, the city, is locked into protection of industrial areas. But I’m one who believes that sometimes you have to look at an industrial area or parts of an industrial area and say, 'You know what? This is not going to attract industrial uses.' We have to look for different kind of uses to come into these areas.120
Di Giorgio held up the conversion of nearby industrial lands at St.Clair Avenue and Weston Road into a big box retail complex as an example for Mount Dennis to emulate. The councillor's comments support a market-driven approach to “neighbourhood revitalization,” in which the state's role is to remove regulatory barriers blocking new retail and housing developments. A member of the MDWN contrasted the retail-led vision of economic development championed by the local councillors with the MDWN's vision for good-paying green jobs in manufacturing:
...the Mount Dennis Network, it had opposition on the ground to its vision of a green economy. You know, the two city councillors were—they were not supportive of it. And I think you can make a case that they were opposed to it...
119Mt. Dennis Economic Development Workshop, December 18, 2012, Closing remarks by Councillor Nunziata, Learning Enrichment Foundation, Toronto. 120Mt. Dennis Economic Development Workshop, December 18, 2012, Opening Remarks by Councillor Di Giorgio, Learning Enrichment Foundation, Toronto. 188
[They supported retail development on the Kodak site.] And their reason for doing so was, create jobs. But you know, then this goes into the dichotomy of well, yes it’s a job, it’s probably going to pay minimum wage or maybe 10% to 15% above minimum wage. But you know, the few jobs above that level, the managerial level, they’re mostly chains. They’re probably going to be people that have been trained across Canada, being brought in, a slight chance that people might be successful on the retail floor, might be able to work there through the management chain.
And we know that that retail sector does have a history of not even providing 40 hours a week so that not only are people stuck with a low wage, they don’t get full time hours. And so you got this, you’ve got literally poverty wages. And you know, I think what the Labour Council in particular, but you know, other progressive social change agencies that are visible in Good Jobs for All [Coalition], the thinking is that a job should lift you out of poverty, not keep you in it.121
Despite the low wages offered in the service sector, the two local city councillors had given up on restoring the manufacturing sector in the area. The local councillors also did not support the “green agenda” advanced by the previous administration led by Mayor David Miller's (2003-2010). Neither councillor championed environmental initiatives within City Council, instead promoting a reduced role of the state in society by supporting budget cuts across all city departments (except the police). Both councillors were part of the Right-wing city administration led by Rob Ford (2010-2014), who became notorious for (amongst other things) campaigning to end what he claimed was a “war on cars”(Margolis 2012).122 Even though both local councillors supported the conversion of industrial lands, the city government as a whole was more conflicted, with some councillors and senior bureaucrats realizing the importance of protecting industrially-zoned land (see chapter four). In contrast with the local councillors, the City's Chief Planner, Jennifer Keesmaat, came out strongly in support of protecting employment lands as a key component of “complete communities.” As the guest speaker for the 2013 Weston Village Residents' Association Annual General Meeting, Keesmaat argued that “complete communities” would improve the quality of life for residents and benefit the environment by allowing people to walk or bike to work (reducing stressful and polluting commutes), and to meet meet their shopping, recreation, and entertainment needs locally. The idea of complete communities resonated with older residents at the meeting who remember Weston and Mount Dennis as thriving blue-collar neighbourhoods where workers would walk to their
121Interview with participant ID012, November 28, 2013. 122Frank Di Giorgio would sit on the Executive Committee from 2012-2014, and act as the Budget Chief 2013-2014. Councillor Nunziata, who was also Speaker of City Council, was appointed onto the Budget Committee in 2013. 189 factories, shop and dine at local businesses, and even go out to the local cinema, bowling alley, hockey arena, or baseball diamond. As one elderly gentleman told the Chief Planner:
I grew in Weston. Was here all my life. It was, like you say, a complete community. You could walk to school. Walk to church. Find summer employment [as a youth] near my house. Everything was near my house. The main thing that is missing [today] is jobs.123
Despite the social and environmental benefits of complete communities, the Chief Planner had few concrete ideas for creating jobs in York South-Weston, let alone the type of good-paying manufacturing jobs for which older residents were nostalgic. Keesmaat appealed to “entrepreneurialism,” the use of start-up business “incubators,” and—when pressed by residents— suggested that arts and culture, or a college campus could become a new “employment anchor” for the area.124 But these ideas remained vague and were a hard sell for neighbourhood residents who had grown up with steady blue-collar employment based in manufacturing Without creating good-paying jobs that are accessible to the current residents living in deindustrialized spaces, policies for “complete communities” proposed by Keesmaat may instead end up supporting gentrification—becoming synonymous with “mixed use” retail-condominium developments popular amongst planners and councillors, but which have facilitated the conversion of significant amounts of industrial lands. In meeting with the community, both Keesmaat and the staff from the City's Economic Development division had to admit that attracting businesses into the area has been a challenge. At the Mount Dennis Economic Development Workshop, the head of the City of Toronto's Economic Development & Culture, Mike Williams, outlined a range of services the City provides for stimulating neighbourhood economic growth: marketing retail businesses through “place-making” (e.g. street art, street beautification; street events such as food festivals); advising people on how to start or grow a small business; providing meeting space and networks to establish incubators (i.e. people coming together to start their own businesses, sharing problems, giving peer-support); and—especially for youth—supporting the commercialization of artistic endeavours. The City also works with existing large employers to support the expansion of their facilities. While some of these activities were underway in York South-Weston, they were not translating into any significant numbers of new jobs.
123Resident, May 27th, 2013, Weston Village Residents' Association, Annual General Meeting, Weston Memorial Jr. Public School. 124Jennifer Keesmaat, May 27th, 2013, Weston Village Residents' Association, Annual General Meeting, Weston Memorial Jr. Public School. 190
Defending his office through a politics of scale, Williams explained that the City only plays an indirect role in economic development, and lamented provincial legislation that limited the types of policy tools available to the City for supporting businesses (e.g. grants, land transfers, lending City property, etc.):
Economic development from a City perspective is like laying your flower bed, laying a flower bed. In other words, creating conditions for jobs and investment to happen. We can't build a business, you know. We're not allowed to give businesses money, because that's not fair. And it's not allowed in provincial legislation, except for one exception. So, but we can try to create conditions. We can try to create synergies, we can try to marry people up.125
This separation of powers allows officials from different levels government to deflect neighbourhood demands for the right to the city. The city can blame the province for a lack of policy instruments, while the provincial can say that economic development is the responsibility of the city. A lot of the City's focus is on supporting small businesses. The challenges facing small businesses in York South-Weston are evident by the high level of turnover rates and storefront vacancies along the major road connecting Mount Dennis and Weston.126 But even the small businesses that survive, do not employ many people, and even then, only pay minimum wage or less (e.g., hair salons, restaurants, convenience stores). At the same time, the problems with looking to existing large employers for job growth is demonstrated in the case of one of the only remaining factories in York South-Weston: Irving Tissue, which employs 350 well-paid, full-time employees and another fifty casual workers. Although the company made significant fixed capital investments to expand production, these technological advancements only served to maintain existing employment levels.127
125Mt. Dennis Economic Development Workshop, December 18, 2012, Presentation by Mike Williams, General Manager, City of Toronto Economic Development and Culture, Learning Enrichment Foundation, Toronto. 126A survey of 163 businesses along Weston Road in Mount Dennis (between Jane Street and Lambton Avenue), undertaken by a member of the Mount Dennis Community Association, found that 15% of establishments were vacant. A separate survey by Rankin, Kamizaki, and McLean (2013) for the same area recorded a vacancy of 20%. The City's average vacancy rate is 9%. 127Irving trucks in large 1000kg pulp bales from New Brunswick and transforms these into tissue paper that is sold in the Greater Toronto Area as well as exported into the United States. As Mike Williams highlighted in his presentation, the City has helped Irving expand its operations (the company is the second largest user of electricity in Toronto and one of the largest consumers of water, which requires a lot of planning and coordination with the City). Officials from Irving reported that they were in the process of investing $150 million and expanding facilities in order to diversify their product line and increase production capacity. But these investments will not lead to any new jobs being created. As the plant manager put it at a separate community meeting: “Our goal is to keep the jobs. Maintain competitiveness.” Moreover, most of the existing employees do not live in York South-Weston, which the company says is because “the equipment requires a high level of skill” that cannot currently be found in the community. The case of Irving Tissue reflects broader trends in the manufacturing sector in Canada and the United States, with increasingly capital-intensive 191
The province was represented at the Mount Dennis Economic Development Workshop through the local MPP, Laura Albanese, as well as members of Metrolinx's senior management team. In contrast to the local councillors, Albanese (whose government was in power provincially), sent representatives to MDWN meetings or attended herself. But while she opened the workshop with platitudes about how “the community knows best what the area needs,” her government failed to concretely support the MDWN's proposals for local job creation. Meanwhile, Metrolinx—a provincial agency—deflected the MDWN's proposals for economic development on surplus land at the Kodak site, by stating that responsibility for economic development rested with the municipal government (see chapter nine). This politics of scale between levels of government was one reason the MDWN later scaled-up its activities into a city-wide coalition. At a local level, Albanese showed support for small businesses by participating in Business Improvement Area (BIA) meetings, which discussed improvements to streetscapes, parking, licensing issues, etc. But, aside from youth summer employment programs, Albanese did not present a strong vision for local economic development and job creation in York-South Weston. Evoking a politics of scale, Albanese used regular electronic newsletter and speeches to promote the government's policies for province-wide economic growth (i.e., investments in infrastructure, innovation, and education).128 Public transit infrastructure investments were central to the provincial government's job creation and environmental policies (see chapter five). The challenges of attracting private capital investments into particular neighbourhoods made public works projects all the more important for provincial politicians wanting to gain legitimacy by demonstrating their ability to create jobs locally. In her opening remarks to the Mount Dennis Economic Development Workshop, Albanese presented transportation infrastructure investments as a way to “revitalize” neighbourhoods that have lost manufacturing jobs:
We all know that transportation projects can be a great opportunity to revitalize the area. Now, this area had flourished with ah ah manufacturing jobs. We still have some presence in the area. Many businesses. However, Weston Road, and I would say even Keele Street and Eglinton, used to ah really be full of vitality and um character. And they’ve lost some of that character. And so these new transportation projects that we have, and especially the Eglinton LRT in this case, offer the opportunity to revitalize the
facilities requiring fewer, and increasingly higher-skilled, workers. Community meeting, July 16th, 2012, Comments by Phil Viger, Plant Manager, Irving Tissue (1551 Weston Road). A pilot program was being developed to train local residents for jobs at the plant (Taylor 2014). 128As discussed in chapter three, two other major planks of the Liberal Provincial Government's economic policy includes reducing the corporate tax rate and supporting new international free trade policies. But these two planks were not promoted in Albanese's communications to her constituents. 192
area. And that’s what we’ve seen with the GO expansion and the Area Link Project in Weston. There are opportunities for partnerships that can be created...
...We have the St.John the Evangelist School that will be using the surface of the [train] tunnel for the new school so the kids will be able to take advantage of that. We also have...a permanent farmers' market and a cultural centre, a cultural hub, at the location of the old station....So there are a lot of synergies that can be created. But I think the community knows best what the community needs.129
But aside from building a new school playground, a farmers' market, and cultural hub, it was not clear how transit-related “synergies” would lead to job creation. Albanese joined the Ontario Premier at photo-ops in York South-Weston celebrating billions of dollars in public transit infrastructure investments being built through York South-Weston (i.e., the Georgetown South Project, the Union-Pearson Express, and the Eglinton Crosstown Project). Government press releases and media events promoted the thousands of jobs created through these projects, as well as the broader economic and environmental benefits. But Albanese was often put on the defensive by Mike Sullivan (the NDP Member of Parliament), and MDWN members, for the lack of jobs being generated from these projects for residents of York South-Weston. Albanese failed to explain how transit infrastructure projects would create stable, good-paying jobs in the community to restore what she referred to as the area's “glorious past,” nor whether the “glorious future” she envisioned included the area's current low-income renters who were threatened by increases to land values associated with transit-oriented development.130 The broader environmental benefits of these projects were also lost upon the residents of York South-Weston, or rather challenged by them, through the Clean Trains Coalition—a grassroots campaign that criticized the Union-Pearson Express for its use of “dirty diesel” trains (Spurr 2012). Finally, the federal government did not have a strong on-the-ground presence in York South- Weston, and was conspicuous by its absence at the Mount Dennis Economic Development workshop. The MDWN received support from the local Member of Parliament (Mike Sullivan), whose party formed the Official Opposition. Sullivan sent representatives to MDWN meetings or attended himself. As the former chair of MDWN, Mike Sullivan had a long history fighting against the loss of manufacturing jobs in the area, and regularly critiqued the federal Conservatives' economic policies in the House of Commons for their failure to create jobs. His office supported the ideas for green
129Mt. Dennis Economic Development Workshop, December 18, 2012, Opening remarks by MPP Laura Albanese, Learning Enrichment Foundation, Toronto. 130Ibid. 193 economic development being proposed by the MDWN, but only offered limited support in trying to operationalize these ideas. Most concretely, Sullivan used his position to pressure the provincial government to set up a local hiring program for transit infrastructure projects underway in the area—an idea the MDWN, and later the TCBN, would take up in earnest in their fight to win a community benefits agreement.
Conclusion
The Mount Dennis Weston Network demonstrates a grassroots attempt to spatially fix “green” capital onto the landscape in order to create jobs, achieve social justice, and address environmental problems. The “green economy” is commonly conceptualized through discourses produced by international conventions, government policies, reports by environmental and labour organizations, corporate marketing, and academic studies. Analyses of these discourses tend to neglect the perspective and conceptualization of the green economy at the neighbourhood scale. This chapter highlighted how the green economy is being produced discursively in York South-Weston, through meetings, debates, and activities spearheaded by a labour-community coalition. While these neighbourhood forums were in dialogue with “high level” discourses, some novel ideas for the green economy also emerged that reflected the particular needs and resources of the neighbourhood (e.g., commercial gardening in the flood plains). Adopting a neighbourhood perspective helps reveal how problems of everyday life shape understandings of, and visions for, the green economy while at the same time providing a fine-grain analysis of the political and practical challenges for grounding high level policies into concrete projects in particular locations. One of the MDWN's objectives was to help low-income residents escape poverty through the creation of good-paying, green jobs. The MDWN's “green” focus for job creation was motivated by the environmentalist consciousness of its members and the MDWN's initial perception that political opportunities were opening up due to the municipal and provincial state's endorsement of the green economy as a growth sector. Resources provided by the Toronto and York Region Labour Council and Blue Green Canada to reinvigorate the MDWN in 2011 were also strategically orientated towards the green jobs agenda. In the end, the MDWN lacked the resource capacity and political support to operationalize the green economy into concrete neighbourhood projects, especially after green job creation policies were abandoned by the provincial government and after a Right-wing populist 194 administration took control municipally. In previous chapters, I argued that livelihood struggles in deindustrializing areas like York South-Weston—as part of a broader crisis of manufacturing job loss, and growing concerns around climate change—helped push the state to develop green economic policies, such as Ontario's Green Energy Act. But as chapter six and this chapter demonstrate, the MDWN was never able to “scale- down” these policies into concrete neighbourhood job creation projects. Although a discourse of green job create was politically useful for the provincial government in organizing consent for its privatization schemes (see chapters 3-5), creating green jobs at a neighbourhood scale remained elusive. The MDWN's vision was by no means radical. Even the MDWN's more oppositional efforts to reverse deindustrialization through green manufacturing gave way to a pragmatic strategy of simply influencing the terms of urban renewal. Nevertheless, the MDWN's ideas for spurring green economic development still faced considerable ideological resistance from those in power who preferred a top- down and laissez-faire approach to “neighbourhood revitalization.” Councillors from York South- Weston endorsed the re-zoning of industrial lands for retail and housing developments (i.e. the so- called highest and best use of land, as determined by the market), while separating economic and environmental goals so as to devalue the latter. City officials, the local member of provincial parliament, and Metrolinx all used a politics of scale to deflect the MDWN's proposals for green economic development. Meanwhile, the federal government was conspicuous by its absence at neighbourhood discussions on economic development. The environmentalist orientation of the MDWN offered a master frame that helped recruit participants and facilitated cooperation amongst members who otherwise had conflicting political commitments and ideas for improving the neighbourhood. The lack of consensus within the MDWN over what “the green economy” should be, or whether the priority should even be on “green” jobs in particular, could be taken as a strategic weakness that undermined more focused lobbying of decision- makers. But I have argued that the wide range of ideas proposed by the MDWN was a strategy of pursuing many ideas in hopes that one of them may be successful. At the same time, the breadth of ideas discussed and debated by the MDWN reveals the coalition as a space of social movement learning (i.e., ideological deepening) and a participatory space for anyone wishing to re-imagine the neighbourhood's socio-ecological relations. The MDWN's proposals were not without contradictions. Mainstream discourses of 195 neighbourhood revitalization—driven by new retail, housing, and transit developments—facilitate gentrification, which threaten to displace low-income renters living in York South-Weston and “unsightly” industries (even those providing local environmental services, such as metal recycling). Although the MDWN was concerned with alleviating poverty through green economic development, some of its proposals to improve environmental quality bolstered dominant processes of neighbourhood revitalization. These later proposals worked against alliance-forming efforts to connect jobs, justice, and the environment. Despite these shortcomings, there are certainly too few spaces in the city where people can come together every few weeks to re-envision their neighbourhoods. Of course, there are even fewer examples of groups taking the next difficult steps to organize the political power necessary to realize these visions. A lasting impact of the MDWN's work on the green economy was in building relationships—both amongst MDWN members, as well as with the state—that strengthened its future work. Despite its frustrations realizing green jobs creation projects, the MDWN's regular meetings and persistent advocacy increased its legitimacy with, and strategic insights into, the state (i.e. local politicians and Metrolinx). This legitimacy and cognitive praxis would become important to the MDWN's subsequent campaign for securing local jobs opportunities and other “community benefits” associated with the construction of the Eglinton Crosstown's LRT maintenance and storage facility on the Kodak lands. 196
Chapter 8
Organizing for Community Benefits (Take Two): The Mount Dennis Weston Network (2012)
In chapter five we examined how extra-local social movement struggles helped bring about two rapid transit infrastructure projects in York South-Weston as part of a regional socio-ecological fix— i.e., the Georgetown South Project (including the UP Express), and the Eglinton Crosstown light rail transit (LRT). This chapter examines how labour-community alliance-forming based in York South- Weston tried to mediate the character and consequences of the these infrastructure projects at the neighbourhood scale. I discuss how the Mount Dennis Weston Network tried to leverage the construction of transit infrastructure to meet community needs such as poverty alleviation and equitable access to jobs and training, in addition to meeting environmental objectives. The provincial government legitimized rapid transit infrastructure investments as a way to spur urban revitalization, create jobs, and address environmental problems. But the shallowness of the government's rhetoric is most evident at the neighbourhood scale of analysis where we see the state resisting the MDWN's ideas for enhancing the social, economic, and environmental benefits that could be derived from these projects. Although the state failed to meet the MDWN's demands, the state's rhetoric about the economic and environmental benefits of transit investments helped organize consent for these projects in ways that masked their most contentious aspects (e.g., the use of public-private partnerships, and their gentrifying effects). This chapter analyzes the strategic development, efficacy and impacts of the MDWN's alliance- forming efforts throughout 2012 as it shifted its focus from green jobs creation to obtaining “community benefits” from rapid transit construction projects underway in York South-Weston. This was the MDWN's second of three attempts to derive local hiring and other community benefits from transit infrastructure projects. On the one hand, this history of unsuccessful attempts reveals the state's resistance to the idea of community benefits policies. On the other hand, it speaks to the incredible persistence of labour-community building in York-South Weston, and the ability of the MDWN to respond to changing political conditions. I demonstrate how social movement learning was critical in transforming the MDWN's organizational commitment to a social justice framing. The MDWN learned from previous attempts to win community benefits agreements (CBAs) in Toronto asa well as their use in other jurisdictions. The MDWN also led popular education activities on CBAs in York South- 197
Weston. The second half of this chapter appraises the strategies and tactics used by the MDWN to have the idea of community benefits taken up and implemented by provincial policymakers. Metrolinx—the provincial transit authority—resisted the MDWN's demands for community benefits by ideologically separating infrastructure construction from other policy goals. The provincial state also used a politics of scale to deflect responsibility for economic development down to the City of Toronto while at the same time scaling-up authority for managing transit projects from the city back to the province in order to deepen the neoliberal governance of public transit (see chapter five). Nevertheless, I identify a set of political opportunities within the provincial state that were conducive to the opening up of negotiations between the MDWN and Metrolinx: the slim minority rule of the provincial Liberal government following the 2011 election, which made it more politically responsive to neighbourhood concerns in swing ridings like York-South Weston; considerable pressure placed on both Metrolinx and the provincial government by other social movement groups based in York South-Weston, over the purchase of diesel (vs. electric) trains for the the UP Express; and a series of high profile gun shootings in Toronto, in addition to two shootings in York South-Weston, that pressured the provincial government to create employment opportunities specifically for racialized youth. Although these conditions were conducive to the negotiation of a community benefits agreement, it was only through the activism of the MDWN that these circumstances were brought to bear. The MDWN brought the local Member of Provincial Parliament onside and publicly pressured Metrolinx into implementing the Georgetown South (GTS) Project Employment Initiative. I evaluate the GTS Employment Initiative arguing that it was used by the government as a photo-op rather than being a pilot project for improving future community benefits programs (as the government claimed). While the MDWN helped bring the concept of community benefits into the provincial policy arena, its political reach was ultimately limited by its neighbourhood focus (given the city-wide extent of the transit projects and their management by the provincial rather than the municipal government). This points to how a politics of scale undermined grassroots efforts to mediate a socio-ecological fix.
“Parking lot for trains” or “high density employment area”?
In January of 2012, Metrolinx bought the 57-acre Kodak lands to house the maintenance and 198 storage facility that would service the new $6.6 billion Eglinton Crosstown light rail transit line.131 Over the course of the following year, the MDWN's vision and demands for redeveloping the Kodak lands would change through a process of social movement learning that involved extensive deliberation (e.g., at regular MDWN meetings, and by email) and praxis (e.g., participating in public consultations, writing letters to government officials, etc.). As discussed in chapter seven, the mission of the MDWN was to connect struggles for jobs, justice, and the environment. Yet, initially the MDWN did not explicitly frame green job creation as a way to target benefits towards marginalized residents. The MDWN's concern for social justice became more explicit in its communications and activities as the coalition learned about the use of community benefits agreements in other jurisdictions, worked closer with agencies representing equity-seeking groups, and responded to high-profile incidences of gun violence both in Toronto and in the neighbourhood. In February 2012, Metrolinx publicly announced its purchase of the Kodak site, and presented its initial redevelopment plans to at a lively and confrontational town hall meeting at the York Civic Centre. After presentations by politicians and Metrolinx, questions and comments were given by members of the two residents associations that border the Kodak lands—i.e. the Greenhills Community Association and the Mount Dennis Community Association. These two associations had been on opposite sides of previous fights over whether to convert the Kodak site into a big box retail centre, and speakers representing the Greenhills Community Association still wanted retail development over a transit maintenance and storage facility (MSF). Residents worried the site would become “a wasteland,” “a dead zone,” “a place to dump things,” or follow the experience of other transit yards in Toronto and “end up with barbed wire fences and garbage.”132 A concern was raised about noise pollution from the facility while another resident asked about soil contamination issues on the site due to the seepage of industrial chemicals. The MDWN had previously come out in support of using the Kodak site as a maintenance and storage facilities when the project was originally proposed by the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC). But all residents at the meeting agreed that the site needed to become “more than simply a parking lot for TTC trains, and a repair station.”133 Most residents
131The provincial government paid $48 million for the 57-acre Kodak site, generating a large profit for the land prospector, Metrus, which had purchased the site for $19.5 million in 2006, only six years earlier. The $19.5 million paid by Metrus was for a 52-acre portion of the site. I could not confirm the original price paid for the 5-acre site at 55 Ray Avenue, but a nearby 10-acre industrial site at 66 Ray was listed for $8.5 million in 2010. Metrus probably sold the entire 57-acre site for double what it original paid. Metrus also spent money demolishing buildings and levelling the site. 132These statements come from four different residents at the York Civic Centre, February 15, 2012 meeting on the Kodak lands. 133Resident and member of the MDWN, York Civic Centre, February 15, 2012 meeting on the Kodak lands. 199 emphasized that “this area desperately needs employment. It needs meaningful employment.”134 Three members of the Mount Dennis Community Association (who were also active in the MDWN) used their comments to advocate for “a proper high-density employment area surrounding the TTC- Metrolinx facility.”135 They argued that Metrolinx should use the site as a catalyst for encouraging local economic development in the transit or sustainable transportation sectors. At this point in time (early February 2012), the issues of equity and poverty were only framed implicitly in relation to the redevelopment of the Kodak lands. One resident at the York Civic Centre meeting cited the need “to provide much-needed employment for all levels of people in this area (emphasis mine),” while another resident who had lived in the area for fifty years argued (to much applause) that “selling off this [land] and not allocating something for some kind of employment is just sowing the seeds of social unrest.”136 As was common at these types of public consultations, no speakers spoke from the perspective of low-income or racialized residents, and the audience was predominantly white. The idea of employment equity or affirmative action programs were never raised. Two members of the MDWN handed out flyers at the start of the meeting. The flyers provided a lengthy overview of the Making Green Work project (discussed in chapter seven), encouraged the use of surplus land on the Kodak site for green economic development.137 In a nod to the MDWN's social justice goals, the flyer called for a “planning approach...that creates employment opportunities that are locally accessible and inclusive for all people in our communities, especially those who are economically marginalized”(MDWN 2012a). Reflecting long-standing attempts by the local councillors to undermine the vision and political power of the MDWN, the flyer was criticized at the very beginning of the meeting by the chair, Councillor Di Giorgio, who said: “This has nothing to do with our meeting. It really throws a ratchet into the plans that I think you will try and adopt as a result of our meeting tonight, and after you’ve heard from Metrolinx.”138
“Dear Metrolinx...” Towards a CBA
Coming out of its January re-visioning workshop, and the February York Civic Centre public 134Resident and member of the Greenhills Community Association, York Civic Centre, February 15, 2012 meeting on the Kodak lands. 135Comments by resident, York Civic Centre, February 15, 2012 meeting on the Kodak lands. 136These quotes are from two different residents and members of the MDWN, York Civic Centre, February 15, 2012 meeting on the Kodak lands. 137 The MDWN argued that Metrolinx did not require the entire 54 acres of the Kodak site for the maintenance and storage facilities ,and so could free up some land around the perimeter of the site for economic development. 138Councillor Di Giorgio, York Civic Centre, February 15, 2012 meeting on the Kodak lands. 200 meeting, the MDWN held monthly meetings at which they critiqued and re-envisioned Metrolinx's plans for the Kodak site (see table 8.1). Discussions at MDWN meetings for the first few months mainly focused on the layout and design being proposed by Metrolinx for the maintenance and storage facility, and explored how this project could maximize positive environmental and economic contributions, especially to the surrounding neighbourhoods. The MDWN communicated its ideas to Metrolinx by participating in public consultations and writing a series of three, multi-page, letters to Metrolinx's CEO, Bruce McCuaig, over the course of the year (the first on May 24, 2012, the second on November 12, 2012, and the third on January 9th, 2013). Writing letters to Metrolinx was an important relationship- and consensus-building process for the MDWN, as well as an of cognitive praxis through which the coalition achieved internal frame resonance. Letters took weeks, and sometimes months, to finish as members offered new ideas and debated the scope and tone that should be taken. The letters provided Metrolinx with dozens of detailed recommendations as well as guiding principles that the MDWN would like to see implemented for the redevelopment of the Kodak site. The series of letters attest to the social movement learning undertaken by the MDWN, including its deepening concern with social justice.
MDWN Meetings139 Other Significant Events Summer & Fall 2011 (Core MDWN group planning meetings every October 6, 2012 – Ontario General Election, Liberals form minority government couple of weeks) January 22, 2012 Metrolinx purchases former Kodak site January 27-28, 2012 (visioning workshop) February 29, 2012 February 21, 2012 – MDWN sends Metrolinx summary of visioning workshop March 27, 2012 April 28, 2012 – Clean Trains Coalition Festival May 22, 2012 May 3, 2012 – NDP MPP Jonah Schein introduces private members' Bill 83, to prevent the use of diesel trains for the air-rail link
May 24, 2012 – MDWN Sends first letter to Metrolinx June 26, 2012 – MDWN attends Environmental Impact Assessment public consultation July 4, 2012 June 2nd, 2012 - Eaton's Centre shootings June 26, 2012 – Metrolinx holds Kodak site MSF consultation July 24, 2012 July 16, 2012 – Danzig shootings
139This does not include sub-committee meetings. The outreach sub-committee, as part of the Anti-Poverty Community Organizing and Learning (APCOL) community-research project, met an additional eleven times between November 2012 and March 2013. 201
August 14, 2012 August 2, 2012 – Clean Train Coalition files lawsuit against Metrolinx; Forum on Community Safety – Social Planning Toronto August 17, 2012 - Letter from NDP Jonah Schein to Premier about community benefits August 30, 2012 – Meeting on Gun Violence (York Civic Centre) September 8, 2012 – Clean Trains Coalition Party September 12, 2012 – Premier McGuinty stages photo-op at GTS construction site September 19, 2012 - Metrolinx dumps TTC as partner, in favour of P3 October 10, 2012 October 12, 2012 – GTS Employment Initiative launched by Metrolinx October 14, 2012 - Clean Trains Rally October 15, 2012 - Metrolinx and the Liberal MPP for York South-Weston launch Georgetown South Project “Employment Initiative” October 31, 2012 – Shooting of Leonard Fullerton November 14, 2012 November – Six meetings on gun violence in York South-Weston (See table 9.1) November 7, 2012 – First TCBN Task Force meeting November 12, 2012 – MDWN Sends second letter to Metrolinx December 13, 2012 December 12, 2012 - Meeting with MPP Albanese; Metrolinx hosts meeting to update public on Kodak MSF December 18, 2012 - Mount Dennis Economic Development Workshop hosted by Councillors and Metrolinx December 19, 2012 – Toronto Community Benefits Network (TCBN) hosts first CBA negotiation meeting with Metrolinx senior management team January 9, 2013 January 9, 2013 – MDWN Sends Third Letter to Metrolinx from MDWN January 24, 2013 - First TCBN General Meeting February 6, 2013 February 18, 2013 – MDWN-APCOL Family Day Event March 28, 2013 – MDWN meeting with Crosstown LRT design team April 22, 2013 – TCBN hosts all-party briefing on CBAs at Queen's Park April 23, 2013 – MPP Albanese writes letter to Metrolinx CEO Bruce McQuaig in support of a CBA April 26, 2013 – International guest panel discussion held in Mount Dennis on CBAs May 8, 2013 June 5, 2013 Various TCBN Meetings (see table 10.2, Next Chapter) (Visioning Meeting & BBQ) October 16, 2013 Table 8.1 Timeline of MDWN meetings and other significant events
The socio-ecological fix at a neighbourhood scale
The three letters clearly reflect MDWN's concern for the environment, creating green jobs, and improving everyday life in York South-Weston. The MDWN's first letter to Metrolinx focus on green economic development, and environmental design suggestions for the Kodak site, laying out: “ways to leverage public transit investment to help create the infrastructure and markets needed for innovation, green jobs and economic growth; ways to shape the physical form and site plan relationships of [the] project on the Kodak lands; and ways to include sustainable design elements in both the Kodak Facilities and local improvements that enhance mobility hub functions and strengthen the community” 202
(MDWN 2012b). The MDWN asked Metrolinx to reduce the footprint of the new LRT facilities to allow for “intensification” of employment generation on the site—namely, a “green innovations incubator potentially specializing in sustainable transportation,” (MDWN 2012b, 2), green manufacturing, or a post-secondary satellite campus.140 Although the letter speaks against any “big box or large franchise retail activities,” it does suggest that the high concrete retaining wall along the Eglinton Avenue frontage be replaced with “a mix of micro business and small business retail uses” The MDWN submitted more than fourteen detailed sustainable design recommendations for the maintenance and storage facility that would see the site incorporate: renewable energies (solar, wind, and geothermal); district energy systems; stormwater management; green roofs; bike paths; the highest LEED certification; use of construction materials that are recyclable within closed loop life cycles, and so forth (MDWN 2012b, 3) The proposed route of the the LRT, roads, and bus bays going through the site were all heavily scrutinized by the MDWN and a new alignment was suggested that would improve pedestrian and cyclist mobility as well as free up space for development. The MDWN also presented ideas for how the future station and the historic Kodak Employee's building, which the Mount Dennis Community Association had saved from demolition, could “support community gatherings and public functions, not just passive use (original emphasis)”(MDWN 2013, 6). The MDWN's demands regarding the design and purpose of the Kodak site, can be understood as a socio-ecological struggle over the area's urban metabolism. The MDWN's advocacy was aimed at reducing the ecological footprint of the LRT facilities, creating a landscape that was more pedestrian- and cyclist-friendly, and pushing the government to catalyze green industries that benefitted local and regional economies and environments. At the same time, these negotiations were a struggle over the toxic legacy left by previous rounds of industrialization in York South-Weston. Two contamination overview studies produced for Metrolinx and the Toronto Transit Commission identified the Kodak lands as having a long history of environmental contamination, including on-site spills of hazardous waste (e.g., fuel oil, nitric acid, NOX, transform oil/PCBs, silver, sewage, and cooling system water), and a former landfill on the property (M. Rankin 2012; Robins 2010). Metrolinx undertook a separate environmental site assessment in advance of purchasing the Kodak site (M. Rankin 2012). Soil samples for this assessment showed elevated levels of petroleum hydrocarbons (PHC), volatile organic
140The MDWN's (2012b, 3) letter asked that “effort be made for strategic attraction [of] green businesses relating to sustainable transportation, green urban development, energy conservation and renewable energy, water purification and efficiency, bio-materials, etc. to locate within the development and the surrounding area. Suppliers of material or parts for the Crosstown LRT and/or the other rail (GO, ARL) and bus transit systems be encouraged to locate workshops here.” 203 compounds (VOCs), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, metals, and inorganics.141 Meanwhile, groundwater samples revealed elevated levels of PHC, VOCs, total cyanide, metals, and inorganics. The heavy contamination of the soil and groundwater on the Kodak site meant that any design features requiring soil removal pushed up the costs of the project significantly. An engineer hired by Metrolinx to help with initial designs for the Crosstown project told me that it would cost $250,000 for each meter that the retaining wall along Eglinton was pushed back: “you move it back 15 meters, that's $3 million.”142 The MDWN's proposals to accommodate retail and micro-businesses along the Eglinton frontage of the Kodak site, as well as its proposals for route realignment, underground parking, and underground train storage, all would have added millions of dollars to the project in soil remediation costs alone. We see here how the degradation of the environment from previous rounds of capital accumulation, created constrains on a labour-community coalition's ability to assert a right to the city, and mediate a socio-ecological fix at the neighbourhood scale.
Local hiring and learning about CBAs
The MDWN's proposals underwent a frame transformation that reflected the MDWN's deepening understanding and commitment to equity. The initial letters from MDWN to Metrolinx demanded “local hiring” for jobs associated with the planning, design, and construction of the maintenance and storage facility on the Kodak site, as well as for operation and maintenance jobs once the project was complete. The MDWN argued that post-secondary education facilities should be established on site to attract local youth into these careers. The MDWN argued that the Kodak site was officially designated an employment lands and, given the thousands of local jobs the site once supported, and the level of poverty in York South-Weston, Metrolinx's development of the site should try to maximize the creation of jobs, especially for the “local community.” In early 2012, the MDWN used the phrase “local community” as a euphemism for poor and racialized residents of York South- Weston. The MDWN's first letter to Metrolinx calls for a “Community Benefits Proposal,” but does not yet specify any mechanism (e.g., a CBA) for operationalizing “local hiring.” Although the low-income status of the community is mentioned once, the MDWN's initial proposal never identified specific social groups who should be targeted by a local hiring policy.
141By elevated, I am referring to contaminants in soil and water samples being above Table 3 standards (i.e., full depth generic site condition standards in a non-potable ground water condition) as established by the Ontario Ministry of the Environment (Ministry of the Environment 2011). 142MDWN meeting with Metrolinx's Crosstown LRT design team, March 28, 2013. 204
It was not until their second letter in November 2012 that the MDWN argued specifically for a “Community Benefits Agreement” as a way to secure training and employment opportunities, as well as other social and environmental benefits, for residents of York South-Weston. The MDWN had long argued that local residents should benefit from job opportunities associated with the UP Express and the Eglinton Crosstown projects. But the idea for the MDWN to organize its vision and full suite of demands to Metrolinx in terms of a community benefits agreement was suggested by a graduate student at the University of Toronto, who attended MDWN meetings as part of their graduate assistant duties through the Anti-Poverty Community Organizing and Learning (APCOL) participatory research project (see chapter one). As it turned out, this student had done a research paper on the use of community benefits agreements in other jurisdictions, and happened to have worked in 2007 for a few months with one of the agencies in the area that helped setup up the MDWN.143 Learning about CBAs provided a much more specific legal framework for the MDWN to operationalize its objectives, and increased the confidence of the MDWN in making demands of Metrolinx. The MDWN's CBA proposal had nine components (see table 8.2).
a) Local hiring and training program for both the construction and operation phases b) Project Labour Agreement (i.e. good green jobs) c) Higher use of environmentally sustainable (green) technologies in the design of MSFs d) Procurement from local business where possible, to stimulate the local economy e) Support for innovation and transportation-related business development, including local incubator and training space for community businesses f) Space for on-site day care for employees g) Reducing the land footprint of operations (e.g. building vertically) to leave space for green industrial and commercial developments related to transportation elsewhere on the same site h) Easy employee access from the site to Weston Road businesses i) Work with community and Toronto Regional Conservation Authority to enhance and protect green space on site Table 8.2 CBA Proposal by the MDWN to Metrolinx, November 12, 2012
Whereas the focus of the Toronto Community Benefits Network, which formed in 2013 out of the
143Labour Council staff involved with the MDWN in 2009-2010 had already outlined a “Conceptual Framework” for a CBA when the LRT project was being managed by the Toronto Transit Commission. But these files had been forgotten about due to significant staff turnover, the inactivity of the MDNW in 2010, and shifting priorities within Labour Council. They were only discovered after the MDWN had already moved ahead with the idea of a CBA in late 2012. This reveals how organizational learning sometimes occurs through happenstance, as well as the challenge for grassroots organizations to maintain institutional memory given high turnovers and limited resources. 205
MDWN, would become narrowed to issues of training, jobs, and procurement practices for the construction of the Eglinton LRT, the MDWN was seized with a much broader set of concerns (albeit focusing on York South-Weston, and the redevelopment of the Kodak site in particular, whereas the TCBN's focus was city-wide and the construction of the entire Eglinton Crosstown line). The MDWN did not provide specifics about the “local hiring and training program” it proposed (e.g., leaving unanswered who would be considered “local” in order to access these programs); but it did point to two existing pre-apprenticeship programs being run by trade unions that targeted marginalized youth in Toronto. Compared with the first letter, the second letter much more clearly contextualizes the area as poor and racialized, with a high level of recent immigrants and lone-parent families. As is evident from the second letter, the MDWN began connecting gun violence with a need for job creation, mentioning that “gun violence and gangs are part of our community’s reality” (MDWN 2012c). This came after two high profile shootings in Toronto during the summer of 2012 (at the Eaton's Centre shootings, and on Danzig Street), and the October murder of a former youth worker within ear-shot of the Kodak lands (see chapter nine). The second letter points to examples of CBAs in other jurisdictions. CBAs in the United States are explicitly driven by efforts to address racism in terms of access to jobs and affordable housing. Learning about the use of CBAs in other jurisdictions encouraged the MDWN to frame job creation on the Kodak site more explicitly as a social justice issue. By then end of 2012, it had become evident to the MDWN that “local hiring” and “the local community” would have to be more clearly defined within the context of a legally-binding CBA. Whereas the beneficiaries of the MDWN's CBA proposal were geographically-defined as “the local community,” once the MDWN scaled-up into the city-wide Toronto Community Benefits Network in 2013 this framing shifted with beneficiaries being more specifically defined as “equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups” (see chapter ten). This discursive shift came after significant internal debate (i.e., frame resonance disputes), and as groups joined the coalition that had much stronger equity-agendas and collective identities reflecting experiences with oppression. Shifting away from the geographical focus on York-South Weston would weaken the motivation of some MDWN members to continue participating in the city-wide TCBN (see chapter ten). 206
“We are civil engineers, not social engineers”
The MDWN feared that Metrolinx's mandate to “'lay the tracks', and 'lay them quickly',” would mean that the transit projects would deliver transit but not much else.144 The MDWN saw potential in the redevelopment of the Kodak to transform the neighbourhood, but worried this would give way to an underutilized site with sprawling buildings and storage tracks for LRT trains. This fear was only heightened by Metrolinx's early design proposals. Fundamentally, the MDWN's advocacy was aimed at expanding Metrolinx's traditional role in transit planning and construction, to include broader economic, social, and environmental policy concerns, ideally through the negotiation of a CBA. Moreover, the MDWN was trying to force a very top-down institution, responsible for provincial and regional transportation planning, to engage more meaningfully with problems in particular neighbourhoods. This was challenging. Whereas the MDWN approached Metrolinx as “the government,” which should be responsive to residents' concerns, Metrolinx resisted expanding what it saw as a specific mandate to build a transit line. This mandate was institutionally bounded by a history of practice, rationalized by a given budget, and directed by a senior management team who excused themselves for being “civil engineers, not social engineers.” The CEO of Metrolinx, Bruce McCuaig, responded dismissively to the MDWN's letters. He deflected the MDWN's concerns over site design to upcoming public consultations. McCuaig also employed a politics of scale by redirecting questions and recommendations about economic development to the City of Toronto's economic development department. Metrolinx consistently rejected the idea of intensifying development on the Kodak site, claiming that it needed to reserve the entire site for maintenance and storage uses. The MDWN argued that Metrolinx over-estimated the amount of space they would need since the second stage of the LRT expansion to the airport would not happen for another 15-20 years, if ever, given the construction of the new air-rail link express line. Despite an officially tepid response from Metrolinx, the Chair of the MDWN was told by a senior community relations manager that “our letter was received and created quite a lot of discussion around departments in Metrolinx.”145 Metrolinx would eventually agree to hold in-person negotiations with the MDWN (which by then was reconstituted as the TCBN), but only after a year of political lobbying and community mobilization.
144Letter from Marabelle McTavish (MDWN Chair) and Rick Ciccarelli (Making Green Work Coordinator) to Bruce McCuaig, November 12, 2012. 145MDWN Meeting, October 10th, 2012. 207
Mobilizing for a CBA in York South-Weston
In addition to writing detailed letters, the MDWN used several tactics to pressure Metrolinx into negotiations for a CBAs. The MDWN participated in three official consultation meetings on site design, and as part of the project's environmental impact assessment. An environmental assessment requires the government (or their consultants) to respond to residents concerns in a final report, but there are many ways for the project team to get around having to make changes to the project as a result of suggestions raised. Many project considerations that interested the MDWN were outside the legal scope of the environmental assessment (e.g., intensifying economic development on the site, the sourcing of materials, whether facilities' roofs could be designed for solar panels, how construction jobs would be distributed). The final environmental assessment report includes official responses to concerns submitted in writing by residents. But residents are unlikely—on their own—to press very hard to have their concerns addressed. The entire process, in other words, is linear and disempowering. This is why the CEO of Metrolinx directed the MDWN's demands towards this official consultation process. Nevertheless, while most residents who attended these consultations did so as individuals, members of the MDWN were at least able to present a stronger voice because they had prepared their ideas collectively in advance of the consultation meetings. Other tactics used by the MDWN to advance their vision included: ongoing email conversations with Metrolinx's ever-growing community relations team; requesting (unsuccessfully) to make a deputation to Metrolinx's Board of Directors meeting;146 and lobbying the local MPP and other politicians. During this phase of activity (i.e. before Metrolinx agreed to in-person negotiations), the MDWN's demands remained ambitious and their tone with Metrolinx and politicians was stern, if not confrontational. MDWN members called Metrolinx officials out at public meetings for failing to create local jobs; distributed flyers promoting a community benefits agreement; wrote emails to Metrolinx public relations staff critical of things they said or failed to do; and attended a Metrolinx Board meeting with “community benefits” buttons and banners (see figure 8.1).
146The CEO of Metrolinx wrote back to the Chair of the MDWN that “Deputations to the Metrolinx Board of Directors are not received, although we are happy to take any comments you may have in writing” (Letter to Marabelle McTavish, Chair of MDWN from Bruce McCuaig, CEO of Metrolinx, December 3, 2012). In contrast, residents and groups are able to make deputations to the Toronto Transit Commission. 208
F
Figure 8.1 Newly formed TCBN unveils banner in front of Metrolinx offices during Board Meeting December 5th, 2012. Participating are members of the MDWN, SAWRO, and Labour Council.
During the fall and winter of 2012-2013, the MDWN mobilized political support in York South- Weston for a comprehensive community benefits agreement through popular education. With the financial support of a community-university research grant called APCOL (Anti-Poverty Community Organizing and Learning), myself and two community organizers facilitated a public meeting and workshop in York South-Weston aimed at raising awareness about community benefits agreements, and to brainstorm what a CBA for the Eglinton Crosstown project should look like. We first approached social service agencies since they understood from their everyday work the type of social and economic problems facing the area's residents, and would play a central role in the implementation of any future CBA (e.g., training). Given the dearth of political organizations in the community, it was also hoped that social service agencies would help spread the word to residents in the community about the prospect of a CBA in order to raise political support for the idea, as well as join with the MDWN in lobbying Metrolinx to negotiate a CBA. Two meetings with social service agencies were held in the north and south parts of York South-Weston, with all agencies being invited. Although social service agencies did send representatives to these meetings, who were all enthusiastic about the concept of a CBA, the hope that social service agencies would help to politically organize residents in York South-Weston, or lobby the government, was misplaced. With two important exceptions—the Learning Enrichment Foundation (LEF) and For Youth Initiative (FYI)—social 209 service agencies were either too overtaxed, or felt that advocating for a CBA was outside their organizational mandate or comfortability.147 The MDWN, with resources from APCOL, held two community meetings in Mount Dennis to discuss how infrastructure projects in the area could help alleviate poverty through a CBA. The first meeting was specifically intended to be a participatory political space for low-income families, especially single-mothers, and so was promoted in the community as a Family Day (February 18th, 2013) celebration and discussion (see flyer in figure 8.2).148 Despite many public consultations by Metrolinx, the City of Toronto, and local politicians, surrounding transit developments in York South- Weston, none of these official meetings focused on how transit-related investments could help create jobs to lift the area out of poverty. Racialized residents and lone parent families (representing 30% of the entire area, with a very high proportion being racialized women) were almost entirely unrepresented at these official public meetings due to various barriers blocking their participation (childcare, lack of notice, timing, food, cost of transportation, language, etc.).149
147For Youth Initiative worked with marginalized youth, and positioned itself as a leader in the community for addressing gun violence. LEF is the most established social agency in York South-Weston, having been around for thirty years and having a staff of three hundred. Because LEF has a diverse revenue stream in addition to government funding, it might feel more secure about lobbying government. The LEF's main office and programming buildings are across from the Kodak site, giving it a long-term interest in the area's redevelopment. The Executive Director of LEF was also personally interested in community benefits agreements, and had been investigating their use in Scotland. 148Family Day is a statutory holiday in Ontario celebrated on the third Monday of February. 149Public consultations included: Metrolinx's environmental assessment for the Eglinton Crosstown project; Mount Dennis Mobility Hub/Station design consultations; Metrolinx's Big Move consultations focusing on revenue generating tools to finance transit investments over the next thirty years; the City of Toronto's Eglinton Avenue planning study consultations called “Eglinton Connects”; and the Mount Dennis Economic Development Workshop. I attended all of these meetings and observed the number of women and racialized residents in attendance. 210
Figure 8.2 Family Day Flyer (February 18th, 2013)
We tried to address these barriers at the Family Day event: a child-minding space was provided at the back of the room allowing parents to freely participate in discussions; food was culturally- appropriate; and public transportation was covered for participants. Most importantly, outreach for the event was not simply done through well-established social agency networks, but also through flyering in the community, word-of-mouth, and door-to-door invitations. Community Researchers were hired through the APCOL grant who lived in the area, and were positioned within equity-seeking and historically-disadvantaged groups, thereby helping to ensure these groups were better-engaged. By addressing barriers to participation, and through targeted outreach, eighty adults and thirty children participated in the Family Day workshop throughout the afternoon. Most of these participants were people of colour, and many mothers came with their children (figure 8.3).
211
Figure 8.3 Family Day in Mount Dennis, February 18, 2013, showing child-minding centre in foreground, food tables at left, with presentations and break-out groups in background. Photo Credit: Steve Shall horn
In small groups, participants discussed three questions: 1) what are the barriers they faced getting a good job in construction or operation of public transit; 2) what type of benefits other than jobs should the community receive from new transit projects; and 3) what specific language should go into a CBA to make sure these good jobs opportunities and other benefits materialize (see table 8.3). Participants were able to readily identify the many institutionalized barriers they face in securing employment (question 1). There was also a strong sense of what resources, in addition to jobs, the community needed (question 2). But participants struggled to translate these needs into specific policies or contractual language that could be negotiated between the community and Metrolinx as part of a formal community benefits agreement. This suggested the need for another meeting so that residents could become more informed about how CBAs work and have worked in other jurisdictions. 212
Barriers to employment: Community Needs: CBA Language:
“What is preventing you from “What types of benefits, other than “How should a Community getting a good job either in the jobs, should our community Benefits Agreement with construction or the future receive through this development Metrolinx (the government and operation of new TTC LRT project?” contractors building the LRT) be lines?” worded in order to benefit our community?” • Lack of information • Daycare, this will allow • “Don't know the way to regarding these jobs; women to enter the go.” poor communication workforce • transparency for the money • No experience • Public spaces (e.g. being used in the local • Immigrants lack the marketplace in front of area Canadian experience current Scotiabank where • should indicate percentage that employers seek station entrance will be) of people who are going to • Lack of training (many • Give businesses already in be given jobs, affordable residents only have high place the first opportunity housing, businesses and school level education) to expand instead of chains other benefits • Racism: e.g. Not hired • Recreation centre (fitness • concrete number of jobs due to accent or ways of centre especially for targeted to local area; if dressing such as women; indoor pool; 10,000 being created than wearing a hijab computers, pamphlets) 25% of job years should • Lack of SIN (many • Nearby park development come from the area people living as non- • A one-stop shop for • guaranteed employment, of status cannot access agencies (community hub at least a certain number these types of jobs) in Mount Dennis) or percentage of people • Language skills • The Mount Dennis from the community • No link to people doing Community Centre is • monitoring and reporting the hiring; “door always locked requirements must be keepers” • Volunteers to help with job clear to ensure • Existing agencies will searches accountability help you upgrade your • Music school • job training dollars for resume, but not connect • Entrepreneurial workshop local people in the you with employers • Pedestrian bridges over community • Businesses are leaving railway (to create more • training should be made because of increasing direct access to grocery available for the available rent (gentrification) store and future jobs • More basic job search recreational centre) • new equity approach for assistance required • Housing increased access and (resume workshops, inclusion interview workshops, • placements opportunities job research tutorials, so people can gain etc.) additional experience • community should be represented at tables to ensure we can preserve our economic system • hire security personnel from within the community (e.g. hire police officers from within the Somali community) 213
• Hire youth to keep them busy • Youth employment programmes such as PAYE (Partnership to Advance Youth Employment) Table 8.3 Family Day workshop, break-out groups' responses to key questions.
On April 26th, 2013, three guest speakers from Los Angeles, Scotland, and Vancouver were flown-in to share their experiences in leveraging community benefits out of large infrastructure developments.150 After presentations by the guest speakers, community members had an opportunity to ask questions and make comments about how a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) could apply to York South-Weston. The discussion ranged from specific questions about how to access apprenticeships associated with the $6.6 billion Eglinton Crosstown project, or whether religious dress would prevent certain groups of women from working in construction, to much broader questions about the types of political mobilization that is necessary for ensuring the successful negotiation and implementation of any Community Benefits Agreement. The guest panelists shared their learnings about the successes and challenges they faced in each of their respective jurisdictions. A community meal and child-minding were again provided to encourage broader participation.
The MDWN's Public Policy Impact
By the end of 2012, the persistent political pressure that MDWN placed on Metrolinx through its letters, participation in consultations, political lobbying, and popular education workshops, began to shift Metrolinx's position—or at least its approach to engaging with the public's demands for more participatory decision-making. The MDWN pushed Metrolinx beyond its narrow comfort zone on building transit, to co-host a workshop with the City in Mount Dennis on economic development (see chapter seven). Although the MDWN were not permitted to depute to Metrolinx's Board of Directors (an opportunity the Board had given only once before, notably to Labour Council), they were granted their first in-person meeting with Metrolinx's senior management team, and a representative from Infrastructure Ontario, on December 19th, 2012. Preparation for this initial meeting helped bring
150 Funding for flying in these speakers came from a grant from the Atkinson Foundation. 214 together new partners from across the city that would come together to form the Toronto Community Benefits Network (see chapter ten). And although Metrolinx initially ruled out any negotiations about intensifying economic development on the Kodak site, the MDWN continued to work with local councillors who passed motions at Toronto City Council in the spring of 2013 that pressured Metrolinx to change their position and support intensification (City of Toronto 2013f, 2013c; Winsa 2013). The public meeting on CBAs and the Family Day workshop were important for raising public awareness and hope about how a CBA could benefit the community, but they also generated political pressure on the local politicians who attended these meetings to make this happen. In advance of these meetings, myself and another organizer met with the local councillor (Frances Nunziata) and MPP (Laura Albanese) separately to let them know what we were asking for, and to encourage them to view CBAs as a political opportunity rather than a threat. Although the councillor was not forthcoming with support, these efforts helped bring Albanese onside with the idea of a CBA. Albanese publicly supported a CBA, helped advertise the public meetings on CBAs to her email listserv, and would eventually raise the issue of CBAs with cabinet ministers. Her office was also represented at an all- party briefing about CBAs held at the Ontario Legislature on April 22, 2013 by the newly formed Toronto Community Benefits Network. The day after this all-party briefing, Albanese wrote to Metrolinx CEO Bruce McCuaig asking him to accept the TCBN's proposal for a CBA:
A CBA would ensure that training is available for local residents and most importantly, that the training is linked with career opportunities. Such agreements would benefit local communities and would help to address the skilled labour shortage in Ontario. I understand that the Toronto Community Benefits Network is hosting a workshop on April 27- 28 with community representatives, labour leaders, and labour market experts to develop a potential agreement that will be proposed to Metrolinx. I hope that you will support the proposal from the Toronto Community Benefits Network to include a CBA in the procurement process for contracts related to the Eglinton Crosstown LRT project.151
Getting Albanese's support was an important first step in Metrolinx opening their doors to negotiations around a CBA and eventually signing a Community Benefit Framework one year later. It demonstrates how a labour-community coalition's mobilization at a neighbourhood scale helped scale-up its concerns to the provincial political arena.
151Letter from Laura Albanese to Bruce McCuaig, “Re: A Community Benefits Agreement for the Eglinton Crosstown LRT Project,” April 23, 2013. 215
The Georgetown South Employment Initiative
The Georgetown South Employment Initiative is another example of how the MDWN leveraged neighbourhood mobilization to scale-up its influence with provincial policymakers. The $1.2 billion Georgetown South (GTS) Project added new tracks and grade separators to the existing rail corridor cutting through York South-Weston that would allow for increased regional commuter train (GO Transit) service and an all-day shuttle between the airport and train station called the UP (Union- Pearson) Express. Metrolinx launched the Employment Initiative in October 2012. I argue this was in response to the MDWN's persistent demands for local hiring practices, coupled with mounting bad publicity from the Clean Trains Coalition (see table 8.1), and broader political threats to the ruling Liberal government as I will discuss below. The GTS Employment Initiative was billed as a pilot project aimed at “connecting interested individuals living in communities along the GTS rail corridor with opportunities to pursue careers in the transit construction and civil engineering” (Metrolinx 2012). Metrolinx used the GTS Employment Initiative to demonstrate its “commitment to positively contribute to the communities in which we work and serve” (Metrolinx 2015). For local politicians, provincial ministers, and the Mayor of Toronto, the GTS Employment Initiative offered timely photo- ops (e.g., see figure 8.4) that suggested they were taking action to help unemployed racialized youth secure careers, following a summer with high-profile gun shootings by young Black men. In contrast, the MDWN lambasted the GTS Employment Initiative as simply a public relations ploy, that came only at the end of construction (long after calls were made in the community for such an initiative), and that only produced relatively few jobs for local residents. In 2010, a Metrolinx spokesperson said that the GTS project would create 10,000 jobs, and that “Metrolinx is working with various agencies, construction associations and contractors to support apprenticeship programs that will promote career opportunities for people living in the City's priority neighbourhoods” (Keenan 2010). Similarly, in September 2012, the GTS Project was used as a photo- op by the Ontario Premier and York South-Weston's MPP who appeared on the construction site in hardhats promising “thousands of design and construction jobs” (Metrolinx 2012). Despite these announcements, and although the project started in 2006, by 2012 Metrolinx officials could not identify any local residents along the corridor—let alone disadvantaged residents—who had benefited from the jobs created by the project.152 The lack of local benefits from the project in terms of jobs was
152This question was asked to Metrolinx officials by email and in person at quarterly GTS Project update meetings held in Weston. 216 particularly upsetting for residents in Weston who complained at multiple public meetings about the dust, noise and traffic detours associated with the construction. Mount Dennis and Weston residents already felt mistreated by Metrolinx, having waged a hard struggle just so that the UP Express would make a stop in their community, and also because they were fighting (through the Clean Trains Coalition) for Metrolinx to electrify the trains. The approach taken by the GTS Employment Initiative for realizing local hiring was through career counselling and career fairs held along the corridor by Toronto Employment and Social Services (in other words, improved information dissemination about job openings), coupled with the goodwill of contractors to hire some local residents voluntarily. Notably, the GTS Employment Initiative did not target marginalized residents, but rather all “local community members” (which was never clearly defined). Metrolinx met with the five big contractors working on the GTS and asked them to each provide two jobs to local residents, and to aim for a target of between 20 to 100 positions over the course of the remaining jobs.153 After five months of the Initiative, only four residents had been hired— three as road flaggers and one as an administrative assistant (Adam Norman 2013).154 By the one year anniversary of the program, Metrolinx reported that over six hundred community members had attended career fairs and networking events—reflecting a high demand in the area for good-paying jobs. Yet, only fourteen local residents had gotten interviews and only six community members had been hired (Metrolinx 2015). For the second phase of the GTS Employment Initiative, Metrolinx gave $100,000 to the Central Ontario Building Trades' (COBT) Hammer Heads pre-apprenticeship program to bring fifteen youth into apprenticeships. Hammer Heads is a twelve-to-fourteen week “comprehensive skills development program [that] introduces youth to several different construction trades while developing skills important to successful long-lasting careers in construction. The program is comprised of safety training, hands-on skills development, mentoring and coaching and represents a life-changing journey for our participants” (Metrolinx 2013b). Although the stated goal of Hammer Heads was to provide opportunities to “youth of under-resourced neighbourhoods”(Central Ontario Building Trades & Hammer Heads 2011), Metrolinx depoliticized the program in official communications by simply saying the program was open to all youth. The initial pre-screening of applicants was done by staff at City of Toronto employment centres run by Toronto Employment & Social Services. Although the
153Email communication with ID002, November 9th, 2012. 154A lack of transparent reporting on the number of jobs created nor any demographic or geographic breakdown of these jobs makes it difficult to evaluate. 217 selection criteria for the Hammer Heads program was not transparent, and demographic information for disaggregating applicants was never taken, I was reassured by one City manager involved in the screening process that “the right people were getting in.” Based on pictures, 12 of the 15 Hammer Heads participants for the GTS Employment Initiative were racialized and one was a woman (Albanese 2013). The fact that ninety youth (aged 18-26 years old) applied to fifteen positions, spoke again to the unmet need for good-paying jobs amongst this demographic, but also meant that only top candidates were chosen. The GTS Employment Initiative fell far short of the MDWN's vision of a community benefits agreement that was: legally binding; called for a much greater number of training and job opportunities (i.e. hundreds vs. tens); explicitly targeted marginalized residents; included non-trade job programs; and encompassed neighbourhood environmental improvements and economic development initiatives. In contrast to the GTS Employment Initiative, the MDWN sought: firm hiring targets; outreach deep into the community; targeted upgrading and training pathways through local high schools, colleges and apprenticeship programs; and the financial and personal supports needed by the most disadvantaged residents to succeed (e.g. grants, mentorship, childcare, etc.). The TCBN would also take a decidedly pro-union position compared with the GTS Employment Initiative which worked through non-union contractors as well as the (union-led) Hammer Heads program.155 Even as simply a local hiring program, the GTS Employment Initiative fell far short of the “hundreds” of local hirings that the Executive Director of the GTS Project said was possible. Relying on the goodwill of contractors, rather than inserting enforceable targets into contracts, clearly did not work. Metrolinx defended the results of the GTS Employment Initiative by saying it was a “pilot project.” But these lessons were never institutionalized by Metrolinx, or were conveniently ignored, as it went into negotiations with the TCBN over a CBA for the Eglinton Crosstown. For example, Metrolinx refused to sign a legally-binding agreement to force contractors (and Metrolinx itself) to hire a certain number of targeted residents, even though the voluntary approach used with the GTS Employment Initiative had failed. The GTS Employment Initiative was also never explicitly focused on equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups but rather open to all residents of Toronto, albeit marketed to those living near the transit projects. So it was never explicit about trying to reach social justice policy
155Although the GTS Employment Initiative worked with Hammer Heads, the Executive Director of the GTS Project seemed unaware Hammer Heads was a union initiative when, at a public meeting, he blamed unions for blocking local residents from getting jobs. 218 objectives such as employment equity or anti-poverty. For the Crosstown Community Benefits Framework, the TCBN would eventually persuade Metrolinx to more clearly define “local communities” in terms of “equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups.”156 Despite failing to meet its objectives, the GTS Employment Initiative proved useful for boosting the public image of Metrolinx and the provincial government at community meetings and in monthly newsletters and email updates.
Figure 8.4 Hammer Heads graduation ceremony with (from left to right) Metrolinx CEO Bruce McCuaig, Councillor Nunziata, COBT Business Manager James St.John, Hammer Heads student Lawrence Toulouse,, and Glen Murray, Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure. Source: (GO Transit 2013)
Explaining the MDWN's Impact
Why did Metrolinx launch the GTS Employment Initiative (in October 2012)? And why was the graduation ceremony for the first Metrolinx-funded class of Hammer Heads for the GTS Employment Initiative (on October 25, 2013) such a high-profile public relations event and photo-op, with speeches from the Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure, the CEO of Metrolinx, the local MPP (Laura Albanese), the Mayor of Toronto, and the local city councillors (see figure 8.4)? Normally, fifteen students graduating from an apprenticeship program, even a special program like Hammer Heads, does not receive such fanfare. Why did Metrolinx begin to take the demands of the 156Metrolinx was reluctant to define any targeted groups, but was adamant that it was uncomfortable giving any preference to residents who happened to live in neighbourhoods adjacent to project. 219
MDWN seriously, eventually setting up an in-person meeting with senior management and Infrastructure Ontario in December, 2012? Why did Albanese come out publicly in support of a CBA in the spring of 2013? Social movement coalitions are not always able to get such strong support of their MPP, especially when the MPP is part of the governing party. The social movement learning and collective actions of the MDWN were necessary for these developments to transpire. But the MDWN's advocacy also took advantage of a broader set of political pressures and crises facing Metrolinx and the provincial government between 2011-2013. The wider provincial political context was especially relevant to MDWN organizing because both the Georgetown South project (including the UP Express) and Eglinton Crosstown project (including the redevelopment of the Kodak lands), which ran through York South-Weston, were provincial projects. The Ontario general election in October 2011 left the Liberal Party one seat shy of a majority government, giving the balance of power to the New Democratic Party (Benzie 2011). The ruling provincial Liberal Party had to protect every seat it had, especially in swing ridings such as York South-Weston. In the 2007 and 2011 provincial elections, the Liberals only narrowly beat the New Democratic Party for the York South-Weston riding by 452 votes and 734 votes, respectively (with the NDP winning a by-election in 2007 by only 315 votes). This placed extra pressure on MPP Albanese (a Liberal) to be seen tackling the community's problems. The government used the GTS Employment Initiative and its openness to a community benefits agreement to show voters in York South-Weston, and across the province that it was taking action on a range of pressing issues: job creation; youth unemployment; racialized poverty; and gun violence. In September 2012, the Liberals lost a by-election in the Southern Ontario riding of Kitchener- Waterloo that had been carefully orchestrated by the Premier to secure a governing majority (the Conservative MPP who had stepped down in the riding to trigger the by-election, was appointed by the Liberal Premier as chairwoman of the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board) (Howlett and D’Aliesio 2012). The Liberals' loss in Kitchener-Waterloo (with the New Democratic Party gaining the seat) not only blocked a Liberal majority but also signalled growing displeasure amongst the general electorate with the Liberals due to: public sector pay freezes (The Canadian Press n.d.); pre-emptive back-to-work legislation that undermined collective bargaining with teachers' unions (Walkom 2012); as well as a series of spending and political cover-up scandals (Canadian Press 2014; The Huffington Post n.d.). The Liberals, in other words, were desperately looking for “good news stories” that could help boost their fortune in the pending election (which the NDP could trigger at any moment). 220
The ruling party was particularly vulnerable in Toronto's west end, including York South- Weston, but also Davenport—the provincial riding further south along the rail corridor—because of the government's decision to use diesel trains for the UP Express in order to have the system running in time for the 2015 Pan Am Games. In August of 2012, the Clean Trains Coalition applied for a judicial review to overturn Metrolinx's decision to use diesel trains (Kupferman 2012). The New Democratic Party had successfully linked their party to this growing struggle against Metrolinx by circulating petitions, tabling a private members' bill, and rallies. Lawn signs demanding “Clean Trains Now!” with the names and contact information of NDP politicians were posted all along the rail corridor. The NDP also helped organize a series of rallies in the summer and fall of 2012 (see table 8.1). In May 2012, the NDP MPP for Davenport, Jonah Schein, introduced a private members' bill that sought to amend the Metrolinx Act to “ensure that any passenger railway system established between downtown Toronto and Toronto Pearson International Airport is not powered by diesel fuel”(Jonah Schein 2012, 83). This bill passed first reading and was due for second reading on October 18, 2012, but died on the floor when Premier McGuinty announced October 15th that he would be resigning and proroguing the legislature (thereby annulling all bills in progress before the legislature).157 The timing of the GTS Employment Initiative launch in October 2012, and Metrolinx's decision to meet with the MDWN for an in-person meeting in December of 2012, came at the height of a legitimacy crisis for the ruling Liberals. Moreover, Metrolinx and the government was about to appeal to the public for new taxes and road tolls to pay for the next wave of transit projects (Metrolinx 2013a). This demonstrates how the political vulnerabilities, needs, or threats facing a ruling government can become an opportunity for neighbourhood labour-community coalitions to scale-up their struggles. But whether and how these political openings within the state are seized by social movements is always contingent; it was only through the agency of activists that the TCBN emerged and mobilized the necessary resources to access provincial decision-makers, and framed its demands in a convincing way. Of course, Albanese may have supported the idea of a community benefits agreement simply because she saw it as good public policy. After all, within an climate of budget austerity, CBAs offered a way to stretch infrastructure spending in order to achieve—or at least be seen to be addressing— wider social policy objectives. Notwithstanding Albanese's support, it became evident to the MDWN during its first negotiation meetings with Metrolinx that the government was extremely hesitant to take
157With only a minority government, a series of parliamentary procedures and bills had placed increasing pressure on the Liberals, including a rare contempt of parliament charge linked to a cover-up scandal surrounding the cancellation of unpopular gas power plants in Liberal ridings as part of the 2011 election campaign. 221 any concrete action. Prolonged consultations and negotiations is a key tactic by those in power to undermine counter-hegemonic resistance. In opening up a negotiation process, Metrolinx got a reprieve —successfully dissipating the combative stance that the MDWN had thus far adopted during public meetings against Metrolinx. Metrolinx also bought itself some time, as it would be another full year and a half before Metrolinx would even sign a relatively weak “community benefits framework.” Learning from its battles with the Weston Community Coalition (see chapter six) and the Clean Trains Coalition, Metrolinx and the ruling government opened the door to negotiations partly because it wanted to get ahead of the MDWN's demands around community benefits before they became politically damaging. But Metrolinx would not have done so if it did not perceive the MDWN as a viable threat (which the MDWN made clear through its persistence and ability to mobilize resources and community support within York South-Weston). The timing of the political support given to youth employment programs like Hammer Heads in York South-Weston is also partially explained by a wave of gun violence that rocked Toronto during the summer and fall of 2012 and demanded a government response. As I detail in the following chapter, racialized residents, particularly from the Caribbean and Somali communities, responded to this gun violence by pressuring the government to create youth employment opportunities.
Conclusion
York South-Weston is undergoing a level of investment that it has not seen for two generations. Billions of dollars in public money are building transit projects through this low-income, racialized, deindustrialized community. Chapters 5 analyzed ways that the Eglinton Crosstown LRT project, as a socio-ecological fix, was constituted through extra-local struggles: the push by capital to increase rates of capital accumulation; but also demands by Ontario's construction and trade unions for jobs, protests by environmental movements over urban sprawl and climate change, and pressure from residents across the greater Toronto region for better public transit and shorter commutes. This chapter scales- down analysis of this socio-ecological fix to the neighbourhood scale where efforts were made in 2012 by a labour-community coalition to assert more democratic control over the Crosstown project, including the environmental design and purpose of the Kodak site (the proposed site for the Crosstown's MSF), as well as the distribution of jobs associated with the MSF's construction and operation. The provincial government sought legitimacy through investments in rapid transit it said 222 would spur economic growth, reduce congestion and air pollution, and create jobs; however, this chapter challenges this rhetoric for failing to scale-down in ways that addressed social, economic, and environmental concerns in the neighbourhood. I began this chapter detailing residents' concerns that the redevelopment of the Kodak site as a maintenance and storage facility would leave it as “a wasteland” or “a place to dump things.” I have argued that the MDWN's efforts to influence the environmental design of the Kodak site and to intensify green economic use on the site, should be understood as a socio-ecological struggle—not only for a more sustainable neighbourhood and a future green economy—but also against the toxic legacy of previous rounds of capital accumulation embodied in the Kodak site's heavily contaminated soils and groundwater. The high cost of remediating brownfields is both a constraint on, and object of, socio- ecological struggle that has the potential to influence the emergence and form of a proposed socio- ecological fix (e.g., by affecting a project's budget or profitability, depending on the social movement's political strength). The Mount Dennis Weston Network tried to influence policy-makers by writing letters, attending public consultations, lobbying politicians, and engaging in popular education. Through this process, the MDWN itself underwent social movement learning, deepening its concern for social justice, and gaining an understanding of how social justice and other economic and environmental policy objectives could be linked to infrastructure projects through the negotiation of a community benefits agreement. The MDWN efforts to win community benefits—the coalition's second attempt—faced considerable resistance from the state. In 2009, the MDWN had made some progress working with City Council and the TTC to advance community benefits proposals for the Eglinton Crosstown LRT project. But these arrangements were nullified when the provincial government took control of the Eglinton Crosstown project away from the City of Toronto. The MDWN and Labour Council discovered that they had less political sway with Metrolinx than with the municipally-run TTC. The MDWN's second articulation of a community benefits proposal, discussed in this chapter, included wide-ranging ideas for the design of the Kodak site, green economic development, as well as “local hiring.” Metrolinx tried to separate its mandate for building transit, understood very narrowly, from other social, economic, and environmental policy objectives being pursued by the MDWN. Metrolinx redirected the MDWN's demands around site design to a disempowering environmental assessment process, and used a politics of scale to deflect the MDWN's demands around green economic 223 development to the municipal scale. Undeterred, the MDWN itself tried to “jump scale” by lobbying and pressuring Metrolinx and provincial politicians (and ultimately by supporting the establishment of the TCBN). In scaling-up its lobbying to the provincial political arena, the MDWN was able to take advantage of a growing legitimacy crises facing both Metrolinx and the ruling provincial Liberal Party which both eagerly sought “good news” stories. The MDWN succeeded in getting the concept of a community benefits agreement publicly endorsed by MPP Albanese, who later would bring the concept to the attention of the provincial government cabinet. Another tangible outcome of the MDWN's advocacy was the creation of the GTS Employment Initiative by Metrolinx in partnership with the City of Toronto. The GTS Employment Initiative reflected the MDWN's success at forcing Metrolinx to reframe its mission—at least rhetorically—in ways that brought together infrastructure spending with social and economic policy objectives. In announcing the one-year anniversary of the Georgetown Employment Initiative, Metrolinx stated that it “has embarked on new ground to ensure that the communities in which we work and serve realize not just the transportation benefits of The Big Move but also social and economic benefits from investment” (GO Transit 2013). This was a significant shift for an institution full of “civil engineers, not social engineers.” Yet, in the end, only a very small number of local residents secured jobs through the GTS Employment Initiative. Moreover, Metrolinx's understanding of “social and economic benefits” was much narrower than the expansive list of proposals made by the MDWN and was not explicitly targeted at equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups (although Hammer Heads, which was supported through the program, did target a small number of disadvantaged youth). In the end, the GTS Employment Initiative was a public relations exercise by the provincial government to manage growing and overlapping social movement pressures in York South-Weston and elsewhere in the City (e.g., contention from the MDWN at public meetings, bad publicity created by the Clean Trains Coalition, and outrage over high profile shootings). Finally, the MDWN's activities throughout 2012 offers some lessons for labour-community coalitions engaged at the neighbourhood scale. The MDWN's persistence was important in convincing Metrolinx and Albanese that the coalition and its demands were not simply going to “go away.” Sustaining a coalition for an extended period of time requires patience, a desire to learn, and commitment to working through differences. Preparing a single letter to Metrolinx sometimes took the MDWN months. Although the content of the letters were largely dismissed by Metrolinx, the cognitive 224 praxis and consensus-building involved with their writing developed strong working relationships between members thereby helping to establish the long-term resolve of the coalition. A lesson learned from the Family Day event is that community organizing must address people's barriers to political participation. Special measures were taken by MDWN to make the Family Day event inclusive to equity-seeking and historically-disadvantaged groups and to resonate with the collective identities of marginalized residents in the community. But the success of this event required external resources through the APCOL community-university grant to pay community researchers to conduct door-to-door outreach. It became clear that social service agencies could not be relied upon for carrying out this type of political organizing in the community. Many social service agencies working in the community would not even come to MDWN meetings, let alone mobilize their clients to attend a political meeting or lobby the government (I explain this apolitical positioning of social service agencies in the next chapter). Building and sustaining any kind of mass movement requires resources: either financial resources to hire organizers (e.g., from union donations or by growing the membership base of the coalition and collecting membership dues); or else human resources (i.e., volunteers willing to engage in outreach—something that MDWN members were not ready to do). The MDWN's lack of an organizing strategy limited its ability to build-up political power in the community. The MDWN also faced related challenges within alliance-forming across class and ethno-racial differences as I will discuss in the following chapter. The MDWN's limited capacity to organize a mass movement in York South-Weston, coupled with the city-wide scope of the Eglinton Crosstown project, led the leaders of the MDWN to consider ways of increasing its political leverage with Metrolinx and the provincial government through scaling- up into a city-wide coalition (i.e., the TCBN). But, as I will discuss, scaling-up the coalition beyond York-South Weston raised new challenges such as overcoming the militant particularism reflected in the MDWN's “local hiring” proposal and maintaining neighbourhood-specific socio-ecological struggles as a priority for the new city-wide coalition. 225
Chapter 9
The Challenge of Cross-class, Multi-Ethno-Racial Alliance-forming in York South-Weston
“Shovels in the ground”
On October 30th, 2012, Leonard Fullerton was shot dead in broad daylight, outside of a social housing apartment building in the heart of Mount Dennis not far from where the MDWN held its regular meetings. Fullerton, aged 26 and a father of two, was known for his work leading after school dance and basketball programmes for low-income and racialized youth through a social agency in York South-Weston called For Youth Initiative (Poisson, and Powell 2012). But like many young Black men in York South-Weston Fullerton had been struggling for years to find steady employment. The murder was ear-shot from the former Kodak Canada employee's building: once a jewel of the community's post-war industrial boom that had since been abandoned; a vandalized shell symbolizing the ways neoliberalism had failed York South-Weston. At the time of Fullerton's murder, hundreds of millions of public dollars were “putting shovels in the ground” in York South-Weston through investments in the Georgetown South Project and the Eglinton Crosstown light rail transit project. But the area's racialized residents and women were disproportionately excluded from the well-paid jobs being created by these projects in the construction sector, reproducing the highly gendered and racialized character of poverty (G.-E. Galabuzi 2006; Block and Galabuzi 2011).158 At the same time, racialized families, and Black families in particular, found themselves disproportionately putting shovels in the ground to bury young men who fell victim to gun violence on Toronto's streets, especially in so-called Priority Neighbourhoods such as York South-Weston (Ezeonu 2008; G. Galabuzi 2009).159 These cold facts came to motivate the Mount Dennis Weston Network and later the Toronto Community Benefits Network (TCBN) to pressure
158The building and construction trades have a disproportionately low numbers of racialized workers. Only nine per cent of Ontario's apprentices in the skilled trades are people of colour despite racialized workers making up 23 per cent of the labour force (Menard, Chan, and Walker 2008). Women account for only 3 per cent of skilled tradespersons (Statistics Canada 2014). 159Violent crimes are concentrated in Toronto's poorer neighbourhoods (Charron 2009). The lack of good-paying jobs and supports for more recent racialized immigrants and single-mothers helps explain why the experience of gun violence in the neighbourhood is racialized and gendered (Lawson 2012). As several commentators have noted, the disproportionate number of Black men being shot to death in Toronto should not be characterized as a “Black problem,” not least because it is but a symptom of white supremacy. And the notion that Black people are somehow more violent, is a long-standing racist stereotype (Paradkar 2017). 226
Metrolinx and the provincial government for a community benefits agreement that would ensure more equitable distribution of training and job opportunities associated with transit infrastructure projects. These coalitions attempted to produce a more socially just city. The MDWN's demand for a community benefits agreement ought to have easily fused with widespread grief and outrage in York South-Weston over the murder of Fullerton and other Black youth, as well as with other ongoing and inter-related struggles in the community against poverty (e.g., precarious, low-paying jobs; unemployment; inadequate affordable housing; etc.) and white supremacy (e.g., racist police practices). But a cross-class, multi-ethno-racial, feminist, right-to-the-city movement in York South-Weston failed to coalesce. This undermined the ability of the MDWN and marginalized residents to mediate socio-ecological fixes towards more democratic and emancipatory goals. This chapter analyzes the multi-scalar factors that frustrated cross-class, multi-ethno-racial social movement alliance-forming in York-South Weston and offers some approaches for trying to overcome these divisions.160 First, I argue that the state undermined multi-ethno-racial, cross-class alliance-forming in Toronto by trying to ideologically separate “Black issues,” centred on crime and gun violence, from ongoing debates over urban renewal. Looking at the state's response to a series of high-profile gun shootings I argue that the state sought to “manage” the political crisis surrounding gun violence rather than address its political-economic causes. Local politicians in York South-Weston appealed to white homeowners—their primary constituents—through a racist discourse of “community safety” that subtly portrayed low-income, racialized residents as the cause of the area's economic and moral decline. By framing the problem in terms of community safety, with only a nod to “crime prevention” centred on individual improvement, politicians tried to deflect criticism away from the lack of (good) jobs in the community. Meetings on gun violence became segregated spaces where Black residents individually “vented” their frustrations as individuals and so remained unconnected in any kind of organized collective way to ongoing consultations in the community on transit planning, transit infrastructure projects, land use planning,and economic development. Ruling politicians feared the counter- hegemonic narratives and organizing that might have developed out of alliance-forming between groups like the Mount Dennis Weston Network (a predominantly white, middle-class organization) and
160I focus on class and race because gender divisions were not cited by participants as major barriers for coalition-building. But the causes and experiences of poverty and racism are certainly gendered, as is any political organizing. Patriarchy is clearly evident in York South-Weston which has one of the highest percentages of single-mothers in the city. Gun violence too has a gendered character with mostly men being murdered and perpetrating crimes. Although, Lawson (2012, 821) has critiqued simplistic and racist discourses of “fatherless households headed by single Black mothers” that are commonly used in the media to explain why young Black men are involved in gun violence (Ezeonu 2008). 227 the area's low-income and racialized population. Framing gun violence in terms of community-safety worked to separate these discussions from from the MDWN's demands for a CBA aimed at ensuring marginalized residents benefited from urban renewal projects. The second half of this chapter explores additional factors that constrained cross-class, multi- ethno-racial alliance-forming: socio-ecological contradictions; the MDWN's model of organizing; legal and political constraints imposed on social service agencies; and inter-organizational differences (i.e., frame disputes, and contrasting collective identities and organizational cultures). I have identified and discussed the socio-ecological contradictions that undermined alliance-forming in other chapters—e.g., the tension between organizing for “green jobs,” and the immediate need of marginalized residents for any job. The MDWN's orientation was towards large-scale job creation in the emerging green economy. This orientation was at odds with the only other group advocating directly on economic development issues in York South-Weston from a social justice perspective—a social service agency named Action for Neighbourhood Change—that approached organizing within the Black community by supporting small businesses. The MDWN's model of recruitment also meant that it mainly worked with (predominantly white) home owner associations, representatives from the Toronto District Labour Council and representative of social service agencies rather than engaging in direct door-to-door outreach to low-income and racialized residents in low-income apartment buildings. Although social service agencies had connections to marginalized residents and so were well-positioned to support alliance-forming, they were reluctant to support the MDWN by organizing their “clients” politically out of fears this would jeopardize their state funding. I conclude by discussing how to build a culture of solidarity across class and ethno-racial differences through interactions across collective identities and by creating opportunities for regular, open and authoritative deliberation within a learning space of equal status.
“They only have meetings when somebody is shot”
In the summer of 2012, a series of brazen shootings—including one inside the food court of Toronto's busiest mall (the Eaton's Centre shootings on June 2nd), one on a cafe patio (June 18th), and another at a well-attended block party (the Danzig Street shootings on July 16th)—were the worst acts of gun violence that the police chief could remember (Doucette and Sun 2012; Yang et al. 2012; Warmington and Sun 2012; Loriggio 2017). These shootings were met with a sequence of events that 228 has become too familiar in Toronto: public outrage, followed by emergency high-level meetings between political leaders and members of the Black community (even though the cafe patio shooting was of an alleged Italian drug trader); debates over about how to weigh prevention with enforcement; new funding announcements for youth programs and anti-gang police initiatives; and more public consultations and reports with recommendations (that would never be, or only selectively be, implemented). The government's response was more about trying to contain a potentially explosive political crisis rather than to actually address the underlying causes of gun violence. The state and the media did not address gun violence as a failure of economic development— especially the lack of good paying jobs and supports for Black men coming out of jail, as well as for single mothers (Lawson 2012; Ezeonu 2008). Rather, emergency meetings reproducing well-trodden out narratives instead worked to segregate gun violence as a problem of “crime” (i.e., crime prevention and the policing of criminals), or at best, a problem of social delinquency requiring additional funding for after-school social programs for “at-risk youth.” To the extent that the economic causes of gun violence were acknowledged by the state, the routine response was to create an insufficient number of short-term summer contract jobs for youth (which were subject to budget cuts in future years once the issue was out of the media spotlight). Writing about failed efforts to address gun violence in Toronto over the past ten years (since the first “Summer of the Gun”), Burale (2015) aptly concludes:
But after the TV crews move on, the police-community bbq’s wrap up, and the funding announcements concluded, the lived experience of the residents of Toronto’s marginalized communities mainly remain unchanged. To say we did or didn’t do enough is exceedingly difficult to determine. However, what is clear, ten years later, is that we did more to manage the problem than actually solve it.
The state's attempt to manage the gun violence problem, and segregate it from economic development, was evident in York South-Weston following Leonard Fullerton's shooting in October of 2012. In light of the all the brazen gun violence that had happened across the city during the summer and fall, a series of meetings were organized in York South-Weston by the local councillors and MPP Albanese, as well as by some social service agencies (see table 9.1). 229
Forum on Community Safety – Social Planning Toronto August 2nd, 2012 Meeting on Gun Violence (York Civic Centre) – Hosted by August 30th, 2012 local politicians Youth Panel on Violence – For Youth Initiative and local September 7th, 2012 politicians Leonard Fullerton memorial – For Youth Initiative November 2nd, 2012 Shooting Debrief – Learning Enrichment Foundation November 8th, 2012 Somali Youth Policy Conference – With support from MPP November 10th, 2012 Albanese Gun Violence Meeting – 30 Denarda Street (site of shooting) – November 14th, 2012 Hosted by Toronto Community Housing, Councillor Nunziata, Toronto Police, and other city departments Film Screening of “The Interrupters” - Hosted by MPP November 22nd, 2012 Albanese & Councillor Di Giorgio, with City of Toronto staff from Toronto Police, Crisis Response Team, Community Development Toronto Community Housing Corporation Special November 23rd, 2012 Security Meeting - Local Councillors Table 9.1 Meetings on gun violence in York South-Weston
In stark contrast to public consultations in York South-Weston around transit developments, or the Mount Dennis economic development workshops discussed in chapter seven, meetings around gun violence were very well attended by racialized residents—especially those from the Caribbean and Somalia. Greater participation of Black residents in these meetings might be because they interpellated gun violence as “their issue.” But participation was also encouraged through the organization of meetings in racialized spaces (e.g. in the gym of a social housing apartment building, and at social service agencies that worked primarily with racialized populations). Space was also deliberately created on panels for people of colour, and residents had opportunities to speak into the microphone from the floor. The number of meetings on gun violence in York South-Weston is impressive, but also reflects a reactive approach taken by the state to entrenched poverty and racism. It took a series of shootings that endangered women and children bystanders before issues that matter to racialized residents were viewed as an “emergency” by the state—and even then, only through the lens of gun violence. The everyday struggles of racialized residents, such as chronic unemployment, precarious work, crowded buses, disrepair of rental units, etc., were not treated as emergencies by the state with each given a series of neighbourhood meetings. Six months after the last meeting on gun violence had taken place a 230
Black women living in the social housing building outside of which Fullerton was shot criticized the state's response to issues facing low-income, racialized residents: “Nothing is being done. They have meetings and nothing is done. ...They only have meetings when somebody is shot.”161 The local councillors and MPP framed gun violence in York South-Weston as a problem of “community safety” and “crime prevention” (with emphasis on one or the other depending on which group of residents were being addressed). The state's discourse on community safety was not-so-thinly veiled as a need for greater policing of low-income, racialized neighbourhoods. Crime prevention was understood as a bureaucratic managerial problem (e.g., how to better manage social service agencies, and youth programs in particular, through better “coordination,” “communication,” and “evaluation”). To the extent that local politicians discussed jobs, it was usually about training and education, rather than job creation or the creation of good-paying jobs. Many solutions to crime proposed by the state (including those coming from politicians, the police, and state-funded social service agencies) emphasized “self-improvement,” through education, after-school programs, counselling, etc. This approach individualizes the causes of criminal behaviour, rather than addressing its political causes, such as structural unemployment, or racism and patriarchy within the labour and housing markets, and justice system (Baszak 2015). Racialized residents used public meetings to transform the framing of gun violence by the state from an individualizing model to a social justice master frame that centred political-economic oppression. This master frame connected many long-standing and inter-connected political grievances: racialized poverty; unemployment; racist police practices (e.g., racial profiling, targeted street checks known as “carding,” and police brutality); a justice system that is quick to put racialized youth into jail but then abandons them coming out; racist hiring practices in the public and private sector; inadequate and unsafe housing; low-paying jobs that keep single mothers away from their children; and a failed school system, especially for immigrant families (e.g., too few teachers hired from immigrant populations; insufficient translation services between parents and teachers; insufficient resources to help students with English as their learned language). Despite attempts by those in power to steer the conversation away from the political-economic drivers of crime, the relationship between jobs and gun violence was a major theme raised by racialized residents of York South-Weston, at the well-attended public meeting that took place on August 30th,
161Focus group interview, May 15, 2013, 30 Denarda, Toronto. This quote also speaks to the challenge of community organizing. People become discouraged and cynical of meetings—whether organized by the state or by community groups—after they fail to see these meetings lead to any concrete changes. 231
2012, at the York Civic Centre. Tellingly, local politicians advertised this meeting as a “Youth Services and Crime Prevention Forum,” in an email that made no mention of jobs, economic development, or any of the other long-standing community grievances listed above (figure 9.1)(Albanese 2012). But community members' pushed back against the state's narrow framing of the discussion.
Figure 9.1 Advertisement for gun violence meeting in York South-Weston, August 30th, 2012
After an hour of rather dry presentations from politicians and social service agencies, racialized residents came to microphone ready to speak their mind with a level of urgency, passion, and candour that had thus far been missing from the meeting. A Somali woman, who had worked in the jails, went to the heart of the problem, explaining how inmates are not connected with a job upon leaving jail:
I speak on behalf of Somali immigrants actually in the communities. The reason why I'm here is that there's issues going and I'm going to speak about those two issues that we have. The one issue that I really want to talk about is we don't do … like the community doesn't do anything with all those people that are going to jail, with the youths that are going to jail. We should provide services and programs for those people that are in jail, you know, the inmates and everything. The second thing is our youths … 232
we don't have no jobs for them. You know, there's like a lot of youths that have diplomas and like, you know, they work hard and they have like a lot of nice things in there. They work hard and everything but they don't have jobs. Because for myself I graduated from Humber College. I was in the police foundations program and I did work with a lot of youth in the jails but they should … we should … the government should really focus on what they're doing in the jail. ...They don't have jobs for those people in … like the youth in jail. They don't have ... because they're criminals and I understand they're criminals. But they should ...get jobs out there. That's the biggest issue that they have basically. Thank you very much.162
In contrast to this speaker, politicians shied away from discussing the obvious need for inmates and ex- convicts (not just “youth”) to be given a job and additional supports once leaving jail, given the additional difficulties they face (e.g. an empty resume, criminal record, social and psychological challenges associated with readjustment, etc.). Echoing the MDWN's work around local economic development, the lack of stable, well-paying jobs in the area was often raised at the meeting by racialized speakers. A presenter from Social Planning Toronto, summarizing a previous “Forum on Community Safety” that took place a month earlier, reported that residents wanted to “make jobs more accessible than guns. The whole issue of the precarious employment, the temporary employment, the contract employment...How do we ensure that our young people are hired in the community?” Several community members spoke about the specific need for creating opportunities in the trades. One man, who had grown up and lived in Priority Neighbourhoods his whole life, spoke surely about how youth could be trained in the trades and given jobs fixing the notorious backlog of repairs in social housing:
I have been living in the Lawrence and Weston area maybe close … a little over 20 years and I grew up in the Jane corridor. Kids have wanted work for a long time. Unfortunately, this government closed down the trade schools. We have to arm our youth not with guns, but with trowels, hammers. And in order to do this, this government has to put in line the Ministry of Labour, the Ministry of Education and the trade unions. Let's work on programs to get two year, four year certificates for them. We need them in Toronto Housing. Our own people could be fixing our houses. But we have to pay them right from the get-go. I say this government puts an initiative in the way we do it with people through COSTI or through Worker's Comp or something like that retraining them. We should not retrain our youth. We should train them from the get-go. Give them that opportunity. Let's open up the trade school. They'll have jobs. The government has to pay them to go to school for those jobs and we will get the guns
162 Youth Services and Crime Prevention Forum, August 30th, 2012, York Civic Centre, Toronto. 233
off the streets.163
Another Caribbean man criticized the state's tacit support of the gun trade, but also emphasized the need to focus less on after-school programs and more on creating jobs in the trades:
So what I'm simply saying is that if you're going to solve the problem with youth violence and all that, we don't own guns, we don't own ships, we don't cross your borders. Find out why the guns are coming here. Stop putting them in the communities. Stop building basketball courts. Trades, trades, trades. Thank you.164
But a Caribbean woman, who had tried to setup a trades school, pointed out that having a criminal record was a major barrier to gaining employment in the trades:
...one of these young persons said we must speak the truth. ... I work as a community advocate to two people over there. One is in line here to ask a question. I never took a penny of funding from anybody. But I fix lives. Now, if you all sit down here and you really are interested, not just in York South-Weston, but as representatives of government, you must listen to the voice of experience. It teaches wisdom. [clapping] ... I spent thousands of dollars setting up a trades centre which none of these bloody governments wanted. In order for you to get these kids out of this setting, first thing, when a child offends, you cannot send them out there into the trades. You must close that criminal record.165
The Member of Parliament for York South-Weston, Mike Sullivan (who had formerly chaired the MDWN), also talked about construction jobs. He used his opening remarks at the meeting to advocate for expanding programs like Hammer Heads that could link transit infrastructure investments with training and jobs for youth from Priority Neighbourhoods:
Some of you will hear from a recent graduate of Hammerheads which is an amazing program creating real jobs, apprenticeships, for kids who need out of the vicious cycle of gangs and drugs and violence that they're in now. And Hammerheads is doing that job. It needs help but it's doing a great job so far. We need to connect the people spending money in this province, something like $10 billion is going to be spent in the next two years on transit improvements in Toronto. We should not be spending $10 billion and not be assisting a bunch of the youth in these areas finding good, well-paying
163Ibid. 164Ibid. 165Ibid. 234
jobs so they can get out of the cycle of poverty and violence that they're now in. And I call upon the provincial government to make that a reality, to make it necessary for the contractors that are getting access to this $10 billion of our money to hire our kids. To put our kids and our grandkids into good jobs in the ridings where it needs to happen. In York South-Weston, in the Jane-Finch area, in Regent Park. In all of the 13 priority neighbourhoods in Toronto. If we've got the money to spend let's spend it on making sure that these kids get good jobs.166
The comments made by these residents and Sullivan certainly aligned with the community benefits advocacy of the MDWN. And these meetings no doubt put pressure on the provincial government to become more open to the notion of a community benefits agreement, and to launch the GTS Employment Initiative that fall (which included a special Hammer Heads class sponsored by Metrolinx). At the York Civic Centre meeting, Michael Coteau, the Ontario Minister of Children and Youth Services, alluded to the these two initiatives when detailing the response of his government to the demands for jobs being raised by residents:
We've met with different organized labour groups, the trades, apprenticeships, big business. And what we're planning to do is to set up a private sector job initiative and we're going to ask the private sector to step up and start creating jobs and target the specific communities where kids need it the most.167
But rather than solving unemployment in York-South Weston, the state largely took a law-and- order approach, investing millions of dollars a year for new “community policing” initiatives targeting poor, racialized communities (J. Rankin and Winsa 2012). Starting in 2006, the Ontario Government spent $5 million per year to fund the Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy (TAVIS). TAVIS has been criticized for over-patrolling poor, racialized communities, including the use of a “carding” program whereby police officers stopped and questioned residents to gather information. Carding has led to the racial profiling of residents in poor neighbourhoods, especially young Black men. On July 23, 2012, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty made the province's contribution “permanent” after a high-profile meeting with Mayor Rob Ford and Police Chief Bill Blair (Dale 2012). Additional state funding was provided for “crime prevention” programs, such as after-school arts and recreation
166Ibid. 167Ibid. Coteau was in charge of handling the Ontario Government's response to the gun violence, and was one of only two Black MPPs. Coteau highlighted the government's efforts to create 4,000 youth job opportunities (although these were only summer jobs) as well as new funding to create 800 youth mentorship jobs based in Greater Toronto Area schools. The deficiency in the government's approach to youth employment, as a solution to gun violence, is seen in the small number and short-term nature of these jobs, as well as the fact that these jobs were not explicitly targeted towards marginalized youth. 235 programs, and skills training (e.g., as part of Toronto's Priority Neighbourhoods strategy). This approach viewed crime as an outcome of youth “idleness,” or the moral and cultural deficiency of particular groups (e.g., young, poor, racialized) rather than as a consequence of unemployment (Harvey 2012). Such an approach became the bread and butter for social service agencies servicing “at-risk youth,” but largely failed to address the broader political and economic drivers of crime. One MDWN member voiced their frustration with after-school programs as a solution for reducing gang activity:
Why do people join gangs? Because they have a sense of respect and belonging which they don’t get in the general community... And these are the people that we hope are going to take over from us. They’re going to be our future citizens and we’re going “Oh. No.” Because you know what? You meet them individually, they’re great kids. They’re great, they’re intelligent. But the thing is they’ve become disenfranchised. And we throw programs at them which are stop-gaps... “Oh yeah, basketball! Yeah.” Umm, how’s that going to lead to something that’s going to pay them so that they’ll go to college or that they’ll have some kind of meaningful job when they leave?... Why shouldn’t they get involved in drugs? They can get an SUV, they can have the lifestyle. You know? They’ll do time but they can’t see that.168
The meetings on gun violence demonstrated, at once, the need, the potential, and the challenges for alliance-forming in York South-Weston. Although the MDWN's diagnostic and prognostic framing of a community benefits agreements aligned considerably with the diagnostic and prognostic framing by participants at these gun violence meetings, these different groups never organized themselves together politically—i.e., collectively and on an on-going basis—to ensure that their overlapping concerns were addressed by those in power. The participation of (predominantly Black) residents at gun violence meetings in York South-Weston was on an individual, rather than collective, basis.169 This made it more difficult for residents to hold politicians to account after the immediate crisis for the government had subsided. Individuals came to public meetings, “vented” their frustrations, and then went home as individuals, feeling either content that they had “spoken their mind,” or feeling unheard and disenfranchised without any recourse. Missing was the motivational framing that would have encouraged people to take collective action. No political organizations (rather than social service agencies) were at these meetings actively trying to organize a collective response. This proved to be a
168Research participant (ID008), interview by author, September 4, 2013. 169One resident expressed his desire for greater political organization amongst Black residents so their concerns were better addressed by the state: “We [Black residents] are not organized. The other groups, they all have their organizations, but not us.” 236 strategic failure of the MDWN. Organizing meetings on gun violence thus became an effective tool for the state to absorb or dissipate—in other words, manage—wide-spread frustration in the community, especially amongst racialized residents, without ever having to change the status quo very much. Similarly, the GTS Employment Initiative and Metrolinx's funding of a single Hammer Heads class of pre-apprentices as discussed in chapter eight must be understood in this context as a relatively cheap public relations response to the deep-seated problems voiced by low-income and racialized residents. These meetings revealed that the primary means through which Black residents have found themselves able to influence economic policy is through their advocacy around gun violence. Participation of racialized residents was disproportionately very low at the many other meetings being held in the community around land use planning, transit projects, and economic development.170 This contrasted with the MDWN's strategy and capacity to shape economic policy through lobbying, by pushing the state to run economic development workshops, and through accessing negotiations with Metrolinx for a community benefits agreement linked to transit development. While both of these conversations were ultimately aimed at addressing high levels of racialized poverty in the area, their separation marked a failure of alliance-forming between these two groups of actors within York South- Weston (as much as it was a success for the hegemonic bloc in keeping these groups from uniting politically). The following section examines additional factors that hindered cross-class, multi-ethno- racial alliance-forming in York South-Weston.
“Two different Mount Dennis Westons”
In his presentation at the MDWN's 2012 January re-visioning working, a community planner and Project Co-ordinator for Action for Neighbourhood Change (ANC), spoke of “two different Mount Dennis Westons: one where people are more plugged in and perhaps better off; the other where people are struggling to get by, and who recently moved into Toronto and are attracted to the area by cheaper rents and family or social networks.”171 According to the ANC Coordinator, sixty-one percent of the neighbourhood was visible minority and there is a high level of transiency with fifty percent of the population moving out every four to five years. Many residents who are racialized, recent immigrants, single-mothers, or disabled, seek out the cheaper rents in the neighbourhood's low-income and public
170 See footnote 149 in chapter eight. 171 MDWN Visioning Workshop, January 27th, 2012, Mount Dennis United Church. 237 housing apartment buildings. In York South-Weston, Black residents are more concentrated along Weston Road and the northwestwardly rail corridor, where there are more apartment buildings and multi-story rental buildings, while white residents are more concentrated in enclaves of older, detached homes (see figure 9).172
Figure 9.2 Dot map of York South-Weston. Each dot represents one person based on the 2011 Canadian Census and National Household Survey, and coloured according to visible minority status. Green dots represent Black residents, predominantly along the rail corridor and Weston Road running diagonally (northwestwardly). Blue dots represent white residents, red dots represent Asians, brown dots represent South Asian, and yellow dots represent other/mixed. Extracted from Jeff Clark (2013).
The Project Coordinator's concern that racialized tenants in York-South Weston were less politically organized, echoed the reflections of local resident who had worked with the ANC as a community researcher:
The homeowners of Weston - Mount Dennis are well-organized; they have numerous organizations that ensure that they have a strong voice and input in any changes that are happening in the area. The problem is tenants are not always included and little space for their participation is created. Tenants need to be engaged in order to make these organizations truly reflective of the diversity in the area.(Robest 2010)
172 This reflects conclusions of two quantitative studies on home ownership in Toronto that both conclude that that Black home ownership is disproportionately lower than for whites at every socio-economic and demographic level (Skaburskis 1996; Darden and Kamel 2000). 238
The concerns raised by Action for Neighbourhood Change over a lack of political voice amongst low-income and racialized residents in York South-Weston were also discussed by the Mount Dennis Weston Network. At the MDWN's year-end barbecue held on June 5, 2013, sixteen of us gathered to reflect on the past year-and-a-half and to brainstorm where to go with the MDWN. One of the only Black members of the MDWN identified the lack of ethno-racial diversity within the membership of the MDWN as a major challenge to addressing the community's problems:
I just have one concern looking around this group. And I look at the population out there and we are not represented....So we haven’t even got the voices.173
Reinforcing this sentiment, two of the five key themes that would emerge throughout the year-end meeting were “integration” and “engagement” (the others being “jobs,” “poverty & social services,” and “the environment”). The MDWN was aware that its collective identity did not overlap with the collective identities of marginalized residents living in the community. Despite being self-aware that the coalition lacked diversity, the MDWN nevertheless struggled to build a multi-ethno-racial, cross- class, coalition. Alliance-forming was constrained by several factors: socio-ecological contradictions; the MDWN's organizing model; legal and political constraints imposed on social service agencies; and inter-organizational differences (i.e., frame disputes, and contrasting organizational cultures related to differences in collective identities).
Socio-ecological Contradictions
The socio-ecological contradictions of deindustrialization and urban renewal created barriers for cross-class, multi-ethno-racial alliance-forming. As I have discussed in previous chapters, the MDWN struggled to organize a common sense around their vision for green economic development. The MDWN's demands for good-paying (unionized) jobs, and green jobs in particular, came into tension with the immediate demands by low-income residents for any job (e.g., retail jobs, or jobs in environmentally-destructive industries). The MDWN failed to develop concrete plans, and clear sense, about how marginalized residents living in York South-Weston would come to access the good-paying manufacturing jobs it was advocating for. Although the “green jobs” framing may not have been salient 173MDWN Meeting & Year-End BBQ, June 5th, 2013, at the Learning Enrichment Foundation, Toronto. Sixteen people attended this meeting. 239 to marginalized residents in the neighbourhood, it must be pointed out that cultivating environmental values and motivating collective action around those values amongst any social groups is a deep ideological challenge for environmentalism (Dietz, Fitzgerald, and Shwom 2005; Kennedy et al. 2009). As I have pointed out, even within the MDWN there were frame disputes over championing specifically green job creation. The issues being discussed by the MDWN (e.g., design plans for the Kodak lands, park redevelopment, and a community benefits agreement for the future light rail transit maintenance and storage facility) may have seemed far removed from the day-to-day problems facing low-income residents in the neighbourhood (e.g., the immediate need for jobs; unresponsive landlords; over- crowded transit; police harassment and brutality; daycare; gun violence; etc.). Moreover, immediate everyday livelihood struggles can become so time-consuming that it interferes with residents' participation in community groups or coalitions, especially low-income residents who are more likely to be working multiple jobs and evening shifts, and who have longer daily commutes. Two racialized members of the community who attended a MDWN meeting in the spring of 2013 following the MDWN's Family Day event, wanted to support the development of commercial urban agriculture in the area. They voiced their support for the MDWN's work, but said they simply did not have the time to attend future meetings because they were too busy looking for work and commuting outside of the community to tend to their garden plots. Urban workers experience contradictions in their coinciding roles as producers, consumers, and residents. Low-income residents are threatened by “urban revitalization,” which causes rents to increase, even while gentrification may offer at least some of these residents employment opportunities (e.g. in new restaurants or retail stores). As much as marginalized residents want good-paying jobs associated with public transit development, and so would have supported the MDWN's push for a community benefits agreement (CBA), they might also fear that if they fail to get one of these good- paying jobs, transit-oriented development will simply raise their rent beyond their means, forcing them out of the community. Similarly, although some of the MDWN's proposals for the Kodak lands and surrounding area would have constrained gentrification (e.g., green manufacturing), other proposals encouraged gentrification (e.g., park redevelopment, attracting a high-tech incubator or post-secondary satellite campus).174 These contradictions within the MDWN's mission and proposals, may have led marginalized residents to respond to the MDWN with suspicion.
174According to interview participants, the MDCA did discuss and debate how redevelopment proposals for the Kodak lands would affect different socio-economic groups of residents due to land value changes. 240
Limits of the MDWN's Organizing Model
In addition to (and especially given) these contradictions, the MDWN's organizing model was insufficient for broadening its membership beyond its existing collective identity. There were few people within the MDWN committed to sustained outreach into the community—something that takes considerable amounts of time, energy, and tact. The MDWN had no clear organizing strategy beyond bringing together representatives of social service agencies and other organizations operating in the area, and having members reach out to people within their own existing social networks. The MDWN was given some dedicated outreach support through a university-funded community-research project named Anti-Poverty Community Organizing and Learning (APCOL) with the aim of engaging marginalized residents in a movement for developing and winning community benefits agreement linked to local infrastructure projects (see chapter eight). By hiring two residents from the area as community researchers—including a young mother who had immigrated from Somalia, and a young father who had immigrated from Jamaica—the MDWN did succeed in temporarily connecting with groups of residents that the coalition had historically struggled to reach (namely, residents living in low-income apartment buildings, racialized immigrants, and young parents). This demonstrates the importance of supporting activists who have lived and embodied experiences with oppression to become leaders and (should resources be available) paid staff members of labour-community coalitions. But the APCOL funding was only short-term and the uncertain prospect of winning a CBA failed to maintain people's interest in the MDWN. Paradoxically, the MDWN struggled to recruit marginalized residents with whom its members worked closely on an everyday basis. Organizations making-up the coalition included: social service agencies that directly serviced marginalized residents in York South-Weston; the MDCA, which ran activities for low-income residents; and a member-driven organization, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), that fought for the rights of low-income tenants.175 For its
175 Organizationally, the MDWN was anchored by a the Mount Dennis Community Association—a group of predominantly white, middle-class, homeowners (and some renters). The MDCA formed out of concerns for the local environment, city beautification, and social justice. The MDCA organized several activities in the community geared at supporting the area's low-income residents, such as the construction of an outdoor skating rink with free skate rentals, and a free fishing day at the nearby Humber river. Some members of the MDCA and MDWN were part of the Mount Dennis United Church, and helped run a “community kitchen” in the church basement so that low-income residents could cook healthy, affordable, meals, in addition to having access to computers. The Learning Enrichment Foundation (LEF), which was the largest social agency operating in York South-Weston, was a member of the MDWN. LEF offered employment counselling and support services, basic skills training and 241 part, the MDCA had only limited results trying to invite low-income residents living in the neighbourhood's apartment buildings to its meetings (see chapter six). Interview participants discussed the difficulties trying to gain access to apartment building mail rooms in order to distribute flyers for the meeting. ACORN played an important role in fostering collaboration between low-income tenants and the MDWN during the coalition's first phase of activities (2007-2010) (see chapter six). But as I discussed, the participation of ACORN members faded once MDWN meetings turned overly partisan, and discussion became “too high level” (i.e., in an inaccessible language, and on topics that failed to resonate with participants' everyday struggles).176 The MDWN therefore not only struggled to recruit marginalized residents but also failed create an inviting meeting space that would retain their interest. Notably, the MDWN CBA proposals failed to incorporate any of ACORN members' concerns over low-income housing, and the TCBN's proposal for a CBA intentionally excluded mention of ex- offenders. This type of exclusionary boundary work was not conducive to cross-class, multi-ethno- racial alliance-forming.
Apolitical social service agencies
For their part, the social service agencies that were part of the MDWN, such as the Learning Enrichment Foundation or For Youth Initiative, did not try to recruit their clients as a way of building- up and broadening the coalition's membership base. The constrictive legal and political context in which social service agencies operate in Canada restrict social service agencies from engaging in political organizing. Many social service agencies are charities which are expressly barred from any partisan activity. Charities can use up to ten per cent of their budget towards promoting public policy
language programs, immigration resettlement services, youth programs, childcare services, and other supports for families. For Youth Initiative, another social agency participating in the second phase of the MDWN (2011-2013), offered a range of programs to help marginalized youth succeed in school, find employment, and navigate the transition to adulthood. The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a member-driven organization representing low-income residents, established its first Toronto chapter in Weston/Mount Dennis in 2004. ACORN was most active during the first phase of the MDWN (2007-2010). ACORN helped low-income tenants organize against absentee landlords to improving living conditions in apartment buildings, and protect their affordability. Of course, Labour Council too was a member of the MDWN, although only had indirect contact with working-class residents of York South-Weston who happened to be members of trade unions that were affiliated with Labour Council. Labour Council also organized conferences and workshops that brought together community organizations and union activists from across the city (e.g. the annual Aboriginal/Workers of Colour Conference). 176By the time of the MDWN's second phase, ACORN had lost some key organizers, weakening its capacity to mobilize residents and to collaborate with the MDWN. 242 positions. But starting in 2012, the Conservative Federal Government put a political chill across the non-profit sector by directing the Canada Revenue Agency to audit charities to see if they were engaging in inappropriate, or too much, political activity (De Souza 2013). Organizations doing environmental and social justice work have been targeted by these audits which, if inappropriate spending was discovered, could strip organizations of their charitable (tax exempt) status. The MDWN was explicitly a non-partisan organization and open to the participation of all political parties and social service agencies. But some agencies in York South-Weston still considered the MDWN “too political” to be associated with it.177 Some social service agencies in York South- Weston may have therefore stayed clear of participating in the MDWN not only because they fear losing their charitable status (however unlikely), but also because their operating funds depended on the support (or neutrality) of sitting politicians that were antagonistic to the MDWN. Given the general lack of political organization within most low-income and racialized communities, the reluctance of social service agencies that operate in these communities to engage in political activity (even moderate, non-partisan activity) presents a major challenge for labour-community alliance-forming.
Inter-organizational Tensions between the MDWN and ANC/WELED
Other challenges involved in building a cross-class, multi-ethno-racial coalition in York South- Weston through inter-organizational collaboration (vs. recruitment of individuals) can be understood by analyzing the inability of the MDWN and Action for Neighbourhood Change (ANC) to work together to influence the area's economic development despite having overlapping missions. ANC projects were established in thirteen “priority neighbourhoods” identified across Toronto, including Weston-Mount Dennis, for their lack of social services and high levels of poverty. Priority Neighbourhoods and ANCs were part of the United Way's “Building Strong Neighbourhoods Strategy” launched in 2005 following the United Way's groundbreaking report “Poverty by Postal Code” (United Way of Greater Toronto and Canadian Council on Social Development 2004). This report revealed the socio-spatialization of poverty in Toronto's inner suburbs, and took on a political urgency following the notorious 2005 177The reputation of the MDWN as a “political” organization comes from their advocacy around the Kodak lands, and the often heated partisan exchanges that characterized MDWN meetings, particularly before 2011. Some of the key members of the MDWN were known to be heavily involved in the provincial and federal election campaigns of the New Democratic Party (NDP), and the Chair of the MDWN would go on to become elected as an NDP Member of Parliament for York South-Weston. During the 2010 municipal election, members of the MDWN were accused of distributing a poster that negatively portrayed the incumbent councillor—who went on to take powerful positions as a member of the Executive Committee. This poster incident had significant ramifications for the Toronto Good Jobs Coalition, leading several agencies to withdraw from the coalition. 243
“summer of the gun” (Lorinc 2015; Dempsey 2012). On paper, the missions of ANC and the MDWN were very similar: both focused on engaging and empowering residents, neighbourhood economic development, poverty-alleviation, and sustainability. The state goal of ANC in Weston-Mount Dennis was to “provide an approach to locally- driven neighbourhood revitalization that can enhance the capacity of individuals and families to build and sustain strong, healthy communities” (ANC 2015). The aim of the ANC project was “to work with local residents, not-for-profit agencies and public/private sector partners to combine local resources in new ways to develop creative locally-based solutions for sustainable community development and neighbourhood revitalization” (ANC 2015). Similarly, the purpose of the MDWN was to bring “like- minded organizations and individuals” together “to affect decision making in the York South-Weston area of Toronto” (Mount Dennis Weston Network 2007). The MDWN's vision was that: “Through the policies and practices of sustainable development, York South-Weston develops a strong economy in which all people can live to their potential, are engaged, are respected and can prosper within a clean and healthy environment” (Mount Dennis Weston Network 2007). ANC was part of the MDWN during its first phase of activities (see chapter six). According to one ANC organizer who had been active at the time, participating in the network was “an obvious thing to do, because it was political,” and saw the ANC's role as “trying to actually get a more diverse group of people, a more broad-based group of people at that [MDWN] table and make it not so much a table, not all this talking heads stuff.”178 But after a new Project Coordinator came to ANC around 2008, it developed a new focus and pulled away from participating in the MDWN. In 2009, the ANC initiated WELED (West End Local Economic Development) in collaboration with Social Planning Toronto and financed by two community-university action research projects—one focusing on anti-poverty organizing and social movement learning (Oldynski 2012), and the other focused on neighbourhood gentrification (K. Rankin, Kamizaki, and McLean 2013). In addition to sharing a similar mission aimed at empowering residents to influence the area's economic development, both the MDWN and WELED/ANC drew financial and technical support from a common university research project (i.e. Anti-Poverty Community Organizing and Learning based at the University of Toronto). Although the ANC Project Coordinator spoke at the MDWN's January 2012 re-visioning workshop, and members of the MDWN attended presentations by the WELED/ANC project, these groups held separate meetings and did not collaborate around local economic development
178Research participant (ID006), interview by author, August 29, 2012. 244 initiatives.179 What is important for our analysis of alliance-forming is that the contrasting demographic and socio-economic characteristics of the area, described above as “two different Mount Dennis Westons,” were reflected organizationally in the composition of the MDWN and WELED/ANC. Participants involved with WELED/ANC tended to be younger, racialized, residents who rent homes (along with several white researchers of mixed income levels who live outside the community). In contrast, the MDWN was comprised of a much higher proportion of older, white, home-owning residents.180 These contrasting collective identities meant that socio-cultural interactions between members of each organization were uncommon which worked against a culture of solidarity from organically forming. But differences in collective identities between these groups should not be reduced to demographic characteristics. I argue that the MDWN and WELED/ANC organizations also failed to collaborate due to ideological differences about job creation strategies, and green economic development in particular.
Socio-cultural Differences
Social and organizational cultural differences between WELED/ANC and MDWN inhibited their collaboration. Community organization meetings are not only political; they are also a social experience for friends and neighbours to hang-out with one another (i.e. socialize, discuss, rant, reflect, etc.). WELED/ANC was comprised of mostly younger, racialized residents, many living in rented apartments, who may not have identified with the older, predominantly white MDWN membership— many whom are home owners. These two groups do not have strong socio-cultural overlap, or what I discuss in chapter two in terms of shared collective identities and socio-organizational resources. So it is not surprising that the different networks of people making up WELED/ANC and MDWN—social networks heavily created through different racialized and classed practices—were attracted to different spaces for “hanging-out.” The lack of regular social interactions meant that these activists could not build trust and mutual understanding. Had the two organizations tried to collaborate more (e.g., through joint meetings) they may also have experienced some tensions in terms of meeting cultures. Meetings were conducted differently in each organization. WELED/ANC meetings were carried out more casually as a group discussion, and
179WELED would end its activities once funding from the university research project concluded in 2012. 180Both the MDWN and WELED/ANC hired community researchers, but the MDWN was comprised of a greater number of volunteers from the community. 245 politicians were not present. In contrast, MDWN meetings were more formal, facilitated by a meeting chair, and had a pre-circulated agenda. The MDWN had more people at their meetings making free- flowing discussion much harder. The members of the MDWN included representatives from organized labour who were more familiar and comfortable with a formal meeting style (i.e. having a meeting chair; an agenda; adoption of minutes; motions; etc.). Another reason the MDWN had more formal meetings was to ensure that politicians from different parties, or their representatives, who attended Network meetings did not monopolize the space for partisan gains.181 Because only a couple of members of the MDWN and WELED/ANC attended one another's meetings, and only a few times each, it is difficult to determine the extent to which contrasting meeting cultures and collective identities affected people's decision to participate or to withdraw in these groups. I did observe that participation during MDWN and TCBN meetings was uneven, with less space given to racialized residents to speak (especially racialized women). This suggests that the meeting cultures of the MDWN and TCBN were not fully conducive to everyone's equal participation. Overall, language at MDWN meetings was respectful, and free of racist, sexist, and homophobic comments, and several MDWN members explicitly acknowledged their positions of privilege; nevertheless, the few occasions that racist attitudes or ideas surfaced, would have certainly turned away racialized members from participating. Further research should investigate how oppressive social relations within these coalitions impacted their ability to institutionally broaden and ideologically deepen.
Contrasting Strategic Visions
Collaboration between WELED/ANC and the MDWN was frustrated by their different strategic visions (prognostic and motivational framing) for bringing about neighbourhood “revitalization.” The WELED initiative promoted the creation or strengthening of small businesses along Weston Road—the main artery running through the community182—in the hope that income-generating opportunities would be created in the short term. The political orientation of those leading WELED/ANC was explicitly aimed at supporting recent, racialized immigrants who had, or wanted to own, small businesses.183 In contrast, the MDWN's focus was on the future, larger-scale economic redevelopment
181 While this had been an issue in the past, during the course of my participation in the MDWN, between 2011-2013, meetings had mellowed out, with far less of a partisan tone. Those attending meetings recognized that partisanship had turned off some people from wanting to participate in the MDWN. 182Weston Road can be seen in figure 9.1 running diagonally (northwestwardly), populated on either side with a predominantly Black population—one of the most concentrated in Toronto. 183The power of the “entrepreneurial spirit” to create jobs and lift people out of poverty is a dominant narrative reproduced 246 of the abandoned Kodak industrial lands. The MDWN initially focused on attracting large companies working in the green economy, and then later tried to win local hiring provisions for the operation and construction of public transit infrastructure projects. Representatives of organized labour involved with the MDWN brought with them a history of union organizing that was skeptical of small businesses to drive the creation of a large number of jobs, or to pay much above minimum wage. A major concern raised by the WELED initiative was the displacement of renters, including small immigrant-owned businesses, due to gentrification (McLean, Rankin, and Kamizaki 2015). In contrast, the MDWN did not tackle the problem of gentrification.184 Most significantly, the MDWN's proposals for a CBA linked to the Eglinton Crosstown LRT project failed to incorporate demands for protecting affordable housing. Land values (and rent) would increase due to the public investments in transit infrastructure. Some members within the TCBN did later consider ways of incorporating concerns over housing affordability into a legally-binding CBA. But few policy instruments exist within Ontario and Toronto's land-use planning regime that could be included in a CBA to force developers to build affordable housing units, or that could restrict rent increases in a particular area185 The MDWN and WELED/ANC would have needed to support social movement organizations across Toronto pushing for public investments in social housing, and strengthened rent control legislation. WELED/ANC did not share the MDWN's explicit focus on green economic development. Both the ANC and the MDWN have “sustainable development” as part of their mission statements. But the Project Coordinator of the ANC raised a number of conceptual and organizing challenges with the MDWN's green agenda. Following their extended research with ANC/WELED, McLean et al. (2015, 1289) observe that ANC/WELED had grown increasingly concerned that “arts-led” and “green” strategies for neighbourhood revitalization (e.g., farmers' markets, community mural programs, place- marketing brands, flower stalls, bicycle paths, and coffee shops): “overlooked the perspectives and
by the state and by many immigrants themselves who see owning a small business as a way to further oneself in a new country. Canadian immigration policy has also favoured business-class immigrants (Wong 2003). But an approach to alleviating poverty based on entrepreneurialism, tends to individualize the problem, and fails to address the political causes of widespread structural unemployment (Baszak 2015). For a more sympathetic analysis of the social and economic role of small-businesses for low-income and racialized residents of York South-Weston, see: McLean, Rankin, and Kamizaki (2015), Rankin and McLean (2015), and Rankin, Kamizaki, and McLean (2013). 184Around 2009, the MDCA—a member organization of the MDWN—did invite Michael Shapcotte of the Wellesley Institute, to discuss inclusionary zoning, and to consider the impact that intensification pressures related to transit projects would have on the community. 185 Other jurisdictions have inclusionary zoning policies (Mah 2009). The use of land value capture strategies could also raise property taxes (collected on the land value uplift) that could be devoted to building social housing (although investments in social housing could also be made regardless). In May 2017, the government passed legislation to extend rent controls—currently capped at 2.5% per year—to all new building units. But landlords can still increase rent to new tenants without any restrictions, so current rent control laws do not protect against gentrification in the long run. 247 experiences of local shop keepers and that they could set in motion processes of displacement that would favor commercial enterprises considered more desirable for creative-city planning.” As I have argued in chapter five, consent for the urban sustainability fix in a given locale is organized, in part, through geographically displacing or externalizing the social and environmental costs associated with the fix onto less powerful social groups. The tension between the ANC/WELED and the MDWN reflects this dynamic, with ANC/WELED worried that the MDWN's green agenda would facilitate gentrification, displacing small businesses owned by racialized immigrants (and low-income tenants). The ANC Project Coordinator also noted that the term “green” is used too narrowly and often excludes sustainable livelihood strategies already undertaken by the poor, such as sewing-clubs.186 Sewing-clubs are a good example of an activity that has a positive, if under-appreciated, environmental impacts (i.e. repairing clothes rather than throwing them away). The Project Coordinator argued that sewing-clubs (like community gardening) also serve as important social networking sites that can help facilitate marginalized residents engagement with other community activities and politics, starting from where their immediate needs lie. As mentioned, organizing politically around a call for green jobs is also difficult when residents who are struggling for basic survival are worried about getting any job, let alone a green one, or a good-paying one. Even during the first phase of the MDWN (when the ANC was part of the MDWN), ANC organizers identified tensions surrounding the MDWN's environmental orientation:
...there was some conflict with, not conflict, but just a tension, whatever you want to call it, between people who were interested in the environmental piece and again, going back to the single mothers just struggling to keep their heads above water, like the environment was just not really a key part of it. And again, it seemed like kind of a frivolous thing. Like, “yeah, okay, maybe once I get the kids raised, I can start thinking about that.” But just in the reality of the moment. Or you know, substance abuse issues, just other things.187
As this quote reveals, marginalized workers often come to perceive and experience a trade- off between a need for a livelihood and addressing environmental problems. The challenge and art of cross-class, multi-ethno-racial alliance-forming is to try to transcend socio- ecological contradictions by linking struggles over workers' immediate economic needs with people's long-term struggles for socio-ecological reproduction.
186MDWN Visioning Workshop, January 27th, 2012, Mount Dennis United Church. 187Interview with participant ID006, August 29, 2012. 248
Much of the MDWN's work has been oriented towards helping marginalized residents find economic opportunities in the neighbourhood. The MDWN fought against real estate developers converting the Kodak lands into a big box retail complex, arguing that residents deserved accessible, good-paying, (green) manufacturing jobs, and that local small businesses (including those owned by people of colour) should be protected. The MDWN also campaigned subsequently for local hiring initiatives meant to ensure that marginalized residents benefit from public transit infrastructure investments. Despite its concerns for social justice, the MDWN did not always frame its green economic proposals in ways that were decidedly pro-poor. The underlying socio-ecological contradictions of capitalism mean that pro-poor approaches to green economic development are quickly sidelined by those in power, prompting social movement groups like the MDWN to shift towards more reformist interventions (e.g., promoting “clean tech incubators,” a satellite college campus, sustainable building and site design, “green-scaping”, etc.). Some of these proposals for green economic development appealed to the dominant real estate-led urban growth regime, that has increasingly used environmental “clean-up” as a justification and tool for gentrification.
Conclusion
Building solidarities across class and ethno-racial differences is a major challenge for social movements that are trying to mediate socio-ecological fixes or otherwise assert a right to the city. Community groups—especially those bound narrowly by specific ethno-racial collective identities— can rarely gain enough political power by themselves to effect broader social or socio-ecological change. Indeed, the containment or segregation of groups according to class, race, gender, or other differences, has always allowed those in power to maintain hegemonic control: divide and conquer. A related mechanism of power is to individualize resistance as we saw through public consultations on gun violence that allowed individuals to “vent” their frustrations but which did not lead to concrete actions since there was no counter-hegemonic collective ready to hold the government to account. By undermining the formation of counter-hegemonic collectives the state can organize socio-ecological fixes that only very weakly addressed concerns about jobs, social justice, and the environment while greatly deepening the production of neoliberal cities (e.g., through privatization and gentrification). Counter-hegemonic alliance-forming involves social movement learning. Individuals as well as 249 organizations undergo an ideological repositioning through which they begin to see the struggles of others as part of their own. Alliance-forming is therefore both a process of ideological deepening as well as institutional broadening. The task for organic intellectuals is to facilitate cooperation and build solidarities both within and across organizations. In York South-Weston, the MDWN itself was an example of ideological deepening and institutional broadening. The MDWN's mission was always to fuse issues of local economic development, social justice, and the environment. Throughout its first and second phases, the MDWN gradually deepened its concern and understanding of the linkages between poverty, equity, and urban development culminating in its demands for a community benefits agreement. The MDWN brought together neighbourhood activists, representatives from member-driven organizations, and social service agencies. The MDWN framed its mission in terms of helping residents who had wide-ranging collective identities: home owners; low-income tenants; racialized youth; recent immigrants; environmentalists; single parents; and workers; however, all these voices were not well-represented at MDWN meetings—especially the voices of racialized and low-income residents. The MDWN's failure to strengthen participation from amongst low-income and racialized residents significantly weakened its ability to realize its green economic development proposals and to force the hand of Metrolinx in negotiations for a CBA. This chapter has analyzed factors that undermined cross-class, multi-ethno-racial alliance- forming in York South-Weston—even at a time when the legitimacy of the state in addressing racialized poverty was under intense scrutiny. These factors include tensions at multiple scales, from the inter-personal and inter-organizational, to broader socio-ecological contradictions that condition social movement coalition-building. The state used a discourse of community safety in response to high profile shootings to try to ideologically separate “Black issues,” centred on crime and gun violence, from broader debates and political organizing around urban renewal. Alliance-forming was also hampered by the MDWN's lack of sustained outreach into the community; the apolitical stance taken by social service agencies that are meant to be supporting marginalized residents; the contrasting strategic priorities between the MDWN and ANC/WELED; and differences in the socio-cultural networks or collective identities shared by MDWN members (but not shared by low-income and racialized members). Transcending all of these contradictions and tensions goes beyond the capacity of the MDWN acting alone. But this analysis does point to several strategies for improving social movement alliance- 250 forming in York South-Weston, and beyond. First, social movement groups must develop an analysis of how the state and other power holders are trying to create or exploit socio-cultural differences to produce or stoke political divisions. While I have focused on overcoming divisions produced through class oppression and racism, social movement coalitions can also build political strength by transcending divisions created by patriarchy, homophobia, transphobia, ablism, and xenophobia. At the organizational scale, social movement groups and individual activists must not only identify privilege, but also become more reflexive about how positions of privilege have shaped strategic priorities, issue framing, organizational cultures, and models of outreach and engagement. Coalitions must engage in what Ganz (2000, 1016) calls “regular, open and authoritative deliberation” so that all members feel that their beliefs, ideas, values, and concerns are being recognized and considered by the collective. More space must be created for frank dialogue between social movement groups, recognizing the challenges for frankness given the uneven power relations between and within these groups. As discussed in chapter two, this type of reflection and cognitive praxis requires fostering a learning space of equal status within the coalition. If concrete collaboration is not immediately possible between different organizations, it is important to increase long-term socio-cultural interactions. Through joint meetings, attending one another's events, providing political endorsements, writing joint statements, and so forth, members of different organizations can begin to build familiarity, establish trust, and engage in working relationships that over time will develop into a culture of solidarity and opportunities for strategic collaboration. Building cross-class, multi-ethno-racial coalitions also requires building the strategic leadership capacity of members coming from equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups who share collective identities with the groups of people the coalition is meant to be helping. The success of the Family Day workshop at reaching equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups demonstrates the importance of using affirmative action policies when hiring staff. All members of a coalition must be reflexive of their privilege and positionalities to ensure that they are creating welcoming and meaningful spaces for equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged participants at all levels of the organization. A longer term goal of social movement organizing is to address the socio-ecological contradictions of capitalism that are used to politically divide subaltern groups, e.g., by creating trade- offs between jobs and the environment, or between workers' needs as producers, consumers, and 251 residents. As a practical step, the government must be pressured into developing policy tools for constraining gentrification (e.g., inclusionary zoning laws). Addressing the entrenched socio-ecological contradictions of capitalism requires social movement groups to increase their power through an ideological repositioning, as discussed above, and a much stronger commitment to “door-to-door” and “member-to-member” organizing. The legal and political restrictions placed on social service agencies currently frustrate organizing efforts. Removing these restrictions would involve restructuring how social service agencies are funded, creating longer-term funding arrangements, or eliminating social service agencies and delivering needed social programs directly through the state. 252
Chapter 10
Scaling-up Demands for a Community Benefits Agreement: The Toronto Community Benefits Network (2013-2015)
The following two chapters analyze the emergence, development, efficacy and impact of a labour-community coalition called the Toronto Community Benefits Network (TCBN) between 2013- 2015.188 Compared with the Mount Dennis Weston Network the TCBN had a broader (city-wide) geographical scope, a more ethno-racially diverse membership and greater institutional resources. The TCBN was established in 2013 when the Mount Dennis Weston Network joined with new partners from across Toronto in an effort to win a community benefits agreement (CBA) for the construction of the $6.6 billion Eglinton Crosstown light rail transit project.189 The Crosstown ran across Toronto's mid-town, between Mount Dennis in the west and the existing Kennedy subway terminal in the east (figure 10.1). The Crosstown was part of a socio-ecological fix aimed at reducing congestion, improving the circulation of capital, increasing mid-town land values and creating profitable investments for the construction sector (see chapter five). To justify the large public investment and respond to various social movement demands, the provincial government extolled the project's regional and global environmental benefits while promising it would create 46,000 jobs.190 This rhetoric sounded good at a high-level, but the TCBN demanded that benefits scale-down to Toronto's poorest neighbourhoods through which the Crosstown would be built (see figure 10.1). The TCBN advocated for an equitable distribution of jobs and training associated with the project, the use of social
188The TCBN was still active in 2015 when observations for my dissertation ended, and continued to exist into the summer of 2017 at the time of submission. 189The Metrolinx Board of Directors approved a budget of $5.3 billion for the Crosstown Project in 2010 dollars, but this did not include the 30-year maintenance and repair contract. This original $5.3 billion figure has increased to $6.6 billion dollars through “Board approved escalation rates” to the year of expenditure over the project delivery schedule. This means that the maintenance and repair contract is worth around $2.5 billion. See Metrolinx, December 31, 2014, Eglinton Crosstown, “Funding,” http://www.thecrosstown.ca/progress/funding, accessed February 16, 2016. Also see: Ontario Government, November 3, 2015, “Crosslinx Transit Solutions Signs Contract to Deliver Eglinton Crosstown by 2021,” https://news.ontario.ca/mto/en/2015/11/crosslinx-transit-solutions-signs-contract-to-deliver-eglinton-crosstown- by-2021.html, accessed February 16, 2016. 190In 2015, the Ontario government stated in a press release that: “The new LRT will offer new reliable transit to Toronto residents, integrate transit services, generate jobs, stimulate the economy, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and manage congestion.” See: Ontario Government, September 24, 2015, News Release, “Tunnelling Begins Westward on Eglinton Crosstown LRT,” https://news.ontario.ca/mto/en/2015/09/tunnelling-begins-westward-on-eglinton-crosstown-lrt.html. Similarly, in 2010, Metrolinx announced that: “The Eglinton Crosstown LRT project will take more cars off the road, improve air quality, create approximately 46,000 jobs, reduce travel times and support a stronger regional transit system in the Greater Toronto Area.” See: Metrolinx, July 28, 2010, Eglinton Crosstown, “Metrolinx purchases tunnel boring machines for Eglinton Crosstown Light Rail Transit project,” http://thecrosstown.ca/news-media/whats-new/metrolinx- purchases-tunnel-boring-machines-for-eglinton-crosstown-light-rail. 253 procurement, as well as other neighbourhood improvements (e.g., sustainable design of stations). The following chapter will evaluate the outcomes of negotiations between the TCBN and Metrolinx for a CBA. The TCBN's proposal for a CBA was an attempt to mediate a socio-ecological fix and to assert a right to the city. This chapter explains and assesses the scaling-up of the MDWN into the TCBN as a moment of social movement alliance-forming. I explain what enabled this scaling-up to take place, the types of social movement learning that took place in the process and the contradictions and tensions that ensued. First, I use social movement theory to explain the emergence of the TCBN focusing on the critical role played by the Toronto and York Region Labour Council. Previous chapters have already explained how social movement protests in Mount Dennis-Weston around transit projects (e.g., by the Clean Trains Coalition), together with political pressures over “gun violence” in Toronto and a broader political crisis facing the Liberal minority provincial government, created favourable political opportunity structures for the MDWN to advocate for a CBA. This chapter documents how the Labour Council helped the TCBN seize these political opportunities. Labour Council was instrumental in mobilizing the necessary financial and political resources to gain access to Metrolinx's senior management team and in building-up the TCBN's negotiation leverage (e.g., through growing and diversifying the coalition's membership, and leading lobbying efforts). Labour Council also played a critical role in setting the strategy of the TCBN and in framing its demands. Despite the important leadership of the Labour Council, I argue that the TCBN was not a “vanguard coalition” (or “labour front organization”) of organized labour that merely appealed to the idea of “community” to advance the narrow self-interest of particular unions (Frege, Heery, and Turner 2004). Labour Council saw labour-community alliance-forming around a CBA as a form of social bargaining: a way to reintroduce employment equity policies and as part of a longer-term strategy of building a broad-based, counter-hegemonic movement in opposition to growing anti-union, anti- working class politics. Rather than act as a “vanguard coalition” for particular unions, the TCBN instead found it a challenge to gain full political buy-in from the building and construction trade unions to the objectives of the TCBN and to get any involvement from the transit workers' union. Second, I document and reflect on the social movement learning that took place during the TCBN's coalition-building activities. Drawing on my definition of alliance-forming as a process of transformative learning, or praxis, I show how the TCBN's strategic thinking evolved through extended deliberation, reflection on past CBA organizing experiences in Toronto and other jurisdictions, and 254 relationship-building across previously separated collective identities. I argue that the TCBN's democratic structures and consensus-building approach supported a process of dialogue and trust- building that was conducive to participants' ideological repositioning. My examination of social movement learning within the TCBN focuses on how the coalition refined its original CBA demand for “local hiring” into a demand that more specifically targeted “equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups.” At the same time, I argue that social movement learning about environmental issues failed to take place. A major reason for this was the dismissal of these concerns by Metrolinx at the negotiation table, in turn, deprioritizing them within the TCBN. Moreover, the MDWN's long- standing framing of community benefits in environmental terms (e.g., green economic development, sustainable design, etc.) did not resonate with other TCBN members in the same way as it did for MDWN members, and little time was taken at TCBN general meetings to deepen people's environmental consciousness (although one working group did have an environmental focus). Third, I analyze the contradictions and tensions that challenged social movement alliance- forming. The TCBN case study demonstrates how leveraging scale can strengthen right-to-the-city movements by increasing their legitimacy as a political threat (or opportunity) in the eyes of decision- makers and also because a more diverse coalition creates chances for social movement learning. But at the same time, I argue that scaling-up a coalition raises the dilemma of militant particularism (Harvey 2001b). Place-bound issues and affinities that might motivate individuals or groups to join a coalition at one scale (e.g., neighbourhood environmental issues), may end up becoming deprioritized or strained once the coalition reframes or refocuses issues in ways that seek relevance to a greater number of groups across wider geographical scales (e.g., the city, or province). In this way, scaling-up may erode the original basis for an individual or groups' participation and solidarity. I argue that one reason the MDWN dissolved in 2013 was because its original focus on “local hiring” and “neighbourhood improvements,” which had previously bound together the MDWN in its struggles with Metrolinx, were reframed or deprioritized once the coalition scaled-up into the TCBN. I also argue that the TCBN's weak bargaining position in the face of strong resistance from the state forced the TCBN to negotiate gains regarding employment equity and social procurement by trading-off its demands for green economic development, socio-ecological regulation of the Kodak brownfield site and other social justice concerns (e.g., gentrification). The following chapter includes significant amounts of detailed observations about the processes involved in the formation of the TCBN, its strategic deliberations, its organizational structures and how 255 its demands and framing shifted over time. Providing these details orients analysis and critique toward processes of coalition-building, rather than simply its outcomes. For example, social movement learning is a long process of dialogue, interaction, and reflection, that is embedded in relationship- building and power relations. Simply stating that the TCBN changed its framing from “local hiring” to “equity-seeking and historical disadvantaged groups,” would fail to appreciate the long (over one-year) process that led to this seemingly minor change. Similarly, tracking the ebb and flow of participation in the TCBN prompts productive questions and insights into the coalition's dynamics (e.g., how ideological or strategic differences are addressed, and how power operates within the coalition). Providing detailed observations also reveals the resistance of the state at almost every step of CBA negotiations, first with the MDWN (as discussed in chapter eight), and again later with the TCBN. This supports a sharper critique of the state (and a more sympathetic critique of the coalition's strategic decisions). The government must not only be criticized for failing to deliver on its rhetorical support for a Crosstown CBA, as I reveal in the following chapter, but also for the way it narrowed the scope of negotiations for a Crosstown CBA along the way. Detailing this negotiation process also draws attention to the significant amounts of resources it demanded of labour-community coalitions that might have otherwise been spent protesting the government's move to deepen the neoliberal governance of transit infrastructure (e.g., the Crosstown as first public-private partnership for a transit project in the Greater Toronto Area) or drawing attention to how transit developments will gentrify neighbourhoods and deepen Toronto's socio-spatial polarization. It is my hope that documenting in detail how strategic decisions played out in the development of the coalition and in the negotiation of a CBA will inform future strategic planning by the TCBN or other labour-community coalitions setting out to assert a right to the city. 256
Figure 10.1 Map of Toronto's Neighbourhood Improvement Areas (formerly "Priority Neighbourhoods") showing the route of the Eglinton Crosstown Light Rail Transit line. Source: Adapted by the author from the City of Toronto (2014).
Seizing Political Opportunities
In October of 2014, the Premier of Ontario praised the work of Metrolinx and the TCBN in negotiating what she referred to as “Ontario's first community benefits agreement” and heralded as a “turning point in how we invest public money.”191 But this discursive support from the Premier's Office in late 2014 belies years of struggle for a CBA including two attempts by the MDWN (dating back to 2009) that preceded the attempt by the TCBN. Institutional changes within Metrolinx around community benefits have come very slowly. In the end a legally-binding CBA was never signed by Metrolinx, only a “Community Benefits Framework” (see table 11.1). Even to win very tentative and limited commitments from Metrolinx took the TCBN almost a year and a half of regular in-person negotiations, which came after an additional seven month period of written correspondence between the MDWN and Metrolinx. As early as February 2012, members of the MDWN started to publicly ask Metrolinx to deliver “community benefits” associated with the Kodak lands maintenance and storage facility and raised this idea at official public consultation meetings for the Crosstown project.192 The
191Premier Kathleen Wynne, October 4, 2014, keynote address, UNIFOR Good Jobs Conference, at the Mattamy Athletic Centre, Toronto, Ontario. 192Members of the MDWN participated in all of the official public consultation exercises held by Metrolinx in the west- 257 slow pace of change by Metrolinx not only reflected the agency's hesitation to broaden its mandate but also reflected the challenges faced by the TCBN in building-up political leverage to fight for a community benefits agreement. Prolonging negotiations also allowed Metrolinx to delay implementing any changes while ensuring that, in the meantime, the TCBN would not campaign more publicly, more aggressively and more critically against Metrolinx or the provincial government (especially in the lead- up to the 2014 Ontario general election). After a year of advocacy, the MDWN had won support for a Crosstown CBA from Laura Albanese, the MPP for York-South Weston, and Metrolinx opened its door to in-person negotiations at the start of 2013 (see table 10.1). For Albanese's government, and Metrolinx, the TCBN and negotiations for a CBA offered an efficient way to manage, what Metrolinx identified as, growing problem with “community relations.”193 Metrolinx and the ruling Liberal provincial government had faced unrelenting political pressure from residents of York-South Weston (as well as neighbourhood further south along the rail corridor) over the UP Express, and Georgetown South Project (see chapters 5 and 6). The Mount Dennis Community Association successfully fought Metrolinx to preserve heritage buildings on the Kodak lands. The Weston Community Coalition had long-protested the design and purpose of the UP Express, arguing it should service the local community rather than simply act as a express service for business travellers and tourists. Meanwhile, the MDWN and others had put public pressure on Metrolinx for its lack of local hiring. Many community concerns related to how Metrolinx's transit projects were reorganizing the local urban metabolism: generating new noise and vibrations (both from construction and increased train traffic); creating dust pollution from construction that was so thickly laid onto people's houses that Metrolinx paid to have it washed off; clear-cutting thick stands of trees and brush that had grown for decades along the rail corridor; and increasing the release of carcinogenic diesel fumes along the rail corridor.194 Meanwhile, the MDWN demanded that Metrolinx support green economic development on the Kodak site, and made dozens of other environmental design proposals, as well as proposals for utilizing the site in ways that would have required costly soil remediation (see chapter eight).
end regarding the Eglinton LRT project. 193Reflecting its growing need to respond to community demands, Metrolinx significantly expanded its “community relations” and “strategic communications” teams. In late 2010, Metrolinx hired a “Director of Community and Stakeholder Relations,” and in 2012 hired a “Director of Community Relations and Communications, Toronto Transit Projects.” These Directors oversaw dedicated teams of managers and staff to facilitate mandatory environmental assessment public consultations (which were run by private consulting firms), and to respond to other community concerns at public meetings and at new “Community Offices” set up near construction projects. 194The Clean Trains Coalition (n.d.) reported that Metrolinx planned to increase the capacity for train traffic from 50 trains per day, running five days a week, up to 450 trains a day, running seven days a week. 258
December 2012 The TCBN task force and negotiation teams are formed In-person negotiations with Metrolinx begin April 23, 2013 MPP Albanese writes letter to Metrolinx CEO Bruce McQuaig in support of a CBA May 2013 TCBN adopts its Foundation Document May 27, 2013 Metrolinx Board endorses Investment Strategy that includes recommendations around “community benefits”195 September 10, 2013 Metrolinx Board “commends” CBA negotiations as “breaking new ground” after hearing presentation Jack Collins, Metrolinx Executive Vice President, and John Cartwright, President of Labour Council196 October 2013 Metrolinx reverses its position and agrees to open the Kodak lands to broader economic development beyond transit facilities October-November 2013 TCBN meets with MPPs situated along Eglinton, as well as provincial cabinet ministers. December 2013 Some clauses around apprenticeships and community benefits included in the Request for Proposal issued for the Crosstown Project April 28, 2014 Metrolinx & TCBN sign Community Benefits Framework (CBF) May 2014 TCBN presents its community benefits proposals to bidding consortia October 2014 Premier of Ontario begins using the Eglinton Crosstown CBF and TCBN as a 'good news' example in her speeches Fall 2014 Ontario Government (MTCU) funds a Labour Market Partnership for the Eglinton Crosstown Project to advance community benefits June 2015 “Community benefits” language included in amendments to Bill 6 (Infrastructure for Jobs and Prosperity Act) following coordinated deputations by the TCBN and other non-profit agencies in May. Table 10.1 Key Milestones for the Toronto Community Benefits Network
Both Metrolinx and the government hoped that entering into CBA negotiations would politically contain some of these social movement groups (e.g., the MDWN) in a prolonged,
195The investment strategy recommends that Metrolinx “continue working with communities and local and regional organizations to develop and implement strategies to take advantage of local jobs and training programs to provide community benefits for the areas that will be hosting the rapid transit infrastructure,” (81) and reports that “Metrolinx continues to meet with community benefits organizations to discuss how local jobs and training programs can be optimized during the construction, operations and maintenance phases of The Big Move projects. Metrolinx will work with local and regional organizations to develop and implement strategies to ensure communities that are hosting the transit facilities realize not just the transportation benefits of the infrastructure, but also receive social and economic benefits from the investment that is being made” (30). Metrolinx, May 27, 2013, “Investing in our region, Investing in our future,” http://www.metrolinx.com/en/regionalplanning/funding/IS_Full_Report_EN.pdf. 196Metrolinx Board of Directors, September 10, 2013, Meeting Minutes, http://www.metrolinx.com/en/docs/pdf/board_agenda/20130910/20130910_BoardMtg_Minutes_EN.pdf. Jack Collins and Judy Pfeifer, September 10, 2013, Community Benefits Agreement Update, Presentation slide deck, http://www.metrolinx.com/en/docs/pdf/board_agenda/20130910/20130910_BoardMtg_Community_Benefits_Agreemen t_Update_EN.pdf. 259 bureaucratic process of negotiation. The government wanted Metrolinx to have a positive image in York-South Weston—a swing riding at a time when the ruling provincial Liberals only held minority rule. More broadly, CBAs provided the perfect “good news story” for a scandal-plagued provincial government (Morrow 2015) that had damaged relations with unions (Rushowy and Benzie 2015; Rushowy and Ferguson 2013) and had recently been under pressure from equity advocates for failing to address the root causes of gun violence. Despite the prevailing political context helping to open up negotiations for a CBA, Metrolinx would not make negotiating community benefits easy for the TCBN: dragging out negotiations for years, only to offer minor concession in the end (see chapter eleven).
Scaling-up Negotiations: From the MDWN to the TCBN
The MDWN anticipated that Metrolinx would be unable or unwilling to negotiate a CBA with only one community (i.e. York South-Weston) or to negotiate individually with each community organization along the Eglinton Crosstown line. It would be considerably easier for Metrolinx to negotiate a CBA with one umbrella, city-wide organization—especially since plans were underway for Metrolinx to build two additional light rail transit lines in other parts of the city that would increase interest in community benefits from even more community groups across the city. From the coalition's perspective, the inclusion of more communities in the coalition would help generate more political pressure—especially since the political ridings along the Eglinton Crosstown line included a number of key provincial cabinet Ministers. The legitimacy and the bargaining power of the community would be much greater if there was one organization representing all low-income neighbourhoods. The TCBN was therefore an effort to leverage scale in its struggle to assert a right to the city. Like the MDWN, the TCBN was not a revolutionary undertaking. Compared with Harvey or Lefebvre's radical concepts of the right to the city, the TCBN was proposing rather modest reforms. And yet, the TCBN still faced significant resistance from the state. In the following sections, I discuss how the MDWN scaled-up into the TCBN and worked to increase its bargaining power against Metrolinx. The TCBN secured foundation funding to resource the activities of the TCBN; grew and diversified its city-wide membership to legitimize itself as “the community”; refined its understanding of CBAs as a tool for mobilizing policy changes; forged a consensus within its membership over what the main objectives for a Crosstown CBA should be; 260 lobbied the provincial government; and gradually narrowed its demands in hopes of consolidating support from Metrolinx. As negotiations progressed, the TCBN also shifted its strategy from the “outsider's game” (i.e., using protest tactics and an adversarial tone) that had characterized the MDWN's relationship with Metrolinx) to an “insider's game” (i.e. lobbying, compromising on its demands, using a conciliatory or collaborative tone and refraining from any public criticism of Metrolinx).
Mobilizing Resources
It is unlikely that the MDWN's proposal for a CBA would have gone much further than its letters to Metrolinx, without the resources provided by organized labour. The MDWN had few resources and was not incorporated (so could not apply for foundation or government funding). The Toronto and York Region Labour Council played a critical role in helping the MDWN scale-up into the TCBN, and to strengthen its negotiation position vis-à-vis Metrolinx. Labour Council used its moral and socio-organizational resources to recruit groups into the coalition from across the city and to provide the TCBN with institutional legitimacy necessary for accessing government decision-makers and funding agencies. Labour Council also provided in-kind contributions of staff time that helped the TCBN establish its initial strategic direction and activities. The ability of Labour Council to help the TCBN access negotiation spaces and funding from non-profit and government sources speaks to the enduring political strength of organized labour—particularly within urban centres (I. MacDonald 2017; L. Turner and Cornfield 2007b). A funding proposal was successfully made by the Toronto and York Region Labour Council in November 2012 to the Metcalf Foundation aimed at scaling-up the CBA work of the MDWN into a city-wide initiative led by the TCBN.197 The Metcalf funding proposal was endorsed by twelve organizations from across the city, including: the MDWN; other resident-based, grassroots organizations (e.g., the South Asian Women's Rights Organization); unions; social service agencies that delivered employment and immigrant settlement services, or that supported social enterprises; and social justice organizations, such as ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). To gain endorsements for its funding proposal the TCBN targeted groups that operated near the proposed Eglinton line and groups that had worked with the Labour Council before in past political
197The initiative was led by the Director of the Labour Education Centre (the training wing of the Labour Council), and the funding application was formally made by Labour Community Services (the non-profit wing of the Labour Council). 261 campaigns. Representatives from the MDWN travelled to meet with these groups and introduce their learnings around CBAs. Getting these endorsements legitimized the TCBN as a city-wide organization in the eyes of both funders and Metrolinx, and began a long process of relationship-building within the growing coalition. The TCBN would become very successful in securing funding, over $676,000 between 2013- 2016.198 This was a considerable increase in resources compared with the approximately $60,000 that had been available to the MDWN between 2012-2013. The TCBN's funding from the Metcalf Foundation, worth $90,000 per year for 2013 and 2014, provided money to hire its first part-time staff member who helped organize regular meetings, brought new members and partners into the coalition, and provided reports and new proposals to funders. A small amount of funding ($15,000) from the Atkinson Foundation was used by the TCBN to hold a two-day workshop in April 2013 where members of the TCBN developed the vision of the TCBN and their primary objectives for a Crosstown CBA (these were codified in the TCBN's “Foundation Document”). This funding also helped pay for guest speakers to be flown in to share their experiences with negotiating and implementing CBAs in other jurisdictions (California, British Columbia, and Scotland). These initial funds were significant for the establishment of the TCBN, especially since Metrolinx had rejected the TCBN's request for operational funding. The TCBN would go on to receive operating funding from the Atkinson Foundation ($90,000 in 2014, $103,000 in 2015, and $108,000 in 2016), as well as the United Way of Toronto ($90,000 in 2014). Metcalf provided another $90,000 for 2015. This funding allowed the TCBN to hire three full time staff members, maintain a website, print- off materials and provide meals for meetings (which happened in the evening after members finished work). Securing this funding also increased the legitimacy of the TCBN in the eyes of Metrolinx and the government because it signalled that the TCBN was not 'going away' and so had to be engaged. Directors and board members of funding agencies shared social spaces and professional relationships with politicians and board members of Metrolinx. The funding agencies that supported the TCBN also participated in policy forums where they could endorse the TCBN's work on CBAs. One of the TCBN's funders, for example, was able to use their connection to the Ontario Premier's Office to have the TCBN invited to speak in front of Premier Wynne at the 2014 Council of the Federation (a
198This does not include the money the TCBN received through the LMP, discussed below. 262 summit of Canada's Premiers). In 2015, the TCBN received an additional $120,000 through a Labour Market Partnership funded by the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities to carry out targeted resident engagement sessions, with a small portion of this money given to TCBN member organizations to advertise and host engagement sessions in the neighbourhoods where they were based. Besides helping to secure funding for the TCBN, Labour Council's moral and socio- organizational resources were instrumental in getting Metrolinx to agree to enter negotiations. Labour Council gave the TCBN legitimacy (in the eyes of Metrolinx) by participating in the coalition, and by attracting the participation of the United Way of Toronto. The United Way of Toronto, which is by far Toronto's largest charity and private funder of social service agencies, has deep historical ties to the Labour Council but is nonpartisan and well-respected across the political spectrum (Labour Community Services 2013). The concept of a CBA fit well with the United Way's existing mandate to provide social programs and family services to low-income residents, and its growing emphasis on work-related issues (unemployment, precarious work, underemployment).199 The United Way Toronto acted as an early advisor to the TCBN, participated in negotiation meetings between the TCBN and Metrolinx, and would later oversee a Labour Market Partnership (LMP) for the Eglinton Crosstown Project in 2014-15 on behalf of the provincial government. The LMP funded the TCBN to engage marginalized groups of residents in apprenticeship opportunities and also funded a consultancy to “develop a workforce development ‘pipeline’ model that will ensure Toronto residents that have been historically disadvantaged are engaged, assessed, recruited, registered, trained and employed in new jobs related to the construction of the ECL”(Social Research and Demonstration Corporation 2015, 1). The TCBN's ability to mobilize resources was therefore a key factor in its success in scaling-up the neighbourhood activities of the MDWN into city-wide and provincial initiatives.
Strategic Objectives and Framing: The role of Labour Council
The Labour Council saw labour-community coalition-building and organizing around CBAs as a way to reintroduce employment equity policies and to build a multi-ethno-racial counter-hegemonic movement aimed at union renewal, and defence of the working class more generally. Employment
199In 2004, the United Way of Toronto (2004) published an influential report called “Poverty by Postal Code” that, together with concerns around gun violence in 2004's “Summer of the Gun,” led the City of Toronto's to designate thirteen “Priority Neighbourhoods.” In 2013, the United Way joined with McMaster University to research and publish, It's More than Poverty: Employment Precarity and Household Well-being (Wayne Lewchuk et al. 2013). 263 equity had been neglected by provincial policy-makers since it was attacked and undermined by Ontario's Progressive Conservative Party led by Premier Mike Harris (1995-2002) (Boudreau, Keil, and Young 2009b; Bakan and Kobayashi 2007; Agócs 2014). Concerns about re-igniting a similar backlash led the TCBN to avoid using the phrase “employment equity,” but this decision was also because the TCBN was interested in addressing chronic unemployment and cycles of poverty, rather than simply employment equity per se. At the same time, the formation of the TCBN and winning a CBA was aimed at deepening an understanding of organized labour more generally within marginalized communities. Ontario's poor job market, especially for youth and racialized residents, was being used by conservative politicians at all levels of government as an opportunity to attack unions which these politicians argued were bloating government budgets and blocking reforms that could create more jobs (such as privatization, open shop contracts and higher apprenticeship-to- journeyperson ratios).200 On the one hand, conservative politicians were appealing to their traditional white (often rural and poor) voter base through a revanchist politics (N. Smith 1996). Meanwhile, these same politicians used attacks against the building and construction trade unions as a way of appealing to urban racialized workers who struggled to gain access into the trades. The rise of right-wing populist Mayor Rob Ford in Toronto revealed a strong anti-union sentiment amongst poor, racialized communities—many of whom feel shut out of good-paying, unionized, public sector jobs. During my fieldwork in York-South Weston, I learned that anti-union contractors were directly contacting social service agencies operating in marginalized communities to signal their desire to hire low-income, racialized residents, in an effort to generate political support for open shop (non-union) tendering processes. Provincially, the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party (the official opposition) issued a “white paper” that promised to turn Ontario into a “right-to-work” jurisdiction while opening up all public procurement to non-union contractors (Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario 2012). This was an attempt by the Ontario PC Party to appeal to urban, racialized voters who find themselves chronically unemployment or underemployed, by scapegoating the building and construction trade unions—known to be good-paying jobs, predominantly held by white workers.201 Similarly, an anti-union coalition called Working Canadians, funded by the open shop 200Ontario's 2013 youth unemployment rate (15-24 years old) was between 16% to 17.1%, higher than the Canadian average of 13.5% to 14.5% (Geobey 2013). 201The Ontario Progressive Conservative Party in the 1990s and early 2000s gain political power through an anti-urban, anti-welfare, libertarian politics, similar to what Smith (1996) identifies as the “revanchist city” politics in New York City. Whereas the Ontario PC's had attacked public sector unions and teacher unions, appealing to the poor or unemployed, white working classes, the 2012 white papers expanded these anti-union attacks to the building and construction trade,s in part to appeal to racialized urban voters who found themselves chronically unemployed or underemployed. Meanwhile the federal Progressive Conservative Party appealed to a xenophobic culture of fear (“anti- 264 contractors' association, Merit Ontario, also formed in late 2013 to help the Conservatives get elected by attacking “union bosses”(Working Canadians 2014). This came at a time when Metrolinx, under the direction of Infrastructure Ontario, had opened tendering for Toronto transit projects to non-union contractors (unlike the historical practice of the Toronto Transit Commission). The Ontario Progressive Conservative Party also appealed to the masses of unemployed youth by campaigning during the 2014 election to create 200,000 new skilled jobs over four years by increasing the apprenticeship-to- journeyperson ratios.202 This was a carefully disguised attack on building trade unions that were fighting to maintain ratios in order to prevent companies from using cheaper apprentices in place of journeypersons.203 The Labour Council saw the formation of the TCBN and a community benefits agreement as part of a larger, long-term political project aimed at mobilizing a cross-class, multi-ethno- racial, labour-community alliance and potentially even a new organization that could bring about changes to laws and policies that would improve workers' lives in a number of ways (including employment equity) while defending unions and communities against right-wing electoral politics. The Labour Council's goal, though laudable, was not achievable through an “insider game” or lobbying strategy. In the following chapter I call attention for the lack of what I call “deep community organizing” both within the labour movement as well as other movements for social and environmental justice.
Strategic Learning
The TCBN developed its strategic objectives and framing over the course of many meetings (see table 10.2). These meetings seldom produced tangible outcomes. But through regular meetings the members of the TCBN developed trust with one another, shared knowledge and experiences, built strategic consensus and developed an increasingly sophisticated understanding of how to address equity and poverty through a CBA. To setup the TCBN, ten strategy meetings were held by a task force at the Labour Council offices between September 2012 and the end of January 2013 (see table 10.2). The task force was comprised of Labour Council staff (including representatives from the Labour Education Centre, and Labour Community Services), myself and another representative from the MDWN.
terrorism,” law-and-order agenda). This peaked during the 2015 federal election with thinly veiled attacks against Muslims—but notably led to the Conservative losing power. 202The leader of the Conservative Party called the current apprenticeship ratios, “artificial and politically motivated roadblocks to getting more young people into the skill trades”(Brennan 2014). 203Unions carefully monitored the labour market to prevent an oversupply of tradespersons which would put a downward pressure on wages. Unions also note that a higher apprenticeship ratio would reduce safety on job sites. 265
The task force set the initial goals, strategies and tactics of the TCBN, which would be further developed and changed by the membership of TCBN as it became more established in the spring and summer of 2013 through an additional set of meetings and workshops. The task force meetings at the Labour Council offices were spaces for brainstorming, learning and reporting back on initial efforts to bring the TCBN into existence and on the initial in-person negotiations with Metrolinx for a CBA. This leadership role by the task force would be taken over by the TCBN's Steering Committee in April 2013 after it was elected by the general membership. Labour Council also provided the critical political link that brought the building trade unions into the coalition, including the Carpenters (Local 27), the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW Local 353), and later the Ironworkers (Local 721), the Sheet Metal Workers (Local 30) and the Labourers' Union (Local 506). These unions were represented in the TCBN through representatives from their training centres rather than by elected leadership—creating challenges that I discuss in the following chapter.
TCBN Task Force TCBN-Metrolinx TCBN General TCBN Steering TCBN Advisory Meetings Negotiation Meetings Committee Meetings Group Meeting Meetings November 7th, 2012 December 19th, 2012 January 24th, 2013 April 11th, 2013 April 15th, 2013 November 13th, 2012 *January 19th, 2013 February 20th, 2013 May 9th, 2013 June 14, 2013 November 20th, 2012 March 22th, 2013 March 13th, 2013 June 3, 2013 November 23rd, 2012 May 24th, 2013 April 3rd, 2013 July 2nd, 2013 December 5th, 2012 August 30th, 2013 April 15th, 2013[Pre- August 26th, 2013 December 12th, 2012 October 17th, 2013 workshop training] September 6th, 2013 December 18th, 2012 November 29th, 2013 April 27-28th October 23rd, 2013 (negotiation team) *February 12th, 2014 [Workshop] January 22nd, 2014 September 11th, 2012 February 21st, 2014 May 22nd, 2013 February 18th, 2014 January 4th, 2013 May 6th, 2014 [Foundation document April 30th, 2014 January 21st, 2013 †May 23rd, 2014 approved] June 10th, 2014 January 28th, 2013 July 31, 2014 June 18th, 2013 August 27th, 2014 March 11th, 2013 September 14th, 2013 December 8th, 2014 March 27th, 2013 (Workshop) April 7th, 2015 *smaller meeting or November 5th, 2013 phone conversation February 25th, 2014 June 18th, 2014 †Meeting between September 13, 2014 TCBN and bidding January 9th, 2015 consortia June 2nd, 2015 Table 10.2 TCBN Meetings 2013 (Does not include TCBN working group meetings) 266
The task force debated what would be the best legal or policy mechanism for ensuring that the multi-billion dollar transit investments in Toronto would be used to create local employment and jobs for marginalized communities. A legally-binding community benefits agreement became the preferred option after also considering the potential merits of winning a policy commitment, new laws, an enhanced Project Labour Agreement (PLA) or simply getting desirable language written into the Request for Proposals (RFP) issued by Metrolinx for the Eglinton Crosstown project. A policy commitment was not legally-binding which the literature on CBAs and the failed experience of the GTS Employment Initiative indicated was necessary for successfully realizing social justice objectives. An enhanced PLA would not be able to cover all of the demands raised by the TCBN (e.g., white-collar jobs, social enterprises and land-use planning) and in any case would require greater political buy-in from the building trades than existed at the time. The concern with relying on clauses in the RFP was that too much discretion would be given to the bidding consortia, with community benefits potentially neglected as part of a consortium's overall multi-billion dollar bid. Going into negotiations the TCBN had decided it wanted a CBA but was still debating how to frame its equity demands and how it would operationalize equity goals at a programmatic level. Ideas for realizing equity included: training and hiring quotas (percentages or numbers) or “soft” (aspirational) targets; targeted outreach and engagement in neighbourhoods less familiar with, or historically excluded from, working in the building and construction sectors; ensuring targeted groups are the best trained and most qualified to win job competitions; the provision of wrap around supports (e.g., mentorship, childcare, subsidies for work boots or training costs, etc.); and addressing sexist and racist workplace cultures. An immediate objective was to secure funding from Metrolinx or the provincial government to dramatically scale-up enrolment levels of two existing pre-apprenticeship programs that supported disadvantaged youth: Hammer Heads, run by the Central Ontario Building Trades Council; and CHOICE, run by the Carpenters' Union (Local 27). These programs enrolled forty-five and fifteen “disadvantaged” youth per year, respectively, whereas the TCBN wanted to scale- up these programs into the hundreds. The TCBN's justification to Metrolinx for a CBA was that the low-income, racialized, “Priority Neighbourhoods,” through which the proposed light rail transit projects would pass, should benefit from the jobs being created. The TCBN therefore framed their demands using the logic (if not the language) of environmental justice.204 A CBA was also presented by the TCBN as “good public policy”
204The TCBN only briefly considered how low-income renters living along Eglinton avenue would be displaced by raising land values associated with the Crosstown project. But the TCBN struggled with how to operationalize a solution to this 267 that made more efficient use of scarce public dollars through leveraging existing infrastructure investments towards other social policy objectives. The best language to use in framing the issue of equity and to identify the specific beneficiaries targeted by a CBA was still being debated by the task force when negotiations with Metrolinx commenced. At the onset of negotiations, the terms “local,” “marginalized,” “disadvantaged” and “low-income” were used interchangeably, combining both geographical and socio-economic parameters. The TCBN recognized that racialized residents and women were under-represented in the building and construction trades. The TCBN also wanted Metrolinx to commit to hiring recent immigrants who came to Canada with professional, administration and technical credentials (e.g., engineers) but who were struggling to get hired in their fields because many Canadian employers do not recognize their credentials or international experience. There was a concern that the use of public- private partnerships (also called Alternative Finance Procurement) for the design, finance, construction and maintenance LRT projects, could see international firms win contracts that off-shored design and engineering jobs, or that would bring in temporary foreign workers—as happened with Vancouver's Canada Line (Drews 2013). In the early stages of negotiations, the TCBN therefore demanded that temporary foreign workers not be used on the Crosstown project, although this demand was soon dropped by the TCBN negotiation team as it began to narrow its focus. In developing its objectives and strategy the TCBN task force learned from other labour- community coalitions and efforts to win CBAs. The task force drew inspiration from the labour- community coalition organization called the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) (Meyerson 2013).205 The President of the Toronto and York Region Labour Council had previously visited Los Angeles and heard first-hand about LAANE's efforts to win the first CBA in the United States and to build an alliance between labour and low-income, racialized communities that fought against anti-union ballot initiatives. The TCBN task force also consciously incorporated lessons from previous and concurrent labour-community campaigns and coalitions in Toronto, such as: the attempt to win a CBA for the Woodbine Live! entertainment project in 2008 (Tufts 2008); the effort to get disadvantaged youth hired as part of the Regent Park housing redevelopment project that converted social housing into 'mixed-use' condominiums; previous struggles for employment equity (e.g., within
problem through a CBA. As a result, the TCBN did not press the issue of transit-driven gentrification during negotiations, aside from making the suggestion that surplus land purchased by the Metrolinx for construction-related purposes be turned into affordable housing. 205LAANE helped win the first CBA in the United States and formed an alliance between labour and low-income, racialized communities to fight against anti-union legislation and referendums. 268 the Toronto District School Board and Toronto Hydro); the hiring of Aboriginal youth as part of the construction of Casino Rama in Orillia, Ontario; and other Labour Council campaigns such as the fight to raise the minimum wage or prevent the privatization of cleaners in public buildings. Organizers who had been directly involved in these initiatives spoke at task force meetings about their successes and failures. I also presented cross-jurisdictional research to the task force about other CBAs, mainly from California, British Columbia and Scotland. Others shared a basic understanding about how the trades worked (e.g., in terms of hiring, job security, and workplace culture) and the experiences so far of Hammer Heads and CHOICE. The Chair of the TCBN along with representatives of funding agencies would also later attend a conference in California that brought together organizations from across the country to share best practices around CBAs and similar policies.206 We can see from the work of the task force that Labour Council played a critical role in setting the initial strategy and issue-framing of the TCBN. These strategic discussions were intense periods of social movement learning. Learnings would be later brought into TCBN general meetings and visioning workshops where they helped the coalition further develop its strategy and issue-framing. The initial strategy arrived at by the task force was to have the TCBN begin more as a top- down, lobby organization that would try to play the “insider game” in the short-term while building up more grassroots involvement and participatory governance over the medium-to-long term. The insider game would involve a lobby effort of Metrolinx board members and provincial politicians, coupled with a media strategy and negotiations with Metrolinx's senior management. This strategy was chosen due to time constraints. The TCBN wanted to have the CBA agreed to, in principle, before the Request for Proposal (RFP) for the Eglinton Crosstown was issued by Metrolinx. The TCBN feared that without language in the RFP that made the CBA a mandatory requirement for the project it would be much harder to compel the consortia to incorporate community benefits after the fact.207 Because negotiations between Metrolinx and the TCBN only began in December 2012, and the RFP was expected (at the time) to be issued in June 2013, a top-down, lobby-strategy was viewed by the TCBN task force as the quickest method, and most efficient use of scarce resources, for winning a CBA language in the RFP. As it turned out, Metrolinx delayed issuing the RFP until December 2013, which
206The Partnership for Working Families Summit: Building Power for Workers & Communities, held February 4th-6th, 2014. 207In the following chapter, I will discuss other ways the Alternative Financing and Procurement, or P3, process constrained negotiations for a CBA, not only in terms of placing tight time constraints on negotiations, but also in terms of the language that Metrolinx was willing to adopt into a CBA. 269 provided time for the TCBN to carry out lobbying activities while simultaneously building-up the coalition and broad-based support for a CBA.
Organizational Structures of the TCBN
There was no other city-wide organization in existence besides the TCBN that could take-up negotiating a CBA from a community and worker perspective. Civic Action was an influential city- wide organization engaged with transit policy, but was comprised of executives from large corporations, charities and post-secondary institutions, and focused on funding mechanisms and regional transportation planning rather than labour issues and social justice. The City of Toronto might have played a leading role in negotiating with Metrolinx for community benefits particularly during their negotiation of a “Master Agreement” for Toronto's three new light rail transit projects. The City's administration under Mayor David Miller had taken an active role in negotiating community benefits for the Woodbine Live! Entertainment-hotel project (later canceled) as well as the Crosstown Project before it was taken over by Metrolinx. However, organized labour and community groups struggled to gain influence with the conservative administration led by Mayor Rob Ford, elected in 2010. The TCBN task force struck a negotiation team that met with Metrolinx seven times between December 19th, 2012, and April 23, 2014—the date when Metrolinx signed a Community Benefits Framework (see table 10.2). Members of Metrolinx's senior management team participated in these meetings, as well as representatives from Infrastructure Ontario. In approaching negotiations, the TCBN's negotiation team carefully took into account: approach (i.e. the tone and pace of meetings, who should be in the room, who should speak about what issues); what to ask for; how to frame the ask; and what not to discuss (e.g., focusing on jobs rather than Metrolinx's use of public-private partnerships). The TCBN's negotiation team included: the President of the Labour Council; the Director of Labour Education Centre; a representative from the Good Jobs for All Coalition who was also on the Board of Urban Alliance on Race Relations; a representative of the United Way; a representative of SAWRO (South Asian Women's Rights Organization, a grassroots community group operating in the east end); and myself (as an academic advisor and representing the interests of community groups in the west end). A manager with the Toronto Enterprise Fund, which supported social enterprises, later joined the negotiation team in the fall of 2013. These members of the negotiation team provided a range of attributes: experience with contract negotiations and the concept 270 of CBAs; ethno-racial diversity; geographical representation across Toronto; and legitimacy both in terms of representation from a grassroots organization (SAWRO) that was working directly with the target beneficiaries of the proposed CBA, as well as large and politically-connected organizations like the United Way and Labour Council.208 To increase it's bargaining power with Metrolinx and to begin achieving its long-term organizational and political goals, the TCBN grew its membership, established a participatory governance structure and solidified its vision for a CBA. The General Membership was comprised of between 20-30 representatives from community groups (grassroots organizations and neighbourhood associations), social service agencies, workforce development agencies, building and construction trade unions and Labour Council. Some unaffiliated individuals were also part of the General Membership, although when the TCBN incorporated in the summer of 2014, only community groups or organizations could sign-up to become voting members (individuals were still encouraged to participate, and few votes ever took place). Unlike other labour-community coalitions in Toronto (e.g., the Good Jobs for All Coalition), in which the “community” voice was primarily represented by social service agencies, the original hope was that the TCBN would be comprised of more grassroots, member-driven organizations, that were less institutionalized within the state (e.g., relying on government funding). Based on the Labour Council's past experiences, social service agencies that received funding from the state—although often geographically-based in marginalized communities and working closely with marginalized residents—were not willing to engage in the type of confrontational politics that the TCBN task force anticipated would be necessary to win a CBA and other changes to policies and legislation in the longer-term. However, as an organizing strategy, finding grassroots, member-driven organizations to work with proved difficult. Three or four member-based, grassroots groups interested in the potential of CBAs did join the TCBN, but there are not many of these types of groups in the city to begin with let alone those that were based along the Eglinton Crosstown corridor. This would become the single most important limiting condition on the TCBN's ability to build-up negotiation leverage with Metrolinx.
208The negotiation team was unelected. One reason for this is that the negotiation team had its first meeting with Metrolinx before the TCBN had established its general membership and governance structures. Even after the TCBN was firmly established, representation on the negotiation team was never voted on by the TCBN general membership, although the negotiation team introduced themselves to the general membership, and complaints as to the make-up of the negotiation team were never raised at any meeting. After February 2014, myself and the representative from SAWRO were no longer on the negotiation team. After Metrolinx signed the Community Benefits Framework in April 2014, high-level negotiations ended and were replaced with discussions around the implementation of the Framework. These implementation discussions were held between lower level managers within Metrolinx and the Chair and staff of the TCBN. 271
As negotiations proceeded, and as the TCBN itself applied for more foundation and state funding, the TCBN narrowed (rather than stepped-up) its political demands, assumed a more conciliatory attitude towards Metrolinx and adopted a more bureaucratic and gradualist approach to realizing community benefits (rather than pushing to win a robust CBA). I evaluate the outcome of negotiations in the following chapter. Between January 2013 and April 2014 (when Metrolinx signed the Community Benefits Framework), the TCBN held ten general membership meetings, elected a Steering Committee which held nine of its own meetings and struck an Advisory Group which held two meetings (see table 10.2). The General Membership helped craft and then formally adopted the TCBN's four-page Foundation Document that lays out the coalition's vision and objectives for a CBA (appendix III). The General Membership also provided strategic guidance to the negotiation team and approved major organizational decisions (e.g., by-laws, governance structure, election of the Steering Committee, etc.). In between General Membership meetings members could participate in any of the TCBN's four working groups charged with implementing the major objectives and programs of the Foundation Document and the Community Benefit Framework: equity hiring of apprentices; hiring internationally- trained professionals for white collar jobs; procuring tenders through social enterprises; and realizing neighbourhood improvements (e.g., green economic development, environmental design of the maintenance and storage facility site, affordable housing). After the Foundation Document was adopted, general membership meetings became a space for sharing any developments in the negotiations with Metrolinx as well as the ongoing work of the four working groups. 272
Figure 10.2 Organizational Chart of the Toronto Community Benefits Network
The Steering Committee was comprised of four labour representatives, four community representatives (two from the west end and two from the east end) and Steve Shallhorn from the Labour Education Centre as the ninth member and Chair of the TCBN. The Steering Committee coordinated the working groups, set the agenda for general membership meetings, oversaw the budget and funding proposals, and made time-sensitive decisions in-between general membership meetings. Steering Committee meetings were open to all TCBN members. From time to time there was debate about why labour representatives should hold the balance of power on the Steering Committee (which later became the Board of Directors once the TCBN incorporated). But the issue was never pressed since there was seldom contentious decisions being voted upon by the Steering Committee/Board anyways and because it was generally accepted that Labour Council had been the one to initiate the TCBN and to secure and manage its funding. The TCBN used a consensus-based decision-making model. Formal votes were reserved for changes to the coalition's by-laws and Foundation Document, or in rare cases where elections for Steering Committee positions were required. The Advisory Group was an ad-hoc group comprised of funders, workforce development agencies and bureaucrats from the City. The creation of an informal Advisory Group allowed these actors to provide insight and assistance to the TCBN without being formally associated with the 273
TCBN's political activities—especially early on in the development of the TCBN when it was still uncertain how much advocacy the TCBN would be engaging in and the tactics that it would employ. The Advisory Group provided practical knowledge to the TCBN during its formative stage about the workforce development sector, related government initiatives, as well as potential funding opportunities. Advisory Group members also provided the TCBN with political capital, for example, helping connect the TCBN to provincial government ministers.
Alliance-forming: Trust, Consensus-building, and Transformative Learning
Social movement learning is critical for the ideological deepening and institutional broadening of short-term, opportunistic coalitions, into long-term social movement alliances. I have defined alliance-forming as a process of transformative learning, or praxis, through which subjects become 'repositioned' ideologically and engaged with other socio-political movements of resistance, or at least the concerns of other coalition partners (Hall 1988; Freire 2000; Zullo and Pratt 2009). This reorientation of coalition members' beliefs, values and/or strategic goals contributes to the intensification of members' motivation for, and commitment to, the work of the coalition. The TCBN's democratic structures and consensus-building approach supported a process of dialogue and trust- building that was critical for enabling transformative learning. A prolonged process of social movement learning by the TCBN and its members (as well as by Metrolinx) is reflected in the high number of TCBN meetings listed in table 10.2, including task force meetings, General Membership meetings, Steering Committee meetings as well as negotiation meetings between the TCBN and Metrolinx. Through extended opportunities for respective deliberation, coalition members developed new working relationships and arrived at a consensus around the TCBN's organizational objectives and strategy. As a coalition of groups that in many cases had never worked together before and who were coming from very different institutional cultures and social backgrounds, it took time for people to get to know one another and to digest the contributions that others were making during meetings. For example, social service agencies and community groups had much to learn from unions about how apprenticeships and union hiring halls work as well as the rigours and workplace culture of construction sites. Many representatives of unions and grassroots groups had to learn what social enterprises were. Community groups and social service agencies shared insights about the systemic challenges facing immigrants and low-income, racialized residents in accessing training and jobs. All 274
TCBN members had to learn about the concept of CBAs and the experiences with them in other jurisdictions. The TCBN's democratic organizational structures and consensus-building approach were critically important for encouraging social movement learning and alliance-forming. One member involved in the social enterprises working group, for example, pointed to the trust-building and learning that took place between their group and unions over the course of a year:
I've been really heartened by how well the social enterprise sector has been received within the group, within the Network. And, and I feel that even, you know, diehard unionists, or union people, are really sort of opening up. And, and yeah, sort of, welcoming us, and interested in what we're doing, and trying to figure out how we can all work together. So I've been really heartened by that.209
Union representatives had to overcome an initial suspicion of social enterprises (which are not generally unionized).210 But the same interview participant from the social enterprise working group also noted that their involvement in the TCBN had let them learn about the construction sector and to better appreciate grassroots community groups and union activists:
Well, I've learned so much about the whole construction business. You know and the trades, and quite a bit more about how, how unions work....And I think the—it's been, I've been sort of rubbing shoulders with people from communities that I had no exposure to before. So that's been really a great learning experience for me. Just the whole negotiation process. And you know being, being with people who are such strong activists, and advocates, has been, has been really, really fun. My work has tended to be kind of pushing from the back, as opposed to leading from the front ….211
Besides building new relationships, a lot of time at meetings was spent discussing and debating the vision, objectives and governance structures of the TCBN, as well as building a consensus about what a CBA is and how one could be won and implemented for the Crosstown LRT project. The membership growth of the TCBN meant that new voices, questions and concerns were continually being introduced to the group at meetings. The time and patience it took the group to review, repeat and refine ideas and positions was seen as necessary for building-up trust and arriving at a consensus. Functionally, forming a consensus was necessary for the TCBN since participation in the coalition was
209Interview with ID026 on March 17, 2014. 210 Social enterprises are also critiqued from the Left for supporting a neoliberal strategy. Services formerly delivered by the welfare state have been downloaded to social service agencies. The promotion of social enterprises within the social services sector comes as social service agencies are being asked to become more entrepreneurial and market-driven in order to become financially self-sustaining in the face of austerity. 211Interview with ID026 on March 17, 2014. 275 voluntarily and so members could vote with their feet (i.e. leave) if they felt their ideas were not being adequately considered.212 Politically, this consensus-building process was critical for allowing the TCBN to present itself to Metrolinx and politicians the TCBN was lobbying as the authentic voice of “the community” with the authority to negotiate and sign a CBA.
From “local hiring” to “equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups”
The development of the TCBN's Foundation Document is a good example of alliance-forming as a process of transformative learning or praxis. The Foundation Document lays out the TCBN's vision of a CBA for the Eglinton Crosstown LRT project:
The expansion of transit that is envisioned for Toronto will result in opportunities for good jobs. It is crucial that all Torontonians have access to economic opportunities stemming from infrastructure investments. As such, we believe that the diversity of the workers on the LRT construction should reflect the diversity of residents of Toronto. (Appendix III) (Toronto Community Benefits Network 2013, 1)
The TCBN came to see its primary goal as creating training and job opportunities for equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups, and creating opportunities for social procurement.213 Another goal, continuing on the work of the Mount Dennis Weston Network, was to ensure that the transit facilities on the Kodak lands and other land purchased for the construction of the Crosstown project were used and designed in a way that maximized social justice and environmental objectives. The language used in TCBN meetings and documents (including the Foundation Document) to describe the objective of the CBA changed over time from “local hiring”, with “local communities” cited as the targeted beneficiaries of a CBA, to the use of the much more politically explicit but geographically nondescript phrase, “equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups.” This reframing arose out of discussions and debates within the TCBN over strategy, implementation logistics and ideology. In earlier correspondence with Metrolinx the MDWN had demanded “local hiring and training” for jobs related to the construction of the LRT maintenance and storage facility on the Kodak lands. Since the building of the maintenance and storage facility was located entirely within Mount Dennis
212This contrasts with union members who are legally bound to the decisions made democratically by their union. 213Certain political positions and implementation details were purposefully left out of the Foundation Document (e.g., specific equity hiring targets, the opposition of most TCBN members to public-private partnerships and non-union contractors). The TCBN leadership did not want to let debates over specific targets create barriers for Metrolinx to engage in negotiations or to prevent the formation of a consensus within the TCBN on the overall objectives for a CBA. 276 the demand for “local jobs” seemed straightforward. Mount Dennis was designated a Priority Neighbourhood and the MDWN had long been motivated by a desire to address the area's poverty through the redevelopment of the Kodak Lands. Reference to the “local community” carried an understanding of social justice for the MDWN, but no explicit reference to “equity” was made at the time. Residents living in the area had also been the most affected by the negative impacts of the Georgetown South Project (e.g., late night construction noise, dust, and road closures) and would be most disturbed by the future construction of the facility. Moreover, in the literature on CBAs that the MDWN was consulting,many CBAs identified a geographical area for the targeting of community benefits (e.g., “residents within five miles of the project”). These CBAs covered projects being built in highly segregated, poor and racialized neighbourhoods in American cities with the major concern of community groups negotiating the CBAs being the displacement of existing residents through demolition and gentrification. So in these cases a CBA was viewed as a way of securing affordable housing provisions along with employment benefits to the nearby residents who were otherwise negatively impacted by the new development. When the MDWN scaled-up into the TCBN the demand for “local hiring” became tenuous. For one thing, the TCBN correctly anticipated that Metrolinx would resist a geographically-defined community benefits programs citing a need to be fair to all residents and out of (misplaced) fears that targeting “local” communities would breach international trade laws.214 The TCBN's focus was also no longer simply on the maintenance and storage facility in Mount Dennis but on the entire Eglinton Crosstown project that ran through many neighbourhoods (including both wealthy as well as poor neighbourhoods). So it was more difficult to try to link the creation of specific jobs to particular neighbourhoods in order to argue that those residents should be benefitting, especially given the highly mobile and intermittent nature of work within the building and construction trades.215 There were ways 214For several negotiation meetings between Metrolinx and the TCBN, Metrolinx officials emphasized that they did not want to give preference to particular geographic communities and worried about “the law”, even though a local hiring provision was never demanded by the TCBN and no specific law preventing the TCBN's demands was ever cited by Metrolinx. In terms of government procurement, both NAFTA and WTO exclude “urban rail and urban transportation equipment, systems, components and materials incorporated therein, as well as all project-related materials of iron or steel.” See World Trade Organization, Government Procurement: The Plurilateral Agreement on Government Procurement, Appendix I, Annex 2, https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/gproc_e/appendices_e.htm#appendixII, accessed January 7th, 2016. North American Free Trade Agreement, Chapter Ten: Government Procurement, Annex 1001.2b General Notes Schedule of Canada, https://www.nafta-sec-alena.org/Home/Legal-Texts/North-American-Free- Trade-Agreement?mvid=1&secid=a550e516-c181-49fc-9176-76db29b2969b#An1001.1a-3, accessed January 7th, 2016. 215Tradespersons do not only work in one neighbourhood or city, but move on and off of job sites as they are needed. Different trades (e.g., excavation, cement masons, electricians) would be coming in and out of the project at different points in time and locations. So the concept of a particular neighbourhood along the line benefiting from the construction jobs associated with a particular segment of the transit line, did not make sense. Even just trying to link a particular tradesperson to the entire Crosstown project was difficult since individual tradespersons could easily be 277 to still account for this dynamism, for example by requiring that a percentage of overall project work- hours be completed by workers from particular neighbourhoods along the proposed transit line—i.e. By naming “local communities” (plural), or specifically targeting “Priority Neighbourhoods,” or “low- income neighbourhoods” (defined as a percentage of the median income). Instead, some members of the TCBN began to advocate for the targeting of community benefits to be more explicitly defined in terms of equity rather than “local.” The scaling-up of the coalition had brought in organizations that specialized in anti-racism and anti-oppression work, as well as grassroots organizations that—unlike the MDWN—were comprised of people of colour. These groups had suspicion, born from past experiences, that the use of coded language such as “local communities” would create too many opportunities for the CBA to fail, during the program implementation phase, in terms of realizing its equity goals.216 Some people also felt like the phrase “equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups” better articulated the political purpose of the CBA by evoking the problems of structural racism, patriarchy and colonialism. A concern raised with the use of more explicit equity language was that there would be a right-wing political backlash to any mention of an employment equity program—as had been mobilized by the neoconservatives in Ontario during the 1990s to get the Progressive Conservatives and Premier Mike Harris elected (Bakan and Kobayashi 2007). Others felt like reference to “low-income communities/individuals” was more specific and could avoid political backlash while still benefiting equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups given these groups' disproportionate levels of poverty. After much discussion, the Foundation Document ended up reading:
Working in tandem with community-based organizations, labour and other partners, the [Eglinton-Scarborough Crosstown]CBA will implement specific strategies, including targets, that expand opportunities among historically disadvantaged communities and equity seeking groups. Outreach strategies will be an important part of reaching groups which include: residents in low income neighbourhoods, including Priority Neighbourhoods; among urban Aboriginal populations; within racialized and newcomer communities; and among people with disabilities as well as youth and women who are disadvantaged.
The TCBN would refer to all of these groups using the shorthand phrase, “equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups.”
transferred to other job sites as they were needed. 216In their discussion of how fears of political backlash have shaped employment equity programs in Canada, Bakan and Kobayashi (2007) argue that “Members of the designated groups who are the victims of systemic discrimination have suffered the most from strategic accommodations” (162). 278
One member of a labour organization I interviewed reflected on how their thinking around equity had changed through the strategic discussions and debates within the TCBN about how to define the groups being targeted for support through the proposed CBA:
So going back to what I learned in this, it was, you know, in the early meetings that I was attending in the Mount Dennis Weston Network, which was about middle of 2011, the language we used was of local hiring. And it was understood that local hiring meant racialized youth. But the term wasn’t-, but local hiring was the term. And it wasn’t really until about two years later, almost two years later in some of the discussions around the formation of the TCBN, that we kind of ran into organization and other activists, and saying, well, that’s not good enough, that you have to be explicit. And you know, and at first I was a bit confused. But then, you know, as one often does, you process it, you think about it, you have more discussions with people about what is not sufficient. And you know, and then you accept, yeah, absolutely, that is right, that local doesn’t cut it.217
This quote reflects the transformative learning and alliance-building that can take place when there is a need to develop a consensus position, and when supports for respectful conversation are present (e.g., a meeting chairperson and system for allowing all voices to be heard and respected; and reoccurring opportunities for interaction and dialogue over a prolonged period of time).
Militant Particularism
The TCBN's strategic reframing of target beneficiaries from “local communities” to “equity- seeking and historically disadvantaged groups” helped resolve some political tensions within the coalition. At the same time, this shift reflected a geographical contradiction involved in alliance- forming: neighbourhood-based groups' hopes of getting specific benefits for their constituents come into tension with the needs of the coalition to be inclusive in order to build solidarity across the city. Many members of the MDWN became involved in a campaign for a CBA in order to benefit the immediate geographical area in which they lived, in the spirit of being “good neighbours” and “caring about the community.” But this also meant that many MDWN members were less motivated to participate in the TCBN given its city-wide focus, since the particular benefits for Mount Dennis and Weston residents became less tangible. This problem, of scaling-up political organizing, is what Harvey (2001b) refers to as “militant
217Interview with ID012, June 6, 2013. 279 particularism.” Scaling-up a struggle experienced in one locale into a broader political movement can be difficult if those who are engaged locally do not accept the relevance of the broader political movement to their immediate struggle, or feel that their immediate struggle is undermined by the terms of the broader struggle. For example, a couple of years after the formation of the TCBN, one MDWN member questioned the overall direction the TCBN had gone in, which for them seemed distant from the MDWN's original goal of “creating jobs in our community.” Militant particularism also has a practical element. MDWN members were less motivated to travel further distances in order to attend regular TCBN meetings, which were held downtown so as to be more centrally located. The TCBN tried to address these geographical challenges of organizing by ensuring that representation on the Steering Committee was geographically balanced (two from the east-end, and two from the west-end). As part of the implementation of the Community Benefits Framework, the TCBN also held information and applicant screening sessions in neighbourhoods where TCBN member organizations were based. But it was sometimes difficult to please every group in this way. It was not only the TCBN but also Metrolinx that had to learn (and be convinced) about CBAs and ways of defining target beneficiaries. The phrase “equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups” was eventually accepted by Metrolinx as language for the Community Benefits Framework. This was a significant improvement from the start of negotiations when Metrolinx officials discussed “communities” as a homogenous group, sometimes referring to “local communities” but only in a strictly geographical sense as in “the neighbourhoods nearby projects” (i.e. without the same coded meaning encompassing social justice as was inferred in the usage by the MDWN or TCBN). For example, Metrolinx's communications around the GTS Employment Initiative (power point presentations, website materials, emails, and flyers) usually only referred to “community,” “interested individuals living in communities along the GTS rail corridor,” and “local community members.” These communications gave no rationale for targeting local communities and made no mention of equity, social or environmental justice. The Hammer Heads programme, which Metrolinx had partnered with for the GTS Employment Initiative, was only described by Metrolinx officially as a “youth” program, thereby downplaying the fact that the programme was specifically designed for youth on social assistance, or from “priority and under-resourced neighbourhoods.”218 The effort by Metrolinx to depoliticize the GTS Employment Initiative could be viewed as unintentional if it was not for the
218Central Ontario Building Trades. (No date). Creating Career Opportunities and Apprenticeships for Youth, Hammer Heads It's Working. Power Point Presentation. Available on-line at: http://www.cobtrades.com/hammerheads/presentation.pdf 280 strategic importance--and significant resources—Metrolinx gave to public communications. In this sense, the TCBN's efforts to have Metrolinx adopt a more politicized framing of community benefit programs must itself be considered a victory. The TCBN also engaged in “boundary work” (Fominaya 2010) to strategically depoliticize its image, and frame its demands in ways it thought would be more warmly received by decision-makers. Unlike with CBAs in the United States, the TCBN's Foundation Document did not specifically identify ex-offenders, military veterans, or those on social assistance, as key target groups to benefit from a CBA. In the United States, the higher rates of incarceration and numbers of veterans has forced the employment problems facing ex-offenders and military veterans onto the mainstream political agenda. In contrast, the TCBN did not explicitly identify ex-offenders and welfare recipients as potential beneficiaries of a CBA (e.g., in TCBN media communications, in the Foundation Document, or in the Community Benefits Framework), out of a fear that the stigma associated with these groups of people would be mobilized by conservative politicians to undermine the overall initiative. A political backlash to job programs aimed at ex-offenders and welfare recipients is a real concern, especially given the high numbers of working poor in Toronto who might see these programs as unfair given their own struggles (Stapleton, Murphy, and Xing 2012). It was also pointed out at a meeting that the construction sector and construction unions were already under intense public scrutiny for alleged ties to organized crime (Cribb and Alphen 2014; Zach Dubinsky 2014). On the other hand, the TCBN could have tried to publicly win the argument either from a social justice perspective or from a conservative economic perspective (i.e., that it is much cheaper for the state to provide ex-offenders and welfare recipients with training and jobs than to leave people to re- offend and end up in jail or to remain stuck on the welfare rolls). The Hammer Heads program had already won support from the government, in part, by arguing that it was saving the government money by taking youth off of social assistance.219 In the end, the TCBN decided to implicitly include ex- offenders and social assistance recipients as targeted beneficiaries by quietly reaching out to these groups during the implementation phase of CBA (i.e. during the advertisement and engagement of participants for new training and job programs). The disadvantage of this strategy was that it forwent the formation of strategic alliances with social justice organizations contesting the criminal justice system (largely Black activists) and social assistance (e.g., the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty).
219Central Ontario Building Trades. (No date). Creating Career Opportunities and Apprenticeships for Youth, Hammer Heads It's Working. Power Point Presentation. Available on-line at: http://www.cobtrades.com/hammerheads/presentation.pdf 281
Narrowing socio-ecological demands & the dissolution of the MDWN
Throughout its negotiations with Metrolinx for a CBA, the TCBN was forced to narrow the scope of its initial demands, moving away from the MDWN's advocacy around land use and environmental considerations, and focusing instead on jobs (especially apprenticeships) and social procurement. These trade-offs that the TCBN experienced in negotiations with Metrolinx are conditioned by broader socio-ecological contradictions and call into question the government's framing of public transit investments as progressive environmental policy. When the TCBN was established, a fourth working group was formed to advance some of the proposals for “neighbourhood improvements” that had been initially developed by the Mount Dennis Weston Network. The primary task of this working group was to influence the layout and design of the maintenance and storage facility (MSF) on the Kodak lands, and to consider ways of mitigating gentrification. The TCBN argued that the MSF should be built according to the highest environmental design standards. For example, at the negotiation table, the TCBN argued that MSF buildings should have solar panels on the roof or that Metrolinx at least require proponents bidding for the MSF contract to build the roof strong enough so that solar panels could be easily installed later (e.g., once the government assumed control of the buildings after the 30-year P3 contract ended). The TCBN requested that the footprint of the MSF be reduced so that the site could be developed to its full potential as an employment area rather than simply being used as transit yard. Finally, the neighbourhood improvement working group continued to advocate for the remaining Kodak employees building to be restored for purposes that served the community, rather than simply turned over for private sector use. Metrolinx consistently refused to discuss the Kodak site in negotiations with the TCBN, redirecting the conversation to Metrolinx's official consultation process for the Mount Dennis “mobility hub.”220 The mobility hub consultations were a series of three “public open house” meetings between the summer of 2012 and spring of 2013 managed by Metrolinx and facilitated by consulting firms. The Mount Dennis Economic Development Workshop (discussed in chapter seven) also informed the final report. The Mobility Hub study focused on the Mount Dennis station design (including the repurposing of the Kodak employees building), the integration of the Mount Dennis station into other transportation
220Metrolinx identified fifty-one mobility hubs in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area that would act as multimodal transfer points within the regional transportation network. 282 networks, “streetscaping” along Eglinton Avenue and Weston Road, and the development potential of the Kodak lands and adjacent properties. At a high level, mobility hubs were framed by the government as a way of planning and designing key transit nodes to realize broader economic and environmental objectives:
A mobility hub is more than just a transit station. Mobility hubs consist of major transit stations and the surrounding area...
Mobility hubs have great potential to help transform the region and reinforce provincial policies as laid out by the landmark Greenbelt Plan and Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe. The hubs will be centres of activity, attracting opportunities for live, work, and play, that are connected to the rest of the GTHA through reliable, rapid transit. This potential can be achieved with the successful integration of land use and transportation planning, committed private sector partners, strong stakeholder engagement and a common vision for the future (Metrolinx 2016).
The final report for the Mount Dennis mobility hub study offers possible scenarios for realizing “a long-term vision for the Mount Dennis Station and surrounding lands of a higher-density, mixed use environment connected by an expanded pedestrian and cycling network”(Metrolinx 2013c, i). But as members of the MDWN pointed out to the design team, Metrolinx only provided detailed scenarios for how the parcels of privately-owned and municipally-owned land surrounding the Kodak site could be intensely developed while ironically only proposing a one-story, sprawling transit facilities and train tracks on the provincially-owned Kodak site itself. The mobility hub planning for the Kodak Site revealed Metrolinx's reluctance to engage directly in economic development on land that it owned (let alone green economic development in particular). Yet the government in many ways supported and subsidized the development of private lands adjacent to a given hub through planning efforts (e.g., re- zoning, street realignments) and public infrastructure (e.g., streetscaping, park development, improved pedestrian and cyclist connections from adjacent properties into transit stations, and the provision of rapid transit itself). A major reason that the mobility hub report has few proposals for the redevelopment of the Kodak lands and the MSF buildings, is because in keeping with P3 procurement ideology, Metrolinx wanted to give free reign to private construction consortiums bidding for the contract to build, operate, and maintain the MSF, to come up with innovative design concepts. But this free market ideology undermines residents' right to the city, and devalues the innovative capacity of residents and social movement groups (which are, in fact, more “free” in their thinking since they are not constrained by profit considerations). 283
The mobility hub final report makes an obvious effort to appeal to environmental sensibilities,221 although only selectively incorporates proposals of the MDWN and TCBN for regulating the urban metabolism. MDWN members engaged heavily in the mobility hub study consultations, in addition to writing letters to Metrolinx with more detailed recommendations. The mobility hub report supports MDWN's proposals for expanding cyclist and pedestrian infrastructure, developing re-naturalized areas on the Kodak site as part of flood control measures, and establishing new park space or parkettes. But the report ignores the MDWN and TCBN's suggestions for sustainable building design of the MSF facilities, as well as proposals that would have required Metrolinx to remediate greater amounts of contaminated soil on the Kodak site (e.g., proposals to establish small businesses along the Eglinton frontage, to realign tracks, and to store LRT trains underground, etc.). The report also completely fails to address the MDWN's suggestions for catalyzing green economic development on and around the Kodak site. The report separates economic development (presented as retail, housing, and eventually commercial) from environmental objectives (framed in terms of “public realm improvements”). The “green” vision articulated through Metrolinx's Mount Dennis mobility hub report promotes a form of housing and retail-driven urban revitalization that reproduces systems of production and consumption driving many socio-ecological problems (even if these problems have become displaced to other spatial and temporal scales). The focus on superficial or aesthetic measures to “clean up,” “beautify,” or “green” the neighbourhood and city, may increase land values for developers and home owners, and create a more enjoyable public realm for those who can afford to live in it, but it does not eliminate the ongoing socio-ecological degradation caused by prevailing modes of capitalist production, circulation and consumption. Nor do these “public realm improvements” address the toxic legacy of former rounds of industrialization, that remain hidden underneath the surface in contaminated soils and groundwater. This urban sustainable fix, as I have discussed in chapter five, also fails to take into account social justice. Not only does the Mount Dennis mobility hubs report leave out the MDWN's concern for a more equitable distribution of the economic opportunities generated through redevelopment and “green” initiatives but also completely ignores how these processes displace low-income and racialized residents through gentrification. While failing to address deep socio-ecological contradictions of capitalism and issues of social justice, Metrolinx's green framing of mobility hubs markets the
221The picture-heavy 106-page Mount Dennis mobility hub study uses the term “environment” thirty times, and the term “green” eighteen times, and the term “greenway” nine times. 284
Crosstown project—and government transit investments more generally—as progressive policies, thus providing an ethical fig leaf for the state's neoliberal agenda (e.g., the use of P3s, and the way transit investments subsidize real estate speculators and developers). It is also important to note that the mobility hub report is a visionary document without any government commitments of making this vision happen. Many of the environmental features displayed in the report, such as “generous landscaping [to] create a true green promenade”(Metrolinx 2013, 37), “generous tree planting”(Metrolinx 2013c, 105), parkettes, living walls and even bike paths, could be easily dropped or delayed by the government or by the chosen proponents for the MSF P3 contract. Metrolinx's refusal to negotiate land-use and environmental issues with the TCBN coupled with the coalition's very limited bargaining power led the TCBN to drop its demands for neighbourhood improvement regarding the Kodak site and the design of the MSF.222 These concerns are not referenced in the Community Benefits Framework nor the RFP clauses issued by Metrolinx for the Crosstown (see table 11.1). Although the MDWN had long-advocated around land-use and environmental issues for the Kodak lands, these issues also had a lower organizational priority once it scaled-up into the city- wide coalition. Members of the TCBN were most interested in winning employment equity or social procurement provisions. The MDWN was one of only two members of the TCBN concerned with land- use and environmental concerns. Although Metrolinx's dismissal of land use and environmental concerns from the negotiation table was the primary reason these issues were deprioritized within the TCBN, we can also understand this deprioritization as a failure of social movement learning within the coalition on these issues. Even if low-income and precariously employed residents are forced to struggle to get any job, making the struggles for green jobs seem frivolous, the TCBN could have done more ideological work to suggest how struggles for livelihoods and environmental quality might be connected through concrete projects (e.g., jobs installing solar panels on the future roof of the MSF). At a minimum, the TCBN might have framed transit jobs as green jobs,and then presented employment equity for these jobs as a struggle for environmental justice—not so much over the distribution of environmental “bads” as over the just distribution of environmental “goods” (e.g., transit-related jobs and procurement). While this framing might not have directly spoken to the MDWN's proposals for green economic development on the Kodak site and the sustainable design of the MSF, it might have provided an ideological segue (or “frame transformation”) that facilitated so-call red-green social movement alliance-forming—better
222 The TCBN's small working group on neighbourhood improvement would continue to meet a few times throughout 2014 and 2015, and neighbourhood improvement would still officially be part of the TCBN's organizational mandate. 285 connecting issues of jobs, social justice and environmental concerns. An environmental justice framing could have helped raise the consciousness of coalition members about prevailing socio-ecological contradictions (and how these setup trade-offs tendencies in CBA negotiations) and may have also institutionally broadened the coalition by inviting participation of environmentally-oriented organizations and activists within the city. But the TCBN never framed its demands for the Crosstown project in terms of environmental justice per se, instead using a discourse of “jobs,” “equity” and “good public policy” to mobilize organizations and residents, and to lobby the government.
The dissolution but lasting impact of the MDWN
The narrowing of the TCBN's negotiation priorities away from neighbourhood improvements coupled with its focus on city-wide employment issues rather than “local jobs” in York South-Weston contributed to the dissolution of the MDWN. The work of the TCBN no longer resonated with some members of the MDWN who had originally joined the MDWN out of a strong neighbourhood identification and a concern for environmental issues and/or the future of the Kodak site rather than than employment equity and social procurement. Three key members of the MDWN who organized and facilitated its regular meetings also had less time to devote to the MDWN because they had become deeply involved in the work of the TCBN. Labour Council representatives who had been involved in the MDWN also pulled away once its attention shifted towards building-up the TCBN. Between recruitment for the TCBN, preparation for TCBN meetings, lobbying politicians and negotiating with Metrolinx for a CBA, the Labour Council representatives had little time to continue participating in the MDWN. The MDWN organized a well-attended strategic visioning barbecue in July 2013 that would nevertheless be its second last formal meeting. As discussed in chapter eight, the MDWN lacked a strategy for growing is membership and political power through cross-class, multi- ethno-racial organizing. Although the TCBN pulled back on its demands around the Kodak site and the MDWN stopped meeting, two key members of the MDWN—the Mount Dennis Community Association and the Learning Enrichment Foundation—were invited by the local councillors to join a “community working group” setup during the summer of 2013 to examine intensification possibilities for the Kodak lands. Also participating in the working group were Metrolinx officials, the local MPP, residents from the Greenhills Community Association, city staff and a landscape architect and urban designer who lived 286 in the area. Because the maintenance and storage facility and other track alignment reconfigurations being proposed were not part of the original 2010 environmental assessment already approved by the Minister of the Environment, Metrolinx needed to provide an Environmental Project Report Addendum and carry out 30 days of consultations. The 2012 City-Metrolinx Master Agreement also required that Metrolinx consult with the City regarding any proposed changes and that City staff provide a report of the changes to City Council before Metrolinx could issue a Notice of Completion (City of Toronto 2013d). The local councillors took advantage of these requirements and their position on the City's Executive Committee to defer City Council's recommendation of the changes until after Metrolinx engaged with the working group (City of Toronto 2013d).223 The formation of a “community working group” by the two local councillors and the MPP reflects the enduring legacy of the Mount Dennis Community Association (MDCA) and the MDWN in forcing politicians to engage local residents in planning and economic development issues. But the politicians' manoeuvres to tightly control this closed-door working group revealed their ongoing disdain for deeper public participation. Residents were appointed (not elected) this working group and —besides the MDWN representative—were ideologically aligned with the councillors' mainstream vision of urban revitalization. Most of the residents appointed to the working group had been supportive of Metrus' 2008 proposal to convert the Kodak lands into a retail complex. Tellingly, all six residents the councillors appointed to this so-called community working group were white, middle class, homeowners, and—with the exception of the MDWN representative—were all men.224 Not surprisingly, the working group's recommendations did not address any social justice issues. The working group met five times over the summer and agreed to nine principles for the redevelopment of the former Kodak site (City of Toronto 2013e). The RFP issued by Metrolinx for the Crosstown project (including the MSF) would request that these nine principles be incorporated into the proposals submitted by the bidding consortia. At first glance, these principles seem to echo many of the demands first presented to Metrolinx by the MDWN: minimizing the footprint of the maintenance and storage facility so that the site could accommodate multiple uses beyond simply a transit facility; incorporating sustainability elements into designs; better connecting the site and the rest of the community (e.g., cycling and pedestrian networks through the site); protecting heritage elements of the
223Section 15 of the Ontario Regulation 231/08 requires a reassessment, or “addendum,” to an approved Environmental Project Report (EPR) if any significant change to a project is proposed so that potential impacts and mitigation measures can be identified. 224This working group was dubbed “the select six” by some community activists to chastise it undemocratic, and unrepresentative nature. 287
Kodak (Employees) Building 9 and the Scotiabank building along Weston road; and protecting the stability of the existing Employment Area to the north of the Kodak site against negative impacts owing to future sensitive residential and non-residential developments on the Kodak site. On the one hand, having these principles adopted by City Council was a victory for the MDWN. Metrolinx had long resisted incorporating or even discussing the community's vision for development of the Kodak lands. On October 9th, 2013, a Metrolinx spokesperson conceded to the media that: “We’ve agreed that we’re going to work with the principals in terms of our requests for proposals going out and we’re going to continue to engage with the community as we move forward....It is unusual but it’s really an important piece of property and really important to the community”(Winsa 2013). But on the other hand, the principles proposed by the councillor-led working group contradicted the MDWN's vision for neighbourhood revitalization in several ways reflecting long-standing debates within the community over the most appropriate use of the Kodak lands. Whereas the MDWN approached neighbourhood revitalization through a social justice lens (e.g., creating job opportunities for marginalized residents), none of the nine principles address social justice concerns and some even facilitated gentrification. Unlike the MDWN's proposals, the councillor's principles do not specifically focus on green economic development. And although principle 8 requires the “application of sustainable elements” into the design of any future development, the meaning of this remains vague, whereas the MDWN and TCBN provided Metrolinx with very concrete sustainable design proposals. Echoing long-standing demands of the MDWN to protect the area's employment lands, Principle 5 requires that future development on the Kodak lands not infringe upon the existing industrial employment uses of the adjacent properties to the north and west of the Kodak lands. However, principle 1 opens up the Eglinton Avenue frontage of the Kodak property to all forms of development, including office, institutional, retail, community and civic uses, public open space, and limited residential. No restrictions are placed on the types of retail that should be allowed (e.g., big box retail), and this was the first time that residential use has ever been proposed for the Kodak lands (with no requirements for affordable housing). Principle 1 therefore contradicts the MDWN's long struggle for the Kodak lands to be reserved for employment uses and its fight against large retail stores occupying the site. The acceptance of all forms of development in these principles side-stepped underlying debates whether to develop the economy through retail and real-estate-led development, or rather through 288 industrial or commercial development, and if so, what type. In adopting principle 1, the councillors essentially turned decision-making over to market (knowing this would favour status quo “mixed-use” development). Similarly, final decisions regarding the MSF would be left up to the two private sector consortiums bidding on the project through Metrolinx's P3 procurement process. In this way, Metrolinx would be able to point to a “fair and free market” bidding process in lieu of having to justify the final designs for the site and building. Even though the MDWN would dissolve, its impact on community organizing would continue to be felt in the years to come. The winning proponent for the MSF contract was Crosslinx Transit Solution. Their initial development plans included an 18 megawatt (MW) gas-fire power plant (City of Toronto 2016b). This was shocking news for anyone who had been attending public consultations for the project, including environmental assessment meeting, where no mention of a potential gas plant was ever made. Thanks to longstanding engagement of the MDCA and the MDWN with the Crosstown project and the redevelopment of the Kodak lands, a group of residents were able to quickly come together after finding out about the gas plant. This “group of 12” (from Ward 12) as they called themselves, formed a coalition with environmental groups (who they had previously work with before), lobbied local politicians and launched a media campaign against the gas plant (Kalinowski 2016). Their success in stopping the gas plant from being built once again demonstrates how social movement groups work to mediate socio-ecological fixes. This struggle demonstrates how the social movement learning (e.g., about how to launch a campaign) and relationship-building (e.g., with each other and also with local politicians) that these residents had undertaken in working with the MDCA and MDWN produced a lasting capacity in the community for political organizing and coalition-building in particular.
Missed Opportunities
The TCBN's weak bargaining position forced it to abandon a number of other demands in addition to dropping its demands around neighbourhood improvements. In the process, the TCBN missed some potential opportunities for strengthening its membership and widening its public support. The TCBN quickly dropped its initial demand that temporary foreign workers not be used on the Crosstown project. The TCBN never pressed Metrolinx to include maintenance and operation jobs as 289 part of the CBA even though this was one of the MDWN's original demands.225 The TCBN was unsuccessful in its attempts to engage the leadership of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 113 (the union covering TTC workers who would operate the LRT). The involvement of the ATU could have helped the TCBN link social justice training and hiring programs to future maintenance and operational jobs while possibly winning guarantees from Metrolinx that maintenance contractors it hired for the Crosstown would honour card-check or adhere to the City of Toronto's prevailing wage policy.226 The TCBN also did not push Metrolinx to address gentrification being caused by the construction of the Crosstown line. The TCBN anticipated that Metrolinx's narrow focus on transit precluded any negotiations around the protection of low-income renters—which would require the province and city to not only build more affordable housing but also adopt new planning measures, such as inclusionary zoning, to regulate development along the line (Grewal 2015; Mah 2009). The TCBN did argue (unsuccessfully) that Metrolinx should use land it appropriated for staging the construction of the LRT project for building affordable housing upon completion of the project. Instead, Metrolinx has signalled its intention to sell-off surplus lands, as well as the rights to build above LRT stations, to the highest bidder in the market as a cost-recovery measure (Kalinowski and Rider 2015). Pushing harder for affordable housing provision in the CBA may have helped bring affordable housing advocates into the coalition.227
Conclusion
The Crosstown LRT project was part of a socio-ecological fix aimed at reducing congestion, improving the circulation of capital, opening new development opportunities through intensification, and creating profitable investments for the construction sector. The TCBN set out to make the Crosstown project mean something more than this by trying to win a community benefits agreement
225On November 28, 2012, Metrolinx signed a Master Agreement with the Toronto Transit Commission providing the TTC with a ten-year contract to operate the LRT vehicles. This meant that the TCBN would have needed to negotiate with the City regarding a targeted hiring program for operation jobs. The TTC already had a “Recruitment Initiative” that created one hundred summer job opportunities for youth from priority neighbourhoods (City of Toronto 2010a). Although the Rob Ford administration was anti-union, Ford nevertheless publicly supported the Hammer Heads program (see figure 8.4). In any case, maintenance and repair work for the Crosstown was still within Metrolinx's jurisdiction, having been bundled as part of a 30-year, $9.1 billion P3 contract (which also covered its financing, design, and construction). 226More research is needed to understand the ATU's reluctance to get involved in the TCBN. But the ATU does not have a tradition of joining community coalitions. 227The TCBN missed an opportunity to take advantage of a major two-year planning study of Eglinton Avenue, that was undertaken by the City of Toronto in partnership with Metrolinx between 2012-2013, to press for the protection of affordable housing along the Crosstown corridor (City of Toronto 2016). The final reports and recommendations for this study, called “Eglinton Connects,” scarcely mention affordable housing. 290 that realized employment equity, social procurement and socio-ecological neighbourhood improvements. This chapter has explained and appraised social movement alliance-forming that scaled- up the MDWN into the TCBN. I analyzed the social movement learning through which the coalition's CBA demands were framed and changed. I also examined the contradictions and tensions that narrowed the TCBN's demands and membership. Drawing on social movement theory, I identified how political opportunities for a CBA opened up within the provincial government and Metrolinx and analyzed the critical role played by Labour Council in mobilizing financial and strategic resources for the TCBN. Labour Council provided the emergent TCBN with strategic and organizational leadership, helping the TCBN access institutional funding while using its legitimacy and political clout to gain TCBN access to government decision-makers. For Labour Council, the TCBN was not an opportunistic “vanguard coalition” nor an ad-hoc coalition aimed at simply winning a CBA. Rather, Labour Council supported the TCBN as a way of deepening an understanding and appreciation of unions within racialized communities given the under-representation of racialized workers in the building and construction trade unions. At the same time, Labour Council hoped to deepen an understanding of, and commitment for, employment equity within these unions. This type of cross-class, multi-ethnic, labour- community alliance-forming was seen as critical for building a counter-hegemonic movement that could resist the rise of revanchist conservative political parties and ongoing anti-union government policies. The scaling-up of the MDWN into the TCBN saw a broadening of the coalition's membership in terms of its geographical representation and ethno-racial make-up but also an ideological deepening that came about through social movement learning and relationship-building. Through deliberation and interactions over the course of many meetings and workshops, coalition members formed new bonds, learned about the experiences of CBAs in other jurisdictions and built consensus around the TCBN's organizational goals, strategy and tactics. I have argued that the TCBN's democratic structures and consensus-based decision-making were key in encouraging members' transformative learning. An important example of the coalition's ideological deepening is how the TCBN transformed its framing of targeted CBA beneficiaries from “local residents” to “equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups.” This shows how members of the coalition—namely, white men—deepened their understanding of equity by listening and working with advocacy groups for equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged people. 291
The TCBN faced significant resistance from Metrolinx to its demands for a comprehensive and legally-binding CBA. The TCBN's weak bargaining position in the face of strong resistance from the state forced it to make trade-offs amongst its proposals. In an effort to consolidate its (already weak) negotiation leverage around demands for employment equity and social procurement, the TCBN dropped its demands around land use planning (e.g., intensified economic development on the Kodak lands), environmental design (e.g., solar panel roof for the MSF) and other social justice demands (e.g., affordable housing). This demonstrates the role of the state in trying to separate environmental concerns from other concerns regarding production and social reproduction. At the same time, it points to the need for greater internal education about how these issues are, or could be, related as part of an emancipatory politics. This chapter has also shown how scaling-up a coalition can raise the dilemma of militant particularism. When the TCBN shifted its framing away from “local hiring” and dropped its demands around neighbourhood improvements, some members of the MDWN stopped participating. Part of the reason for this was practical since meetings for the TCBN were no longer being held in York South- Weston creating an added barrier for people to attend. But another reason some MDWN stopped participating is because their affinities and issues of primary concern were geographically bound to their particular neighbourhood. These tensions, coupled with the loss of key organizers to the TCBN, led to the dissolution of the MDWN. Still, I have argued that the ability of former MDWN members and MDCA members to quickly and successfully organize resistance to a gas plant being proposed for the Kodak lands demonstrates the lasting impact of labour-community coalition-building in York South-Weston. Finally, this chapter has identified several missed opportunities for alliance-forming, either due to the TCBN's strategic decisions, or because of the trade-offs that Metrolinx constructed during negotiations. The TCBN avoided the explicit naming of ex-offenders and welfare recipients as target beneficiaries for a CBA in fears of triggering a conservative political backlash to employment equity and the use of CBAs. Whether or not such a backlash would have occurred (and it still might regardless), the TCBN sacrificed building relationships with social justice organizations defending these groups. Similarly, by failing to push for CBA proposals that addressed transit-led gentrification the TCBN failed to build partnerships with affordable housing advocates in the city. The ATU also missed a chance to work with the TCBN to fight against Metrolinx's move to privatize and de-unionize Toronto's transit sector. 292
Chapter 11
Community Benefits Agreements: Social Bargaining or Negotiated Neoliberalism?
Evaluating CBA Negotiations for the Eglinton Crosstown LRT Project228
This chapter critically evaluates the process and outcome of the TCBN's efforts to win a community benefits agreement from Metrolinx for the Eglinton Crosstown light rail transit project. I draw on the Crosstown project case study in assessing whether CBAs are an effective strategy for labour and community groups to assert a right to the city, to negotiate a more equitable distribution of the economic and environmental impacts of urban revitalization, and to bring about union renewal. I argue that CBAs are worth pursuing as part of a broader strategy of social bargaining but are unlikely to succeed without an organizing model for alliance-forming that is grounded in what I call deep community organizing (as opposed to simply a lobby strategy, communications strategy, or mobilization campaign). I argue that we must be wary of CBAs being used by those in power to co-opt resistance to neoliberal state policies. Public announcements made by Metrolinx and the provincial government claiming they had signed Ontario's first community benefits agreement on the one hand reflect the success of the MDWN and TCBN in pressuring the government to respond. But I argue that the Community Benefits Framework negotiated and signed by Metrolinx and the TCBN actually fell far short of being a CBA. As the TCBN proceeded with negotiations, the TCBN faced pressures from Metrolinx to narrow the scope of its demands. The TCBN's relatively weak bargaining position led it to relinquish demands relating to the regulation of urban space (e.g. environmental design requirements for the Kodak site, provisions to address gentrification, etc.) as well as the regulation of the labour market (e.g. restricting the use of temporary foreign workers). In the end, the community benefits programs implemented for the Crosstown project failed to meet six key criteria that my review of the literature on CBAs indicates is required if a CBA is to realize poverty alleviation and employment equity goals. Rather, a workforce development approach to realizing equity was implemented that did not require Metrolinx or the construction contractors to commit to any hard or soft employment equity targets.
228Several passages from this chapter will be included in a forthcoming journal article: Nugent, James. 2017. “The Right to Build the City: Can Community Benefits Agreements Bring Employment Equity to the Construction Sector?” Labour/Le Travail. (80) Fall. 293
The negotiated Community Benefits Framework, even when taken together with related clauses in the Request for Proposal issued by Metrolinx for the Crosstown project, only met a couple of the demands made by the TCBN during negotiations. Of course, these shortcomings must be understood within the given historical conjuncture in which: Metrolinx was averse to signing any agreement with the TCBN; the provincial government was resisting the (re)implementation of employment equity policies; and government austerity policies have cut funding for poverty alleviation programs (Ontario Common Front 2012; Douglas and Go 2014; Ohemeng and McGrandle 2014; Agócs 2014). Rather than use the Crosstown CBA as a tool to uphold its responsibilities for developing and implementing social and environmental policy, economic development and urban planning, I argue that the provincial government neglected these responsibilities either directly, by refusing to negotiate certain issues at all, or indirectly, by passing them on for the market to address through the competitive alternative financing and procurement (i.e. public-private partnership or P3) bidding process. While failing on its promise, I argue that the government has used the popular appeal of a CBA to help organize consent around a neoliberal socio-ecological fix including the privatization and deunionization of the transit sector. One objective of this chapter is to explain why and how the TCBN was transformed away from being an oppositional force demanding a comprehensive CBA toward becoming institutionalized and depoliticized into something that resembled a workforce development agency. The TCBN's lack of bargaining power and time constraints surrounding the P3 procurement process led it to adopt a more top-down, “insider” strategy based on lobbying and compromise rather than building up bargaining power through protest and the mass political organization of marginalized residents. This type of deep community organizing, which I describe as “raising expectations honestly,” is a time-consuming, resource-intensive process that was likely beyond the capacity and time constraints of the TCBN. The TCBN's insider strategy also arose out of strategic disagreements and confusion amongst the leadership about how to politically engage marginalized communities and whether to “raise expectations” or “manage (i.e. lower) expectations” around a potential CBA. Receiving funding from charities and the state also had a depoliticizing effect on the TCBN's activities. Finally, the TCBN struggled to gain support from the political leadership of the building trades thereby hampering the coalition's ability to negotiate for stronger employment equity measures within apprenticeship programs and foreclosing a potentially broader struggle around the provincial government's introduction of P3s and open-shop contracting for transit infrastructure projects. 294
CBAs: Negotiated neoliberalism or social bargaining?
On the one hand, community benefit agreements would not be necessary if it were not for the long-standing refusal, or neoliberal abandonment, by the state and employers to provide things like job training and workforce development, a living wage, affordable housing and public spaces. Similarly, “benefits” such as employment equity should simply be ensured by the state as a basic human right rather than having to be negotiated for on a project-by-project basis. In this sense, governments and private developers that sign CBAs should not be congratulated for negotiating CBAs but rather critiqued for forcing marginalized groups to negotiate for things that should already be provided and that in certain cases were once provided as a matter of policy (e.g. workplace training, access to affordable housing, etc.). One danger with CBAs is that they normalize a process of limited and piecemeal (project-by-project) negotiations and winning these project-specific CBAs consume scarce social movement resources that could otherwise be directed towards winning system-wide changes (e.g. employment equity legislation). This has led some of the early proponents of CBAs (e.g., labour- community coalitions in Los Angeles that won some of the first CBAs) to redirect their energies towards winning city-wide ordinances or legislation that would make community benefits mandatory for all projects. As my Crosstown case study demonstrates, another danger with CBAs is that they can be used by governments or developers to delay or undermine the political demands and potential alliance- forming of coalitions through the negotiation process itself or by diverting them into a weak (apolitical) bureaucratic exercise consumed by tedious meetings and debates over how best to implement what are only very minor concessions. Dragging on negotiations, sometimes over years (as happened between the MDWN/TCBN and Metrolinx), can work to demobilize a coalition if its overriding focus becomes bargaining per se rather than organizing political pressure to build-up bargaining power. A strategic dilemma for the TCBN was that its bargaining leverage was derived primarily from its tacit agreement with Metrolinx and the provincial Liberal government to not engage in this type of organizing (in other words, to “play nice”). Compromises made during negotiations mean that the actual outcomes of implementing CBAs often end up falling far short of the laudable principles or objectives initially motivating them. Still worse, selectively offering limited benefits through CBAs can be a way for governments or developers 295 to neutralize, split, or co-opt political resistance--not only to specific projects but also in response to broader neoliberal restructuring (e.g. public-private partnerships, gentrification, etc.). In New York City, some CBAs have been criticized because developers negotiated with a hand-selected “community coalition” that favoured redevelopment of the neighbourhood but which did not actually have genuine resident participation and excluded representative of groups opposed to the project (Lavine and Oder 2010; Been et al. 2010; “About BrooklynSpeaks” 2014). Some city planners have also worried that the negotiation of CBAs between developers and neighbourhood advocacy groups may not be carried out with the priorities or interests of the entire city in mind (Wolf-Powers 2010). Similarly, urban planning scholars have suggested that CBAs (with “local” benefit provisions) tend to privilege gentrifying neighbourhoods, unfairly keeping the benefits of urban development away from areas of disinvestment —a form of “NIMBYism in reverse (benefits ‘only in my backyard’) (Parks and Warren 2009, 102). In his case study of urban revitalization projects on New York's Coney Island, MacDonald (2011) shows how working-class interests around affordable housing become traded-off during CBA negotiations in exchange for other working-class interests, regarding employment, wages and union representation. I extend MacDonald critique of CBAs as a form of “negotiated gentrification,” to think more generally about how the state uses CBAs to organize consent for neoliberalism. CBAs provide politicians with “good news stories” that can serve as political cover for other failed policies or worsening conditions. As I will show by deconstructing the Ontario's Premier's statements on the Crosstown “community benefits agreement,” CBAs can make it seem as if politicians are creating jobs (during a period of stalled economic growth and austerity) when in fact CBAs do not create any net new jobs but rather aim to distribute new jobs more equitably. Moreover, the lack of employment equity outcomes for the Crosstown project means the government is actually doing very little to address the livelihood concerns of equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged workers. I argue that the provincial state has used CBAs as a tool for gaining legitimacy, an ethical “fig leaf”229 that has helped it organize consent for neoliberal restructuring (e.g., the privatization and de-unionization of the transit sector, in addition to transit-led gentrification). This manoeuvring is ideological and political: it cheaply quells more radical challenges to the state from social movement groups or even wins their loyalty; meanwhile, setting-up negotiation trade-offs and “non-negotiables” works as a political strategy to separate social movement groups from working together or even creates tensions between
229 I draw on Gavin Fridell’s critique of public institutions using fair trade coffee as an “ethical fig leaf” to mask their support of a neoliberal agenda. Fridell, “The Fair Trade Network in Historical Perspective,” Canadian Journal of Development Studies / Revue Canadienne D’etudes Du Developpement 25, 3 (2004): 424, doi:10.1080/02255189.2004.9668986. 296 them. Despite the potential pitfalls of CBAs, I argue that CBAs nevertheless hold promise as part of a recent wave of social bargaining strategies that have seen some unions and municipal labour councils in Canada and the United States move beyond traditional workplace collective bargaining--which focused on wages and working conditions in particular workplaces--to address problems of the entire working class (e.g. campaigns for a living wage; fight-backs against austerity; anti-privatization campaigns; climate justice campaigns; and the electoral defeat of conservative political parties) (Simon J. Black 2005; Turner and Cornfield 2007b; Cartwright 2007). This turn towards social unionism comes at a time of declining union density (Government of Canada 2015) and when traditional collective bargaining rights in Canada (and elsewhere) have been seriously undermined through “back- to-work” legislation, “net zero” mandates, ongoing blackmail by employers using the threat of privatization or outsourcing of work and fundamental attacks on unions' ability to organize members and collect dues (i.e. “right-to-work” legislation). CBAs are an attempt to tie together issues of social reproduction to capital accumulation. Especially in the United States, movements to win CBAs have not only supported gains in the realm of production (e.g., living wages, unionization, employment equity, etc.) but have been largely driven by struggles for affordable housing (Cummings 2007). CBAs hold promise not simply for the concrete benefits they can (at least in theory) exact from private developers or the state for marginalized groups relating to specific projects but even more importantly for the longer-term alliances that can potentially form amongst the organizations and people involved in struggles for a CBA—including many groups who may never have worked together before. Winning a CBA, even if only a small victory, can motivate future collective action and counter-hegemonic alliance-forming by those involved. These alliances therefore hold the potential for bringing about the social transformations needed to eliminate the oppression underlying the current need for CBAs.
Political Lobbying & Framing
On April 23, 2014, the CEO of Metrolinx sent the Chair of the TCBN a signed copy of a “Community Benefits Framework.” This came as a surprise to the TCBN since it was feeling like negotiations had begun to stall after one-and-a-half years of meetings. Up to that point Metrolinx had been extremely reluctant to put down any kind of agreement into writing—even if only a general 297 statement of principles. Although the Framework was far less than what the TCBN had been demanding it did commit to a “community benefits program” and established a mutually agreed-upon set of principles that the TCBN still hoped could lead to a more comprehensive and legally-binding CBA. Notably, the Framework applied not only to the Eglinton Crosstown, which had been the focus of negotiations, but to all three of the future light rail transit projects in Toronto (i.e. for Eglinton, Finch and Sheppard avenues). Though Metrolinx's signing of the Framework came somewhat as a surprise, it was actually the culmination of behind-the-scenes work by Metrolinx staff coupled with the TCBN's political lobbying of Queen's Park (see table 11.1). The TCBN had also carried out a media strategy that included working with sympathetic journalists to get stories written in mainstream newspapers, developing a website and issuing a couple of press releases surrounding its activities. It was most likely the direct lobbying, rather than the communications strategy, that generated political support from Queen's Park. Although backbench government MPPs with whom the TCBN met knew nothing about the work that the TCBN had been doing, a cabinet minister who met with a delegation from the TCBN said that the idea of CBAs had been raised within cabinet (likely via MPP Albanese or through discussions with senior Metrolinx officials).
August 17, 2012 Letter of support from NDP MPP Jonah Schein to Premier McGuinty April 22, 2013 TCBN hosts all-party briefing on CBAs at Queen's Park April 23, 2013 Letter of support for a CBA from Liberal MPP Laura Albanese to Metrolinx CEO July 2013 TCBN contacts staff of cabinet ministers' office to introduce TCBN/CBAs and to request meeting September 10, 2013 John Cartwright, Labour Council President, makes presentation to Metrolinx Board of Directors October-November 2013 TCBN meets with MPPs and cabinet ministers situated along Eglinton Avenue April 23, 2013 Metrolinx CEO signs Community Benefits Framework August 6, 2014 Chair of TCBN pitches CBA idea to Premier Wynne at Canadian Premier's Summit, “Building Canada UP” Table 11.1 Political lobbying by the TCBN
In meeting with politicians along the Eglinton Crosstown corridor the TCBN took extra measures to present itself as a representative voice of “community” and “constituents” to avoid being 298 cast as a “special interest group,” “labour,” or “the same old faces.” This involved having a lobbying team that was ethno-racially diverse and who had geographical ties to the political ridings of MPPs being lobbied. Securing an audience with, and interest of, a cabinet minister was facilitated by the building and construction trade unions that were involved in the TCBN. Their support of the Liberal party during elections, through financial contributions and volunteers, helped these unions gain access to ministers. The lobbying of provincial politicians in 2013 was also made easier by the fact the ruling Liberal party only had a minority government and so was being forced to adopt a more collaborate governing approach. The basic political pitch of the TCBN was that negotiating a CBA was “good public policy” that was in-line with existing government priorities (e.g., addressing youth unemployment, promoting the trades, poverty alleviation, austerity, etc.). This pitch was given by the Chair of the TCBN to Premier Wynne at the premier's summit where the TCBN Chair stated that a CBA was:
about how to get the most benefit from your infrastructure project, leveraging the maximum social and economic impact of dollars spent, by creating job opportunities for communities who need them the most. ... Its about narrowing the income gap, decent work for all, creating employment and building wealth for low income communities while getting the most employment benefit from your infrastructure dollars.230
The TCBN's lobbying and negotiation strategy succeeded at: introducing the concept of CBAs into the provincial policy arena; having Metrolinx sign a Community Benefits Framework; and getting language put into the RFP for the Crosstown project that required bidding consortia to provide an apprenticeship training program for targeted beneficiaries. The next section will demonstrate that the TCBN's “insider” strategy succeeded in introducing the concept of CBAs into municipal and provincial policy discourses. But I then evaluate the outcomes of the TCBN's negotiations with a reluctant Metrolinx to show that tangible results were left wanting. The ability of the TCBN to hold the government to its rhetoric on community benefits was constrained by the challenges and contradictions the TCBN faced in terms of organizing and mobilizing broad-based political support.
230Remarks by Steve Shallhorn, Chair of the TCBN, to the Building Canada UP Summit, August 6th, 2014. 299
The TCBN's Impact on Policy
On October 4th, 2014, the Premier of Ontario addressed over a thousand union and community delegates to the Good Jobs Summit in Toronto, organized by UNIFOR—Canada's largest private sector union. In her speech, Premier Wynne highlighted the work of the Toronto Community Benefits Network and the importance of ensuring that Toronto's priority neighbourhoods receive good-paying jobs as part of the Eglinton Light Rail Transit infrastructure project, and infrastructure spending more generally. Not to miss an opportunity to present her government as “progressive,” Wynne's speech articulated transit infrastructure as a socio-ecological fix that would address jobs, justice and the environment:
...our historic transit investment over the next ten years. That's a source of good jobs for today and tomorrow. If we connect transit then back to our core values, what we build, carries benefits to support good jobs, transit helps to make communities more sustainable, and helps fight climate change. It can improve our health, it increases productivity, and attracts more jobs. Transit investment creates investment over the long term. And transit gives greater mobility and social inclusion to disadvantaged groups. But especially relevant to the good jobs discussion, if we look at how we're building transit, is how we do that....Most of you will be familiar with the Eglinton Crosstown LRT..this is a 19-kilometre light rapid transit rail that will stretch right across Toronto, from Etobicoke to Scarborough. It's a multi-year, multi-billion dollar project. The biggest transit build in Canada today. So that build, the magnitude of that build, presented an opportunity. Along the line are five of Toronto's Priority Neighbourhoods. By that I mean communities where poverty is pervasive, and opportunity is scarce. So these communities where historic—uh—where historically disadvantaged groups faced too many barriers to getting good jobs. Again, they presented an opportunity. These groups needed to be part of every good jobs conversation. And certainly, need to going forward. So thanks to the work of Metrolinx, Infrastructure Ontario, the Toronto Community Benefits Network, the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities, and a whole range of others, they actually are, these groups are part of the discussion of how these groups can benefit from this investment. Working together, these partners have ensured that the Crosstown build will mean good jobs for people from disadvantaged communities along the line. They signed in fact Ontario's first community benefits agreement on a project like this. Training, apprenticeship, and employment opportunities are now a legally binding aspect of the Crosstown. [applause] Great thing. It's a great thing. So for me, that represents a turning point in how we invest public money. We have the public money invested in the infrastructure, but it's working for people. That's what I love about infrastructure investments. Good jobs here in Ontario, and with benefits for the entire community for today and tomorrow. With so much investment in public infrastructure ahead we're going to keep working together to seize every opportunity for good jobs that build that fairer, more equitable Ontario that I know we're capable of. And I hope that the community benefits process signals a new era of 300
collaboration along the workforce development pipeline. Bringing the goals of government, labour, not-for-profit and business closer together. Because they should not diverge. They should be, ah, all pulling in the same direction.231
The Premier ambitiously misspoke when stating that the government had signed the first “community benefits agreement” since Metrolinx only signed a non-binding “Community Benefits Framework” (discussed below). In a similar speech given to an international research symposium held in Toronto on precarious employment on May 22, 2015, Premier Wynne once again referred to the Framework as a “Community Benefits Agreement between Metrolinx and not-for-profit partners along the Eglinton Crosstown line.”232 The Premier's reference to a CBA rather than the Framework was a strategic error designed to give her government more credit than it deserved. The Premier's statements reflect the political value, if not the full institutional legitimacy, that the TCBN had won for both itself and the concept of CBAs. The influence of the TCBN on provincial policy was also demonstrated in the creation of new provincial legislation. On May 25th, 2015, the TCBN together with representatives from the building trade unions and non-profit agencies made deputations to the Ontario Provincial Government Standing Committee on General Government arguing in favour of linking infrastructure spending to broader community benefits. These deputations successfully led the government to amend Bill 6 (Infrastructure for Jobs and Prosperity Act), changing the principle of the Act, under Article 3, so that it would read:
Infrastructure planning and investment should promote community benefits, being the supplementary social and economic benefits arising from an infrastructure project that are intended to improve the well-being of a community affected by the project, such as local job creation and training opportunities (including for apprentices, within the meaning of section 9), improvement of public space within the community, and any specific benefits identified by the community (Bill 6, An Act to Enact the Infrastructure for Jobs and Prosperity Act, 2015 2015).
Bill 6 became the first time that the concept of “community benefits” linked to the construction of infrastructure projects was enshrined in legislation. But the legislation uses weak language (“should promote”) falling well short of requiring community benefits or the negotiation of community benefits
231Premier Kathleen Wynne, October 4, 2014, keynote address, UNIFOR Good Jobs Conference, at the Mattamy Athletic Centre, Toronto, Ontario. 232Premier Kathleen Wynne, May 22, 2015, Precarity Penalty Symposium, at the Central YMCA, Toronto, Canada. 301 agreements. Rather Bill 6 was best described by the ridicule of an opposition party legislator as “a bill that creates a plan to be able to create a plan.”233 The inclusion of “community benefits” in the Act nevertheless signals the success of the TCBN in scaling-up its impact from neighbourhood- and Toronto-specific contexts to shaping policy discussions that impact the entire province. A similar bill would also later be developed at the federal level by the newly elected Liberal MP for York South- Weston (Press 2016). The TCBN's advocacy around CBAs was also picked up by Toronto's municipal politicians. Olivia Chow incorporated CBAs into her 2014 Toronto mayoral campaign as a way to address youth unemployment (Watson 2014). Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam wrote to the City of Toronto Executive Committee requesting the City establish a Community Benefits Working Group and a CBA protocol “to achieve social, economic and environmental benefits for the local communities impacted by proposed developments and infrastructure projects, and to support the employment objectives of Toronto’s Workforce Development Strategy including that of the Youth Jobs Strategy, Youth Equity Strategy and Newcomer Strategy.”234 The TCBN therefore achieved its goal of introducing CBAs into mainstream political debates. The first major breakthrough for the TCBN at a policy level came a year earlier, on April 23, 2014, when—following a year and a half of negotiations—Metrolinx and the Toronto Community Benefit Network co-signed Ontario's first “Community Benefit Framework” covering three light rail transit projects in Toronto including the Eglinton Crosstown, the Sheppard LRT and Finch Avenue LRT (see appendix IV). The construction of these LRT projects was initially estimated to cost $8.4 billion dollars and were to be built through Toronto's poorest neighbourhoods.235 The Community Benefits Framework is an aspirational document rather than a legally enforceable community benefits agreement and does not have any targets for equity-related hiring or training. Still, as part of the Framework, Metrolinx did commit to a “community benefit program” aimed at “offering a range of employment, training, and apprenticeship opportunities for historically disadvantaged communities and equity seeking groups, as well as encouraging the provision of goods and services from local suppliers and social enterprises”(Metrolinx and Toronto Community Benefits Network 2014). The reference to “historically disadvantaged community and equity seeking groups” in the Framework comes directly
233MPP Taras Natyshak, Legislative Assembly of Ontario, June 3, 2015. http://www.ontla.on.ca/web/house- proceedings/house_detail.do?Date=2015-06-03&Parl=41&Sess=1&locale=en#para1125 234Letter from Councillor Wong-Tam to Mayor John Tory, April 6, 2015. 235The inclusion of all three LRT projects as part of the Framework came as a pleasant surprise for the TCBN, since it had only been negotiating around the Eglinton Crosstown. Note that long-term repair and maintenance contracts will be over and above the $8.4 billion construction contracts, but will be bundled into the overall contract for each project. 302 from language negotiated by the TCBN during its negotiations with Metrolinx. This reflects the success of the TCBN in bringing about a frame transformation within Metrolinx, which had only previously referred to “the community,” or “local communities.” Metrolinx operationalized these commitments in December of 2013 by inserting a special clause into the Request for Proposals (RFP) sent out to procure bids for the construction of the Eglinton LRT project. This clause required private sector consortia making bids on the project to submit an “Apprenticeship Plan & Program” as well as a “Community Benefits and Liaison Plan.” The Community Benefits and Liaison Plan only requires companies to better disseminate knowledge of existing job and procurement opportunities associated with the project. The Apprenticeship Plan & Program takes this a step further, requiring “a focused program for youth-at-risk, historically disadvantaged groups in local communities including low-income, racialized and immigrant populations, and military veterans.”(Metrolinx 2014b) But, importantly, these plans and programs did not bind contractors to any specific equity-hiring targets or goals. Other branches of government besides Metrolinx became interested in the policy approach advocated by the TCBN. In-line with the goals of the Community Benefits Framework, the Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities (MTCU) financed a $400,000 Labour Market Partnership to conduct applied research and targeted resident engagement within priority neighbourhoods to improve access of marginalized residents to jobs building the Eglinton Crosstown LRT. This Labour Market Partnership, in part, funded the TCBN to carry out targeted recruitment of equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups for entry into the building trades. The commitments made by Metrolinx in the Community Benefits Framework and through the RFP clauses are not very strong in that they do not commit Metrolinx to specific programs (aside from the Apprenticeship Plan & Program, but even this has been left to the successful bidding contractor to define). At the start of negotiations Metrolinx strongly resisted the proposals of the MDWN and the TCBN for more equitable hiring practices. Metrolinx defined its mandate and expertise narrowly around the planning and construction of transit infrastructure and conceptualized “community” in an abstract and homogenous way (i.e. using a customer service approach, with no thought towards social justice). In this sense, the Community Benefits Framework signed by Metrolinx and the TCBN on April 24th, 2014, and the reversal of Metrolinx' position in October 2013 which saw it take on a more direct role in the development of the Kodak lands, marked the success of the MDWN and the TBCN in pushing Metrolinx to rethink and broaden its mandate to encompass social policy and economic 303 development. This shift within Metrolinx appears to have been driven, in part, by the provincial cabinet and premier's office which were keen to take credit for connecting jobs, social justice and the environment. On one level, this demonstrates the success of the TCBN's insider strategy in shaping policy discourse. But as I turn now to showing, government rhetoric on CBAs was not followed up with tangible outcomes though it was strategic in helping the government deflect criticism away from its move to privatize and deregulate public transit infrastructure.
Evaluating Negotiations for a Crosstown CBA
Despite the state moving increasingly towards supporting the concept of a CBA for the Crosstown project, concretely, the TCBN's negotiations with Metrolinx only produced some elements of a CBA. The TCBN's negotiations with Metrolinx only produced some elements of a CBA. A review of the CBA literature (see appendix V), together with discussions at TCBN meetings and workshops, identified six key elements that must be included within a CBA if it is to realize its social justice goals around training and jobs:
1. A clear and inclusive definition is needed of the groups being targeted for support (i.e. “equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups”).
2. Training and pre-employment programs for targeted groups (e.g., apprenticeship programs, bridging programs for internationally trained immigrants) that are aligned with the labour demands of the project; and/or social enterprises that have been given procurement contracts for the project.
3. A legal mechanism that gives targeted groups preferential access to training and job opportunities. This has been achieved in other jurisdictions through numerical (“hard”) targets and/or “First Source Hiring” policies (“soft targets”) that give targeted groups advanced access to job postings and/or the first round of interviews. Preference or procurement set-asides have also been given to social enterprises or businesses owned by women and people of colour.
4. Community-based, culturally appropriate outreach is required to ensure that the targeted groups receive notice of opportunities and are encouraged to apply by people they trust.
5. Wrap-around supports for participants so they can attend training and retain jobs (e.g., child care, mentorship, financial assistance, training and strategies within workplaces to address sexism and racism).
6. Strong coordination, monitoring, and legal enforcement mechanisms to ensure parties to the 304
CBA comply. A dedicated coordinator within government helps drive implementation.
An empirical assessment of CBAs indicates that all of these factors are critical if a CBA is to successfully benefit equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups (e.g. it is not sufficient to have legal enforcement mechanisms if a lack of targeted outreach or wrap-around supports undermine participation and retention levels, and vice versa). A seventh element included in many CBAs negotiated in American cities is provisions for affordable housing in order to address the displacement of residents related to a project, either directly through the appropriation and demolition of homes, or indirectly from gentrification of an area. Table 11.1 compares the CBA proposed by the TCBN to Metrolinx with the Community Benefits Framework that Metrolinx eventually signed in addition to the apprenticeship and community benefits clauses that Metrolinx inserted into its Request for Proposals for the Crosstown project. The TCBN's CBA proposal listed in table 11.1 draws from: 1) proposals made by the TCBN during negotiation meetings with Metrolinx; 2) proposals contained in the TCBN's Foundation Document; 3) ideas contained in a draft CBA written for the TCBN by a lawyer pro bono.236 Metrolinx was presented with both the Foundation Document and draft CBA from the TCBN before Metrolinx sent the TCBN its draft of the Community Benefits Framework and the RFP clauses. The influence of the TCBN is evident in the Framework and RFP clauses—above all because these documents would not have existed without TCBN's insistence. Still, the TCBN's proposals are much more comprehensive, specific, and accountable compared with the Framework. As table 11.1 reveals, Metrolinx's refused to commit itself or Project Co (i.e. the successful bidder for the Crosstown project) to many community benefits. The TCBN defines equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups inclusively as: “residents in low income neighbourhoods, including Priority Neighbourhoods; among urban Aboriginal populations; within racialized and newcomer communities; and among people with disabilities as well as youth and women who are disadvantaged (Toronto Community Benefits Network 2013, 2).” The Framework adopted the TCBN's phrase, “historically disadvantaged communities and equity seeking groups,” but did not further define these terms (Metrolinx and Toronto Community Benefits Network 2014, 1). The Crosstown RFP partially adopted some of the TCBN's equity language, but only for its Apprenticeship program, which requires “a focused program for youth-at-risk, historically disadvantaged groups in local communities including low-income, racialized and immigrant
236The TCBN also presented concrete proposals to the bidding consortia on May 23, 2014. 305 populations, and military veterans” (Metrolinx, n.d.). If community benefits programs are to reach the goal of addressing entrenched poverty and social problems like gun violence, then they will have to create training and employment pathways for the most marginalized residents who would not otherwise be able to secure stable employment, rather than only give new opportunities to “the cream of the crop”, as one member of the TCBN noted. This requires that training programs are coordinated with targeted outreach, skills upgrading services, and wrap-around supports. In terms of training and employment programmes, the TCBN proposed three job and training “pipelines” for the Eglinton Crosstown LRT project:
1) a construction jobs pipeline, to bring targeted groups into union apprenticeship and pre- apprenticeship programs; 2) a pipeline for professional, administrative and technical (PAT) jobs, targeting recent immigrants with international credentials (e.g. engineers); and 3) a social enterprise (social procurement) pipeline.
A working group was struck within the TCBN for each of these pipelines, and met in-between TCBN general meetings. The apprenticeships and social enterprise working groups became most active because of the pre-existing organizational strength of the building and construction trade unions, and organizations involved with promoting social enterprises, respectively. The signed Framework makes some kind of reference to all three types of job pipelines, but does not provide any details or commitments to specific programs. The RFP clauses do require Project Co to implement a targeted apprenticeship program, but not a targeted program for social enterprises, nor for professional, administrative, and technical jobs. The RFP only requires that Project Co develop a plan to “enhance community awareness of employment opportunities and opportunities for the provision of goods and services” (Metrolinx, n.d., 2). 306
CBA factor for Network’s CBA Community benefits Community benefits clauses success proposals237 framework in Metrolinx RFP (signed by Metrolinx (December 2013) 23 April 2014)
Inclusive definition - comprehensive: - defined only as - defined for apprenticeship of targeted groups “historically “historically program only: “youth-at-risk, disadvantaged disadvantaged historically disadvantaged communities and equity communities and groups in local communities seeking groups … equity seeking including low-income, residents in low income groups” racialized and immigrant neighbourhoods, populations, and military including Priority veterans” Neighbourhoods; urban Aboriginal populations; within racialized and newcomer communities; and people with disabilities as well as youth and women who are disadvantaged.” Training & - specific targets for - no targets or specific - Apprenticeship Plan & employment expanding union pre- programs identified Program to be developed by programs apprenticeship programs: - “timely” notification Project Co for hiring targeted 100% of new apprentices of PAT job openings groups, apprenticeship to be hired from targeted within Metrolinx completion, ensuring supply of groups - Metrolinx will each trade - jobs pipeline for approve and enforce - Project Co must develop immigrants with apprenticeship plan Community Benefits & Liaison international credentials proposed by Project Plan to “enhance community in PAT sectors Co238 awareness” of employment opportunities, liaise with local workforce agencies - no program stipulated for PAT jobs Social - mandatory use of social - Metrolinx will - not specified procurement enterprises (minimum approve and enforce - Project Co must provide plan dollar amount to be social procurement to “enhance community negotiated) plan proposed by awareness” of procurement - specific social Project Co opportunities enterprises already
237Based on seven negotiation meetings between Metrolinx and the Network that the author participated in, a draft CBA given to Metrolinx by the Network, and a presentation given to bidding consortia by the Network 238“Project Co” referred to whichever construction consortium would go on to win the Crosstown LRT contract (i.e., Crosslinx) 307
identified (e.g., catering, printing, security) - use of smaller tenders aimed at small businesses Legal mechanism - hard and soft targets - none - none for preferential - first source hiring access policy Community-based, - targeted outreach by - targeted outreach by - not specified culturally Network Network, with - Project Co must provide plan appropriate financial support of to “enhance community outreach provincial government awareness” of employment and (Ministry of Training, procurement opportunities Colleges, and Universities) Wrap-around - inclusive training - Network to provide - none supports strategy within mentorship to targeted workplaces to address groups in sexism and racism apprenticeship - Network will provide programs (no funding job coaches and from Metrolinx employment retention committed) support services to apprenticeship program participants - coordination of social service agencies to support participants Dedicated - dedicated coordinator - dedicated - Project Co must identify resources - Metrolinx to pay coordinator hired by liaison person or team Network for facilitating Metrolinx targeted recruitment and - Ontario government pre-employment training will provide funds for targeted recruitment and analysis of workforce development model Monitoring - clear training and hiring - Metrolinx to host - annual report by Project Co targets regular meetings with on plan’s implementation - minimum quarterly Community Benefits - monthly statistics of reporting Working Group apprentice-to-journeyperson - comprehensive CBA ratio oversight committee - Apprenticeship Plan, proposed Community Benefits & Liaison Plans to be public documents Enforcement - legally binding - not legally binding - legally binding agreement 308
agreement between between Project Co and Network, Metrolinx, and Metrolinx on RFP clauses only Project Co Broader - intensified economic - Network “may also - none (conditions might be environmental & development on LRT be invited to laid out in other, confidential land-use maintenance and storage participate” in sections of RFP) considerations facility site discussions on - affordable housing built development of on any surplus land used Metrolinx-owned during construction property - maximize - LRT maintenance environmental design and storage facilities to be LEED gold or silver Table 11.2 Comparison of CBA proposed by the Network and the Community Benefits Framework and RFP clauses agreed to by Metrolinx
Construction Jobs Pipeline
The TCBN's goal for a targeted apprenticeship program was to have to have 100% of all new apprentices working on the Crosstown project hired through union-run, pre-apprenticeship programs geared at supporting youth from equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups. The vision was to increase the capacity of two existing pre-apprenticeship programs, called Hammer Heads (run by the Central Ontario Building Trades) and CHOICE (run by the Carpenters' Union Local 27), that targeted youth from low-income and Priority Neighbourhoods. These programs had annual intakes of forty-five students per year for Hammer Heads (i.e. three intakes of fifteen students), and fifteen students per year for CHOICE. The TCBN confirmed with the unions running these programs that they had the capacity to increase their intakes of participants to meet the demands of the Crosstown project. The TCBN found it challenging to convince those running Hammer Heads that the TCBN's advocacy was aimed at directly supporting and helping to expand the work of the existing Hammer Heads program (rather than trying to replace it with a new program).239 As a result, the Direction of the Hammer Heads program did not participate in TCBN meetings. During negotiations with the TCBN, Metrolinx would not agree to include any targets in the
239Representatives from CHOICE were actively involved in the TCBN. Hammer Heads was not directly involved with the TCBN, although other representatives from unions in the Central Ontario Building Trades Council (that runs Hammer Heads) were involved in the TCBN, including the Ironworkers and IBEW. 309
Framework or the RFP clauses for the training or hiring of historically disadvantaged and equity- seeking groups nor commitments to provide any wrap-around supports. Irrespective of winning hiring targets, the TCBN hoped that by targeting outreach to these groups they will gain an advantage in accessing training and job opportunities with the Crosstown project since they will at least become more aware of these opportunities. For social and cultural reasons, many marginalized groups do not see the trades as a good career or do not know how to enter them. This may be due to the class background of recent immigrant families, the fact that construction jobs are low-paying in other parts of the world, or because racialized immigrants and women must confront racist and sexist hiring practices and workplace cultures in the trades. In the winter and spring of 2015, TCBN staff worked with TCBN member organizations to hold a series of information sessions in marginalized communities about careers in the building and construction trades. The TCBN received funding to conduct these “resident engagement sessions” through a Labour Market Program grant financed by Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities (MTCU) and managed by the United Way of Toronto. Union representatives and employment counsellors from the City of Toronto were at these sessions to explain the expectations, requirements and process for entering an apprenticeship or pre-apprenticeship program, and for screening suitable candidates. As a result, a small number of these candidates (approximately 10) were accepted into trade union apprenticeship programs ahead of the construction start date for the Crosstown. A barrier to entering the trades for many of the most marginalized youth is the minimum entry requirements for an apprenticeship: most construction trades require a grade 10 education and most other trades require grade 12. The lack of financial and personal supports to marginalized pre- apprenticeship participants is another significant challenge. The Carpenters' Local 27 pre- apprenticeship program, CHOICE, provides a basic living stipend and the YMCA covers the costs of a startup toolset and personal protective equipment. Hammer Heads does not provide participants with a living stipend, although many of the participants may already be receiving support through social assistance. Ontario Works (social assistance) may cover some of the hidden costs associated with training and getting a job: transportation costs; clothing and equipment costs; professional and book fees; as well as child care (although there is a waiting list for child care subsidies and spaces). Participants in training programs who are not eligible for social assistance (even if they are only working a minimum-wage job) do not have access to these supports and getting enrolled in social assistance can be a fraught experience. 310
Gaining political support of the building and construction trade unions for a CBA was a significant challenge for the TCBN. Although representatives from a few union training centres participated regularly in TCBN meetings and even sat on the TCBN's Steering Committee, the unions' elected political leadership did not directly participate in the TCBN. Most notably, the Central Ontario Building and Construction Trades Council (COBT), which ran the Hammer Heads program, did not participate in the TCBN although some unions affiliated with the COBT did participate (e.g. the Ironworkers, and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers). Further research is required to ascertain the reasons that the political leadership was reluctant to give their full support to the TCBN. Historically, the building and construction trade unions have operated as “bread and butter” business unions making it highly unusual for their elected leadership (or representatives from their training centres) to be engaged in labour-community coalitions. In this sense, the participation of even the training centres in the TCBN marks a potential opening up of these trade unions to political alliance- forming (and given the hierarchy within these unions, it is unlikely that the training centres would participate without the approval of the elected leadership). This is not to say that the building trade unions were avoiding politics. The close relationship between these unions and the ruling Liberal Party could be one reason why they do not feel the need to join a labour-community coalition aimed at influencing or opposing the government, since they already have a direct voice within government. The building and construction trade unions donated generously to the ruling Liberal party, and some unions clearly endorsed the Liberals through their trade magazines.240 This level of endorsement does not come without an expectation that the government will pass favourable policies or at least provide access to decision-makers. Representatives from the building trades unions who were participating in the TCBN would casually report on meetings they had with different ministers. The strong political loyalty some building trades unions had with the ruling party coupled with their existing access to political decision-makers accounts for why they preferred an insider political strategy that saves the government from public criticism. In theory, the provincial government could unilaterally impose hard or soft employment equity targets for the trades on a given project or negotiate such targets with the TCBN even without the
240 In Ontario, 46% of union political donations went to the Liberals between 2004 and 2011, which includes two provincial elections, This is more than was donated to the New Democratic Party (45%) and the Conservative Party (4%) (Robert Macdermid 2011). During this period, construction unions accounted for 60% of all political donations by private sector unions, with 84% of this going to the Liberals (MacDermid 2011). The Carpenters Union and its provincial district council was the Liberal Party's biggest single donor (Crawley 2016). There is a political divide amongst the large unions, with the United Steelworkers, CUPE, and the Amalgamated Transit Union donating almost exclusively to the New Democratic Party (Crawley 2016). 311 support of the trade unions. This was done in British Columbia during the mid-1990s for the Vancouver Island Highway Project with successful outcomes in terms of increasing employment equity (Cohen and Braid 2000; Calvert and Redlin 2003). But such a measure would be taken as an aggressive political move by the unions and so was very unlikely given the very close political (including financial) relationship between the ruling Liberal government and the leadership of the building trade unions, and given the Liberals' minority status (which required the Liberals to shore up as much political support as possible). Alternatively, the trade unions themselves could unilaterally increase diversity in apprenticeship programs and hiring even without all the work and meetings carried out by the TCBN for a CBA. The building and construction trade unions control admittance into many apprentice training programs and also regulate hiring through the dispatching practices of union hiring halls. The TCBN's negotiation team anticipated that the building and construction trade unions might raise concerns about employment equity initiatives undermining long-standing union hiring hall dispatching practices that are based on the principle of “first out of work, first re-hired” (together with some flexibility according to experience and skills needed).241 The TCBN therefore proposed that employment equity targets would only be for new apprentices rather than journeypersons or returning apprentices. Even still, employment equity would have surely been a contentious issue for union memberships given that many apprentices are brought into the union as apprentices through existing, and often entrenched, familial or social networks. Gaining the membership's approval for employment equity policies would require considerable internal organizing within trade unions to gain the necessary broad-based support. Numerous “side meetings” and “back channel” conversations over three years have fostered trust between the TCBN and the leadership of the building and construction unions. Representatives from various union training centres have helped deliver targeted outreach programs being undertaken by the TCBN and opened up a few positions in unions to historically excluded groups. But it is yet to be seen how far the leadership of building and construction trade unions are willing to go in terms supporting community benefits agreements and opening up apprenticeship spaces for equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged candidates. Another reason that the trade unions were reluctant to get behind a CBA is because they were much more familiar, and preferred, negotiating a Project Labour Agreement (PLA) rather than a CBA.
241The President of the Labour Council was aware and sensitive to the internal politics of the building and construction trade unions, being a carpenter by trade, and having formerly been the the Business Manager of the Construction Trades Council. 312
Building and construction trades unions gain bargaining leverage in negotiating a PLA by ceding their right to strike throughout the term of the contract, thereby saving the contractor money by reducing expensive delays and risks of delays (which factor into the rate of interest on project financing). Because negotiations for CBAs include parties other than unions, unions could feel less in control over the direction and terms of a CBA compared with a PLA. On the other hand, unions could potentially gain bargaining leverage from CBA coalition partners against an antagonistic private or public contractor. Some building and construction trade unions have incorporated community benefits into so- called “enhanced PLAs” (see e.g. Parkin 2004; Calvert and Redlin 2003). While the TCBN was negotiating with Metrolinx for a CBA, the building and construction trades were having parallel discussions with the provincial government to try to secure a Project Labour Agreement for the Crosstown LRT project. The provincial government was waffling on whether it would require closed-shop (union labour) contractors, as per Toronto Transit Commission projects, or also allow open-shop (non-union labour) contractors to bid for the Crosstown project (Meckbach 2016). In the end, the provincial government (through Infrastructure Ontario) insisted on an open-bidding process that would leave the decision about negotiating a PLA up to the winning consortium. The consortium that eventually won the Crosstown bid was led by general contractors that have traditionally signed PLAs with unions (e.g. EllisDon, SNC Lavalin). But the possibility that Metrolinx could have awarded the Crosstown contract to anti-union contractors (e.g. Kenaidan), should be a wake-up call for the building and construction trades unions to support a labour-community alliance that can not only fight for community benefits but help the trade unions wage a campaign against the use of open-shop bidding for public infrastructure projects. While the TCBN and building trade unions missed an opportunity to work together negotiating a CBA or enhanced PLA, the absence of a PLA early on in the CBA negotiation process may have helped open up discussions between Metrolinx and the TCBN around apprenticeships, if Metrolinx was less concerned about breaching the prevailing legal terms of a PLA. But even without a PLA in effect, Metrolinx was cautious in general of binding future contractors to legal conditions required by a CBA.
Professional, Administrative and Technical (PAT) Jobs Pipeline
Most CBAs negotiated in North America have been focused on creating apprenticeship opportunities, non-trade construction jobs, or lower-skilled service-sector jobs. A unique component of 313 the CBA proposed by the Toronto Community Benefits Network is an emphasis on providing job and training opportunities for immigrants who bring with them international professional qualifications or post-secondary degrees in fields relevant to infrastructure projects such as finance, administration, design and engineering. The TBN would later refer to these white collar jobs as “PAT”—professional, administrative and technical—jobs. Of the three job pipelines that the TCBN was proposing for a Crosstown CBA, the PAT jobs pipelines proved to be the hardest one to advance during negotiations. Metrolinx refused to develop any new hiring process or positions within their own organization, or as a requirement for Project Co, that would operationalize employment equity or give any kind of preference to recent immigrants. The only commitment Metrolinx made was to pass along some job postings to the TCBN and CASIP (Consortium of Agencies Serving Internationally-trained Persons)-an social service agency that specializes in helping skilled immigrants adjust to the Canadian job market and seek employment. Interview participants identified five main challenges that immigrants face securing employment in their field:
i. Lack of Canadian work experience. Employers demand that applicants have Canadian work experience, even immigrants who already have tremendous work experience sometimes directly relevant to infrastructure projects.
ii. Credential recognition. Many professions such as accounting and engineering do not automatically recognize foreign credentials. Gaining Ontario credentials may require a difficult negotiation through the rules, exams and fees of a particular professional society (including the need to acquire relevant Canadian work experience). Returning to school to gain Canadian credentials can be expensive for new immigrants, especially since most are caring for families.
iii. Information. Immigrants who have just arrived into Ontario face difficulties navigating information about the labour market. Opportunities may not reach recent immigrants either because they do not know where to look or because this information is not readily available in locations, networks, and languages that are easier for recent immigrants to access. This is especially a problem for those who are part of a 'first wave' of immigration from a particular country and for whom there are not already other extended family members living in Ontario or 314
a well-established diaspora community centres to draw on for support.
iv. Workplace culture. Immigrants may find it difficult to navigate new workplace cultures (e.g. interview culture, office and meeting etiquette, how to relate to the boss, etc.). The (racist) perception by employers that immigrants lack necessary language skills, or else real deficiencies in terms of the language used in particular workplaces, can also pose a significant barrier for getting hired.
v. Need for supports. As with pre-apprenticeship programs, recent immigrants who are living in poverty may requires financial supports in order to participate in career fairs, interviews, training and job placements. The high cost of childcare is a significant financial barrier preventing many poor women from being able to enter the workforce. Access to a vehicle is another problem for jobs that require being on a job site before the regular public transit system begins running.
The TCBN proposed that Metrolinx and Project Co use a First Source Hiring policy that would have allowed targeted equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged residents to apply and be interviewed for PAT jobs before these positions were opened to the general public. Even entry-level job opportunities or paid internships in relevant fields (e.g. as a drafter working under an engineer) would help internationally-trained immigrants gain the Canadian work experience and/or income stability they need to secure professional credentials or job offers that are more in-line with their qualifications. The TCBN also proposed that Metrolinx and Project Co reduce discriminatory hiring practices by removing names and addresses from applications. Although Metrolinx's senior management team was initially sympathetic to the proposal, and began passing along a few PAT job postings for the TCBN to circulate to their members, most of these jobs were highly specialized and Metrolinx did not commit themselves nor Project Co to a First Source Hiring policy or anti- discrimination hiring procedures. During its year-long negotiations with the TCBN, Metrolinx hired a wave of white collar workers (including approximately 25 engineers, as well as additional administrative staff) but failed to adopt the policies or procedures being advocated for by the TCBN. Metrolinx was more open to developing community benefit programs relating to the trades and social enterprises since the hiring processes for these pipelines was outside the purview of Metrolinx's own 315 human resources department. In other words, the senior management resisted institutional change within Metrolinx towards employment equity. The TCBN also demanded that Metrolinx provide grassroots organizations with resources so they could advertise apprenticeship and PAT job opportunities in marginalized communities and provide necessary wrap-around supports to equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups. Several social service agencies and community organizations warned that without outreach and supports for reaching the most marginalized groups, the PAT and apprenticeship pipelines would be “picking the low-hanging fruit,” or “creaming” candidates who would have already succeeded in finding employment without a CBA (e.g. thanks to their more established social networks, existing Canadian work experience, education credentials, etc.). Creaming candidates could provide “quick wins” that demonstrated the potential of the job pipelines (and generated political photo-ops, as we saw with the GTS Project Hammer Heads class) but would not produce net gains in terms of employment equity. This points to one of the difficulties in evaluating the net impact of a CBA since it is hard to control for the opportunities that successful program candidates would have received anyways even without a CBA. Dedicated resources would also be necessary if these job pipelines were to help the most marginalized groups escape vicious cycles of poverty and incarceration through educational upgrading, mentorship and income support coupled with guaranteed job opportunities upon the completion of training.242 The TCBN was eventually successful in securing funding from the provincial government through the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities to conduct targeted resident outreach. But given the limited number of job opportunities and a lack of resources to offer other wrap-around supports, only the top candidates were able to benefit from this outreach. There were many more qualified applicants coming to the TCBN's targeted resident engagement sessions than apprenticeship positions opening up by participating trade unions or than PAT job positions advertised on behalf of Metrolinx through CASIP and the TCBN.
242Redemption Reintegration Services, which works with youth offenders, did come to a few TCBN general meetings in 2015, but there was little follow-up to bring ex-offenders into job pipelines. One challenge is that ex-offenders would require educational upgrading to become eligible for apprenticeship programs or PAT jobs. But upgrading one's educational credentials can take time, money, and mentorship that ex-offenders do not have right after leaving prison. Having these supports, coupled with a guaranteed apprenticeship or job placement at the end of this upgrading period, could go a long way in providing the motivation and meeting the material needs of ex-offenders to participate in community benefits programs. 316
Social Enterprise Pipeline
The third jobs pipeline proposed by the TCBN for the Crosstown LRT project was through social enterprises. It is common for CBAs to require that a certain dollar amount worth of contracts go to small-businesses, particularly those owned by “visible minorities” and women.243 But very few CBAs have included provisions around social enterprises. A social enterprise is “a business operated by a charity or non-profit organization that sells goods and/or services in the market place, for the dual purpose of generating income and achieving a social, cultural and/or environmental mission”(Toronto Enterprise Fund 2014). The hope with the Crosstown CBA was to involve social enterprises that trained and hired residents who were marginalized from the labour market due to poverty, homelessness, abuse, addictions, disabilities including mental illness, or because of their position as a single-parent, newcomer or ex-offender. A key challenge for social enterprises, as with other small businesses, is that large billion-dollar infrastructure projects favour the procurement of large contracts that can only be fulfilled by medium or large companies. The TCBN proposed that Metrolinx facilitate a bidding system and selection criteria that supported the ability for social enterprises to compete for business (e.g. through smaller contracts, awarding points to bids offering “social value-added,” and setting aside a certain dollar amount worth of contracts for social enterprises). The TCBN's social enterprise working group drew on the model implemented in Scotland, through its Procurement Reform Act (2014), which requires all public infrastructure contracts worth over four million pounds to consider how they can incorporate community benefits including social enterprises.244 The TCBN's social enterprise working group identified a range of goods and services for the Crosstown project that could be provided by social enterprises in Toronto, including: catering; marketing and event production; printing; interpretation services; horticultural maintenance; painting and cleaning services. Metrolinx agreed to improve information dissemination about potential opportunities for social enterprises. And under public pressure from associations representing small and medium-sized design firms, Metrolinx did revise its Crosstown RFP to favour bids that incorporated “local knowledge”--essentially a legal code word for 243 Similarly, the Ontario government created “opportunities for diverse supplier involvement” as part of the procurement for the Toronto 2015 Pan Am Games. See Toronto 2015 Pan Am/Parapan Am Games, 2015, Supplier Diversity, http://www.toronto2015.org/business/supplier-diversity. 244 The Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act of 2014 also requires government authorities having annual contracts over five million pounds to develop a social procurement strategy (The Scottish Parliament 2014). The TCBN and the Learning Enrichment Foundation sponsored representatives from Scotland's social procurement sector to visit Toronto twice, in 2014 and 2015, to discuss the Procurement Reform Act and how it was achieved, particularly in light of European Union trade regulations. 317
Ontario-based design firms (Kalinowski 2013).245 But Metrolinx refused to make any legal commitments that would bind itself or Project Co to set aside targets guaranteeing business for social enterprises or to issuing much smaller bids for goods and services that could be delivered by Toronto's social enterprises.
Monitoring and Enforcement
In terms of monitoring and enforcement, the TCBN proposed a legally-binding CBA (rather than the non-binding Framework) with a formal Oversight Committee that would meet quarterly to monitor and coordinate progress. Metrolinx agreed to a Working Group that would “participate in the creation of a monitoring and evaluation framework” (without providing any further details as to the nature of this framework)(Metrolinx and Toronto Community Benefits Network 2014, 4). The Working Group would also make ongoing suggestions to improve the program and “provide input” into quarterly reports published by Metrolinx (rather than jointly by the Working Group itself) (Metrolinx and Toronto Community Benefits Network 2014, 4). Although the TCBN is collecting some demographic statistics on who it is reaching through targeted resident engagement sessions, there is currently no process or commitment by Metrolinx to collect demographic data for people who are actually hired for the Crosstown project (either by Metrolinx itself or by Project Co). Without this disaggregated data it will be impossible to evaluate the impact of Project Co's Apprenticeship and Community Benefits plans and programs according to the social justice objectives of the Framework and the TCBN's Foundation Document, beyond collecting anecdotes. The literature on CBAs and enhanced PLAs indicates that having a dedicated coordinator is critical for driving the implementation and monitoring of community benefits policies and programs. Coordinators can liaise across contractors, government departments and community groups to address problems that arise and ensure that employment equity and social procurement initiatives do not fall through the cracks. To coordinate its community benefits programs Metrolinx hired a dedicated “Community Benefits Specialist” (who is positioned within Metrolinx's “Strategic Communications”
245Metrolinx and Infrastructure Ontario did agree to include “local knowledge” provisions into RFPs and to review the bundling of “mega-contracts” into multi-billion dollar AFP (P3) tenders after facing public resistance from the Construction Design Alliance of Ontario (CDAO—an alliance made up of engineers, architects, and Ontario contractors). This alliance worried that smaller Ontario contractors would lose out on business to international firms. For a summary of media coverage around the CDAO's campaign, see: Construction Design Alliance of Ontario, August 10, 2013, “CDAO's awareness campaign catches media interest,” http://cdao.ca/cdaos-awareness-campaign-catches-media- interest/. 318 division). Metrolinx also required through the RFP that Project Co “identify” a person (vs. create a dedicated position) to “liaise with local community groups” (Metrolinx, n.d., 2). During the winter of 2016, the successful bidder for the Crosstown project contract, Crosslinx Transit Solutions, hired two staff who are to work on implementing community benefits, including a “Manager, Community Engagement” and a “Community Benefits Liaison Officer.” Tellingly, these staff are integrated with the communications team for Crosslinx, reporting vertically to a “Communications and Public Engagement Lead” who: “Oversees the strategic implementation of Community Benefits Plan and ensure integration across CTS communications as appropriate...[and] [l]eads and supports issues management/crisis communications and provides media relations support.”246 The organizational separation of Crosslinx's community benefits implementation team from human resources, procurement and construction managers reflects the treatment of community benefits as more of a public relations and “risk management” exercise than as employment equity and social procurement policies. In sum, negotiations between Metrolinx and the TCBN in terms of creating equitable training and job opportunities for the Eglinton Crosstown project led to very limited outcomes. Viewed optimistically, Metrolinx's willingness to meet with the TCBN and to hire a dedicated Community Benefits Specialist signals the transit authority's commitment to building relationships with the TCBN and institutionalizing the concept of community benefits in the coming years. There has been some agreement on the identification of equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups, and the TCBN was given resources through the government's Labour Market Partnership to conduct targeted outreach to these groups. But the Community Benefits Framework and RFP clauses definitely do not incorporate all of the six key elements that the literature shows are needed if a CBA is to realize its social justice goals around training and jobs. Critically, Metrolinx failed to agree to any legal mechanism that would make the equitable hiring of apprentices and PAT workers, or the inclusion of social enterprises, mandatory.
Privatizing Public Policy
In-line with the government of Ontario's alternative financing and procurement (AFP) policy, Metrolinx has redirected the most important decisions regarding the development of community benefit programs to the logic of market competition. The AFP model (also called P3s) assumes a technocratic
246 Crosslinx Transit Solutions, 2016, Draft Community Benefits and Liaison Plan. The Communications and Public Engagement Lead reports “functionally to the Design-Build Director.” 319 exercise that will optimize project design through a competitive bidding process. Innovation is understood to flow from the private sector, driven by market competition, into the public project. The government oversees some initial public consultations and provides guidelines or parameters to the bidding companies for the project's design, which it issues in a Request for Proposals (RFP). These public consultations are poorly attended and unrepresentative,247 but this is not viewed as a problem by the government since it makes it easier to keep its RFP guidelines broad which the government sees as necessary for promoting market-driven innovation.248 According to Infrastructure Ontario, the provincial agency overseeing AFP: “The less prescriptive the design, the greater the opportunity for innovation by the private sector consortium exists (one of the advantages of the AFP model).”249 The more design details the government provides the less it is justified in outsourcing the design work both ideologically, but also because any in-house pre-design work costs the government money (even if these costs are not included in the government's “value for money” cost-benefit calculations its uses to justify AFP). The presence of an active labour-community coalition that is trying to influence the overall purpose of a project (i.e. towards broader social and environmental policy objectives), including demands for very specific design features as discussed below, challenges the underlying market-based assumptions of the government's “public-private partnership” model. Public participation is therefore reframed by AFP as a hindrance to market-driven design innovation by the private sector. A more participatory, democratic model understands innovation flowing from civil society into the conception, design and implementation of the project with government having the obligation to engage the public in design details that incorporate other social and environmental policy objectives. A more democratic process would also incorporate a more flexible design process since community groups are not often mobilized around a project until it has already visibly started in a neighbourhood—long after the conception and design phases are over. Efforts by community groups to influence the design of a project at this late stage is already difficult and is made even more
247My participant observation of the Crosstown public consultations, aimed at providing input to Metrolinx before issuing its RFP, showed that these consultations did not come close to representing the demographic make-up of the neighbourhood. For example, some consultations had only one, two or no people of colour participating, despite at least half of the area residents being racialized. The necessary supports to ensure broader participation were not present: e.g. daycare; free transportation; translated flyers and documents. Participants were also never told or shown how their input was incorporated into design changes. 248For the Crosstown project contract, Metrolinx has given itself some leeway to make change after it chooses the preferred bid. Metrolinx and the preferred bidder will negotiate a work plan during a period that could last up to six months after financial close (meaning, any changes cannot significantly increase costs). 249Steve Rohacek (Vice President Business Development & Lending at Infrastructure Ontario), April 22-24, “Utilizing the Alternative Financing and Procurement model for delivering Municipal Wastewater projects,” Presentation to the 2012 Water Environment Association of Ontario, Government Affairs Committee Session, Ottawa. 320 complicated by the AFP process. After the government has signed an AFP contract the winning proponent is not legally required to make any changes demanded by the community or government (and some public-private contracts, like the Crosstown, last for 30 or more years). Any changes to the scope or design of the project after a contract has been signed comes at the expense of the government. Certain changes—like requirements to achieve equity-hiring targets or use unionized labour for the operation of a facility—might not be legally possible after the AFP contract is signed. Since the TCBN could only amass and exert limited bargaining leverage in the short period of time before the RFP was issued by Metrolinx the RFP clauses addressing community benefits ended up being quite broad and did not contractually bind the winning proponent to very much. If the Crosstown was using a traditional procurement model then the TCBN may have had more time to build up external political pressure on Metrolinx and elected officials that could have won stronger community benefits language. As it stood, the TCBN was left trying to win more concrete community benefits by lobbying the construction consortia during their bid preparations for the Crosstown project and then negotiating with the winning consortium after it won the bid and revealed its community benefits program. In this way, the government tried to push the negotiation of community benefits out of the formal political sphere.250 The TCBN worried that community benefits considerations could be neglected during the bid evaluation process even if they were included as part of an RFP. Because infrastructure bids like the Crosstown are bundled into multi-billion contracts, community benefits form only a very small component of the overall value of the contract.251 Unless well-defined community benefits are mandated in the RFP then they may be treated as inconsequential by the consortia in preparing their multi-billion contract bids and/or by the evaluation matrix used by the government for selecting the winning bid. A proponent could be selected because it scored high for most criteria even if it scored low for community benefits.252 In this way, public policy priorities become determined by the market. In theory, marginal considerations around community benefits could receive heightened importance in proponents' bids if there was intense market competition for AFP contracts as proponents jostled for
250Metrolinx facilitated a meeting between the TCBN and each of the two bidding consortia making bids for the Crosstown project to whom the TCBN made its pitch for the inclusion of community benefits in the consortia's bid proposals. 251For example, my survey of ten CBAs in the United States on projects ranging from $287 million to $11 billion, revealed that the the cost of workforce development programs were all less than 1%, and most often 0.5% of the overall cost of the project. See Appendix IV. 252For example, if community benefits is only 1 of 200 criteria against which competing bids are evaluated, then the winning bid could theoretically have the worst community benefits program but still easily win by excelling in other areas. In doing so, the AFP process therefore treats benefits that could be realized at cross-governmental and societal levels, as interchangeable with design features of a specific project. The way in which AFP bids are evaluated by the government is therefore critical, and perhaps for this reason shrouded in secrecy in the name of protecting proprietary information (Siemiatycki and Farooqi 2012). 321 ways to make their proposals stand-out. But in practice, only a few large multi-national conglomerates have sufficient resources to make such large bids for AFP infrastructure projects and community benefit programs are a minor consideration in comparing bids. In the case of the Crosstown project only two consortia responded to the RFP meaning that other design and cost elements were likely given priority over community benefit considerations during the selection of a proponent (the details of AFP evaluations are confidential, conveniently blocking any third party empirical assessments). With a traditional procurement process, the government would be more directly involved in the design of the project so could not hide behind the procurement process as a reason to avoid negotiating or implementing specific community benefits programs. Traditional procurement does not bind governments to as many design specifications for a given project nor to multi-decade contracts for the operation or maintenance of facilities. Traditional procurement gives governments more flexibility to change project requirements throughout the life of the project and so is therefore more responsive to democratic concerns that emerge. Although the traditional procurement process is more conducive to negotiating community benefits, Metrolinx ironically used its negotiation of community benefits as political cover for explaining project delays associated with the use of the AFP process. In announcing a one-year delay for the opening date of the Crosstown LRT, Metrolinx's CEO Bruce McCuaig pointed to the addition of community benefit provisions in the RFP as a cause for delaying the tender (Kalinowski 2015; Gupta 2015). McCuaig also blamed the delay on the City of Toronto's decision to replace the Scarborough Rapid Transit with a subway rather than as part of the Crosstown LRT (in effect, shortening the project, but somehow not the construction timeline). But neither the addition of community benefits nor the shortening of the Scarborough segment were at the heart of Metrolinx's delay. In fact, the problem was the AFP process itself. The AFP process can take more time than the traditional procurement process and is susceptible to delays because of the size, legal complexity and duration of the AFP contract and because construction cannot start until the all-encompassing AFP contract (covering design, finance, construction, and long-term maintenance) is signed. Metrolinx was also forced to change its RFP to add a “local knowledge” requirement in response to public criticism from the Construction and Design Alliance of Ontario and the Ontario General Contractors Association who complained that the size of the AFP contract was too large for smaller firms to compete in the bidding process (Kalinowski 2013). The Crosstown project contract is valued at $9.1 billion and includes a 30-year repair and 322 maintenance contract for the facilities and vehicles. Whereas traditional projects are much more streamlined and can more easily be rolled out in different phases of construction (while other phases are still being finalized), the large Crosstown contract required years for the government (Infrastructure Ontario working together with Metrolinx) to issue, assess and close before any final design or construction could take place. First, the government did an internal assessment of whether or not to even use AFP (i.e. a “value for money” assessment); a Request for Qualifications was then issued and evaluated to narrow down the field of bidders; then a Request for Proposals was issued to the qualified bidders after the government undertook its own initial design and engineering studies and public consultations; the submitted bids were evaluated; and finally, up to six months were spent developing a work plan and concluding financial agreements. Given the size and length of the contracts, any changes the government makes in terms of its design parameters can lead to lengthy delays in the procurement process because the bidding consortia's own teams of engineers, accountants, private money lenders and lawyers must re-assess how the changes relate to all aspects of the bid.253 Some anti-privatization advocates raised a concern that the TCBN was condoning the AFP process (i.e. P3s) by not speaking out against it publicly while negotiating with Metrolinx. In response, the TCBN Chair noted that the TCBN would be negotiating a CBA with or without a P3 and looked to other groups to lead the resistance against P3s. Coming into negotiations with only weak political power led the TCBN to pick its battles. In this sense, Metrolinx succeeded in neutralizing the TCBN in terms of it not launching any public criticism of Metrolinx's use of P3s (as well as other problems with Metrolinx like its proposed revenue tools, and the high fare charged for the UP Express). But individual members of the TCBN were still free to speak out against P3s. Labour Council criticized the use of public-private partnerships when speaking directly to Metrolinx senior management during one of the first CBA negotiation meetings as well as through some of its communications to its affiliated unions. In contrast, the building and construction trade unions, which had the most to lose from Metrolinx's shift to open-tendering, failed to voice any kind of public resistance. The ATU Local 113, whose members would directly lose out from the privatization of maintenance jobs on the Crosstown, belatedly launched a short-lived public awareness campaign against the use of P3s leading up to the June 2014 provincial election. But the RFP for the Crosstown had by that time already been issued, and this public relations (vs. organizing) campaign faded quickly after the pro-P3 Liberal Party won a ruling majority. Even if the TCBN had taken a strong official position against the Crosstown being a
253Another problem with the AFP process for the Crosstown was that it usurped the Toronto Transit Commission's traditional policy of only tendering to contractors that use unionized workers. 323 public-private partnership, this alone would not have pressured the government to reverse its position on their use if it was not accompanied by a broader and deeper organizing campaign that directly engaged people in discussions about, and collective resistance to, the problems with P3s.
Bargaining Power and Expectations
The TCBN shifted from having an oppositional to a collaborative relationship with Metrolinx, transforming itself into something that much more resembled a workforce development agency than a political organization. The MDWN and the early TCBN were focused on winning a comprehensive CBA by generating political pressure on the government: criticizing Metrolinx at public meetings; writing letters to the CEO that made ambitious demands and conveyed a sense of urgency; soliciting letters from oppositional political parties; and even staging a quiet protest at a Metrolinx board meeting in which members wore buttons promoting community benefits. But with limited resources and lack of time before Metrolinx was supposed to issue the Crosstown RFP, the TCBN adopted a more top-down, “insider” strategy, lobbying government politicians and framing CBAs in the language of “good public policy.” In-person negotiations with Metrolinx over a sixteen-month period saw the TCBN drop its demands for targets, a legally enforceable agreement, and a host of other demands directly relating to the production of urban space (e.g. regarding gentrification, and use of the Kodak site). In the end, the TCBN was left trying to realize equity through a workforce development approach that is grounded on the belief that employment equity can be achieved through better informing and training equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged residents so that they can better compete in the labour market. In contrast, affirmative action or employment equity policies recognize that institutional change are needed to confront oppression: e.g., reforming hiring policies and practices, changing workplace cultures, monitoring and enforcing quantitative equity targets, etc. But the provincial state, through the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities (MTCU), in addition to charitable foundations based in Toronto, would only fund a depoliticized, workforce development approach to realize equity goals for the Crosstown project. By 2015, the TCBN had securing some of these workforce development funds providing it with a steady operating budget that paid for a full-time Executive Director, a full-time Community Engagement Officer and a part-time administrative staff member. But the political edge of the coalition had been lost. 324
The later institutionalized TCBN was much more consumed with delivering workforce development programs in depoliticized ways that satisfied its funders. The TCBN general membership and Steering Committee (now a Board of Directors) started meeting less frequently with more time at meetings devoted to internal governance, passing budgets and reporting on the progress of funded programs rather than with how to build organizational capacity and bargaining power. Critically, residents who were being reached through the TCBN's targeted community outreach program were treated more as “clients” (in the social agency sense of program delivery) than as potential members of the TCBN who could be brought into a political movement. The membership of the TCBN reflected this shift with dwindling participation at meetings by grassroots community groups and unaffiliated individuals and increasing involvement of social service agencies that deliver training, wrap-around supports and social enterprises.254 Whether CBAs become a weak bureaucratic exercise that consumes coalitions with the minutiae of program implementation (co-opting political resistance), or rather successful social bargaining and alliance-forming, comes down to the organizing strategy, skill and capacity of organic intellectuals. The TCBN's struggle for a Crosstown CBA reveals some of the major challenges and tensions involved in all social movement organizing: on the one hand, organizing around longer-term, and often more radical demands; and on the other hand, wanting to consolidate bargaining power into concrete benefits for marginalized groups, while also creating “small victories” that motivate participants to continue struggling towards the long-term goals. The TCBN experienced this tension between adopting an “insider game” (lobbying) strategy that was conciliatory and compromising while at the same time trying to gain leverage in negotiations by amassing external political support for a CBA (through public meetings, media endorsements and working with opposition political parties). While trying to mobilize external political pressure, the TCBN leadership did not want to be too critical of Metrolinx or MPPs from the ruling government, in fear that this would undermine the TCBN's lobbying effort and negotiations (especially since the TCBN did not have much political leverage to begin with). But in not identifying Metrolinx or the ruling government as a clear target at which people could direct criticism and political pressure, the TCBN was unable to productively mobilize widespread public anger around the lack of jobs and the persistence of structural inequities—an anger that was apparent at public meetings organized by the TCBN. Choosing a strategy was complicated by tight time constraints for getting community benefits written into the RFP for the Crosstown project. An
254The TCBN's new governance rules also meant that only organizations could vote at meetings, although unaffiliated individuals were still welcome at meetings and had full speaking rights. 325 insider, lobbying strategy could produce at least some results in the short-term (namely, introducing CBAs into policy discourse), but the TCBN's bargaining power was limited by a lack of deeper, more time-consuming community organizing. Instead of trying to gain negotiation leverage by mobilizing widespread frustration against Metrolinx or the government (as had been the strategy of the MDWN and other social movement organizations in Weston such as the Clean Trains Coalition) the TCBN's strategy was to entice Metrolinx to sign a community benefits agreement through a lobbying effort coupled with raising public awareness of, and hopeful expectations for, a CBA. The TCBN—especially those on the steering committee—worried about turning residents from marginalized communities against the TCBN if negotiations did not result in very many new job opportunities since the TCBN might be seen as having made false promises of jobs. Labour Council representatives in the TCBN were worried that this kind of backlash against the TCBN would undermine the longer-term strategic goal of building a political alliance between labour and marginalized communities around a broader progressive agenda —i.e. a multi-ethno-racial counter-hegemonic movement. A tension therefore existed between the necessity to “raise expectations” and what some leaders within the TCBN frequently expressed as a need to “manage expectations” to prevent a backlash against the TCBN if its objectives were not met. The phrase “managing expectations” was most commonly used within the leadership of the TCBN and government to mean “lowering expectations.” But others, like myself, wanted to keep hopes and expectations high while still being honest or “realistic” about the likely outcome of negotiations (e.g. that only hundreds, not thousands, of jobs would likely be offered through community benefit programs; that opportunities could be years away; etc.). As the TCBN found out, raising expectations honestly is difficult to do without a capacity for deep forms of community organizing that engages participants in ongoing political analysis regarding the changing context of negotiations and the difficulties realized when implementing programs, and that facilitates strategic reflection on building organizational capacity for collective action (i.e. praxis). Whereas “raising expectations” simply involves mobilizing sentiment around a more immediate and tangible objective, “raising expectations honestly” is a form of alliance-building that requires organizing political and strategic understanding, fostering long-term commitment and building collective power. Connecting sentiment and understanding into a political (counter-hegemonic) form and force is the central task of the organic intellectual and what Gramsci (1999, 767) referred to as the passage “from feeling to understanding and to knowing.” 326
The inability of the TCBN to raise expectation honestly means that the coalition did not have very much bargaining power and so was forced to drop or weaken its demands. The issues of “expectations” was frequently raised at TCBN meetings, usually to justify a cautious approach to negotiations rather than at the centre of a much-needed discussion about strategy and how to build bargaining power. But developing the grassroots organizing capacity needed to raise expectations honestly goes beyond the TCBN and the negotiation of a single CBA. If CBAs are to realize their potential as a form of social bargaining and contribute to union renewal by increasing public support for unions (especially amongst equity-seeking and historically-disadvantaged workers) then the labour movement must get more serious about political organizing. The use of innovative policy tools (like CBAs) coupled with political lobbying cannot replace often challenging, resource-intensive and long- term processes of engaging union members and neighbourhood residents in political conversations and then having people commit to collective action. It's not just unions, but in fact all of society, that is in need of a deep democratic renewal. As the TCBN discovered when it tried to get political support for a CBA from grassroots community organizations—very few of these organizations actually exist. In Toronto, social service agencies are often taken to be the voice of marginalized communities; however, for reasons I have discussed, social service agencies are structurally adverse to political action either because they are funded by the state or are charities with limited legal allowances for political activity. Social service agencies do not carry out community organizing and so cannot deliver the political power needed during social bargaining.
Conclusion
This chapter has used the Crosstown LRT project case study to contribute to our understanding of whether CBAs are an effective strategy for labour and community groups to assert a right to the city, to negotiate a more equitable distribution of the economic and environmental impacts of urban revitalization projects and to bring about union renewal. I have argued that CBAs can help realize these goals but not if they are understood simply as a bureaucratic or technocratic exercise—i.e., a policy tool that can somehow realize social and environmental justice goals without the political organizing that gives that tool force. The TCBN's top-down, “lobbying” strategy coupled with earlier organizing by the MDWN was sufficient—given the political opportunity structures that existed—to bring about a policy shift (if only a rhetorical one) at municipal, provincial, and federal levels. The language of 327 community benefits enabled politicians to articulate infrastructure spending in terms of social justice without having any budgetary implications. The Premier used CBAs as a source of legitimacy pointing to CBA negotiations for the Crosstown as evidence of her government's commitment to jobs, justice and the environment. One danger with CBAs is that they become tools by the state to organize consent for a deepening of neoliberal urban governance—i.e. a neoliberal fix. CBAs risk being used by governments as political cover to put a positive spin on neoliberal policies such as public-private partnerships and open-shop bidding. The negotiation of a CBA can also be used to neutralize or co-opt social movement actors that would otherwise be more critical and vocal of the government. Although internally the TCBN remained skeptical of Metrolinx, the TCBN refrained from publicly critiquing Metrolinx after in-person negotiations had begun. Similarly, after receiving funds from the government and charitable foundations the TCBN became increasingly consumed with delivering workforce development programs rather than political organizing. The strength and success of CBAs as a form of social bargaining come out of the opportunities they create for social movement alliance-forming and deep community political organizing—what I have referred to as “raising expectations honestly.” CBAs can be a tool for labour-community coalitions to exert more democratic control over the production of cities but—as we have seen—can also be used by governments and developers to give an appearance of democratic engagement without actually conceding power. Meanwhile, CBAs risk leading to a “negotiated neoliberalism” by setting up trade-offs between people's needs for jobs associated with urban revitalization projects and their other needs associated with socio-ecological reproduction (i.e., needs for housing, a clean environment, recognition, childcare, etc.). In Toronto, the low level of political organization at the neighbourhood-scale made it difficult for the TCBN to raise expectations (and bargaining leverage) for a CBA in a honest way that did not jeopardize the relationships that Labour Council was trying to forge between racialized communities and organized labour. Due to tight deadlines for negotiating a CBA and limited capacity to raise expectations honestly, the TCBN met some, but not all, of the six key criteria I identified as necessary if a CBA is to realize its social justice goals around training and jobs. The TCBN's political lobbying and negotiations got Metrolinx to agree to a Community Benefits Framework, won some language on community benefits in the project's Request for Proposal and secured funding from the provincial government to undertake targeted outreach for apprenticeship programs. But Metrolinx refused to 328 commit to any targets for employment equity or social enterprise procurement and failed to sign any binding agreement with the TCBN. So while the work of the TCBN introduced “community benefits” into the provincial and federal policy arenas, the most powerful features of a CBA were missing— namely, a legally-binding “agreement” with clear and accountable targets. To date, tangible outcomes in terms of employment equity and social procurement have been minimal. The TCBN's lack of bargaining power also meant that it had to drop several demands first launched by the MDWN that pertained to land use planning, environmental design, the use of temporary foreign workers, transit-related gentrification and maintenance and operation jobs. This narrowing of the TCBN's demands coupled with its increasing institutionalization—i.e. delivering workforce development programs rather than organizing politically for a more comprehensive CBA— led the membership composition of the TCBN to shift away from grassroots community groups towards more social service agencies. This chapter has also critiqued Metrolinx's use of alternative financing and procurement (i.e. public-private partnerships). I have shown how the government has used AFP to redirect its responsibilities for making and implementing social and environmental policies to the market. Community concerns such as employment equity, poverty alleviation and environmental sustainability are de-prioritized through the AFP process, especially when there are only a couple of multi-national conglomerates involved in the “competitive” bid process. The assumptions underlying the use of AFP, i.e. that the market is the source of innovation for societal problems must therefore be challenged. The provincial government is also using P3s as a way to deregulate (i.e. deunionize) both the construction and operation of public transit. I have identified the failures of the building and construction trade unions, and the transit workers' union to engage with the TCBN in order to strengthen the anti-privatization movement in Toronto and Ontario. Although I have pointed to some reasons for this failure—including the close relationship between the building and construction trade unions with the Liberal government and their history of business unionism—this question demands further empirical research. Labour-community coalitions could use CBAs to regulate the “socio-ecological fix,” realizing environmental justice by more equitably distributing the economic benefits of building environmentally-oriented infrastructure, fighting for meaningful public participation in project design, protecting low-income tenants against infrastructure-driven gentrification and requiring that infrastructure projects be built using a unionized workforce. But these laudable objectives will not be 329 realized without deeper political organizing both within and across unions and communities. Without organizing aimed at building bargaining power and the capacity to hold decision-makers to account, CBAs risk being used by governments and developers as a relatively cheap form of positive public relations or “risk management” that co-opts resistance to neoliberal restructuring. 330
Conclusions
My dissertation has sought to document, analyze, and contribute to the ways that ordinary (subaltern) people in Toronto and their organizations asserted a right to the city—i.e., greater democratic control over the production of urban space including the regulation of the urban metabolism, the regulation of human bodies and the distribution of surplus value. The analytical purpose of my dissertation was to emphasize the agency of social movements in the production of urban space by dialectically connecting local struggles with extra-local processes and structures of power, and by conceptualizing socio-spatial fixes as part of much broader socio-ecological fixes. I have argued that social movements do not simply respond to urban restructuring (e.g., deindustrialization, urban sprawl, urban renewal, etc.), but also help mediate or constitute these processes through their resistance, visioning or participation in the negotiation of consent. I have used a multi-scalar methodology informed by critical ethnography, the extended case method, historical materialism, (urban) political ecology and participatory action research. The political aim of my participatory research was to contribute to building (counter-hegemonic) social movement alliances struggling for a more radically democratic and egalitarian society. David Harvey's theory of the spatial fix and Neil Smith's theory of uneven development, though helpful, tend to focus on the ways that urban space is produced according to the needs, logic and agency of capital and closely allied political regimes. The work of Doreen Massey and Andrew Herod have helped to empirically demonstrate the agency of workers in producing spatial structures, but I have argued that these bodies of literature still under-theorize how other social movement actors— sometimes in coalition with labour or fractions of capital—account for the timing, character and consequences of what ought to be conceptualized as socio-ecological fixes. Theorizing spatio-temporal fixes as part of a broader socio-ecological fixes can open up analysis to the role played by other social movement actors in producing urban space. The concept of a socio-ecological fix accounts for how capital accumulation seeks to overcome constraints placed on it from the organization of metabolic conditions during previous rounds of accumulation (e.g., polluted air, water, and soil from industrialization; traffic congestion from previous land use and transportation planning; depleted resources from previous systems of extraction and consumption; etc.). The concept of a socio-ecological fix also captures a wider set of consequences associated with fixes by examining how they spatially and temporally displace socio-ecological (rather 331 than just political-economic) crisis tendencies or contradictions. Socio-ecological fixes have uneven consequences in ways that negatively affect marginalized groups and give rise to new movements for social and environmental justice. So this theoretical approach allows us to better analyze the timing, character, and consequences of socio-ecological fixes as part of multi-scalar, socio-ecological struggles involving a wider range of social movement actors. My dissertation has used this theoretical approach to offer a multi-scalar analysis of Toronto's deindustrialization and urban renewal as two related moments of a socio-ecological fix. At a regional scale, I have shown how social movement struggles around air pollution (smog, climate change), congestion, urban sprawl, the toxic legacy of industrialization and jobs gave shape to Ontario's Green Energy Act and the Big Move (including the Crosstown, Georgetown South Project and the UP Express). Municipally, an urban sustainability fix aimed at raising land values and turning Toronto into a “global city” has been mediated through conflicts it generates over gentrification. Meanwhile, conflicts at a neighbourhood scale over a changing urban metabolism associated with the construction and operation of new transit lines (e.g., increased amounts of diesel fumes from trains, increased noise and vibrations, dust from construction, clear-cutting of trees along the corridor) scaled-up in ways that helped pressure provincial government officials into negotiations for a community benefits agreement. A tenacious grassroots effort to mediate socio-ecological conditions and fixes is also seen in the MDCA and MDWN's heritage preservation and environmental design proposals for the redevelopment of the Kodak brownfield site including site design features that would have required costly soil remediation. Similarly, we have seen how some members of the MDWN went on to fight against a gas plant being proposed on the Kodak site as part of the Crosstown LRT project. This struggle demonstrated the lasting impact of earlier social movement alliance-forming and the ways that even neighbourhood-based social movements can mediate socio-ecological fixes. My empirical analysis has shown how a hegemonic alliance is organized, producing urban space in ways that reproduce prevailing social and socio-ecological relations (i.e., as a neoliberal/hierarchical/unsustainable/etc. city). My case studies highlight many mechanisms used by the hegemonic bloc to consolidate its power: greenwashing neoliberal reforms; using a politics of scale to deflect pressure from grassroots groups; coopting or splitting oppositional movements by negotiating trade-offs between different groups; and so forth. The reproduction of hegemonic relations is always a contested or negotiated process. I document efforts by labour-community coalitions to realize counter- hegemonic visions of the city, in other words, to assert a right to the city. My theory of labour- 332 community alliance-forming explains the emergence, development, efficacy and impacts of labour- community coalitions by integrating macro-scale theories of coalitions (i.e., eco-Marxist and Gramscian approaches), with social movement theories, theories of social movement learning and ethnographic approaches. This theoretical approach emphasizes, and moves better between, the dynamic scales of coalition activity, from individual ideological and organizational changes to the formation of broader hegemonic and (potentially) counter-hegemonic strategic alliances. I also use social movement alliance-forming as an analytical concept that accounts for an related two-way shift in scale that efficacious and impactful coalitions undergo: an institutional broadening (or organizational scaling-up) and an ideological deepening. Although my findings support Desfor and Keil's (2004, 3) claim that “the ecological has become an important arena where subaltern groups mount their challenge to institutions and structures of power as well as where they express their alternative designs for different social relations,” I also argue that “green” political discourse has been effectively used by the ruling political party and fractions of capital to organize consent around a neoliberal agenda. Labour-environmental coalitions operating at the national and international scales helped push the state to adopt an ecological modernist policy discourse, which in Ontario was epitomized by the government's Green Energy and Green Economy Act, but also the transit infrastructure plan called The Big Move (Nugent 2009). These labour-environmental coalitions celebrated this Act for promising to increase renewable energy production, stimulate Ontario's troubled manufacturing sector and create thousands of “green jobs.” I have understood the MDWN, in part, as an effort by the Toronto and York Region Labour Council, environmental organizations and activists from the community to operationalize these “green jobs” policy at the neighbourhood scale. These efforts failed. This failure reflects the incredible challenges faced by labour-community-environmental coalitions to organize even a reformist alliance with “green” fractions of capital thereby exposing the weakness of labour within post-Fordism (Lipietz 1997). At the same time, it exposes the state's use of “green” policies as an ethical fig leaf, used to organize consent for a neoliberal socio-ecological fix (i.e., increased privatization of the energy sector, and a greater reliance on nuclear energy). Similarly, I have argued that the provincial government has used rhetoric on CBAs as a “good news story” to sell its equity and job creation credentials and to deflects criticism away from the privatization and deregulation of the transit sector and transit-related gentrification. Offering labour- community-environmental coalitions minor concessions in terms of “green jobs” and “CBAs” that 333 failed to deliver on their promise was an important way the provincial government organized consent for its neoliberal agenda. The most well-resourced social movement organizations in Toronto were effectively coopted thereby undermining the capacity for stronger counter-hegemonic resistance. Throughout this dissertation I have detailed how ideological divisions, including spatial and scalar hierarchies, have undermined efforts by social movements to assert a right to the city. Capitalism tends towards the separation of production from socio-ecological reproduction and devalues the latter. People find themselves faced with contradictions in their roles as producers, consumers and residents in ways that frustrate coalition-building. We saw during the TCBN's negotiations for a CBA with Metrolinx how these socio-ecological contradictions setup trade-offs amongst people's demands for employment, equity, environmental quality, access to affordable housing, etc. Setting-up negotiation trade-offs and “non-negotiables” works as a political strategy for the hegemonic bloc to divide social movement groups and generate tensions within the coalition. An example of a socio-ecological trade-off in York South-Weston was how marginalized residents' desperation for any job came into tension with the MDWN's demand for green manufacturing jobs. I have documented several examples of how the state separated economic and environmental objectives or put them into opposition. One way Metrolinx and Infrastructure Ontario legitimized this separation was by using a “free market” ideology which puts social and environmental policy decisions related to public infrastructure investments through the logic of an (oligarchical) market bidding process (so-called alternative financing and procurement or public-private partnership). Scale is another instrument of power used by the state to suppress counter-hegemony. We have seen how Metrolinx deflected grassroots demands about economic development and environmental design by redirecting them to the city or market while at the same time asserting jurisdiction over an uncooperative municipal regime in order to deepen the neoliberal governance of public transit. In turn, institutionally scaling-up social movement activity became a critical strategy for the MDWN and TCBN to confront the state and assert a right to the city. As Smith (1993, 101) aptly put it: “The scale of struggle and the struggle over scale are two sides of the same coin.” Ideological and institutional manoeuvring by the state reproduced scalar and spatial hierarchies that undermined social movement alliance-forming in Toronto. The state used a discourse of “community safety” in response to high profile shootings in Toronto in a way that framed and institutionally managed “Black issues” as problems of crime and gun violence that were segregated from broader debates and political organizing around economic development and urban renewal. 334
Meanwhile, the state depoliticized social services agencies through laws and tacit threats of political retaliation. This blocked organizations—which are supposed to be helping the most marginalized— from actually organizing people or actively participating in more radical right-to-the-city movements. Many of the contradictions, oppressive socio-spatial hierarchies and ideological tensions discussed above are reproduced internally within organizations and coalitions. These tensions underlie the TCBN's need for prolonged debates and deliberations in order to arrive at a consensus about its strategic organizational objectives and framing. We have seen how militant particularism becomes a key obstacle for coalition-building. And although seldom overt, racism and sexism was certainly evident in these coalitions which weakened members' desire to participate and may account for why deep community organizing was never given the organizational priority it deserved. I have called for coalitions to become more reflexive of internal power relations by creating opportunities for regular, open and authoritative deliberation within a learning space of equal status. This dissertation has developed the counter-hegemonic concept of social movement alliance- forming to examine how social movement coalitions might overcome these spatial and scalar hierarchies, ideological tensions and forms of oppression to assert a right to the city. I characterize social movement alliance-forming as a two-way shift in scale: an ideological deepening for overcoming sectionalism or militant particularism; and an institutional broadening or “scaling-up” of organizational activity. For example, the scaling-up of the MDWN into the TCBN broadened the coalition's membership in terms of its geographical representation and ethno-racial make-up while also leading to a process of social movement learning and relationship-building that deepened participants understanding of equity. The TCBN shifted its identification of targeted beneficiaries for a CBA from “local residents” to “equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups.” I have applied concepts from within social movement theory and theories of social movement learning (e.g., political opportunities; resource mobilization; framing; collective identity formation; cognitive praxis; etc.) to help track alliance-forming processes throughout my ethnographic record. My theory of alliance- forming helps understand hegemony and counter-hegemony across multiple scales of analysis, connecting local ethnographic insights to theories of the production of urban space (e.g., socio- ecological fixes). Another objective of my dissertation has been to assess labour-community coalition-building as a strategy by organized labour to resist neoliberal policies and to renew the political-economic power of the labour movement (i.e. “union renewal”). The Toronto and York Region Labour Council played a 335 critical role facilitating the formation of labour-community coalitions and guiding their strategic development. Labour Council's political engagement in York South-Weston, starting with the MDWN in 2007, helped shift the strategic orientation of neighbourhood groups in ways that ideologically and pragmatically connected jobs, justice and the environment. Organized labour also shifted electoral representation of York South-Weston Leftward, turning it into a swing riding thus making the government more attentive to community concerns. By bringing together the Toronto Community Benefits Network, Labour Council enabled neighbourhood-based groups from across Toronto to scale-up their influence over provincial infrastructure policy. Labour Council provided the emergent TCBN with strategic support, organizational leadership, access to institutional funding, legitimacy and political clout for accessing government decision-makers. It is unlikely that neighbourhood groups acting on their own, or even working together but without organized labour, would have been able to force Metrolinx into negotiations for a community benefits agreement. This demonstrates the enduring strength of organized labour within post-Fordist cities and hints at their potential to contribute, or even lead, more ambitious right-to-the-city movements. My dissertation has also demonstrated Labour Council's ongoing contributions to long-standing —though not well-recognized—efforts of organized labour in Canada to forge a so-called red-green alliance (Nugent 2009). Red-green alliance-forming is aimed at transcending socio-ecological contradictions of capitalism (e.g., between the logic of capital accumulation and human needs for socio-ecological reproduction) (O’Connor 1998). My dissertation has analyzed how these contradictions are experienced in everyday life and become obstacles for social movement alliance- forming (e.g., the tension between “any jobs now” vs. “green jobs tomorrow”). At the same time, environmental justice demands by the Clean Trains Coalition put pressure onto Metrolinx and the provincial government that worked in favour of Metrolinx opening negotiations for a CBA. This cross- movement synergy demonstrates how political opportunity structures are not simply seized by social movements but also created by them. Labour Council and the MDWN were not simply concerned with questions of production (i.e., good job creation), or distinctively green production, but also other matters of socio-ecological reproduction such as equity. Labour Council saw CBAs as way of reintroducing employment equity into provincial policy and viewed multi-ethno-racial alliance-forming more generally as critical for building mass opposition to intensifying revanchist right-wing populism and ongoing anti-union 336 government policies. CBAs are not easy technocratic solutions; successfully addressing deeply set social and environmental injustices through CBAs hinges on deep and broad-based organizing within unions and communities. Despite their many potential pitfalls, CBAs offer some hope as a form of social bargaining at a time when when traditional collective bargaining rights in Canada (and elsewhere) have been seriously undermined and when unionization rates have steadily fallen. CBAs are an attempt to link together people's needs within the sphere of production (e.g., people's needs for jobs and a living wage) with their other needs associated with socio-ecological reproduction (i.e., needs for housing, a clean environment, recognition, childcare, etc.). The MDWN and TCBN cases suggest that CBAs hold promise, not simply for the concrete benefits they can (at least in theory) exact from private developers or the state for marginalized groups, but even more importantly for the longer-term relationships and alliances they encourage. For organized labour, therefore, the MDWN and TCBN were not opportunistic or “vanguard coalitions” aimed at advancing the narrow self-interest of particular unions (Frege, Heery, and Turner 2004). To the contrary, getting unions (rather than simply Labour Council) more deeply engaged in the coalitions was often a challenge. The existing labour movement in Toronto responds much better to defensive struggles when union members' existing rights become threatened. It is much harder to launch offensive struggles that depart from traditional “bread and butter” issues or that seek to make significant gains—especially if these gains are for other groups of (marginalized) workers. Overcoming militant particularism is certainly possible but requires significant ideological-educative work on the part of organic intellectuals. This challenge reflects the underlying contradictions within capitalism between production and socio-ecological reproduction that are manifest, for example, in spatial hierarchies and oppositions between “the workplace,” “home,” “the environment,” etc. Nonetheless, the TCBN even found it hard to engage unions that seemingly had a self-interest in joining a political coalition (e.g., the building and construction trade unions and the Amalgamated Transit Union which were both being threatened by deregulation and privatization of their sectors). My participatory investigation of labour-community coalitions in Toronto has therefore pointed to both the potential of labour to help build a right-to-the-city movement but also significant weaknesses within the labour movement that is preventing this from happening. Future research could investigate empirically the reasons why deeper political relationships and strategies between these unions and the TCBN never developed. 337
What do these examples of coalitions say about building the struggle for a right to the city? The TCBN's lack of bargaining power forced it to drop many of its initial demands such as a legally- binding agreement, hard targets for employment equity, environmental design features, measures to address anticipated gentrification, restrictions on temporary foreign workers, inclusion of maintenance and operation jobs, etc. Even then, the community benefits programs negotiated with Metrolinx have only led to very limited results so far. The TCBN has become consumed with tedious details of implementing what amounts to a workforce development program, rather than pushing politically for a more meaningful and legally-binding CBA. This raises strategic questions about whether the focus of social movement groups and coalitions should be on simply building political power and making uncompromising demands on the state and leaving it to the state to implement a response; or whether more can be achieved by playing an “insider game” in which social movement groups engage in prolonged negotiations and compromises and get more involved in designing and implementing programs and concession meant to resolve the conflict. A common justification within the TCBN for adopting an insider strategy was that winning small victories, such as the introduction of the concept of CBAs into policy discourses, was important for motivating future collective action, building relationships and creating new political opportunities structures that could be taken advantage of by future rounds of organizing. It is still too early to fully evaluate the impact of the Crosstown community benefits programs, not only on their own terms, but also in terms of whether these programs will eventually gives rise to further-reaching CBAs on future infrastructure projects. But to date, it seems like significant amounts of time and resources were spent on lobbying, negotiation and the minutiae of workforce development for what—in the end—amounted to rather minor concessions from the state (and the building and construction trade unions) around employment equity and social procurement. Moreover, many of the original members of the coalition are no longer participating suggesting that this strategy led to a break-down of relationships (or just interest) rather than strengthening them. The TCBN may have put too much faith into an “insider” strategy and devoted too few resources towards deep organizing within unions and the community that could have increased its bargaining power. There was a lack of participation by rank-and-file union members in the coalitions. When unions were represented, it was often by a paid staff member rather than the elected leadership. Similarly, most participants who identified as part of the “community” wing of the coalition were staff members of a social service agency (albeit, volunteering their time to participate in meetings). Few 338 residents ever joined the coalition as individuals, and those who did often dropped out. There were very few member-driven community groups involved in these coalitions and even they were only ever represented by a couple members and had to eventually pull back their involvement. Follow-up research should investigate the reasons that these groups and individuals stopped participating in the coalition. The MDWN and the TCBN were not radical or revolutionary struggles. For those of us interested in bringing about a radically democratic and egalitarian society we might ask then, what is the importance of studying these types of reform-oriented coalitions? One response is that if we can't even win a community benefits agreement then how are we going to bring about revolution? Granted, a limitation of the MDWN and TCBN might be that their goals were not ambitious enough—i.e., that they lowered rather than raised expectations. I have argued for a strategy that would widen rather than narrow CBA demands so as to include support for ex-offenders, policies for addressing gentrification and a lack of affordable housing, and provisions to fight against the privatization of public transit. This strategy may have helped build-up cross-class, multi-ethno-racial coalitions that could assert a more radical right-to-the-city. The deprioritization of these concerns and groups within the coalition reflects the privileged positionalities of coalition participants and raises questions about whether we can look to these types of coalitions as agents of revolutionary change. The privilege and internal power dynamics of a given coalition certainly does shape its objectives and strategy—including whether or how it goes about organizing. But if we accept Laclau and Mouffe's (2001) argument that several classes or social groups share an interest in supporting a radical form of participatory democracy (rather than limiting radical or revolutionary change to the working-class actor or other particular oppressed groups) then we can identify opportunities for more (privileged) social groups—like those represented in the MDWN and TCBN—to contribute to building a counter-hegemonic bloc. This makes it worth investigating how they do, or could, fit into this counter-hegemonic political project. Reform-oriented movements are relatively easy to critique a priori when looking backwards from a given set of revolutionary goals or a radical right-to-the-city vision. But this form of critique tends towards tautology: e.g., a reform-oriented coalition is critiqued for only ever achieving reforms. What is more important to analyze, but also much harder to answer, is why such organizations are reformist-oriented? How does hegemony operate through them? And in what ways might they be directed towards more radical programs? This line of questioning demands ethnographic and 339 participatory research and opens questions about social movement learning and the praxis of organizing. There are relatively few organizations in Toronto or across Ontario that have explicitly revolutionary goals or a radical orientation guiding their involvement in right-to-the-city movements. But these organizations and activists—including activist-researchers—must always engage with real existing conditions and organizational forms if they hope to build a mass popular movement. This means engaging with groups like the MDWN and TCBN which are more common (albeit still too rare in a city with millions of people) and that already command significant social movement resources. The tensions and opportunities for collaboration between these two strands of activism is worth considering for those hoping to re-orient real existing coalitions into more radical movements of societal transformation. My theory of alliance-forming contributes to this objective by providing insights into processes of ideological and organizational repositioning through social movement learning. Regardless of whether a coalition has reformist goals or radical goals they will share many under-appreciated practical organizing problems. It's not sufficient to have well-framed demands, democratic organizational structures, anti-oppressive meeting spaces and strong internal solidarity amongst existing members resulting from consensus-building activities and processes of transformative learning. All these things are certainly required. But more attention must be paid to the thankless work keeping an organization running (e.g. updating the website, answering emails, booking meeting rooms, securing resources, taking minutes, etc.), and carrying out “case work” to ensure participants' basic material, social, and emotional needs are met (e.g., providing childcare, offering emotional support, as well as facilitating creative and fun activities such as street theatre, potlucks, constructive joke-telling, inter-cultural exchange, etc.) so they can and want to continue engaging in collective action. Critically, building a coalition or counter-hegemonic movement requires organic intellectuals to physically go out and speak with their neighbours or co-workers and convince them to become engaged in the struggle—i.e. deep organizing into workplaces and communities. For unions this means investing much more heavily on internal member education and strengthening the organizing capacity and democratic responsibility of union stewards and rank-and-file members. Several authors have laid out concrete plans for going about this (Fletcher and Gapasin 2009; McAlevey and Ostertag 2012; McAlevey 2016). This type of transformative educational-organizing program is very resource- intensive with those who are most threatened by it often having most control over institutional resources. 340
In going out and trying to organize people deep within workplaces and communities one quickly realizes that people have all sorts of everyday problems that prevent them from getting involved in political organizations with seemingly abstract or distant goals. These everyday problems and barriers to collective action are not only within the sphere of production (e.g., pressures associated with unemployment, precarious work, long hours, etc.) but also connected to socio-ecological reproduction (e.g. mental and physical health, childcare needs, housing needs, bed bugs, access to transit and time of commuting, etc.). These barriers to collective action mean that counter-hegemonic organizing must to some extent tangibly address these problems so people can overcome their immediate barriers to political participation (and which in the process will validate collective action as a credible means towards emancipation). It is at this point that radical organizing in practice starts to look not too much different than so-called reform-oriented right-to-the-city movements. The main difference might be more in how these movements are framed rather than what they entail in a practical sense if either is to be realized. The goal of coalition-building then is to solve the practical problems in people's everyday lives but always in ways that try to ideologically and organizationally connect with opportunities for broader, more radical social transformations. 341
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APPENDIX I
Map of York South-Weston (Federal Electoral Riding District)
Source: Adapted from Elections Canada, 2017, Electoral District Maps and Description, York South- Weston, http://www.elections.ca/res/cir/maps2/mapprov.asp?map=35120&lang=e, accessed August 10, 2017. APPENDIX II 384
MOIJNT DENNIS WESTON I{ETI}VORK IZO guestvilte Avenue, Toronto ON M6N 4Ft6 emaill [email protected]
May 24,2012
Bruce McCuaig, CEO Metrolinx 20 Bay Street , Suite 600 Toronto ON MsJ 2W3
Attn: Dina Graser, Director, Community &Stakeholder Relations, Jack Collins, Vice President, Rapid Transit lmplementation
Re: Metrolinx lnvestment in Transit lnfrastructure and Kodak Lands development in the Weston- Mount Dennis Area
Dear Bruce,
I am writing on behalf of Mount Dennis Weston Network (MDWN) to continue the dialogue we began last fall when MDWN rep=resentatives met with you and members of your senior management team to discuss our plan for a community workshop on green economic development with a focus on transit investment. We appreciate the response bt Oina Graser lcknowledging our submission of February 21s1,2012 in which we highlighted the general outcomes of our Making Green Work event held January 27th and 28th of this year.
We are now offering Metrolinx more detail on community concerns and aspirations as articulated at our January workshop and in subsequent discussions. ln order to inform your planning at this early stage, please find attached a Community Benefits Proposal. Our process of collaboration with community members and experts envisions how the Kodak site and sunounding employment lands can connect our community with the emerging green economy' We are interested in working with Metrolinx to achieve job-generating outcomes.
The Community Benefits Proposal begins by laying out our various understandings relating to your current and future developments in our community. ln it, we identify planning and implementation principles that support green and sustainable development, which we hope to see your development program align with. We then outline three sets of requests that we ask you to consider for incorporation into your approach.
These requests call for ways to leverage public transit investment to help create the infrastructure and markets needed for innovation, green jobs and-economic growth; ways to shape the physical form and site plan relationships of your prolect on the K-odak lands, and ways to include sustainable design elements in both the Kodak Facilities and local imprcvements that enhance mobitity hub functions and strengthen the community.
We understand that Metrolinx is committed to public consultation, something that the Mount Dennis Weston Network part has been engaged in over the past 5 years with respect to the Kodak site. Our members look fonivard to taking in Metrolinx'Jupcoming planning consultations which we understand will take place during this summer. We are eager to see action happen on green jobs responding to the needs of our priority community and would like to meet with you to discuss this proposal at your earliest convenience'
Yours truly, r -/,.':; / #,t !rr- ,
Marabelle McTavish Chair, Mount Dennis Weston Network Date: May 24,2012 385 To: Metrolinx From: Mount Dennis Weston Network Re: Communi ts Pro Facilities
l We understand from participating in the February Town Hall meeting, in which the purchase of the Kodak Lands was announced, that first and foremost, Metrolinx intends to build a Maintenance and Storage Facility (MSF) for Bombardier-built Light Rail vehicles to be used on the Eglinton Crosstown Transit line. This is expected to begin revenue service in2020.
2. We further understand that a future station connecting these transit services with the GO Rail and Air Rail Link services on the Union Station to Kitchener rail corridor is to be planned sometime in the near future.
a be and that a private bus line -1. We further understand that aregional bus terminal wili built operator is in consideration; that space will be required for parking facilities, for passenger drop-off, taxi pick up and bicycle stands.
4. We have also been informed through having participated in the Electrification Environmental Assessment Advisory Group meeting that the Kodak site may be in consideration to serve as the MSF for the Air Rail Link vehicles in the future eventuality that this service is electrified.
remediated 5. We understand that the former Kodak lands is a brownfield site which has been to environmental standards that ailow for industrial and commercial development, although is there are still trace contaminants of which Metrolinx is aware of and for which a response being prepared as part of the environmental assessment'
6. We further understand that the former Kodak lands have no existing servicing' which l. Lastly we understand that the South Georgetown Rail Corridor lmprovement Project .*, udlu."nt to the Kodak Lands as it runs through Mount Dennis and Weston will be clearing trees and greenery which help provide for improving local air quality and connecting our community to the natural environment'
the Kodak lands 8. The Mount Dennis Weston Network recognizes that the redevelopment of site is a unique opportunity to transform old industrial brownfields to modern urban well employment latrds. It is stiategically located within Toronto's transportation network, is a connected to rail and major anerials with Avenues designations and highway links- It major portion of designated employment lands in our area and central to other pockets of inaustriat activity in ih" surrognding community which could potentially handle spin off development activities.
public investment in 9. Mount Dennis Weston Network encourages Metrolinx to leverage its We transit infrastructure as a catalyst for economic revitalization of our communify. MSF, although understand that it is likely thainot all land purchased will be required for the on LRT that the site layout be fully determined until final decisions have been made plans for vehicles, connection,"*ooi route and station location'
Mount Dennis Weston Network Community Benefits Proposal 1 10. We welcome Metrolinx as a public corporation, because we believe that development of 386 these lands provides opportunity to assist our community in overcoming its status as the poorest in Toronto and ihe second poorest in Ontario. The Mount Dennis Weston Network supports the building of these facilities on the former Kodak lands. We believe it will make orr.io*mity a transit hub, wili provide employment opportunities and bring people into our community.
11. We are, however, concerned about the potential for negative impact this development can have on our neighbourhood and on the quality of the environment. As concerned community residents and partners, we are acting upon our concerns and have given considerable time and effort to preparing a Community Benefits proposal for consideration of Metrolinx. By working collaboratively with MDWN to achieve these Community Benefits, Metrolinx can demonstrate its commitment to the public pledge it has taken to be a responsible corporate citizen and to plan for a strong economy' cleaner environment and healthier community.
12. First and foremost the Mount Dennis Weston Network requests of Metrolinx that the planning and implementation for this site be guided by a set of fundamental principles:
(a) thatmaximum opportunity is created for jobs through building a strong cluster of green economic activities;
(b) that, as a green industry-centred development, it strive to be a resource that actively creates synergy for green economic development; (c) that this development intensiff the use of the Kodak site within the context of the Official Plan's Employrnent Lands and Avenues designations to make the most of employnent lands as a limited resource within the city of Toronto; (d) that the development achieve a high level of sustainability in its built form and its business practices, using quality design to minimize any negative impacts; and (e) that the development is well integrated with the surrounding neighbourhoods and Eglinton Avenue to strengthen the urban structure and promote green and healthy community.
13. In terms of innovation for green jobs and economic development, we ask that:
(a) we work collaboratively to set up the ways and means for local hiring as a recruitment priority for planning, design, construction, operations, and maintenance jobs that will be produced here;
(b) a workforce training strategy be developed and this site be used as a training centre for local and regional transportation system pre-employment, apprenticeship and upgrading programs;
(c) space be provided for a green innovations incubator, potentially specializing in sustainable transportation. Noting the number of transit related businesses and innovations in the area (TTC buses, postal EVs, Bixi, ARL, Eglinton LRT, etc), perhaps a Transit Innovation Centre could be developed; (d) efforts be made to attract a new campus of one of the existing colleges or universities to involve young people in leaming, design, research and business development. Such a facility would create ongoing jobs in a range of skill sets, and could also be used to attraciyouth from adjoining neighbourhoods into post-secondary education. More than Mount Dennis Weston Network Community Benefits Proposal 2 387 one institution has expressed an interest in doing so in this community, and Toronto 393395 Region Conservation Authority is wiliing to link with it as a satellite to their Living City Campus; (e) support be provided for research and development for the incubator and campus planning and implementation; (0 procurement tendering processes be structured in the interests of furthering the above; (g) effort be made for strategic attraction green businesses relating to sustainable transportation, green urban development, energy conservation and renewable energy, water purification and efficiency, bio-materials, etc. to locate within the development and the surrounding area. Suppliers of material or parts for the Crosstown LRT and/or the other rail (GO, ARL) and bus transit systems be encouraged to locate workshops here; and (h) neighbouring landowners, including the City of Toronto, CanadaPost, and Ross'No Frills (Loblaws) plus others in the surroundingarea, be encouraged to join in a district development concept that promotes the green economy'
14. In tems of transit facilities planning, we request that:
(a) the LRT continue past Keele Street to Jane with a Mount Dennis station that connects with a new stop for the GO/ARL service on the Union-Kitchener rail corridor; (b) the footprint of the Maintenance and Storage Facility be minimized so that additional economic activities can be accommodated on-site; (c) the internal boundary area of the MSF include site parcels for developing the innovations incubator, campus and attracting other related green manufacturing and service industries; (d) it be recognized that there are efforts underway to restore the retail/commercial areas along Weston Road. Such efforts are an important piece to re-vrtalizing Mount Deruris and are likely to include development of small retail, micro retail, restaurants and personal services. Our Network strongly supports these efforts and is concerned that using the Kodak lands for big-box or large franchise retail activities would undermine the attempt to re-build the Weston Road retail corridor. We note that there is already 600,000 square feet of new retail currently under construction at the north-west comer of Keele St. and St Clair Avenue; (e) the Eglinton frontage of the site include higher density commercial-institutional functions that relate to the functions of the site and with a mix of micro business and small business retail uses at grade here plus several locations scattered through the larger development; (0 the existing Kodak Employees Building No.99 be retained and repurposed as part of the redevelopment; (g) the parking facilities for employees and transit users be incorporated underground or rooftops. Depending on location, these might provide a community resource on evenings and weekends in terms of attracting customers to local businesses. Such parking will generate revenue, which should be designated in whole or in part toward rnppo,tittg green community economic development. Parking lot maintenance and operation should be developed as a community employment business;
Mount Dennis Weston Network Community Benefits Proposal 3 388 Eglinton and into (h) the urban design enhancements be made to pedestrian walkways along the site be maJe for improved environmental quality, better access and stronger connection between surrounding residential areas and mainstreets; Road (i) an internal roadway be built between Eglinton Avenue and Industry Street/Bertel for improved access of vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians. A controlled intersection at Eghntbn should allow traffic and pedestrians ease of access from both north and south sides, and potentially be aligned with the entrance to the Ross'No-Frills property for traffic flow; rail 6) the site be configured in such a way as to block noise from the operation of the yards, potentially including underground storage tracks and well designed noise barriers; and (k) the access for LRT vehicles to the MSF be via an underground tunnel or by a bridgeway at the north end of the site, so as not to sterilize the Eglinton Avenue frontage from being developed to its maximum economic use' i5. In terms of Sustainable Design, we ask that:
(a) with such alarge facility lands, site development should take advantage of the significant opport,rt ltles to build-in renewable energy and to use energy efficiency teihnologier. Sotur in particular should be well suited on the top of any structure, be that the MSF Barn, surrounding factories, storage, maintenance or parking garage, or peripheral structures. Rooftop installations on sulrounding factory buildings can be Lrr"o.rrag"d as part of a district energy system. We note that with the width of Eglinton Avenue, there would likely be strong, uninterrupted solar site lines on these lands. As well there may be other ranewable energy investments that wouid contribute to lower geo- operating cosis of facilities and provide for local area lighting. This might include thermal or even wind installations, all of which couid be used to heat and cool buildings; (b) buildings be built to the highest possible green_standard and that local green products be incorporated and demonstrated. We understand that Metrolinx has indicated it will aim for LEED Silver. Can this be surpassed if local manufacturing can be stimulated to produce features called for in the design? Potentially re-cycling the steel beams and materials from the retaining wall along Eglinton Avenue could help; (c) the use of the historic industry Employees Building Number 99be as a living laboratory for developing sustainable building technologies, as previously proposed by Ryerson Universitl,. As new windows, elecirical plumbing fixtures, heating, ventilating and air conditioning system technologies are designed, the building is used for testing and demonstratirgplug-in prototypes, and for relating training. Make it a living building with green r"utit uttA rooftop garden, and a home for green community economic development; the (d) stormwater management for such a large site be done with the aim to improve district infrastruciure. Black Creek channel in the Rockcliffe area south of Mount Dennis is now at capacity during extreme weather events. Diversion of stormwater pond from the site into Black Creek -ight entail construction of a stormwater retention pavement and and marsh at Rockcliffe to help titwalizethe channel. Using permeabie of extreme swales will allow rain runoff to penetrate the ground and lessen the impact weather on the watershed's natural drainage system;
Mount Dennis Weston Netrrvork Community Benefits Proposal 4 389 (e) the heat island effect of large expanses of roof or open paved parking areas be addressed with strategies for cool roofing and green roof tops, shade tree planting, and solar canopies; (0 the use of clean fiIl from tunnel construction associated with the Eglinton Crosstown line should also be used to raise the grade of the Rockcliffe employment area along the southern edge of Mount Dennis. This will serve to create flood protection, help the vacant industrial sites in this location become more useable and increase potential for employment growth within reasonable distance of the Mount Dennis mobility hub; (g) atry parking facility be equipped with charging stations, as the number electric and fuei cell vehicles is expected to rise significantly by the time the facility is opened;
(h) space be made for bicycle access and storage. We note that the Bixie bicycle repair and winter storage is nearby at the Learning Enrichment Foundation on Industry Drive, and that convenient locations for this service be incorporated in relation to the design of transit stops and facilities; (i) existing bike path connections should be extended to connect with destination points internal to the employment area as well as to the future transit stop, the neighbouring recreation centre development and points of interest within the surrounding community. Bike path construction should be a source of community employment; 6) green-scaping the community and replacing trees removed from the rail corridor area also be done as a community jobs initiative; (k) there may be opportunities to develop market gardening or cornmercial greenhouses. There is a growing market demand for local produce and some land remnants may be suitable for such use once fully remediated; and 0) materials selection involved in construction, maintenance and operation choose those with closed loop life cycles, so that the materials that are used can be recycled to the maximum degree at the end of their functional life.
16. Finally we would like to ask that our proposal on Community Benefits be assigned to the appropriate Metrolinx staff and partner agencies for technical review and fuither development towards implementation . We look forward to the opportunity to work collaboratively with Metrolinx towards achieving these benefits for Mount Dennis, Weston and neighbouring communities.
Signed, r "t- t.tlt / -.'r' i. /,. NJ { tr 17'4,-s-:,' ,4 { 4'' =t /;,. / "L /' i^-"q
Marabelle McTavish Rick Ciccarelli Chair Coordinator- Making Green Work Mount Dennis Weston Network Mount Dennis Weston Network
Mount Dennis Weston Network Community Benefits Proposal 5 APPENDIX III 390
www.communitybenefits.ca
! ! ! ! Foundation Document
On Track to Opportunities: Objectives for an Eglinton – Scarborough Crosstown Line Community Benefits Agreement
May 22, 2013
Our Vision and Commitment
We envision Toronto as an inclusive, thriving city in which all residents have equitable opportunities to contribute to building healthy communities and a prospering economy.
We believe that a priority for a thriving and inclusive city is the continued expansion of transit infrastructure and neighbourhood improvement to meet the needs of all residents. Accessible transit is critical for the social, environmental and economic wellbeing of our city today and into the future.
The expansion of transit that is envisioned for Toronto will result in opportunities for good jobs. It is crucial that all Torontonians have access to economic opportunities stemming from infrastructure investments. As such, we believe that the diversity of the workers on the LRT project should reflect the diversity of residents of Toronto.
As members of Toronto’s communities we commit to working in partnership with Metrolinx and all other partners on a Community Benefits Agreement that can advance our vision for an inclusive, accountable thriving City.
391
Eglinton – Scarborough Crosstown Line Community Benefits Agreement
Objectives
The Eglinton-Scarborough Crosstown Community Benefits Agreement (ESCCBA) is a legally binding agreement between Metrolinx and the Toronto Community Benefits Network (TCBN). The CBA is founded on a shared commitment by both parties to build and complete public infrastructure projects through an effective, efficient, transparent, fair and inclusive process that supports good jobs and prevailing industry standards.
The ESCCBA is geared to achieving five core objectives:
1. Provide equitable economic opportunities that promote economic inclusion for all Toronto residents.
The ESCCBA will develop, resource and implement an economic inclusion strategy to ensure that the diversity of the workers on the LRT project reflects the diversity of the residents of Toronto. This will reap benefits in long term careers and short-term jobs for all Toronto communities. Working in tandem with community-based organizations, labour and other partners, the ESCCBA will implement specific strategies, including targets, that expand opportunities among historically disadvantaged communities and equity seeking groups. Outreach strategies will be an important part of reaching groups which include: residents in low income neighbourhoods, including Priority Neighbourhoods; urban Aboriginal populations; within racialized and newcomer communities; and people with disabilities as well as youth and women who are disadvantaged.
Specific measures should include, but not be limited to: • Specific targets and timetables in: pre-apprentice and apprenticeship programs, supply chain contracts and role of social enterprises, as well as construction jobs and ancillary positions; • Initiatives that enhance job awareness (design and construction) for local residents in the communities along the transit lines; • An inclusive training strategy within workplaces.
2! ! 392
2. Contribute to the development of a system of training and workforce development programs that can enable economic inclusion.
The ESCCBA will help ensure that a skilled workforce is ready and available for the completion of infrastructure projects by tapping into the capacity of Toronto’s diverse communities. The ESCCBA will contribute to the establishment of a shared framework for workforce development that ties together community based organizations, governments, colleges, training agencies, local unions professional societies and subcontractors involved in the trades, professions, and ancillary industries. By contributing to the capacity of the training and workforce development system to work in a coordinated and collaborative manner today, the ESCCBA will foster a long term commitment to workforce development through existing training delivery agencies and union training programs
Specific measures should include, but not be limited to: • Resourcing the development of a shared framework of workforce development geared to Metrolinx opportunities; • Recruitment, training and employment opportunities connected with the Metrolinx expansion must start with engineering and design work and include ancillary roles, in addition to access to jobs.
3. Support social enterprises and other related vehicles to economic inclusion through commitments to social procurement.
Social enterprises are businesses owned by non-profit organizations that are directly involved in the production and/or selling of goods, services and training for the blended purpose of generating income and achieving social, cultural, and/or environmental aims. The ESCCBA will be integral in fostering the establishment and successful growth of social enterprises affiliated with the LRT project.
Specific measures should include, but not be limited to: • Social procurement policies that enable social enterprises to deliver catering, printing, security and post construction services and/or recruitment and training delivery, plus other services; • Social procurement practices that encourage staging contracts so that smaller businesses can have access to tendering opportunities.
3! ! 393
4. Contribute to neighbourhood improvements through building new transit infrastructure.
Most residents will experience long-term benefits thanks to physical improvements and street beautification as a result of new infrastructure, access to more transit options, diversification of local economies. The 57 acre site of the Maintenance and Storage Facility allows opportunities for Community Benefits as do lands acquired for time limited purposes such as works yards, clearance or tunnelling access points.
Specific measures should include, but not be limited to: • The Maintenance and Storage Facility will be built to a high environmental standard and the former Kodak Employees Building preserved as a resource centre for jobs, training and social innovation. ESCCBA will commit parties to work with appropriate levels of government to mitigate gentrification along the line, and look for opportunities to build affordable housing.
5. Ensure clear commitments and accountability from all parties to deliver on the ESCCBA.
Metrolinx and TCBN will work with key stakeholders to finalize a strategy for operationalizing the ESCCBA. It will be built on the shared commitment by all parties to achieve the objectives of the ESCCBA within the context of successfully delivering on Metrolinx project deliverables. The ESCCBA will define the specific roles and responsibilities of Metrolinx and its subcontractors, labour/trades, and other key stakeholders in the Agreement.
Specific measures should include, but not be limited to: • A monitoring process to be carried out by the Toronto Community Benefits Network and Metrolinx; • Details of how and when signatory partners will be evaluated; • Assignment of a lead person who will be responsible for the implementation of the CBA at each of the main project stakeholders; • A resource strategy that enables the Agreement’s five objectives to be achieved. April!27/28,!and!was!adopted!by!the!May!22!General!Meeting!of!the!TCBN.
Acknowledgement: The original document was produced by Karen Lior and Patrick Rettig of the Toronto Workforce Innovation Group (TWIG). Subsequent revisions resulted from a 2-day workshop with community members, experts and key informants organized by the Toronto Community Benefits Network (TCBN).
4! ! APPENDIX IV 394 395 396 397 398 399
APPENDIX V
Building Opportunities through Community Benefits Agreements:
Leveraging infrastructure projects to increase training and labour market access for equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups in Ontario
March 2014
James Nugent Department of Geography & Planning University of Toronto [email protected] 400
Table of Contents
Executive Summary
Key Policy Recommendations 6
1. Introduction 8
2. Research Questions & Methodology 9
3. What is a Community Benefits Agreement? 11
Origins of CBAs 11
4. Reviewing Community Benefits Agreements 12
CBA Mechanism I: An inclusive definition of “targeted 13 groups”
CBA Mechanism II: Preferential Hiring Provisions 15
Local Hiring Provisions 15
First Source Hiring 17
Third Party Referral 18
Equity Dispatching: Building & Construction Trades 18
Targeted Training & Hiring Through Legislation 23
CBA Mechanism III: Pre-employment programs, Training & 27 Built-in Supports
Pre-employment Training & Screening 28
Pre-Apprenticeship Programs in the Trades 30
Equity through College (Non-union) Apprenticeships 33 401
CBA Mechanism IV: Community-based, Culturally 34 Appropriate Outreach
CBA Mechanism V: Women- and Minority-owned Businesses 35
CBA Mechanism VI: Monitoring and Enforcing Equity 37
5. Impact Benefit Agreements 42
6. Case Study: Negotiating a CBA for the Crosstown Light Rail 46 Transit Project
Background: The Big Move; Transit investment; Crosstown 46
Three Job Pipelines for the Eglinton Crosstown 47
Pipeline #1: Construction Jobs (Apprenticeships) 47
Pipeline #2: Finance, Administration, Design and Engineering 50 (FADE) Jobs
Pipeline #3: Social Enterprise 52
Key Challenges in Negotiations so far 53
7. Economies of Agglomeration and Network Effects 55
8. Conclusion 57
References 59
Appendix A: Toronto Community Benefits Network 63 Foundation Document 402
Executive Summary
This report identifies and evaluates mechanisms used by community benefits agreements in Canada, the United States, and Scotland (e.g. legal arrangements, policies, programs, and supports), to understand how they might be used for leveraging Ontario's ongoing infrastructure investments towards increasing labour market access for equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups. A community benefit agreement (CBA) is a contract negotiated between a developer or public agency and representatives of a community that outlines the benefits the community will receive from the development in return for their support of the proposed project.
Six mechanisms used by CBAs to exact greater labour market access for equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups are identified and analyzed in this report: an inclusive definition of groups receiving a targeted preference; preferential hiring provisions; pre- employment programs, training & built-in supports; community-based, culturally appropriate outreach; preference for women- and minority-owned businesses; and monitoring and enforcement procedures. All these mechanisms must work together if targeted groups are to realize the benefits of a CBA. Unfortunately, it difficult to evaluate how well these mechanisms worked in terms of opening up access to jobs and training for equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups for specific CBAs due to a general the lack of proper monitoring and public reporting of participation data.
In many cities across the United States, coalitions made-up of unions, community-based organizations, and training organizations have been negotiating CBAs with developers since the late 1990's. Canada has less experience with CBAs and they tend to be driven by municipal and provincial governments. Although, the report also draws out lessons learned from the similar practice of "impact benefit agreements" in Northern Aboriginal communities. In Scotland, the delivery of community benefits is becoming a matter of national law for all large public contracts. 403
There has not yet been a CBA negotiated in Ontario, but this report provides a case study of a CBA that is currently under negotiation in Toronto surrounding the Eglinton Crosstown Light Rail Transit project. Labour, community and social agencies advancing a CBA for the Crosstown are hoping to develop three job pipelines: one aimed at bringing more equity- seeking and historically disadvantaged groups into the trades; one aimed at supporting immigrants to gain Canadian work experience in their professional fields; and a third centred on increasing the sub-contracts awarded to social enterprises. The key challenges currently facing negotiations of the Crosstown CBA include: a lack of information around the number and type of jobs expected to be created; disagreement over whether a signed, legally-binding agreement is necessary; the extent to which community benefits should be detailed in the request for proposal; and the need for effective monitoring and enforcement.
A strength of CBAs is that they bring together aspects of workforce planning and development that are often kept separate or only poorly coordinated: outreach; training; supports for training; and job opportunities. The coordination that CBAs provide amongst training institutions, social agencies, labour, community groups and government, can ensure that additional “social value for money” is captured from public infrastructure projects. Beyond offering positive impacts for any one project, CBAs also foster strong working relationship between the organizations involved that generate “economies of agglomeration” and “network effects” within the broader workforce development sector. 404
Key Policy Recommendations:
➢ Key Recommendation #1: Value-for-money analyses used for evaluating alternative financing and procurement (AFP) infrastructure projects should incorporate a broad definition of value that includes the value-added from community benefits (“social- valued added”). ➢ Key Recommendation #2: Community impact reports should be conducted in the early stages of an infrastructure project to provide detailed projections of potential job opportunities and to identify existing skills and training gaps for equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups. ➢ Key recommendation #3: The negotiation of Project Labour Agreements with trade unions for all infrastructure projects can be a key tool for bringing under-represented and marginalized groups into the trades. ➢ Key Recommendation #4: The Ontario Government should hold contractors of public infrastructure projects accountable to employment equity legislation or programs similar to the federal Employment Equity Act and the Federal Contractors Program. ➢ Key Recommendation #5: Participant data of training and job placements associated with a CBA should be closely monitored, disaggregated according to the groups targeted by the CBA, and publicly reported. ➢ Key Recommendation #6: The Ontario Government should draw heavily on the Scottish model of social procurement as a way of incorporating community benefit clauses into the competitive bidding process for all public contracts over a certain dollar threshold. ➢ Key recommendation #7: Tender documents for public infrastructure contracts need to clearly specify the equity and training provisions expected of contractors. Otherwise contractors will be reluctant to voluntarily spend the time and money required to train new workers. ➢ Key Recommendation #8: Pre-training and training programs need to begin well in advance and timed so as to have targeted participants qualified to work when hiring 405
begins. ➢ Key Recommendation #9: Ontario Ministries that have overseen impact benefit agreements (e.g. Ontario Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs and the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines) should meet with ministries that are implementing community benefits agreements. ➢ Key Recommendation #10: The Ontario government should support the significant expansion of the Hammer Heads and CHOICE programs. This expansion should include coordination between the pre-apprenticeship programs and secondary schools or adult education programs so that interested applicants can gain the necessary math, science and english prerequisites they need to be eligible for the program. ➢ Key Recommendation #11: Further research is needed on the extent to which women- and minority-owned businesses, engaged through CBAs, increased training and secure employment for equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups, and how experiences varied across these different groups. ➢ Key Recommendation #12: Infrastructure Ontario should facilitate a bidding system and criteria that supports the expansion of social enterprises through public infrastructure procurement. ➢ Key recommendation #13: An apprenticeship system covering all aspects of highway construction work will provide a clear access point for targeted groups looking to enter the sector while helping employers to more readily know what skills different workers possess. ➢ Key Recommendation #14: Provincially-regulated public corporations that are involved in public infrastructure projects should institute policies aimed at hiring and training more equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged workers. 406
1. Introduction
Ontario is facing a paradox: skills shortages have emerged in certain trades and professions at the same time as highly-skilled immigrants suitable for these jobs are unable to secure employment and other disadvantaged groups remain unemployed or underemployed due to lack of training or access to opportunities. Meanwhile, the government hopes to address budgetary deficits, brought on by the recent recession, by trying do more with less. Community benefits agreements offer a way to bridge the skills gap while simultaneously achieving multiple social policy objectives around equity and the alleviation of poverty and social assistance dependence.
Over the past decade, the Government of Ontario has increased infrastructure spending to an average of $10 billion per year. These investments have created or preserved 100,000 good- paying jobs and contributed $25 billion to the Ontario economy each year. 255 The Ontario government has committed to promoting Ontario's construction sector abroad to take advantage of the $2 trillion invested globally in economic infrastructure over the next twenty years. But Engineers Canada has warned in its report, Engineering Labour Market Conditions 2011-2020, that despite increasing enrolments in engineering degree programs, over the next decade Ontario will experience a shortage of engineers who have 5-10 years experience.256 Similarly, the Construction Sector Council reported that retirements in the construction sector between 2013-2021 will lead to a shortfall of 40,000 workers, with demand greatest in the GTA.257 Some skilled trades, such as electricians and crane operators, could face critical shortages in the coming decade if more apprentices are not trained.
The Ontario Government has recently underscored the importance of infrastructure spending as a policy for training, job creation and economic growth. The fifth principle of Bill 141 (the
255Government of Ontario, Building Together: Jobs and Prosperity for Ontarians (Ministry of Infrastructure, 2011), http://www.moi.gov.on.ca/pdf/en/BuildingTogether_En.pdf; Conference Board of Canada, The Economic Impact of Ontario’s Infrastructure Investment Program, April 2013, http://www.conferenceboard.ca/temp/3c699e0c-a786-4986- b23e-f158e3b83db7/13-246_ecoimpactontinfrast_br.pdf. 256Randstad Engineering, Engineering Labour Market Conditions 2011-2020 (Engineers Canada, 2012), http://randstad.ca/downloads/110112-engineering-labour-market-conditions-2011-2020.en.pdf. 257Construction Sector Council, Construction Looking Forward: 2013-2021 Key Highlights, 2013, https://secure.csc- ca.org/forecast/en. 407
Infrastructure for Jobs and Prosperity Act), currently before the Ontario Legislature, is that: “Infrastructure planning and investment should promote economic competitiveness, productivity, job creation and training opportunities.”258 But certain groups of workers are highly under-represented in the construction sector. For example, women only make up 2% of workers in the skilled trades while immigrants make-up 17% of skills trades persons compared with 21% in the non-trades.259260 A major challenge for immigrants who already have considerable international experience building infrastructure in other parts of the world is gaining work experience and accreditation in Canada in order to secure employment in their field. The policy challenge of replacing Ontario's aging construction-related workforce could be met by attracting and facilitating under-represented demographic groups into these careers.
Another policy challenge facing the Ontario government is how to increase post-secondary participation and job attainment of at-risk-youth and low-income residents (either living on social assistance or the working-poor), e.g. through apprenticeship programs offered by trade unions and Ontario colleges. This report reviews the use of community benefit agreements to meet these policy challenges. Community benefits agreements offer incredible promise for meeting Ontario's infrastructure construction demands while simultaneously training tomorrow's workforce and addressing systemic inequities. By more efficiently coordinating and targeting existing resources of governments, social agencies, trade unions and community organizations, community benefits agreements offer exceptional “social-value added” for public infrastructure investments.
2. Research Questions & Methodology
The purpose of this report is to identify and evaluate mechanisms (e.g. legal arrangements, policies, programs, and supports) used by community benefits agreements in other jurisdictions to successfully bring equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups, who
258Legislative Assembly of Ontario, “Bill 141, Infrastructure for Jobs and Prosperity Act, 2014,” November 16, 2013, http://www.ontla.on.ca/web/bills/bills_detail.do?locale=en&Intranet=&BillID=2904. 259Skills Canada & Women in Nuclear, Women Working in the Skilled Trades and Technologies, June 2011, http://www.skillsontario.com/images/pdf/2012misc/women_working_in_trades_pub.pdf. 260Wendy Pyper, Skilled Trades Employment, Perspectives, October 2008, http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/75-001- x/2008110/article/10710-eng.htm. 408 are either excluded or at the margins of the labour market, into training programs and infrastructure-related jobs. These mechanisms, along with similar experiences of impact benefit agreements negotiated between mining companies and northern Aboriginal communities, will be assessed for determining the potential efficacy of community benefit agreements in an Ontario context. Two key questions have guided this research:
1. What mechanisms used by community benefit agreements (CBAs) in other jurisdictions could successfully bring marginalized residents into infrastructure-related training programs and jobs in an Ontario context?
2. How does the CBA being proposed by the Toronto Community Benefits Network for the Eglinton Crosstown Light Rail Transit Project plan to increase access to job training and job opportunities for equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups in Toronto as part of Metrolinx's $8.4 billion transportation expansion projects, and what challenges remain?
While CBAs have addressed a diverse set of issues relating to affordable housing, environmental sustainability and local economic development, this report is not meant to be a comprehensive review of all these goals. Rather the focus of this report is on the capacity of CBAs to increase training and labour market access for equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups, keeping in mind the Ontario context.
The methodology of this report was to first review the academic and grey literatures pertaining to community benefits agreements and impact benefit agreements. Information from CBAs was drawn from over twenty peer-reviewed academic articles and book sections, eight summary reports mostly by organizations and individuals in the United States involved in negotiating and implementing CBAs, as well as sixteen detailed accounts of specific CBAs including the legal texts of several CBAs. Data on CBAs was also drawn from the author's participation in email listservs and conference calls with other CBA practitioners as well as the transcript from an international discussion panel on CBAs in Toronto organized by the author in April 2013. Unlike CBAs, the legal texts of impact benefit agreements are held confidentially, although some similar agreements between governments and Aboriginal 409 groups were publicly available. Most information on IBAs is therefore drawn from the academic and grey literatures. The analysis of the Crosstown CBA under consideration between the Toronto Community Benefits Network and Metrolinx, was drawn from eleven interviews, transcripts of relevant public meetings, and the author's personal involvement in the Network over the past two years.
3. What is a Community Benefits Agreement?
A community benefit agreement, or CBA, is a contract negotiated between a developer or public agency and representatives of a community that outlines the benefits the community will receive from the development in return for their support of the proposed project. A CBA has five characteristics:
i. A signed, legally enforceable agreement, having clear monitoring and enforcement mechanisms;
ii. Specificity to a particular construction project (rather than an institutional policy);
iii. An inclusive, collaborative and accountable process of leveraging a development project towards achieving a broader range of policy objectives such as equity, poverty reduction, environmental sustainability and local economic development;
iv. Details in writing the specific benefits that a community will receive from a given development project (e.g. targeted hiring; dedicated funding for training marginalized groups; support for a living wage; a Project Labour Agreement that supports unionization of the construction site; support for social enterprises; allocations of affordable housing and community-space; and funds for community programs); and
v. Substantial community involvement in all phases of the CBA (i.e. design, implementation, monitoring and enforcement).
Origins of CBAs CBAs emerged to protect the homes of low-income residents in the face of redevelopment pressures. The backlash against urban sprawl in the late 1990's and early 2000's in favour of “smart growth,” coupled with a real estate boom and city redevelopment efforts, attracted investment back into urban neighbourhoods it had previously abandoned. These neighbourhoods had become home for low-income, often racialized, residents. The wave of 410 redevelopment pressures has led to gentrification and displacement. These communities have seen CBAs as a way to assert greater influence over the planning process to win protections for affordable housing and access to jobs associated with any redevelopment project. Though not a focus of this report, it should be noted that the political context motivating many CBAs is a sense of injustice felt by low-income, often racialized communities, who are facing development-related displacement pressures.261262 The expansion of light rail transit into Toronto's poorest neighbourhoods, provides a good example of how, barring preventative measures, infrastructure development in Ontario threatens to displace low-income residents whose rent will increase along with real estate values thanks to the new transit lines. But in other cases, CBAs have simply become a way for governments to achieve more policy objectives with the same initial infrastructure investment.
4. Reviewing Community Benefits Agreements
The growing literature on CBAs is primarily found in legal journals that focus on the contractual writing of CBAs, the negotiation process and their enforcement.263 Planning and urban studies scholars have paid more attention to the representativeness and internal politics of CBA coalitions and how their particularist interests sometimes contradict city-wide policies and needs.264 But no study has explicitly tried to draw together and evaluate how well
261Leland T. Saito, “How Low-Income Residents Can Benefit from Urban Development: The LA Live Community Benefits Agreement,” City & Community 11, no. 2 (June 2012): 129–50, doi:10.1111/j.1540-6040.2012.01399.x. 262William Ho, “Community Benefits Agreements: An Evolution in Public Benefits Negotiation Processes,” Journal of Affordable Housing & Community Development Law 17, no. 1/2 (October 1, 2007): 7–34, doi:10.2307/25782802; Scott L. Cummings, “Editor’s Note: The Emergence of Community Benefits Agreements,” Journal of Affordable Housing & Community Development Law 17, no. 1/2 (October 1, 2007): 5–6, doi:10.2307/25782801. 263Vicki Been et al., “The Role of Community Benefit Agreements in New York City’s Land Use Process. New York: New York City Bar.” (New York City Bar, March 8, 2010), http://www.nycbar.org/pdf/report/uploads/20071844- TheRoleofCommunityBenefitAgreementsinNYCLandUseProcess.pdf; Julian Gross, “Community Benefits Agreements: Definitions, Values, and Legal Enforceability,” Journal of Affordable Housing and Community Development Law 17 (2008): 35; Amy Lavine and Norman Oder, “Urban Redevelopment Policy, Judicial Deference to Unaccountable Agencies, and Reality in Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards Project,” The Urban Lawyer 42, no. 2 (2010): 287–373; Thomas A Musil Dr, “The Sleeping Giant: Community Benefit Agreements and Urban Development,” The Urban Lawyer 44, no. 4 (2012): 827–31,833–51; Michael L Nadler, “The Constitutionality of Community Benefits Agreements: Addressing the Exactions Problem,” The Urban Lawyer 43, no. 2 (2011): 587–625; Patricia E Salkin, “From Bricks and Mortar to Mega-Bytes and Mega-Pixels: The Changing Landscape of the Impact of Technology and Innovation on Urban Development,” The Urban Lawyer 42/43, no. 4/1 (Fall 2010/Winter 2011): 11–27; Patricia E. Salkin and Amy Lavine, “Negotiating for Social Justice and the Promise of Community Benefits Agreements: Case Studies of Current and Developing Agreements,” Journal of Affordable Housing and Community Development Law 17 (2008): 113; Jennifer Cantrell and Suparna Jain, “Enforceability of Local Hire Preference Programs,” National Cooperative Highway Research Program, no. 59 (April 2013): 40. 264Laura Wolf-Powers, “Community Benefits Agreements and Local Government: A Review of Recent Evidence,” 411
CBAs increase access to employment for equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups. Often reports of CBAs simply report the number of “local jobs” created for a project without a more detailed breakdown of which, if any, marginalized groups got placed in these jobs and the mechanisms that ensured the success or failure of these programs. Nevertheless, this report begins an assessment by reviewing six key mechanisms of a CBA that facilitate labour market access for equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups:
I. An inclusive definition of “targeted groups” II. Preferential hiring provisions III. Pre-employment programs, training & built-in supports IV. Community-based, culturally appropriate outreach V. Women- and Minority-owned Businesses VI. Monitoring and enforcement procedures
Affordable housing provisions and social enterprises could be added to this list, but are not discussed in this report. All these mechanisms must work together to ensure that targeted hiring and training of equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups is achieved. It is not enough to simply have hiring provisions written into the CBA if they are not clearly targeted as a well-defined marginalized group, if there is not appropriate outreach to these groups, or if there is not monitoring and enforcement measures put in place to make sure hiring programs are achieving their stated goal.
CBA Mechanism I: An Inclusive Definition of “Targeted Groups”
To support increased training and labour market access for equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups, these target groups must be clearly defined within community benefits agreements. Defining which groups are to be named and targeted by the training and hiring programs of a CBA, and which groups are not, is inherently a political decision that has varied in practice in different times and places. Three groups are commonly given priority through CBAs: i. social groups that have been traditionally excluded from certain occupations such as
Journal of the American Planning Association, 2010, http://works.bepress.com/laura_wolf_powers/11. 412
engineering, project administration and the construction trades (e.g. in 2013, women only accounted for 2.9% of the construction tradespersons in Ontario265); ii. neighbourhoods experiencing direct, negative impacts from a development project (e.g. poor and racialized communities displaced directly by demolition or indirectly through gentrification, or whose environmental health stands to deteriorate due to increased air or noise pollution); and/or iii. marginalized groups who have historically experienced social and political barriers to securing training and employment (e.g. women; Aboriginal peoples; visible minorities; those with disabilities; ex-offenders; veterans; persons on social assistance; low- income residents; and those identifying as LGBTQ).
The Staples Centre CBA, negotiated in 2001 as part of the $2.8 billion L.A. Live sports and entertainment complex, provides an example of how targeted groups were defined both geographically and according to low-income status in the following order:
(1) First Priority: individuals whose residence or place of employment has been displaced by the STAPLES Center project or by the initial construction of the project and Low-Income Individuals living within a one-half-mile radius of the Project.
(2) Second Priority: Low-Income Individuals living within a three-mile radius of the Project.
(3) Third Priority: Low-Income Individuals living in census tracts or zip codes throughout the City for which more than 80% of the households, household income is no greater than 80% of the median household income for the Standard Metropolitan.266
Similarly, the Los Angeles LAX airport CBA, gave first priority to special needs individuals and low-income individuals living within the project impact area and second priority to low- income individuals living within the city.267 The CBA for San Diego's Ballpark Village redevelopment targeted low-income local residents and ex-offenders who were going through
265Calculated by author using data from Statistics Canada CANSIM Table 2820010 , “Labour force survey estimates (LFS), by National Occupational Classification for Statistics (NOC-S) and sex, annually.” 266Community Benefits Law Centre, “Los Angeles Sports and Entertainment District Community Benefits Program,” 2001, http://www.forworkingfamilies.org/sites/pwf/files/resources/CBA- LosAngelesSportsAndEntertainmentDistrictProject.pdf, p.A-16. 267Los Angeles World Airports, “LAX First Source Hiring Program,” 2005, http://www.lawa.org/uploadedFiles/OurLAX/pdf/CBA/ExhC_CBA_LAXFirstSource_120804.pdf. 413 a rehabilitation program.268 And as I discuss further below, the Alameda Corridor CBA prioritized war veterans, who are homeless, single parents, on public assistance, lacking a high school diploma, or emancipated from foster care.
CBA Mechanism II: Preferential Hiring Provisions
CBAs have used a range of legal mechanisms and programs to support the targeted groups mentioned above:
Local Hiring Provisions
In many CBAs, neighbourhoods that live adjacent to a development site are given priority to jobs, training and new affordable housing units. Participants are included in the targeted group based on their postal codes and/or the distance of their homes from a project (e.g. eight kilometres from a new transit line). An advantage of this system is that identifying and engaging the target group is relatively straight forward and may be less politically contentious than other equity targets based according to demographics. Local hiring provisions are particularly well-suited to compensating neighbourhoods that are displaced directly or indirectly from developments. Where the new development eposes nearby residents to new environmental hazards (e.g. air pollution from a new highway or noise pollution from a new airport), local hiring provisions have been used to uphold the principles of environmental justice—i.e., that those whose environmental health suffers disproportionately from the consequences of economic development should receive some of the benefits from that development.269 Geographical targeting also recognizes that poverty, including lack of public and private investment, is often geographically concentrated in particular neighbourhoods. This is the reason the Alameda Corridor CBA prioritized the hiring of poor, Latino communities living within five miles of the new rail line being built. Local hiring has the added benefit of reducing traffic congestion and promoting healthy living since people can
268Parntership for Working Families, “Ballpark Village Project Community Benefits Agreement,” September 20, 2005, http://www.forworkingfamilies.org/sites/pwf/files/documents/Ballpark%20CBA.pdf. 269Los Angeles World Airports, “LAX First Source Hiring Program”; Leslie Bagg, “Projet de Reconstruction Du Complexe Turcot À Montreal, Montreal-Ouest et Westmount” (Bureau d’audiences publicque sur l’environnement, 2009), http://www.bape.gouv.qc.ca/sections/mandats/Complexe_Turcot/documents/DM79.pdf. 414 walk to work rather than become stressed driving through traffic jams.
One disadvantage to local hiring provisions, however, is that equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged residents living outside of the prescribed area may question why they are being excluded from the CBA provisions. The CBA for the construction of the Vancouver Olympic Village originally only included “inner-city” residents. But the program later expanded to include people having “inner-city connections” so as to broader the applicant pool and account for the fact that some people are more transient. At the same time, some felt that this shifting of boundaries was used by Building Opportunities with Business (BOB – the implementing agency) to avoid having to address the reasons that many inner city residents were unable to benefit from the training programs in the first place:
BOB found that many individuals that were interested in the program were deeply connected to the inner-city but did not currently reside there. Some had been long-time inner-city residents but had relocated to find housing outside the neighbourhood; others had recently moved away as part of a recovery or treatment program; others were accessing inner-city programs and agencies and being referred on to BOB but they lived outside the inner-city, for instance on a First Nation reserve or with family in a neighbouring municipality. This difficulty of drawing geographical boundaries around the inner-city community led BOB to redefine the program to serve not only inner-city residents but individuals connected to the inner-city through service agencies and other relationships. This helped to broaden the pool of candidates that could participate in the program and to support people still tied to the inner-city make positive changes. Some critics of this adjustment feel that it allowed the program to side-step some of the employment barriers and challenges faced by inner-city residents and were an indication that the construction jobs focused on in the CBA were not the best fit for inner- city residents.270
Whether a local hiring provision is appropriate will depend on the nature of the development (e.g. a localized social housing redevelopment vs. a cross-city transit line). It should not be assumed that targeting “local residents” will necessarily improve access for equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups. As discussed, this will depend on the degree to which
270Lisa Ranghelli, “Replicating Success--The Alameda Corridor Job Training & Employment Program: A Replication Manual for Winning and Implementing Community-Based Jobs Programs on Public Construction Projects” (Center for Community Change & Alameda Corridor Jobs Coalition, 2002), http://www.campusactivism.org/server- new/uploads/acjc%20replication%20manual.pdf, p.7. 415 equity-seeking and historically marginalized groups are geographically concentrated around the proposed development. For this reason, local hiring provisions are often combined with other socio-economic criteria through a tiered prioritization (e.g. the Staples Centre and LAX Airport CBAs discussed above).
First Source Hiring System
In the strong version of a first source hiring system (which may incorporate local hiring provisions) employers participating in the CBA project are required to provide advance notice of job postings to targeted groups and also commit to interviewing targeted job applicants within a stipulated period (e.g. three weeks) before opening up the postings and interviews to the general public. Some CBAs require that either a specific number or percentage of job hires occur through first source hiring (e.g. 50% for the Staples Centre CBA; 30% for the Ballpark Village CBA; 650 trade jobs and 350 non-trade jobs for the Alameda Corridor CBA), although provisions usually allow for employers to miss these targets so long as they can demonstrate “best efforts” or “good faith efforts” in trying to reach them.
First source hiring programs rely on a referral system that connects employers to targeted groups. This can be done through a apprenticeship training centre, other employment centres, or community-based groups that have received specific funding through the CBA to carry out this role.
A strength of first source hiring systems is that they are less politically contentious than strict quota-based affirmative action hiring policies. However, experience has shown that “good faith effort” clauses can allow employers to avoid hiring from targeted groups, especially since litigation against such employers would be too costly for community-based groups to afford and often difficult to win in court. Another problem is many first source hires stay on the job for only a few months only and never receive meaningful training before they are laid-off. This can be addressed in part by defining first source hiring targets in terms of total person-hours of a project rather than the number or percentage of targeted individuals hired, thereby giving employers an incentive to train and retain targeted hires. 416
Third Party Referral
A weak version of a first source hiring system is better termed a third party referral system. In this case, the employer is only asked to circulate job postings to organizations and agencies that service targeted groups, preferably in advance of circulating them to the general public. The employer is not held to hiring any percentage or number of applicants from targeted groups. The success of a third party referral system therefore completely depends on developing a strong and cooperative relationship between the employer and the referral organization. Where the referral organization is a government agency (e.g. Toronto Employment and Social Services), the employer may have an incentive to participate in the referral system voluntarily to cultivate a long-term relationship with the government and position itself better to win future government contracts. Community pressure may also force the developer to hire from targeted groups even where no legal commitment exists to do so. In both a first source hiring system and a third party referral system, an employment organization or community-based organization often pre-screens applicants and sometimes helps targeted groups to receive additional training before sending them for an interview. This helps ensure that the employer is receiving qualified applicants so that their interest in the system is maintained. But the employer also benefits from saving money it might otherwise have to spend on recruitment.
Equity Dispatching: Building & Construction Trades
Community benefit agreements negotiated for public infrastructure projects most commonly focus on jobs and apprenticeships training within the building and construction trades since the trades already have well-established apprenticeship programs and because the trade unions are often heavily involved in the negotiation of CBAs. But it may not always be possible to use first source hiring, third party referral systems or local hiring provisions to simply place equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged workers directly into apprenticeship programs and jobs within the trades. For construction projects that are covered by a Project Labour Agreement, which give unions exclusive jurisdiction over the project in exchange for agreeing to not go on strike, hiring decisions are traditionally done through union-managed hiring halls. Project Labour Agreements are common for large 417 infrastructure projects because they increase the overall certainty, coordination and health and safety of the workforce. Even where there is no Project Labour Agreement, individual building contractors may have agreements with certain unions to only employ unionized workers (i.e. 'closed shop'). While these union arrangements help protect the wages and working conditions of tradespersons, they pose their own challenges for improving on the currently under-representation of equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups within the unionized building trades.
The way that union hiring halls work is that whenever a unionized tradesperson becomes unemployed they sign their name onto a dispatch list and essentially wait in line for their turn to be sent out onto the next job. The dispatcher is given some flexibility to also match workers on the dispatch list who have specific skills with the type of jobs requested by the employer. In some cases, agreements with the unions give employers the right to select or 'name' a certain number of workers to the job site. In Ontario, regulations govern the ratio of journeypersons to apprentices that can be on a given worksite which favour journeypersons in a ratio of about three to one (although in practice, this is usually five to one).271
This current system of dispatching unionized tradespersons may present a challenge for increasing representation of equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged workers on infrastructure projects for two reasons:
1) During times of high unemployment in the construction sector, unions may feel that there are already enough unemployed members waiting on the dispatch list so may constrain their intake of new apprentices, making it difficult for targeted groups to get into the union and to eventually secure employment;
2) Even where targeted groups are accepted into a union, as new apprentices they will be put on the bottom of the hiring dispatch list and may also be by-passed for workers who have more training and experience to perform certain jobs.
271For specific information on ratios for each trade, see: Ontario College of Trades, “Ratio Reviews,” http://www.collegeoftrades.ca/review-panels/ratioreviews. 418
In two cases, one on Vancouver Island and the other in Los Angeles, Project Labour Agreements have been signed between government agencies, employers and trade unions that give some level of hiring preference to equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups. In the mid-1990's, the British Columbian Government developed an innovative model for increasing the participating of equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups in the construction trades during the Vancouver Island Highway Project (VIHP).272 The government negotiated an agreement between the construction unions and the contractors in which a government agency, Highway Constructors Ltd. (HCL), became the exclusive employer for all labour used on the highway. The union hall dispatchers still maintained their hiring lists and submitted names to HCL, but HCL made final decisions and could therefore prioritize equity hires as well as those receiving income assistance and living within 100km of the project:
Dispatch was carried out in a distinct way and involved collaboration between HCL and the unions. A contractor would make a single call to the dispatcher at HCL requesting a specific type of worker, say, for example, a carpenter experienced at concrete formwork. HCL would in turn contact the Carpenter’s Union and make the request, preferably for an equity hire. The decision about who to dispatch then depended on some discussion between the union and the HCL dispatcher.273
Although there were no official quotas for equity hires, unofficially the goal was for twenty percent of the workforce to be made-up of women, Aboriginals, visible minorities, and persons with disabilities. Majorie Cohen and Kate Braid conclude that: “Without this element of compulsion in the initial project agreement [i.e. unions having to hire through HCL], the overwhelming obstacles to equity training and hiring would have ensured that yet another equity project failed.”274
To get their buy-in, employers were permitted to “name request” up to five core workers for hiring on a one-for-one basis with workers assigned by HCL. The unions also accepted a two dollar an hour wage cut. In return, all workers on the project were required to join the union
272Majorie Griffin Cohen et al., The Road to Equity: Training Women and First Nations on the Vancouver Island Highway--a Model for Large-Scale Construction Projects (Vancouver: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, BC Office, 2000); John Calvert and Blair Redlin, “Achieving Public Policy Objectives Through Collective Agreements: The Project Agreement Model for Public Construction in British Columbia’s Transportation Sector,” Just Labour 2 (2003): 1–13. 273Cohen et al., The Road to Equity, p.13. 274Ibid. 419 regardless of whether the contractor was traditionally 'union' or 'non-union'. As table 1 shows, the VIHP program was successful at breaking through historically entrenched hiring patterns to bring about greater equity despite significant backlash, at least initially, from both employers and union members.
1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 Women 2.2 4 5.8 6.5 10.3 8.4 Aboriginal 5.3 5.9 7.6 7.5 11.6 8.9 People with 0.8 1.6 1.2 1.2 0.8 0.8 Disabilities Visible Minorities 0 1.8 1.8 2 1.5 1.2 **Equity as a % of 8.3 12.6 15.5 16.3 22.1 17.8 Total Table 1: Vancouver Island Highway Equity Groups Proportion of Total Hours Worked.275 ** Total equity is less than the sum of the columns because some people are included in more than one category. Note: The figures for 1994-97 are for the full year, while those for 1998-99 are for the construction season. Only the contractors' core labour force would be working throughout the year, a factor that would depress statistics for equity hires.
The VIHP program's success depended on a number of measures in addition to changing the formal hiring process. An Employment Equity Coordinator was key in facilitating outreach, recruitment, training and advocating on behalf of trainees. A number of measures also tried to address the discriminatory workplace culture and other problems that participants inevitably faced once they were finally hired: a one-day (optional) Diversity Seminar was given to contractors and front-line supervisors; a harassment policy was instituted; there was an active, community-based advisory committee; and a First Nations 'shadow trainer' from the local band was trained as an instructor to help participants on-site when the other instructor was unavailable.276
Similar to the Project Labour Agreement signed for the Vancouver Island Highway Project, in
275Cohen et al., The Road to Equity, p.3. 276Ibid. 420
2012 the Los Angeles County Metro Board signed a Project Labour Agreement with the Los Angeles/Orange County Building Construction Trades Council that gives hiring priority to disadvantaged workers and also (for non-federally funded projects) to local workers in the county.277 The agreement applies to all construction contracts for transit and highway projects greater than $2.5 million. A target of at least forty percent of all project hours are to be worked by those residing in “economically disadvantaged areas.” Ten percent of all project hours are to be performed by “disadvantaged workers” which is defined as workers who face at least two of the following barriers to employment: are homeless; a custodial single parent; receive public assistance; lack a GED or high school diploma; has a history of involvement with the criminal justice system; has experienced chronic unemployment; is emancipated from foster care; is a veteran of the Iraq or Afghanistan wars; is an apprentice with less than 15% of the hours required to graduate journey-level. In addition, the Project Labour Agreement states that twenty percent of total work hours are to be performed by apprentices. Whenever contractors need to hire workers, they are required to send a written form to the unions that specifies the number of targeted workers they are requesting in addition to general dispatch. Both the contractors and the unions must make best efforts to meet the stipulated targets. For the unions, this means bypassing the traditional hiring hall dispatch list.
Besides signing Project Labour Agreements to achieve more equitable representation on transit infrastructure construction projects, unions across North America have also developed special programs to bring marginalized youth and war veterans into the trades. Two specific programs in Ontario are aimed at helping marginalized or at-risk-youth enter the trades: Hammer Heads and CHOICE (discussed below in “CBA Mechanism III”).
Although most trades working on infrastructure projects govern hiring decisions through their unions, some do not. In Ontario, public hydro companies make hiring decisions on power line technicians who are always needed for servicing or preparing new infrastructure developments. These public corporations could unilaterally institute employment equity measures that would help leverage the social benefit of infrastructure investments.
277Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Los Angeles/Orange County Building Construction Trades Council, “Project Labor Agreement,” January 26, 2012, http://media.metro.net/about_us/pla/images/Project_Labor_Agreement.pdf. 421
➢ Key recommendation: The negotiation of Project Labour Agreements with trade unions for all infrastructure projects can be a key tool for bringing under-represented and marginalized groups into the trades.
➢ Key recommendation: An apprenticeship system covering all aspects of highway construction work will provide a clear access point for targeted groups looking to enter the sector while helping employers to more readily know what skills different workers possess.
➢ Key recommendation: Tender documents for public infrastructure contracts need to clearly specify the equity and training provisions expected of contractors. Otherwise contractors will be reluctant to voluntarily spend the time and money required to train new workers.
➢ Key Recommendation: Provincially-regulated public corporations that are involved in public infrastructure projects should institute policies aimed at hiring and training more equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged workers.
Targeted Training & Hiring through Legislation
Targeted hiring has gone beyond individual CBAs to become a matter of public policy in several American cities as well as in Scotland. First source hiring policies that prioritize the hiring of city residents for city-regulated developments have been in effect in Berkeley (since 1988), Hartford (1986) and San Francisco (1998), and East Palo Alto (1996). In Hartford construction projects undertaken by the city's economic development authority must hire thirty per cent of their workforce locally.278 In East Paul Alto, development projects that receive a subsidy above $50,000 have conditions placed on both the construction jobs as well as the future companies that use the development as tenants.279 Contractors must ensure, or
278Kate Rubin and Doug Slater, Winning Construction Jobs for Local Residents A User’s Guide for Community Organizing Campaigns (New York, NY: Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, July 2005), http://brennan.3cdn.net/d513d742a203bf3820_j8m6iy4lf.pdf. 279Laura Wolf-Powers, Jeremy Reiss, and Margaret Stix, Building in Good Jobs: Linking Workforce Development with 422 demonstrate best efforts to ensure, that thirty per cent of all work-hours for each trade is performed by East Paul Alto residents. Meanwhile, corporations that permanently use the development (e.g. retailers) must comply with a first source hiring policy that gives hiring preference to city residents for a window period of six weeks. Berkeley and San Francisco also have thresholds that trigger first source hiring programs based the physical size of a development, if it is receiving public subsidies, and for public contracts over a certain dollar threshold.280 These requirements for “local” hiring at a city level are not aimed at improving access to jobs for marginalized groups and should not be confused with other geography- based hiring programs that do. However, these types of ordinances do point towards the potential of similar targeted hiring policies that could support equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups.
At a federal level in the United States, projects receiving funds from Housing and Urban Development (HUD) are required to provide employment and training opportunities to low- income residents of public housing or the surrounding area.281 However, the Housing and Urban Development Act uses weak language that only requires contractors make “best efforts” to meet the local hiring requirements. This has placed the onus on community groups to undergo difficult legal battles to enforce the law which has often left the requirement unfulfilled.
One of the most comprehensive national-level community benefits procurement policies is being developed by the Scottish government. The Scottish Parliament is currently debating the Procurement Reform Bill that will make community benefit clauses mandatory for all public projects over four million pounds ($7.4 million CAD).282 The Bill (now at stage 2 of 3) is based on a series of community benefits programs piloted at the sub-national (Council) level in Scotland since 2008, including one covering the construction of infrastructure for the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games. In the Scottish context, community benefits are
Real Estate-Led Economic Development (Pratt Centre for Community Development, December 2006), http://prattcenter.net/sites/default/files/prattcenter-building_in_good_jobs_report.pdf. 280Fresno Works for Better Health Collaborative, First Source Hiring Agreements: An Overview (Fresno, California, January 2005). 281Rubin and Slater, Winning Construction Jobs for Local Residents A User’s Guide for Community Organizing Campaigns. 282The Scottish Parliament, Procurement Reform (Scotland) Bill, 2013, http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/S4_Bills/Procurement%20Reform/b38s4-introd.pdf. 423 understood to “include not only targeted recruitment & training, but also equal opportunities, training for the existing workforce, supply-chain initiatives, community consultation, ‘considerate contractor’ schemes, contributions to education, the promotion of social enterprises, and resources for community initiatives.”283 In order to abide by European Union rules around free trade and labour mobility, the Scottish government has made the capacity to deliver community benefits part of the evaluation criteria used to assess competitive bid proposals for public contracts. In this way, a “value for money” analysis by the government is expanded to include wider environmental social value (“social value added), e.g. the public savings or economic benefit associated with training young, unemployed workers as part of an urban regeneration project.284 Once working, these youth will have a better quality of life, will no longer be dependent on social assistance, and can contribute to paying taxes and stimulating the economy through their greater purchasing power.
In 2006, the Scottish Procurement Directorate issued a Guidance Note on public procurement that enabled evaluations of “value for money” to take “social issues” into account. Social issues were broadly defined by the Directorate as:
issues which impact on society or parts of society and cover a range of issues including equalities issues (i.e. age, disability, gender, race, religion and sexual orientation), training issues, minimum labour standards and the promotion of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), including black and minority ethnic enterprises and the third sector including social enterprises.
The priority for all public procurement is to achieve the best Value for Money (VFM). VFM does not mean accepting the cheapest price. It means obtaining the best possible balance between price and quality in meeting the customer’s requirements. The requirements of the Scottish Government and other public sector bodies include the promotion of sustainable development, which includes social, economic and environmental objectives.285
In practice, the focus on community benefits clauses in Scotland have been on supporting social enterprises as well as the recruitment and training of the long-term unemployed and 283Richard MacFarlane, Mark Cook, and Anthony Collins, Community Benefits in Public Procurement (Edinburgh: The Scottish Government, 2008), p.7. 284The Scottish Government, “Social Issues in Public Procurement: A Guidance Note by The Scottish Procurement Directorate,” February 2006, http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/116601/0053331.pdf. 285Ibid., p.2. 424
“new entrants” (youth), including the creation of more apprenticeships. But there is no practical reason why these programs could not also target women, persons of colour or other marginalized groups.
The support that social enterprises have received through Scotland's social procurement policies, has helped a wider range of marginalized workers. A social enterprise is “a business operated by a charity or non-profit organization that sells goods and/or services in the market place, for the dual purpose of generating income and achieving a social, cultural and/or environmental mission.”286 The tender evaluation for the contract to build the Commonwealth Arena and Velodrome included a ten percent consideration of community benefits with the winning contractor agreeing to work with Community Enterprise in Scotland to sub-contract with social enterprises. A small social enterprise catering company won a sub-contract bid to provide catering services to the construction site. As a result, it was able to train and employ individuals who were previously unemployed or affected by disability.287
The Scottish model is important because of how comprehensively it draws together public procurement, including infrastructure projects, with broader social, economic and environmental policies. It is well developed both at a policy and legislative level and has learned operationally through pilot projects. This model fits well within the Ontario context. It is in keeping with the current Ontario and Canadian governments' preference for Alternative Financing and Procurement (AFP) in the way that it makes community benefits clauses part of the evaluation criteria of competitive bid proposals. Moreover, if the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) that was signed between Canada and the European Union is ratified, then Canada may be subject to EU trade rules—something that is already accounted for by the Scottish government in developing its community benefits legislation and programs.
286Toronto Enterprise Fund, “What Is a Social Enterprise?,” Toronto Enterprise Fund, 2014, http://www.torontoenterprisefund.ca/about-tef/what-is-a-social-enterprise. 287ReadyforBusiness, Community Benefit in Procurement Clauses: The New South Glasgow Hospitals, June 2013, http://readyforbusiness.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/cs-South_Glasgow_Hospitals_CBC.pdf; ReadyforBusiness, Community Benefits in Procurement Clauses Developing the Potential of Social Enterprises in Glasgow: Unity Enterprise, June 2013, http://readyforbusiness.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/cs-Unity_Case_Study.pdf. 425
➢ Key Recommendation: The Ontario Government should draw heavily on the Scottish model of social procurement as a way of incorporating community benefit clauses into the competitive bidding process for all public contracts over a certain dollar threshold.
➢ Key Recommendation: Value-for-money analyses used for evaluating alternative financing and procurement (AFP) infrastructure projects should incorporate a broad definition of value that includes the value-added from community benefits (“social- valued added”).
CBA Mechanism III: Pre-employment programs, training & built-in supports
Having developers and contractors agree to more equitable hiring practices or targets as part of a CBA or Project Labour Agreement is necessary, but not sufficient, for increasing access to jobs for equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups. Training also plays a key role. Training that is part of a CBA is distinguished by the fact that it is tied directly to job opportunities and is targeted at workers who are at the margins of the labour market. These workers often need to enrol in “pre-training” courses before they are ready to enter regular apprenticeship and post-secondary training programs. The CBA for construction of the Vancouver Olympic Village site had a six to twelve day pre-employment training course simply to prepare marginalized inner-city participants for re-entry into the workforce.288
Additional economic and socio-cultural supports have also proven critical for the success of targeted participants during training programs and after they are hired. Financial support is often needed by participants who may already have families to support and no savings to draw on.
288Karen Peachey, Building on Success: An Evaluation of the Community Benefits Agreement for the Vancouver Olympic Village Site (Building Opportunities with Business Inner City Society, June 22, 2009). 426
Financial & Educational Supports Common to CBAs:
▪ childcare (e.g. childcare vouchers or on-site childcare) ▪ living stipend during training or pre-training courses ▪ transit fare reimbursement (to attend pre-training and orientations) ▪ equipment grant (boots, tools, uniform, clothing appropriate for interviews) ▪ tuition & book bursaries ▪ math & science tutors
Socio-cultural Supports Common to CBAs:
▪ having equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups (e.g. women, persons of colour, Aboriginal, etc.) as instructors and featured in promotional materials ▪ communications of success stories ▪ mentorships and job coaching ▪ funding for active outreach to marginalized groups (see CBA Mechanism V below) ▪ locating employment and resource centres in targeted community Table 2: Financial and socio-cultural program supports for CBAs.
CBAs have also been responsive to the specific needs that targeted groups have in particular locations. For example, in car-dependent Los Angeles County, the Alameda Corridor CBA found it important to implement a driver's licence recovery program and implemented a driver's license recover program and a car loan program.
Pre-employment Training & Screening
Those who have been marginalized from the labour market altogether for a significant period of time may need pre-employment training programs before they can even apply to more regular training courses. Many marginalized individuals experience social isolation because of their disabilities, low self-confidence or difficulties communicating in the vernacular. Pre- employment programs can help build-up the confidence of participants while helping them to choose what training program will fit their skills and desires the best. The Vancouver Olympic Village CBA included a twelve day pre-employment program for inner-city participants which 427 hoped to prepare candidates for pre-apprenticeship training, heighten their interest in participating in more training, and nurture positive group relationships.289
A dilemma faced by almost all CBAs is what to do when training and pre-training programs as well as first source hiring programs become oversubscribed and the screening of applicants is necessary. One concern is that pre-training programs will simply screen for the best participants who would have succeeded at securing regular training and jobs even without extra supports and pre-training programs. In Vancouver, after the initial pre-training programs of the Olympic Village CBA saw high levels of attrition, a four-level screening process was implemented to exclude applicants who were not likely to succeed at all and to place other applicants into the most appropriate level of training (see figure 1).
Figure 1: Screening matrix for the Vancouver Olympic Village CBA (Source: Peachey, 2009: p.8).
Although the screening process reached its objective, “at least one referring agency reported feeling frustrated that clients they referred and recommended to BOB were not selected for
289Ibid. 428 participation in the program – saying the program had the flavor of 'American Idol.'” 290 This frustration raises the question about how well training programs connected to CBAs can support equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged individuals who are the most marginalized. To be most effective at reaching these individuals, training programs must therefore be complemented by built-in supports and outreach workers who are grounded in the communities and cultures of targeted participants. A comprehensive approach is needed that integrates all CBA mechanisms. At the end of the day, over subscription to pre- employment and pre-apprenticeship training programs may be inevitable given the relatively small number of student spaces that exist. This also presents an important opportunity for CBAs to generate interest in training programs and to raise awareness of other services that exist to help equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged individuals. This “agglomeration effect” is discussed further below.
Pre-training and training programs need to be timed so that targeted participants are qualified to work when hiring begins. A lesson from the Vancouver Island Highway project is that a well-developed training system must be put into place before any actual construction takes place, and the cost of training must be built into the budget.291 If training is not written into the contract documents then contractors will be reluctant to spend the time and money required to train new workers.
Pre-Apprenticeship programs in the Trades
In California, New York, Ontario, and British Columbia the building trades have developed well-established pre-apprenticeship programs that can be easily expanded through the resources flowing from CBAs. The basic components of pre-apprenticeship programs include:
• 10-12 weeks of hands-on and in-class work; • Study of the terminology used in the trade(s); • Exposure to the workplace culture of the trades (e.g. punctual, early morning start times);
290Ibid., p.8. 291Cohen et al., The Road to Equity. 429
• Basic health and safety training; • Construction math; • Daily physical conditioning; • Exposure to culturally appropriate role models and motivational speakers; and • Other supports (see Table 2)
Hammer Heads is a 12 to 14-week pre-apprenticeship program organized and financed by the Central Ontario Building Trades, with some support from the Ontario Government through the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities. Each year, three classes of fifteen youth (ages 18-26) are selected from priority or under-resourced neighbourhoods across the Greater Toronto Area. The program initially recruited mostly young Black men, of Caribbean descent, but has expanded to also focus on women and Aboriginal participants. Throughout the program youth are exposed to all the various building trades and are habituated into the work ethic required to succeed as an apprentice. Between 2010-2013, 107 youth participated in Hammer Heads, 98 of whom graduated and 91 of whom went on to become apprentices, with five returning to post-secondary education.292 This incredible retention rate owes its success to a number of supports given to the participants, including: frequent and ongoing mentorship of participants; financial assistance for equipment, books and tuition; math and science tutoring. Peter Reed, the Field Representative for the Hammer Heads program, explained the importance of mentoring disadvantaged youth during the pre-apprenticeship program as well as the first year of the apprenticeship:
My part of the Hammer Heads program deals a lot with following up with the youth and seeing them in the field. Something that is important to understand is that youth will stumble, and youth will have issues as they go through an apprenticeship or start into a career, as our Hammer Heads do. Employers, a lot of times, don't have time to understand that and don't care. They could accept the fact that a youth was late or had an issue one day, but the next time it happens, they just cut the youth loose and hire somebody else. They don't have time to stick around, so in our program the follow-ups that James talked about are very 292James St.John, Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities (Ottawa, 2013), http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx? DocId=5971524&Language=E&Mode=1&Parl=41&Ses=1. 430
important. It's important to go out there and see in real time what happens. If a youth is late once, I can address that with the youth, and it needs to be addressed with the youth to make sure you solve the problem and you don't let it build until the employer just eventually cuts the youth loose. The first-year mandated follow-ups and interaction with the youth are very important in keeping them on track. We can tell them and teach them to get up early and not to be late and to have a good plan, but you need to ensure that they continue that through the first year so that it becomes a real habit to them. Twelve weeks is great, but you need that year to make sure the habit is formed so that they become good workers and make it in the field.293
While Hammer Heads is clearly life-changing from the perspective of participants, it also offers significant financial savings to the government because participants are able to leave social assistance and public housing. Twenty-one of the Hammer Head graduates between 2010-2013 had previously been recipients of Ontario Works and forty-one were living in community housing. The Director of Hammer Heads, James St.John, highlighted these fiscal implications of supporting marginalized youth in getting careers:
One of the goals of Hammer Heads was to make an immediate impact. A lot of the youth that we're targeting had previously been recipients of Ontario Works. In the short duration that our program has been in existence—it's coming up to almost three years now— we've engaged 21 youth from Ontario Works and put them to work as apprentices in our field of construction, thus resulting in savings of $184,000. Again, there's no cost to the government, yet we've lightened the load of youth who were previously receiving Ontario Works and we have now created taxpaying citizens out of these youth.294
A pre-apprenticeship program similar to Hammer Heads but run by the Carpenters' Union is called CHOICE. Each year, fifteen disadvantaged youth are selected for a twelve week program. After two weeks of intensive health and safety training and basic hand-tool training, the participants divide into work crews and get practical experience in different types of carpentry. At the same time, participants receive mentoring and life skills counselling.
293Peter Reed, Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities (Ottawa, 2013), http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx? DocId=5971524&Language=E&Mode=1&Parl=41&Ses=1. 294James St.John, Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities. 431
Thanks to a wage subsidy from the YMCA, participants are paid $11/hour during the pre- apprenticeship program. The YMCA also covers the cost of a start-up toolkit and protective equipment. After the twelve-week program, participants are placed directly into an apprenticeship. CHOICE has its beginnings as a partnership with Toronto Community Housing Corporation, and participants are predominantly residents of public housing. Since 2005, 120 youth have graduated from the CHOICE program.295
Equity through College (Non-union) Apprenticeships
In cases where large infrastructure projects are carried out by non-union contractors, as is increasingly the case in Ontario even in historically unionized environments like Toronto, job opportunities exist for non-union apprentices who are trained through community colleges rather than union training centres. In these cases, colleges in Ontario could be working with contractors to support equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups in becoming apprentices on projects covered by a CBA. Colleges could attract and retain equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups by using community-based and culturally appropriate outreach strategies (see CBA Mechanism IV below), provide bursaries and tuition rebates to targeted groups, and offer other built-in supports.
➢ Key Recommendation: Training needs aimed at supporting equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged participants must be written into contracts before construction starts, otherwise contractors will be reluctant to spend the time and money required to train new workers.
➢ Key Recommendation: Pre-training and training programs need to begin well in advance and timed so as to have targeted participants qualified to work when hiring begins.
295“CHOICE Carpentry Pre-Apprenticeship Program Connects Youth with Opportunity,” Toronto Community Housing, February 14, 2014, http://www.torontohousing.ca/news/20140214/choice_carpentry_pre_apprenticeship_program_connects_youth_opportu nity. 432
➢ Key Recommendation: The Ontario government should support the significant expansion of the Hammer Heads and CHOICE programs. This expansion should include coordination between the pre-apprenticeship programs and secondary schools or adult education programs so that interested applicants can gain the necessary math, science and english prerequisites they need to be eligible for the program.
CBA Mechanism IV: Community-based, culturally appropriate outreach
Targeted training and hiring programs negotiated through community benefit agreements for infrastructure projects cannot help equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups if these groups are not made aware of these opportunities. Information should be translated into the languages spoken by targeted groups, and also circulated within ethnic media outlets. But ensuring that those who are most marginalized from the labour market can benefit from CBAs requires the active participation of grassroots community-based organizations and social agencies in the negotiation, implementation and monitoring of CBAs. This may require allocating financial resources so that volunteers from affected communities can participate at planning meetings alongside paid staff from agencies, government and business. Organizational and outreach meetings should also be held at times when community leaders are available (e.g. evenings and weekends).
Often, community-based organizations are involved in the initial political campaign that gives rise to a CBA. Through mobilizing their communities to generate the political pressure required to force developers and government to sign a CBA, community-based organizations generate awareness and interest amongst marginalized groups regarding possible training and job opportunities. Community-based organizations also gain the trust and speak the languages of marginalized groups and so are best positioned to deliver information about training and job opportunities through flyers and word of mouth. They can best deliver the often critical social encouragement and financial supports (e.g. transit fare or day care) needed by marginalized individuals to apply and succeed at pre-training and training opportunities.
Pre-employment programs find it effective to use role models who identify with the targeted 433 groups in order to promote the programs. Those involved with the Alameda Corridor CBA stressed the importance of creating a welcoming and inclusive environment for women interested in the trades by having tradeswomen involved in the outreach, at the orientations and represented along men in communications materials.296 Similarly, the Vancouver Island Highway Project did not initially get many applications from the targeted equity groups. But applications from these groups did increase after the government actively tried to recruit directly on First Nations reserves and in women centres in addition to seeking help from organizations more connected to the targeted groups.297 Pre-apprenticeship programs like Hammer Heads and CHOICE have found that participants who have gone through the program can effectively become role models and promoters of the trades within their communities. This is especially important in communities where the trades are either stigmatized or not well known for being secure and well-paying careers.
A major challenge faced by CHOICE and Hammer Heads is that many disadvantaged youth do not qualify to participate because they have not completed the minimum grade 10 english, math and science. This points to the need for secondary schools to coordinate with pre- apprenticeship programs better so that students who could potentially become pre- apprenticeships participants are identified within high schools and educational supports are provided by the school board to these students so they can upgrade their high school credits.
CBA Mechanism V: Women- and Minority-owned Businesses
Women- and minority-owned businesses have been shown to hire more workers from equity- seeking groups.298 While minority entrepreneurs are more likely to engage in start-up businesses, they also face more barriers in getting these businesses off the ground and
296Ranghelli, “Replicating Success--The Alameda Corridor Job Training & Employment Program: A Replication Manual for Winning and Implementing Community-Based Jobs Programs on Public Construction Projects.” 297Cohen et al., The Road to Equity. 298Timothy Bates, “Utilizing Affirmative Action in Public Sector Procurement as a Local Economic Development Strategy,” Economic Development Quarterly 23, no. 3 (2009): 180–92, doi:10.1177/0891242409333549; Timothy Bates, “The Urban Development Potential of Black-Owned Businesses,” American Planning Association. Journal of the American Planning Association 72, no. 2 (2006): 227–37; Andrea E Smith-Hunter and Robert L Boyd, “Creating Jobs? Employment in Women-Owned Minority Business,” Journal of Business and Entrepreneurship 16, no. 2 (2004): 55. 434 experience lower sales, profits rates and employment.299 Community benefits agreements have tried to address some of the barriers facing women- and minority-owned businesses by creating preferences or sales targets to these businesses as part of public procurement and development projects. In the United States, this follows legislation at federal and municipal levels that have mandated affirmative action for women- and minority-owned businesses.300 Although there is not legislation in Canada that requires preference for women- and minority- owned business, the Federal government has implemented employment equity programs that cover federal procurement (discussed below).
CBAs for the One Hill (Pittsburg) arena redevelopment, the Gateway Center (New York), the Alameda Corridor (Los Angeles) and LAX Airport (Los Angeles) all included programs for supporting minority-owned businesses such as targeted outreach, pre-bid meetings and free seminars. For other CBAs, specific targets were set for the percentage of procurement sales that should be going to women- or minority-owned businesses: 50% for Yankee Stadium (New York); 35% for the Columbia University Expansion (New York); 20% for the Wilmington Peninsula Compost project (Delaware); and a 20% minority, 10% women target for the Atlantic Yards arena and redevelopment (New York).301 Although not due to any CBA or legislation, for the 2015 Pan Am Games, the Ontario Government has developed a procurement process that gives preference to women- and minority-owned businesses. While all these efforts bode well for increasing labour market access for equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups, more empirical research is needed to confirm the extent to 299Timothy Bates, William Jackson, and James Johnson, “Advancing Research on Minority Entrepreneurship,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 613, no. 1 (2007): 10–17, doi:10.1177/0002716207303405. 300City of Chicago, “Businesses and Professionals MBE/WBE/DBE,” 2014, http://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/ofinterest/bus/mwdbe.html; City of Baltimore, A New Day A Better Way: Rebuilding a Stronger Baltimore through Economic Inclusion (Baltimore, April 24, 2013), http://www.baltimorecity.gov/files/Advisory%20Council%20Report%20-%20A%20New%20Day%20A%20Better %20Way.pdf; Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Report to the Congress on the Office of Minority and Women Inclusion (Washington, D.C.: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, March 2012), http://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/minority-women-inclusion/files/omwi-report-20120402.pdf; U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, “Equal Employment Opportunity - Minority-Owned Businesses,” U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2014, http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD? src=/program_offices/comm_planning/affordablehousing/training/web/crosscutting/employment/eeominority. 301Been et al., “The Role of Community Benefit Agreements in New York City’s Land Use Process. New York: New York City Bar.”; The Public Law Centre, Summary and Index of Community Benefit Agreements (New Orleans, LA, 2011), http://www.law.tulane.edu/uploadedFiles/Institutes_and_Centers/Public_Law_Center/Summary%20and%20Index %20of%20%20Community%20Benefit%20Agreements.pdf; Mary Alice Miller, “Gateway Center Ll Community Benefits Agreement: A Plan to Enhance Residents and Community,” July 21, 2011, http://ourtimepress.com/?p=6469; Ranghelli, “Replicating Success--The Alameda Corridor Job Training & Employment Program: A Replication Manual for Winning and Implementing Community-Based Jobs Programs on Public Construction Projects.” 435 which women- and minority-owned businesses increased this access and for which targeted groups in particular.
➢ Key Recommendation: Further research is needed on the extent to which women- and minority-owned businesses, engaged through CBAs, increased training and secure employment for equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups, and how experiences varied across these different groups.
CBA Mechanism VI: Monitoring and enforcing equity
Equity will not be realized without conscious interventions through law. As Judge Rosalie Silberman Abella famously concluded in her 1984 Royal Commission on Equality:
To ensure freedom from discrimination requires government intervention through law. It is not a question of whether we need regulation in this area, but of where and how to apply it.
We need equal opportunity to achieve fairness in the process, and we need employment equity to achieve justice in the outcome. ... What is needed to achieve equality in employment is a massive policy response to systemic discrimination. This requires taking steps to bring each group to a point of fair competition. It means making the workplace respond by eliminating barriers that interfere unreasonably with employment options.
It is not that individuals in the designated groups are inherently unable to achieve equality on their own, it is that the obstacles in their way are so formidable and self-perpetuating that they cannot be overcome without intervention. It is both intolerable and insensitive if we simply wait and hope that the barriers will disappear with time. Equality in employment will not happen unless we make it happen.302
This Royal Commission led to the Government of Canada's Employment Equity Act which requires federally regulated employers and the federal government itself to engage in proactive measures to improve employment opportunities for women, people with disabilities,
302Rosalie Siberman Abella, Commission on Equality in Employment, Royal Commission (Ottawa, 1984), http://epe.lac- bac.gc.ca/100/200/301/pco-bcp/commissions-ef/abella1984-eng/abella1984-eng.htm, p.254. 436
Aboriginal peoples and visible minorities. Similarly, the Federal Contractors Program requires provincially-regulated companies having 100 or more employees that bid on federal contracts to implement employment equity. The history of employment equity at a federal level supports the frequently-emphasized insight within the CBA literature that community benefits agreements should have legal enforceability.303 Although some legal issues surrounding CBAs remain, well-defined legal agreements and penalties can help motivate parties to take their responsibilities seriously.304 Monitoring is critical to upholding the legal commitments of community benefit agreements since evidence regarding program implementation needs to be presented in court if disagreements cannot otherwise be resolved.
At the same time, strong enforcement language, penalties and court action cannot by themselves ensure that desired outcomes are successfully realized. Ultimately, a working relationship must be developed between all the CBA partners. Monitoring programs can provide frequent (e.g. quarterly) data on the number of targeted workers being trained and hired. Ideally, implementation committees comprised of all the parties to the CBA (e.g. community groups, contractors and government officials) can then review this data and use it to help guide ongoing adjustments to outreach, training programs and hiring practices.
The lack of monitoring and the weak language of the CBA, which only required “best efforts” on the part of the developer, are two reasons that are frequently cited for the failure of the Atlantic Yards CBA to deliver on jobs, training and affordable housing. When it was signed in 2005, the CBA stated that an Independent Compliance Monitor would be established immediately. But six years later, the Monitor had not been selected and job training programs had just gotten underway.305
Monitoring is also necessary for communicating the results of CBAs to the public. This is important for demonstrating the way in which the project is achieving other social policy objectives like equity and poverty alleviation, and to give good cause to the disruptions caused
303Gross, “Community Benefits Agreements.” 304The LAX Airport CBA , for example, sets out penalties of up to $1000 for contractors who fail to hire through the First Source Hiring Program. 305“About BrooklynSpeaks,” Brooklyn Speaks: Atlantic Yards Must Work for Brooklyn, accessed March 17, 2014, http://www.brooklynspeaks.net/about; Lavine and Oder, “Urban Redevelopment Policy, Judicial Deference to Unaccountable Agencies, and Reality in Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards Project.” 437 by the construction project. Practitioners in other jurisdictions also benefit from quantitative and qualitative assessments of other CBAs. A number of reports have collected together and reviewed the stated goals of CBAs across the United States.306 But there is surprisingly little publicly available, quantitative data of how well CBAs are actually reaching their stated goals in terms of training and job placement outcomes, especially for equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups. Other scholars reviewing first source hiring policies of CBAs have similarly lamented that:
While there is evidence from these cases that a thoughtfully implemented first-source hiring policy – particularly in combination with a living wage policy – can have a meaningful impact on employment opportunities and earning power for people living near a development site, we were able to find no rigorous research that documented this in a systematic way, and little information with which to test hypotheses about what goes into a successful first-source hiring effort 307
Two CBAs that have provided detailed monitoring data regarding outreach, training and job placement programs are the Alameda Corridor CBA and the Vancouver Olympic Village CBA (see Table 3). These cases try to disaggregate data according to gender, ethno-racial categories, citizenship status, income status and distance of residence from the worksite. In addition, the Olympic Village project is a rare case where job retention rates of participants was also documented. Without proper monitoring of retention rates it is not possible to know whether targeted groups are simply being hired in compliance with a CBA but then laid off after only a few weeks on the job.
306Julian Gross, Community Benefits Agreements Making Development Projects Accountable (Good Jobs First and the California Partnership for Working Families, 2005), http://www.goodjobsfirst.org/sites/default/files/docs/pdf/cba2005final.pdf; Fresno Works for Better Health Collaborative, First Source Hiring Agreements: An Overview; The Public Law Centre, Summary and Index of Community Benefit Agreements; Rubin and Slater, Winning Construction Jobs for Local Residents A User’s Guide for Community Organizing Campaigns; Salkin and Lavine, “Negotiating for Social Justice and the Promise of Community Benefits Agreements.” 307Wolf-Powers, Reiss, and Stix, Building in Good Jobs: Linking Workforce Development with Real Estate-Led Economic Development, p.20. 438
Size of Major Outcomes for Targeted Groups Training Project Costs 439
Alameda Pre-apprenticeship Program: Corridor $750 $7.5 million Freight Rail million • 880 Corridor residents graduated (135% of over three Expressway 650 goal) years (CBA only • 16 percent female graduates Los Angeles applied to • 190 graduates (102 female graduates) former County, mid- welfare recipients ($7,500 per USA corridor • 373 graduates ex-offenders (including 298 placement) section of a repeat offenders) larger $2.4 • 72% of graduates placed in union billion apprenticeship programs project) Non-trades training program:
• 401 Corridor residents graduated (115% of 350 goal)
Local hiring:
• 31 percent of all work hours (103% of 30 percent goal) performed on the project were performed by local workers (14% by graduates of the Alameda Corridor programs)
75 percent of the Mid-Corridor workforce were visible minorities
710 program graduates (689 trades and 21 non- trades) placed in construction industry jobs, 188 on the Corridor project
Vancouver 120 Participants (of 300 interviewed) Olympic $1 billion succeeded in securing a construction job: $750,000 False Creek • 57 already qualified for construction job Village Site (originally placements due to previous work experience ($6,250 per budgeted or completion of other pre-apprenticeship placement) for $750 programs million) • 63 (out of 79) graduated from pre-pre- employment training and pre-employment Construction Orientation to Retain Employment (CORE) (safety certifications)
Ethnicity & Citizenship Status: • 5% - Refugee 440
• 19% - Landed Immigrant • 22% - Aboriginal • 54% - Canadian Gender: • 10% Women, 90% Men Economic Status: • 58% - Income Assistance • 13% - No income • 7% - Income assistance and work Geography of Residency • 70% inner city resident • 30% inner-city connected
91 Participants worked past the 12-week threshold Table 3: Monitoring Data of the Alameda Corridor CBA and Vancouver Olympic Village CBA.308
Notably, job training goals were written into the Alameda Corridor CBA and the number of participants that contractors were expected to hire was likewise written into the Vancouver Olympic Village CBA. This suggests that the writing of clear job or training targets into CBAs may act as an added incentive for partners to more carefully track participation data since they want to know how far they are from reaching the goals to which they legally agreed. The LAX Airport CBA is one case of a first source referral system for which program participation data is published.309 Table 4 compiles data taken from annual reports published by the Los Angeles World Airports (although initiated in 2005, the first source hiring program did not get underway until 2009).
Referrals Hires 2012 9,037 996 2011 6,141 803 2011 3,360 679 2009 2,717 603 Table 4: First Source Hiring Program, LAX
308Ranghelli, “Replicating Success--The Alameda Corridor Job Training & Employment Program: A Replication Manual for Winning and Implementing Community-Based Jobs Programs on Public Construction Projects”; Karen Peachey, Building on Success: An Evaluation of the Community Benefits Agreement for the Vancouver Olympic Village Site. 309Annual reports between 2005-2012 are posted on-line. Los Angeles World Airports, 2014, “Community Benefits Agreement (CBA),” http://www.lawa.org/ourLAX/AnnualReports.aspx?id=8034, accessed March 17, 2014. 441
Airport CBA
The LAX Airport First Source Hiring Program is supposed to give first priority to low-income individuals living in the communities immediately surrounding the airport and special needs individuals. However, the data provided in the annual reports is not desegregated by targeted group. This makes it hard to determine the extent to which the CBA increased access to employment and training for equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups.
The examples of CBAs presented above demonstrate how they can leverage infrastructure investments to increase training and labour market access for equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups. But better monitoring and public reporting of participation data, disaggregated according to the groups targeted by a CBA, is needed to evaluate the efficacy of different mechanisms.
➢ Key Recommendation: The Ontario Government should hold contractors of public infrastructure projects accountable to employment equity legislation or programs similar to the federal Employment Equity Act and the Federal Contractors Program.
➢ Key Recommendation: Participant data of training and job placements associated with a CBA should be closely monitored, disaggregated according to the groups targeted by the CBA, and publicly reported.
5. Impact Benefit Agreements
In Northern Aboriginal communities, impact benefit agreements (IBAs) have now become a routine process for ensuring that Aboriginal communities can take advantage of training, jobs, business development and revenue arising from mining operations on their land. IBAs are negotiated between a company, the provincial or territorial government and the affected Aboriginal communities. In both the case of impact benefit agreements and community benefit agreements marginalized communities are faced with developments that could negatively affect them (e.g. through displacement and environmental degradation). A major difference with IBAs, however, is that they are premised on the constitutionally-protected 442 treaty rights of Aboriginal peoples to be properly consulted and compensated from developments on their lands. The legal basis for IBAs are therefore much stronger. This allows Aboriginal groups to negotiate job training and hiring targets rather than simply first source hiring policies. Still both CBAs and IBAs share some similar challenges in trying to leverage development projects to increase labour market access for marginalized populations in the city and remote northern regions, respectively. The challenges include the recruitment, retention and advancement of Aboriginal employees. The barriers blocking greater participation of Aboriginal workers on mining projects has been well-documented and include: lack of the skills to qualify for jobs; tendency for contractors to hire outsiders and people of similar ethno-racial backgrounds; lack of awareness of opportunities; the strangeness of the remote work site environment and work schedule (e.g. two weeks in the mine, two weeks off, 12 hour shifts); the failure to accommodate the needs of Aboriginal workers; and discrimination on the worksite.310 Some of the strategies that IBAs have used to address these barriers share similarities with CBAs, including:
• a community employment liaison; • targeted outreach and recruitment strategies; • advanced notice of job postings and application dates for Aboriginal; • internships to gain work experience; • mentorship programs; • support securing driver licences or other direct transportation between the Reserve and the mine; • anti-racism and anti-harassment training for non-Aboriginal managers and employees; and • various employee support programs (e.g. special leaves for family or community crises).
310Virginia Valerie Gibson, “Negotiated Spaces : Work, Home and Relationships in the Dene Diamond Economy,” 2008, http://circle.ubc.ca/handle/2429/800; Ciaran O’Faircheallaigh, “Aboriginal-Mining Company Contractual Agreements in Australia and Canada: Implications for Political Autonomy and Community Development” 30, no. 1–2 (January 1, 2010): 69–86; Doris Dreyer, “Impact and Benefits Agreements: Do the Ross River Dena Benefit from Mineral Projects?” (ProQuest, UMI Dissertations Publishing, 2005). 443
Other mechanisms used to encourage Aboriginal participation in the workforce that are not common to CBAs include:
• agreements by companies to employ individuals upon successful completion of a training program; • flexible hiring criteria that recognizes equivalent experience in lie of education; • flexibility to allow for the continuation of seasonal economic and cultural activities (e.g. hunting and fishing); • funding of a labour force development plan.311
A labour force development plan is developed well in advance of the start of construction to identify projected job opportunities at the project. A survey of nearby Aboriginal communities is done to determine the pool of potential Aboriginal workers, their existing skills, and what barriers must be removed to increase their participation. A costing of necessary training and apprenticeship programs is conducted and a plan for funding and implementation is developed. With some modifications, these additional mechanism could also be adopted into CBAs to help equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged communities in urban settings. Already practitioners of CBAs are calling for the use of “community impact reports” which are similar to labour force development plans. Community impact reports would require that developers make public vital information about a proposed project and creates a formal process for weighing the costs and benefits of a project in terms of jobs, traffic, quality of life, and so forth.312 Two decades of negotiating impact benefit agreements can offer considerable insights into the types of proactive measures that can be taken by developers and the government to increase access to the labour market for marginalized communities. There is now a large body of academic and governmental literature on IBAs.313 Unfortunately, the expertise on IBAs 311Murray Browne and Krista Robertson, Benefit Sharing Agreements in British Columbia: A Guide for First Nations, Businesses and Governments (Victoria, BC: Woodward & Company, c 2011), http://www.woodwardandcompany.com/media/pdfs/4487_benefit_sharing_final_report_-_updated.pdf; Ginger Gibson and Ciaran O’Faircheallaigh, IBA CommunIty ToolkIt: Negotiation and Implementation of Impact and Benefit Agreements (Walter & Duncan Gordon Foundation, June 2011), www.ibacommunitytoolkit.ca. 312Partnership for Working Families, “Policy & Tools: Community Impact Reports,” Resources, 2012, http://www.forworkingfamilies.org/resources/policy-tools-community-impact-reports#effect. 313The IBA Research Network has compiled a detailed bibliography, “Existing Research”, 444 within the Ontario government is often in different ministries and departments than those that would be involved in developing CBAs. Whereas overseeing IBAs may be the purview of the Ontario Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs and the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines, infrastructure-related CBAs would fall under a number of other ministries such as the Ministry of Infrastructure; the Ministry of Transportation; the Ministry of Economic Development, Trade & Employment; or the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities, just to name a few. This speaks to the main differences between IBAs and CBAs: whereas IBAs are carried out for mining projects in northern, rural, Aboriginal communities, CBAs in contrast are usually infrastructure-related projects in urban settings. Meetings between these ministries could help share the lessons learned from implementing IBAs and to better coordinate the implementation of infrastructure-related CBAs.
➢ Key Recommendation: Community impact reports should be conducted in the early stages of an infrastructure project to provide detailed projections of potential job opportunities and to identify existing skills and training gaps for equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups.
➢ Key Recommendation: Ontario Ministries that have overseen impact benefit agreements (e.g. Ontario Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs and the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines) should meet with ministries that are implementing community benefits agreements.
6. Case Study: Negotiating a CBA for the Crosstown Light Rail Transit Project
Background: The Big Move; Transit investment; Crosstown
The Ontario Government's $50 billion “Big Move” regional transit infrastructure plan for the
http://www.impactandbenefit.com/cms/One.aspx?portalId=625751&pageId=10229806, accessed March 17, 2014. 445
Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area will see approximately two billion dollars spent in transit infrastructure over the next twenty-five years. About eight billion dollars will be spent building three light rail transit (LRT) projects through the poorest neighbourhoods in the City of Toronto. The first LRT to be built is the 19-kilometre Eglinton Crosstown worth $5.3 billion dollars and scheduled to be operational by 2020. As part of the project, a fifty-two acre brownfield site in Mount Dennis (a community in northwest Toronto) will become the maintenance and storage facility for the LRT trains. Mount Dennis was once a thriving industrial suburb but after decades of deindustrialization was named one of Toronto's thirteen “priority neighbourhoods” in 2005. Like many of Toronto's priority neighbourhoods, Mount Dennis is an immigration settlement hub, home to many living in community housing, has high levels of racialized poverty as well as single parents. Gun violence in Mount Dennis an other low-income neighbourhoods has also demanded a response from politicians.
In 2009, a labour-community coalition in Mount Dennis began working with the Toronto Transit Commission, which at the time was in charge of building the LRT, to find ways to create local employment through the construction and operation of the maintenance and storage facility. The coalition was inspired by efforts of a labour-community coalition in Etobicoke to win a community benefits agreement as part of the Woodbine Live! entertainment development (investors for this project ultimately pulled out for unrelated reasons)314. In 2012, Metrolinx purchased the maintenance and storage site in Mount Dennis and took over ownership of the Crosstown project from the TTC. Meanwhile, the labour- community coalition based in Mount Dennis grew into a city-wide coalition called the Toronto Community Benefits Network. Comprised of community groups, social agencies, training institutions and organized labour, the Network's vision is for “all Torontonians [to] have access to economic opportunities stemming from infrastructure investments” and that “the diversity of the workers on the LRT construction should reflect the diversity of residents of Toronto” (see Appendix A).315 The Network's goal is to negotiate a community benefits agreement with Metrolinx that focuses on creating training and job opportunities for equity- seeking and historically disadvantaged groups, including: residents in low income
314Steven Tufts, “Labour and (Post)Industrial Policy in Toronto,” Relay: A Socialist Project Review, September 2008, http://www.socialistproject.ca/relay/relay23_tufts.pdf. 315Toronto Community Benefits Network, “On Track to Opportunities: Foundation for a Toronto Community Benefits Network,” May 14, 2013. 446 neighbourhoods, including Priority Neighbourhoods; among urban Aboriginal populations; within racialized and newcomer communities; and among people with disabilities as well as youth and women who are disadvantaged.
Through a series of meetings and workshops, the Network identified three job and training “pipelines” for the Eglinton Crosstown project that could be supported through a CBA: the construction jobs (focusing on apprenticeships) pipeline; finance, administration, design and engineering (FADE) jobs pipeline; and social enterprise pipeline. In developing these three pipelines, a big part of the work being done by the Network is to bring together and coordinate existing efforts by employment training agencies, social agencies, charitable foundations, colleges, trade unions and grassroots community groups based in poor and often racialized neighbourhoods. Too often, these partners work in isolation. The relatively longer time- frame and scale of opportunity associated with infrastructure projects provides the needed time and space for building up these inter-organizational relationships. Given their sometimes radically different organizational cultures, traditions and mandates, this type of coordination is a significant undertaking. The benefits of which will go beyond the Crosstown project (see Section 7, “Economies of Agglomeration”).
Three Job Pipelines for the Eglinton Crosstown
Pipeline #1: Construction Jobs (Apprenticeships)
The first objective of the Network's proposed CBA is to have 100% of all new apprentices working on the Crosstown hired through Hammer Heads and CHOICE, which are existing pre-apprenticeship programs geared at supporting marginalized youth in low-income and under-resourced communities (See “CBA Mechanism III”). The Network has confirmed with these programs that they would have the capacity to increase their intakes of participants to meet the demands of the Crosstown project, if resources were available. Some pre- apprenticeship participants receive supports from Ontario Works (e.g. for buying boots) while in other cases social agencies help to offset the costs of books and fees or to subsidize wages of trainees. Given the significant public savings when poor and at-risk youth secure employment (i.e. due to forgone public costs associated with income assistance or costs from youth being 447 in the criminal justice system). But capturing these public savings requires that outreach and screening be done to ensure that those being selected for pre-apprenticeship programs are in fact amongst the most marginalized who would not otherwise be able to secure stable employment.
One challenge identified with trying to get marginalized youth into pre-apprenticeship programs is that a minimum grade ten (or higher) is needed to later be accepted into the union as a regular apprentice. One union representative involved with pre-apprenticeship training in Ontario suggested that part of the problem is a lack of understanding and stigma associated with the trades within secondary schools:
I think it also comes down to those minimums being known to say secondary school teachers, counsellors, all that type of stuff, because it definitely is seen I think, the trades, like it has that stereotype. If you are not going to go to college or university, do a trade. But with some of the trades....require licenses – that need people to have their high school diploma.316
This suggests the need for greater coordination between union apprenticeship trainers and secondary schools. Speaking specifically about the challenges facing immigrant youth in considering apprenticeships in Quebec, Lambert Opula (Development Officer, Comité d'adaptation de la main-d'oeuvre pour personnes immigrantes) emphasized the cultural differences that might exist and the need for targeted outreach into marginalized communities:
Young immigrants, who arrive at the end of a long, traumatic process, often face poverty and academic retardation. The impact of this is that they are not always in the kind of living situation where information promoting apprenticeship programs is made available. It is not always easy for these young people to know what is really going on when a training opportunity arises. They also live with families that have different traditions than what we know and do in Canada. In the countries they are from, their traditions place a lot of value in long-term studies, considered the only model for social success. But any opportunity for a young person to move towards a short training program is seen by the parents, who
316Personal interview, March 13, 2014. 448
often dictate the what their children will do, as going against their values. This often disorients young immigrants when there is an apprenticeships opportunity. That's why, when it comes to information chains, promoting programs and apprenticeship opportunities, CAMO-PI is recommending ... communication strategies that target the environments that immigrants live in. In other words, the funding programs and apprenticeship actions should include a component for reaching out to young people in marginalized areas. In addition to information in disadvantaged areas, we also recommend that funding for the various programs be planned to ensure that proactive activities can be organized so that stakeholders could meet these young people where they live and direct them toward training opportunities.317
Special resources should therefore be devoted to conducting outreach within immigrant communities. It is not enough to put information about apprenticeship programs on a website. As Mr. Opula points out:
The information that we circulate on websites or through organizations such as ACCESS in Quebec, can only be seen by young people who have had a normal progression. When we talk about young people who have problems or who live in marginalized communities, having access to a computer is a privilege. They need guidance to know that they must consult this or that website to get the right information. That does not come easily to them.318
Mr. Opula also recommends finding existing tradespersons who share the same ethno-racial background as young immigrants who can better act as role models and instructors. These considerations around appropriate outreach and program supports are applicable for engaging participants in Ontario's urban centres where there are high rates of immigration.
➢ Key Recommendation: Provide resources to grassroots community-based organizations so they can promote training and pre-employment programs through culturally appropriate outreach and mentorship.
317Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities (Ottawa, 2013), http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx? DocId=5971524&Language=E&Mode=1&Parl=41&Ses=1. 318Ibid. 449
Pipeline #2: Finance, Administration, Design and Engineering (FADE) Jobs
Most CBAs focus on creating apprenticeship opportunities, non-trade construction jobs or lower-skilled service-sector jobs. One unique aspect of the CBA being proposed by the Toronto Community Benefits Network is an emphasis on providing job and training opportunities for immigrants who already have international professional qualifications or post-secondary degrees in fields relevant to infrastructure projects such as finance, administration, design and engineering (or “FADE”). Many immigrants come to Ontario with tremendous work experience directly relevant to infrastructure projects but find it difficult to secure employment in their field once they arrive in Ontario. Five main challenges were highlighted by interview participants:
1. Canadian Work Experience: Employers demand that applicants have Canadian work experience. Immigrants often have significant experience in other countries, but no Canadian work experience, so do not get hired. 2. Certification: Many professions such as accounting and engineering do not automatically recognize foreign credentials. Gaining Ontario credentials may require a difficult negotiation through the rules of a particular professional society or returning to school. Returning to school can be expensive for new immigrants, especially since most have families to care for. 3. Information: Immigrants who have just arrived into Ontario find it extremely difficult to navigate information about the labour market. Opportunities that may arise may not reach recent immigrants either because they do not know where to look or because this information is not readily available in locations and languages that are easier for recent immigrants to access. This is especially a problem for those who are part of a 'first wave' of immigration from a particular country and for whom there are not already other extended family members living in Ontario or well-established diaspora community centres to draw on for support. 4. Cultural Expectations: Immigrants may find it difficult to navigate new workplace cultures (e.g. office and meeting etiquette or how to relate to the boss). Language can also pose a significant barrier for getting hired. 450
5. Need for Supports: As with pre-apprenticeship programs, recent immigrants who are living in poverty may requires financial supports in order to participate in career fairs, interviews, training and job placements. The high cost of childcare is a significant financial barrier preventing many poor women from being able to enter the workforce. Access to a vehicle is another problem for jobs that require being on the job site outside the operating hours of public transit.
Although negotiations between the Network and Metrolinx are still underway, some suggestions have already been made about how to help address these challenges through the proposed Crosstown CBA. One idea is for Metrolinx and its contractors to provide a certain number of job opportunities to internationally-trained professionals that are relevant to their professional fields. For example, an internationally-trained engineer could secure an entry- level job as a draftsperson or technician. This might help them gain the Canadian work experience and/or income stability they need to secure professional credentials or job offers that are more in-line with their qualifications. Metrolinx has already begun passing along job postings for FADE jobs within Metrolinx itself to the Network so they can be circulated amongst its community partners. Paid internships may be another possibility. Existing organizations in Toronto such as CASIP (Consortium of Agencies Serving Internationally- trained Persons) that support skilled immigrants to find employment are one of several partners helping to make this pipeline a reality.
The Network's proposed Crosstown CBA also recognizes that some of the most marginalized groups of immigrants may require targeted community outreach and additional supports just to be able to take advantage of the network of training and job readiness programs that exist for recent immigrants. Grassroots community-based organizations that are physically, socially and culturally situated in marginalized immigrant communities are best positioned to deliver this type of “first contact” and door-to-door type of outreach. Several social agencies and community organizations warned that without resources for this type of targeted outreach, the CBA would be “picking the low-hanging fruit” or “creaming” skilled immigrants who would have already succeed in finding employment without a CBA (thanks to their more established networks, existing Canadian work experience, self-confidence, etc.). The CBA should therefore develop clear criteria for which profile of immigrants it is trying to support 451 through the FADE program (e.g. recent immigrant with little or no Canadian work experience).
Pipeline #3: Social Enterprise
The third jobs pipeline that the Network is proposing for a Crosstown CBA focuses on social enterprises. Other CBAs often include provisions for small-businesses, particularly those owned by visible minorities and women. But very few CBAs have specifically focused on social enterprises. The Network is proposing that a certain dollar amount or percentage of procurement for the Crosstown LRT project be sourced through social enterprises. Social enterprises train and hire local residents who have been marginalized from the labour market due to poverty including homelessness, abuse, addictions, disabilities including mental illness, or because of their position as a single-parent, newcomer or ex-offender. Social enterprises could be contracted to provide a range of goods and services to the Crosstown project including: catering; marketing and event production; printing; interpretation services; horticultural maintenance; painting and cleaning services. A key challenge confronted by social enterprises, as with many small businesses, is winning contracts on large projects. Often infrastructure projects favour large contracts that can only be fulfilled by medium or large companies. The Network is proposing that Metrolinx facilitates a bidding system and criteria that will support social enterprises competing for business.
➢ Key Recommendation: Infrastructure Ontario should facilitate a bidding system and criteria that supports the expansion of social enterprises through public infrastructure procurement.
Key Challenges in Negotiations so far
After several meetings with the Network, Metrolinx agreed to add clauses to its RFP for the Crosstown, issued on December 20, 2013, that included a requirement for community benefits. Metrolinx and the Network are also close to agreeing to a “Community Benefits Framework” that lays out the key principles for a community benefits program and clarifies 452 the roles and responsibilities of all the key partners involved. This progress is remarkable given that it is the first time to be developing a CBA for an infrastructure project. Still, some challenges remain.
Lack of Job Data An early request of the Network was for Metrolinx to provide a projection of the number and types of jobs that would be required for the Crosstown project. This information is necessary for workforce planning that has equity as its goal. Community groups and training organizations that are part of the Network want to ensure that equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups are made aware of potential job opportunities on the horizon so that they can start upgrading their skills so they are ready once employment and pre-employment opportunities arise. Meanwhile, training organizations need to do their own preparation to ensure that their organizations are ready to scale-up the training needs of equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups as demand picks up.
Agreement or Framework? A major sticking point since the beginning of negotiations between Metrolinx and the Network has been on whether the voluntary “framework” is sufficient or if a signed, legally enforceable agreement is necessary. Based on the consensus of CBA practitioners, who see legally-binding agreements as fundamental to successfully reaching the stated goals of a CBA, the Network has been pushing for a legally-binding agreement. In contrast, Metrolinx has voiced its concern regarding the litigation risk it would assume by signing a legally-binding agreement. Moreover, Metrolinx is concerned that community groups in Toronto who are currently not part of the Network might later feel excluded by an exclusive agreement between Metrolinx and the Network. One way that the Network has tried to reduce this concern is by engaging community groups all along the proposed route of the Eglinton Crosstown line with hopes to expand its outreach across the entire city as resources become available to do so. The Network also maintains an open, democratic structure that invites the participation of new organizations.
Request for Proposal The Crosstown is being managed through an AFP (alternative financing and procurement) 453 model. This has raised the question of who the proposed CBA should be between (i.e., between Metrolinx and the Network; between Metrolinx and the consortium that wins the procurement bid; between the Network and consortium; or between all three). Another question is how prescriptive Metrolinx should be in detailing community benefits clauses within the request for proposals (RFP). A more general description gives bidding consortia more flexibility, but in the absence of a signed CBA with Metrolinx, the Network worries that this flexibility could allow a tender to be selected that is missing key aspects of the three job pipelines discussed above. Another debate is around how “community benefits” should be weighted by Metrolinx and Infrastructure Ontario in their evaluation criteria for choosing the winning bid. The Network would prefer to have its training and job access objectives not weighted at all, but rather a necessary component of the bid. While Metrolinx has not yet said how exactly community benefits will be incorporated into the final evaluation of bids.
Monitoring & Enforcement The Network believes that community should be a partner in all phases of any CBA that is negotiated, including its design, implementation, monitoring, enforcement and evaluation. Properly monitoring any CBA is a challenge because it requires the frequent and on-going coordination of many different organizations and at all levels of their operations. For example, frontline dispatchers at union hiring halls would have to become actively involved in tracking the person-hours that apprentices from targeted groups are working on the project. Joint CBA implementation committees need to receive and review data from the worksite including, workplace cultural problems facing targeted groups such as discrimination, so that any systemic problems can be addressed early in the process. Specific resources must therefore be devoted to instituting a monitoring program.
7. Economies of Agglomeration and Network Effects
Community benefits agreements bring extra “social value added” to infrastructure investments by using them to also bring about poverty alleviation and employment equity. CBAs help to better coordinate training and employment centres with social agencies and community-based groups, not only for specific infrastructure projects, but in terms of 454 improving coordination in general. One community-based funder expressed the hope of CBAs to foster more deliberate, workforce planning aimed at supporting equity seeking and historically disadvantaged groups: we have a structural problem with the labour market. And we have an increased stratification of jobs...based on who you are, really. And I think that we have an opportunity here to actually introduce some fairness in the allocation of good jobs in the labour market.
I also think that in the context of the big picture around labour, what’s happening with the labour force and the fact that the labour force is aging, the demographics are moving in a certain direction. We know that immigration is going to be able to fill some of those gaps but probably not all of them. And at the same time we continue to have a lot of just under-utilized potential in a lot of communities. And this [CBA] is one way in which we can be, I think, really deliberate about maximizing the potential of everyone in our economy.
the vehicles that we have had to be able to maximize everybody’s potential have not really gelled. And so we have a workforce development system in which we invest a whole lot of money but which somehow is it’s not optimized. It’s not optimized to reach out to people who need jobs and it’s not optimized to reach the employers who need workers. And we have an opportunity here to model a new way of approaching that and investing those dollars and engaging community and employers in a new way which is very exciting and can be scaled up.319
In urban economics, the term “economies of agglomeration” refers to the benefits realized by firms by locating near one another. This reduces transaction costs between firms, increases their coordination, and facilitates innovation by improving the circulation of ideas. CBAs generate economies of agglomeration in the way that first source hiring and third-party referral programs are often also used to connect participants to jobs that are outside the project covered by the CBA. The Toronto Community Benefits Network, for example, has improved coordination amongst Ontario employment centres, colleges, trade union pre- apprenticeship and apprenticeship training programs, social agencies supporting newcomers and marginalized populations, social enterprise organizations, grassroots community organizations based in under-resourced (priority) neighbourhoods, and various government departments at the municipal and provincial level. Through building these relationships
319Personal Interview, March 6, 2014. 455 around three job pipelines for the Eglinton Crosstown LRT project, the Network is also creating positive working relationships between these organizations that will continue to support workforce development even after the Crosstown project is over. The coordination provided by the Network also creates efficiencies on behalf of the funding agencies that financially support workforce development and related social justice programming. Similarly, “network effects” refers to the way that a good or service increases in value as more and more people use it (e.g. a telephone network). As outreach efforts allow more and more equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged residents to become aware of the three job pipelines for the Crosstown project, word of mouth will spread about these job pipelines as well as the other training and services that different organizations of the Network can provide for people. In this sense, those who apply to pre-employment or pre-apprenticeship programs but are screened-out due to lack of room or because they do not meet minimum requirements, will still benefit because they will be referred to other programs and supports that social agencies and government departments provide to marginalized workers. These network effects were seen with the Alameda Corridor CBA through which the “capacity of several [CBA] member organizations to engage in outreach, case management, and job preparation grew tremendously through their roles as intake sites.” The network of training agencies implementing the Alameda corridor, the Alameda Corridor Jobs Corridor (ACJC) were overwhelmed by interested applicants, even though there were only 1000 positions for local residents. In response, the ACJC:
quickly decided to pursue other job matching strategies to help place more job seekers. Short-term strategies included referring applicants to the state employment agency and local one-stop career centers, which actually came on-site to do intakes at the orientations. In the longer term, ACJC was chosen to be part of a three-year CCC-sponsored sectoral workforce development initiative. Through this sector project, ACJC is currently working to place residents in training and jobs in the related field of international trade and transportation, a burgeoning sector in the L.A. regional economy.
The way in which other training and job placement programs can “piggy-back” off of the coordinated outreach of a CBA network, shows the extended social value for money that a CBA can deliver. 456
8. Conclusion
This report has reviewed community benefits agreements in Canada, the United States, and Scotland to understand how they might be used to leverage Ontario's infrastructure investments towards increasing labour market access for equity-seeking and historically disadvantaged groups. Every CBA is shaped by the social, political and economic circumstances and needs of a particular community as well as by the nature of the (re)development. In Ontario, policies or legislation that support the use of CBAs could address a number of pressing social and economic concerns: a growing skills gap in the trades and engineering professions; barriers facing newcomers in applying their professional and trade skills in the labour market; youth unemployment and gun violence; and poverty alleviation.
A strength common to all CBAs is that they bring together a number of elements of workforce planning and development that are often kept separate or only poorly coordinated: outreach; training; supports for training; and job opportunities. The coordination that CBAs provide amongst training institutions, social agencies, labour, community groups and government, can ensure that additional “social value for money” is captured from public infrastructure projects. Going beyond the positive impact to any one project, CBAs foster strong working relationships between the organizations involved that can generate economies of agglomeration and network effects within the workforce development sector. The wide range of policy objectives that community benefits agreements work towards would also help coordinate and focus programs and resources across at least ten Ontario ministries in addition to the Women's Directorate. Meetings between relevant ministries could help chart the best way to support CBAs and to begin crafting legislation similar to the Scottish model.
This literature review of CBAs and impact benefit agreements has identified the need for more, and properly disaggregated, monitoring data of the training programs and job placements undertaken by targeted groups. The need for better monitoring practices presents a key area for further research. Experiences from IBAs of northern mining projects, but also 457 urban infrastructure projects like the Crosstown LRT in Toronto, suggest that labour development plans (or “community impact reports”) should be conducted to determine how the labour market needs of any major development compares with the existing community assets. This would support the work of organizations trying to coordinate outreach and training while allowing realistic targets to be reached during the negotiation of the CBA.
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