Civic Impact

Writer: Katia Snukal
Source: Andrew Knox, Steering Committee Member, Transition Toronto 

The City of Toronto's motto is "Diversity our Strength," but when it comes to integrating skilled immigrants into the workforce, it's not always put into practice. The Toronto Immigrant Employment Data Initiative has found that education achieved abroad is discounted in the Canadian labour market by a factor of 30 per cent and work experience by factor of 70 per cent. 

In an effort to spread awareness of the benefits of hiring skilled immigrants, the Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council (TRIEC) is once again accepting nomination for its Immigrant Success (IS) Awards. Sponsored by RBC and supported by media partners Canadian HR Reporter, CBC Toronto and the Toronto Star, the IS Awards are presented annually to organizations in the Greater Toronto Region that have shown leadership in integrating skilled immigrants into their workforces.

This year, for the first time since the awards began seven years ago, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) will have an opportunity to be recognized.

"What we've found in the past is that we've had nominations for small businesses that have been really good but it's very difficult for them to compete against the large organizations with dedicated HR and diversity staff," says Jessica Hume, acting communications manager with TRIEC.

The new award, the RBC Immigrant Advantage Award for SMEs, is geared directly at these smaller organizations.

"We often use the winners as an example to hold up to other employers," says Hume. "We can say to other employers, 'Here are some good examples, here's some people who've seen the advantage of this.'"

The nomination deadline is Thursday, November 15. A panel of senior human resource professionals, business executives and industry stakeholders will judge the submissions. Winners will be celebrated at a reception in the spring.

Writer: Katia Snukal
Source: Jessica Hume, Acting Communication Manager, TRIEC 

Trees are important for human health.

If this seems obvious, Robert Keen, CEO of the environmental nonprofit Trees Ontario, would like to point out that it's a connection that gets overlooked.

"I think that people get that trees produce oxygen and take in carbon," says Keen. "But there are lots of other things that trees and forests do for us—for instances absorbing pollutants, cleaning the air, controlling flooding, purifying water, providing recreation space—that people don't think about." 

That's why Trees Ontario hosted its first-ever experts forum this month, a multi-sectoral brainstorming session dedicated to exploring the connections between the natural environment and human health.

The forum stemmed from an earlier collaboration between Trees Ontario and John Howard, chair of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE). Earlier this year, Howard contributed to a Trees Ontario report, A Healthy Dose of Green: A Prescription for a Healthy Population, which highlighted how even minor investment in forest restoration has significant impact on human health. 

"One of the main recommendations that came from the report was to bring together a multidisciplinary group," says Keen. "We wanted to bring together folks with different backgrounds looking at these issues in order to brainstorm and strategize how we're really going to move this whole initiative forward."

The forum, which brought members of the medical community together with environmental groups and the forestry industry, is one of the first of its kind in Canada.

"We had over 50 stakeholders there," says Keen. "We had just a great response, there was a lot of positive energy. And we're now looking at putting together a working group to develop strategies and next steps in order to achieve some measurable objectives."

Writer: Katia Snukal
Source: Rob Keen, CEO, Trees Ontario

A new Christie and Bloor workspace is catering to Toronto's independent and mobile workers. Called CO:WORK, the new space combines the flexibility of home, the sociability of a coffee shop and the structure and collaborative nature of an office.

The space is the brainchild of Torontonian Heidi McCulloch, who, after deciding to go independent after working for 20 years in advertising and communications, quickly found that she missed certain aspects of the office environment.

"Obviously working in the advertising field and communications there is so much about human feeling, human connection and human emotion," says McCulloch. "I needed the presence of people to stimulate me, to feel like I'm in an idea space. So I was missing those things."

But her interest isn't all personal. McCulloch is teaching and doing a master's at OCAD University, where she's been studying theories around productive collaborations. "I'd been thinking about how you can structure and build the kind of environment that can make collaboration happen in a productive way. So it's just super interesting to me form a theoretical perspective."

CO:WORK offers private, semiprivate and open works spaces in an industrial-chic aesthetic: tall ceilings, big windows, exposed brick walls, thick wood beams and polished concrete floors. CO:WORK members also have unlimited flexibility in how they use the space; membership packages range everywhere from 24-hour private office access to a pay-by-the-hour system for the more casual CO:WORK user. 

Launched just over a month ago, CO:WORK already has a half-dozen users and lots of interest.

"All the members so far seem to be in the creative and design oriented fields," says McCulloch. "I love the fact that people just spontaneously introduce themselves and chitchat in the mornings."

Writer: Katia Snukal
Source: Heidi McCulloch, Founder, CO:WORK

Yonge Street recently wrote about GTA environmental organization Partners in Project Green (PPG) after the launch of their business-to-business waste diversion program. This month, PPG has launched another project aimed at reducing the environmental impact of GTA businesses. This time, instead of targeting management-types, PPG is looking directly to employees. 

Now in its second year, the People Power Challenge (PPC) is a year-long contest that encourages employees of GTA businesses to get active in greening their own organization.

It doesn't cost anything to sign up, it's open to any GTA company, and each participating organization can choose whether they want to participate in one, two or all three of the sub-challenges throughout the year. The challenge areas for this year's competition are Green Procurement, Green Building and Transportation. Each challenge category will have its own specific goals, point-system and winner. At the end of the competition year, one company in each size category will be declared the overall competition winner and will be awarded $2,500 and a plaque at a Partners in Project Green networking event.

The 2012/2013 contest officially kicks off November 1. Registration information is available here.

Writer: Katia Snukal
Source: Partners in Project Green

How green are Toronto’s green roofs?

No one, it seems, has any clue. 

That's because, explains University of Toronto professor Liat Margolis, while the 2009 Green Roofs Bylaw legislates green roof construction, the city never developed a way to actually monitor the ongoing effectiveness of what gets built.

"The green roof may be fine when it's inspected," says Margolis, "but a month later, it could have died.... Right now the city is explaining 'There is x million dollars in square feet in green roofs, therefore if we take the average performance in terms of water management and energy, we can assume that regionally Toronto is doing such and such performance.' But in reality, they may only doing 30 per cent of that because it could be that 60 per cent of those roofs are actually dead and we don't know it."

In short, though Toronto is certainly a green roof city—it's estimated that there are about 135 completed green roofs in Toronto and almost as many under construction—there's really no way of telling how 'green' these roofs really are. 

That's just one of the problems that Margolis, along with her co-investigators, professors Robert Wright and Ted Kesik and their team of researchers, are working to address at the recently unveiled Grit Lab (Green Roof Innovation Testing Laboratory).

The 2,000-square-foot lab, which runs out of U of T's John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, and which sits atop the faculty building at 230 College Street, is a state-of-the art green roof lab, the only one of its kind in Canada. With 33 green roof beds and 264 sensors (so far), the GRIT lab serves double duty, both monitoring the effectiveness of different kinds of green roofs in the urban environments and simultaneously developing tools that will help to standardize that monitoring process.

The embedded sensors, says Margolis, "monitor and collect data such as humidity, wind, rainfall and temperature every two seconds." This real-time data collection will allow researchers to measure the efficiency of different types of green roof setups in terms of, among other things, energy efficiency, cooling, storm water management and biodiversity.

"Embedded remote sensing allows for various authorities, whether they are city officials or even private owners, or academic research facilities that are monitoring these things regionally, to make more of an accurate assessment," says Margolis.

"We're hoping this work will potentially influence or augment the green roof standard and green roof monitoring in the City of Toronto, and that it might also affect what industry is actually producing and promoting."

The second phase of the project, which will be launched later this year, will include the construction of a 50,000-square-foot green roof at the Tremco building in East York. As part of this second phase of the project, the GRIT team will introduce solar panels into their green roof model to understand how solar energy and green roof technology can work together. 

Writer: Katia Snukal
Source: Liat Margolis, Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Toronto, John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design

Art Reach, Toronto's youth-centered arts-advocacy nonprofit, is gearing up for its annual Youth Arts Pitch Contest.

The contest gives young artists the chance to hone their pitch skills, as well as the chance to win one of three $5,000 awards toward their artistic project or ongoing craft.

"We're an organization that's designed to help connect young people in the age range of 13-29 with limited resources to artistic opportunities," says Derick Asante, program coordinator at ArtReach Toronto, "That's were we're coming from and our programming, including the pitch contest, comes out of that."

The top six online submissions will be chosen to pitch their ideas at a live event  on September 21. The artists will make a case for their project and will be eligible to win one in one of two categories: Community Arts (for projects that meet a need in their community) and Creative Enterprise (for individuals or groups hoping to use their skills to earn profit). 

Before the live pitch, each of the six finalists will also participate in a training workshop.

"We understand that there may be some contestants that are familiar with how to put together a pitch, but that there may be others who are not versed in that area," says Asante, "so we thought let's give everyone, whether you know it or you don't, the opportunity to practice."

In past there's been more than 200 or 300 people in attendance including friends and family. "We get a lot of young artistic people together, they can get to talk to people they might otherwise not meet. We bridge the gap between sponsors and supporters and the people they're people their supporting which they might not be able to connect to otherwise. The whole night is entertaining, crowded and fun."

Although the event is in its seventh year, this is the first time it will be hosted at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the most recent Pitch Contest partner.

"We're so excited," says Asante, "donating the space to host this competition is just an amazing contribution."

Writer: Katia Snukal
Source: Derick Asante, Program Coordinator, Art Reach Toronto