The post below summarizes why Toronto as a city has a strong culture of INCLUSION, but the culture of inclusion does not necessarily translate to one of economic EQUITY,and suggests ENTREPRENEURSHIP as a solution option.
The confluence of a number of events in Toronto over the past couple of weeks inspired this post. The following events are an indication that Toronto lives up to its reputation as the most multicultural, open and tolerant city in the world:
1. Canada Day celebrated by new and old Canadians from all over the world.
2. The annual Pride parade which is one of the largest exhibitions of gay culture in the world.
3. The City of Toronto CUPE Local 79 and CUPE Local 416 strike action, which at least according to the unions, is about equal treatment in the context of a brutal recession.
In the past couple of years, The United Way of Greater Toronto, a social service agency that has a finger on the pulse of the social needs of Toronto through its various member agencies, documented a number of pointed reports, including Losing Ground: The persistent growth of family poverty in Canada’s largest city, which builds on previous reports such as Poverty by Postal Code (2004) indicating a growing gap between high and low income areas in Toronto.
David Hulchanski, at The Centre for Urban and Community Studies (CUCS), University of Toronto, supports these findings in a report titled The Three Cities Within Toronto: Income polarization, 1970–2000. Richard Florida, in his book Who Is Your City, determines from the Place and Happiness Survey a cluster of factors to be key to our happiness in our communities, the third factor being EQUITY.
“… equity and includes affordable housing, manageable traffic patterns, and being a good place to live for senior citizens and the poor.” (emphasis mine)
A solution to growing poverty in Toronto: Entrepreneurship
One of the interesting statistics highlighted in the Sources of Income in the United Way of Greater Toronto report, Losing Ground: The persistent growth of family poverty in Canada’s largest city, indicates that:
“Self-employment was also high among low-income, two-parent families. In Toronto, one-quarter of these family taxfilers relied on income from some form of self-employment, as did one-third in the rest of the CMA.”
A short paper we did a couple of years ago confirms the notion that entrepreneurship is often the most viable option for economic self-sufficiency for a number of low income groups. We found that three of the most economically disadvantaged groups in the city, Somali, Afghan, and bangladeshi immigrants, had organically started cooperative style businesses.
The trend towards self-employment and entrepreneurship as the most viable option for not all, but a significant number of people, has been accelerated by the current prolonged recession:
Thomas Frey, seasoned entrepreneur and futurist at the DaVinci Institute explains in his article The Coming Wave of Entrepreneurship that there are a couple of significant trends: “ Trend No. 6: Reason for optimism: The online digital world is an engine that requires little startup capital. Profitability for new business is often within reach of even those with little or no money. Little wonder more and more talent is shifting away from physical products toward the online marketplace.”
“Trend No. 7: One-person businesses are springing to life with surprising regularity. The Empire of One business model, which seems to be under the radar of colleges and business schools, is catching fire because of innovations that have leveled the playing field, allowing individuals to compete with much larger companies.”
The National Post, one of Canada’s national newspapers, has picked up on the self employment trend during the current recession in the article: Being the boss never looked better.
The Toronto Star, Toronto’s preeminent paper, also highlights the trend in the article Self-employment: The ‘do-it-yourself recovery’.
The most compelling evidence for micro-enterprise as a viable option for economically disadvantaged groups comes from the 500 organization strong and growing members of the The Association for Enterprise Opportunity (AEO). CEO of AEO member Rising Tide Capital, Alfa Demmellash, was recently selected and highlighted as a CNN Hero.
In summary, Toronto prides itself as a city of inclusion, but it is also a city of growing economic inequality. Entrepreneurship is one of the solutions to reducing this growing economic inequality and its inherent negative consequences. There is a rising tide of evidence that more people can become Free Agents, as described by Daniel Pink. Entrepreneurship is not just the province of those that have economic advantages, but entrepreneurship is also a means to economic independence for a broader group of participants including groups who are economically disadvantaged.