It’s true! Since its inception as CEDTAS (Community Economic Development Technical Assistance Service) almost 10 years ago, Spark has leveraged over $1 million dollars in pro bono assistance for Winnipeg’s community organizations. What started as a small pilot project at SEED Winnipeg has grown to a fully fledged service of the Canadian CED Network, helping up to 150 organizations annually.

While there have been a few bumps along the way, we’ve learned and grown, and are confident that we’ve got the experience and skill to help match community development/community economic development organizations with the professional help they need. For a reflection on the early years of CEDTAS, read more here; and you can find a more recent reflection here.

A celebration like this wouldn’t be complete without giving thanks where thanks is due. Many thanks to our amazing pro bono consultants who give of their time and expertise, to the many community groups that have used our services over the years, to past and present Spark/CEDTAS employees, and to SEED Winnipeg for helping get this project off the ground. A huge thanks also goes out to our funders: United Way of Winnipeg, The Winnipeg Foundation, the Province of Manitoba, and Thomas Sill Foundation. We’re also excited to be part of a growing Global Pro Bono Network.

Katie Schewe is a Recruitment Co-ordinator for Spark, where she works to connect Winnipeg’s vast and varied talents to support nonprofits in their work. Through her experience working in the financial service industry and communications, Katie brings a unique perspective to community collaboration and motivating volunteer engagement to support the work of local organizations. Katie is a graduate of Canadian Mennonite Bible College and the University of Winnipeg. She enjoys networking to inspire new connections, matches, and partnerships.

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Fall is traditionally a time to take stock, set new goals, and get back to work and study with renewed energy. In the spirit of furthering our own pro bono education, Spark has been hard at work this fall, studying some of our past matches and building theory. Those of us who have ever orchestrated a match between non-profit organizations and pro bono consultants know that from time to time, things go sideways. The best and most productive-looking match can limp along, break down, or even die if not helped out with preventative and corrective measures.

We looked back over our past three years of matchmaking, and did a careful review of feedback and evaluations from both organizations and volunteers, as well as our own case notes. The first discovery we made when sorting through the piles of data was good news: only 25% of the matches we made had some sort of difficulty or negative feedback attached to them, and a number of these more complicated matches completed the project regardless. This means three quarters of the time, things go well. Not too shabby!

With that in mind, we set out to determine what the most likely points of failure are, and how we can do our part to help steer matches clear of them.

1. Prioritize the match

We discovered that the most common reason for match difficulties is related to organizations not prioritizing the match by dedicating the necessary staff time – and effort – to work with the pro bono consultant.

The fact that this is the most common reason matches hit roadblocks isn’t surprising. Non-profits are busy doing important, complex, and often difficult work in their communities, and almost always getting it done with limited resources. However, the fact that they’ve approached us to find them pro bono help means that they know something could be done better. It’s our hope and expectation that they’ll find the time to work with the pro bono consultant as needed, whether that’s making time to meet, respond to emails, or do their portion of the work to make the project succeed.

When working to get an organization ready for a match, Spark stresses the amount of time and energy required throughout the match, as organizations orient, get information to, and collaborate with pro bono volunteers. In fact, it’s helpful to think of pro bono work as paid work, with the same dedication to timeliness, participation, as well as high quality work and results, on both sides. During an assessment meeting, we discuss this with the organization, and check to make sure they are able to commit the time to take it on. Then once a match is made we keep in touch to make sure that things are progressing well, and everyone is getting what they need, when they need it.

2. Make sure everyone’s on the same page

The second area of potential match difficulty is related to differing expectations of the match. This could come from different visions of what the end goal is, what will be produced along the way, by when, and the role each person plays within the project.

One of the ways Spark helps combat this is to draw up a solid match agreement with all parties present, before the work starts. We begin the process of developing the agreement with a facilitated discussion about the expected outcome of the match and the ways that will be reached, then together we outline all the relevant details. If there are divergent ideas and proposed solutions, these need to be clarified and negotiated until everyone agrees, and both sides want to proceed in working towards that common end result.

Once a common solution has been agreed upon, we facilitate the creation of a robust work plan which includes: the planned outcome; individual tasks and related timelines; an estimate of how many volunteer hours are involved; and the roles and additional responsibilities of each party involved in the match. Working out all of these details together and completing a thorough match agreement (which all parties literally sign) is a strong preventative measure to ensure the enduring health and results of the match.

3. Beware of overcommitment

The third most common area of difficulty is related to volunteers overcommitting themselves. This can take the form of overcommitting on time, skill, or experience.

Many people want to help out, and the organizations that Spark works with are doing important work to help make Winnipeg stronger. However, when volunteers are a bit too optimistic about their abilities, it can add extra challenges to their volunteer experience, and possibly add those challenges to the already-full plate of the person working for the non-profit getting the assistance. We understand that our volunteers are busy people, and that sometimes life and work can get in the way of good intentions. That’s why it’s important that volunteers think critically about their expertise, skills, and time, helping to create healthy matches that produce what the organization needs, on a timeline that works for everyone.

Spark works to prevent volunteer overcommitments through a thorough assessment of a prospective volunteer’s skill sets, level of expertise, and prior experience related to similar projects or processes. We make sure to ask the volunteer which type of project they feel most confident offering their pro bono assistance on, and then match the volunteer with a project that is a good fit for them. Part of the facilitated conversation mentioned above includes a discussion of how many hours of the volunteer’s time will be necessary to complete each of the various stages of the project, and checking with the volunteer to make sure that the total commitment is realistic. We also try to be honest about the fact that sometimes timelines slip – if that happens, will both the volunteer and organization have time to keep working together? After the work begins, Spark checks in frequently: if things are dragging or unexpected difficulties arise, the work plan can be reevaluated and adjusted if necessary.

4. Stay in touch!

The fourth most common reason for match difficulty or breakdown is related to inadequate communication, from either the volunteer or the organization (or both). It’s a bit obvious, but for a project to be successful, the lines of communication must stay open.

In our experience, if there’s an extended period of silence from either side, even if work is happening behind the scenes, things can get complicated. A lack of communication can be interpreted (sometimes correctly) as a lack of commitment to the project, dissatisfaction with the work, or as a change in priorities. Again, the best way to prevent this is to lay the proper groundwork for the match: a good work plan with specific timelines, and encouragement to both sides to treat the pro bono assistance as they would paid work. A discussion of expectations around communication can be useful – how does each side prefer to be contacted (phone calls? email? text?)?

Overtly stating and getting agreement on the first steps of the work (who is responsible for contacting whom, or getting which information to who by when) gets things off to a good start, and sets the stage for successful match completion. Spark also does frequent check ins with both sides to see how things are going, and takes corrective steps when necessary to keep things moving forward.

Conclusion

While making matches includes tangibles such as a defined need and a willing volunteer, through this review we’ve discovered some great tips to help make sure that some of the more intangible things don’t drag down the success of a project. We know that it’s important that all sides:

• are able to dedicate the necessary time to the match.
• know what the goal is, and agree how to get there.
• have the skill and experience to complete the match.
• stay in touch with each other, including us.

With these points in mind, we look forward to creating new, interesting matches for Winnipeg’s community development sector.

Katie Schewe is a Recruitment Co-ordinator for Spark, where she works to connect Winnipeg’s vast and varied talents to support nonprofits in their work. Through her experience working in the financial service industry and communications, Katie brings a unique perspective to community collaboration and motivating volunteer engagement to support the work of local organizations. Katie is a graduate of Canadian Mennonite Bible College and the University of Winnipeg. She enjoys networking to inspire new connections, matches, and partnerships.

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This blog is part of the ‘Voices of New Economies’ series within Cities for People – an experiment in advancing the movement toward urban resilience and livability through connecting innovation networks. This Voices series is collectively curated by One Earth and The Canadian CED Network. We are launching Voices of New Economies as part of New Economy Week 2014, hosted by the New Economy Coalition. Throughout this week, a series of 5 questions guide our exploration of what it would take to build the economy we need – one that works for people, place, and planet.

Today’s Voices story responds to the fifth and final question in the New Economy Week series: How can we support neighborhoods, cities, towns, and regions as the fertile ground for the kind of economy we need?

By Nabeel Ahmed

When Sean Geobey was in university, he helped start up a community capacity building nonprofit. It introduced him to the challenges of how social service organizations financed their work, a question he has grappled with in his doctoral research at the University of Waterloo and the Waterloo Institute of Social Innovation and Resilience. His work on social finance looks at alternative funding models and how they can transform the social sector, private markets, and governments that encourage more inclusive, democratic, and real-wealth creating activities.

For Sean, real wealth comes from the things that allow us to better express ourselves; things that allow for individual talents and interests to flourish in a way that doesn’t harm other people’s capacity to do the same. That wealth comes from our capacity to invest materially, socially, and intellectually in the creation of institutions and infrastructure that support collective efforts to try and make the world a better place

What are some key elements of new economies?

It’s important, here, to take stock of the new economies we are drifting into and guide them towards the new economies we desire (which may have elements of the ‘old’ economies as well).

Increasingly, real wealth is being diminished by the commodification of human inputs and creativity. This is a world of increased automation, designed more by bits and data rather than the creation of actual goods and services. It is a globalized world, not just economically but also socially and culturally. There has been a troubling shift towards institutions that are fundamentally unaccountable to the general public and community; corporate actors that act with impunity across borders present a real challenge for the remaining democratic institutions to channel productive capacity towards broader positive impacts rather than just shareholders.

Despite the discontents, more flexibility does hold an incredible amount of promise, and technological advances can increase material well-being and creative potential.

Ultimately, new, resilient economies that better serve people will require a revitalization of democratic people-controlled institutions, from governments, to finance, to worker organizations, to company ownership and control. It means a better understanding of local environments and the increasing variety of people in them, learning from past institutions while creating new ones, in ways that can leverage advances in technology.

How can we support neighborhoods, cities, towns, and regions as the fertile ground for the kind of economy we need?

At the local level, we have a real opportunity to revive and modernize this idea of a mutual aid driven society that was prevalent in the late 19th century. This includes the credit union sector, cooperatives, and craft unions, creating opportunities for people to support each other’s work around the world. Such organizations can maintain autonomy while working together at a global scale, which large multinational corporations and the financial sector do quite well, but older models of mutual aid have historically struggled with.

This is where social finance comes in. Just as the prevalence of sophisticated, globalized financial tools has helped the modern economy develop, a more human-oriented way of social, economic, and ecological prosperity can come from getting regular people engaged with finance to help develop their own communities and support the work of like-minded people wherever they may be.

The credit union sector, for example, has been pushing for innovation in local economic development through various means, including the creation of community bonds. These are small investments created by nonprofits and social sector organizations, mostly administered by credit unions, that allow organizations without traditional access to debt financing to convert erstwhile donors into more substantial supporters in the form of a loan. This allows social sector organizations with real capital and assets to leverage value in a way they have not been able to do so previously.

Crowdfunding is the most obvious technology-driven social finance innovation, emerging in the last decade to allow an unprecedented global flow of capital from ordinary people. It has been particularly transformative in turning retail consumers into financiers; in the entertainment, music, film and video game industries, the pre-purchase model has allowed new people to produce interesting ideas and tell new stories that were impossible a few decades ago. As a pre-purchaser, you effectively give a loan to a producer, which completely changes the relationship between consumers and producers.

Through tapping into both local and global social finance tools, individuals can transform institutions to be more inclusive of people’s creativity and fundamental dignity.

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Sean Geobey is currently a McConnell Fellow with SiG@Waterloo and pursuing a PhD in Management Sciences at the University of Waterloo. Sean Geobey has worked in policy, program development and research positions in a variety of organizations including the BC Ministry of Health Services, Sustainable Waterloo, and the Laurier Students’ Public Interest Research Group. He continues to provide strategic planning and facilitation workshops, serves on the National Council of Fair Vote Canada, and is developing participatory and experience-based adult education models. Currently his research focuses on how to integrate different perspectives in group decision-making, an approach which has concrete applications in social finance, policy development and resource-allocation within coalitions.

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This blog is part of the ‘Voices of New Economies’ series within Cities for People – an experiment in advancing the movement toward urban resilience and livability through connecting innovation networks. This Voices series is collectively curated by One Earth and The Canadian CED Network. We are launching Voices of New Economies as part of New Economy Week 2014, hosted by the New Economy Coalition. Throughout this week, a series of 5 questions guide our exploration of what it would take to build the economy we need – one that works for people, place, and planet.

Today’s Voices story responds to the third question in the New Economy Week series: How can we connect and learn from successful experiments, pilot projects, and campaigns to build broad-based power and effect deep transformation at scale?

To sharing economy innovator and collaborativeconsumption.com curator Lucy Gao, real wealth is immediately definable but altogether intangible. It means having enough money to sustain oneself, but more importantly to sustain relationships with friends and family. It means having the opportunity to do things that challenge you, and pursue goals and mastery. It means being able to embrace life experiences, like going to a park and enjoying the city.

Lucy’s fascination with (and admirable dedication to) the sharing economy in Toronto emerged from watching a TED talk by Rachel Botsman that made the case for collaborative consumption. It just made sense. As she researched these new business models, she realized they addressed many of the discrepancies she had witnessed between her studies in political science and business. They were solving real problems.

Inspired, Lucy took the four months she had free after university to join the small team preparing to launch Unstash, a peer-to-peer lending platform. This was an education in marketing and using social media to promote the platform, while making sure the supply (of shareables) existed before the demand. Through this project she networked with players in the new economies locally in Toronto as well as globally. This led to attending OuiShare Fest in France and an invitation to be a curator for collaborativeconsumption.com. From this position, Lucy broadened the reach/strength of the local Toronto sharing economy including through Meetups and events.

What do you see as the key elements of “new economies”?

• Systems that promote peer-to-peer (p2p) interactions.
• Creating small neighbourhood-level connections rather than centralized and corporate systems.
• Access rather than ownership.
• Enhancing the reality of people’s lives, while making services available to community members with low incomes.
• Empower people to “be their own business.”
• Enabled by technology, enterprising individuals can reach others interested in what they already have.

How do you think we can connect and learn from successful experiments, pilot projects, and campaigns to build broad-based power and effect deep transformation at scale?

This will be achieved by adding structure to our current networks and enabling current players to reach out to other groups more easily. This will allow easier replication while we share what we have learned. It will also be important to take a more proactive approach with government regulation and building their buy-in. Once we have defined who the new companies are, we can work to help create a new set of regulations. Government involvement can increase the impact of companies that already exist.

Related links:
Rachel Botsman on TED: The Case for Collaborative Consumption
Shareable – Sharing Cities Network – Toronto
Collaborative Living blog
collaborativeconsumption.com

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Lucy Gao is the global curator for Canada at collaborativeconsumption.com.  Lucy is passionate about the sharing economy and collecting moments, not things. This passion has led to her involvement as a team member in ShareFestTO and the Centre for Social Innovation. Lucy was also previously Marketing Director with Unstash.

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This blog is part of the ‘Voices of New Economies’ series within Cities for People – an experiment in advancing the movement toward urban resilience and livability through connecting innovation networks. This Voices series is collectively curated by One Earth and The Canadian CED Network. We are launching Voices of New Economies as part of New Economy Week 2014, hosted by the New Economy Coalition. Throughout this week, a series of 5 questions guide our exploration of what it would take to build the economy we need – one that works for people, place, and planet.

Today’s Voices story responds to the second question in the New Economy Week series: How can we catalyze public conversation about the need for systemic change and the viability of economic alternatives that put people and the planet first?

Finding a name for a nonprofit leads to some serious and playful conversations.  In 2006, four co-founders and I brainstormed until Bill Rees suggested One Earth.  The name resonated – coming home to our incredible living planet.  Re-discovering the wealth in the living systems of which we are a part and revealing our global interdependence.

Our economies shape our relationships with nature and with each other – and we are the designers of these relationships.  Real wealth comes from designing economies to preserve clean air, clean water, healthy food and ecosystems, energy, shelter, love, and purpose for all species now and into the future. It is not about continuing to consume more and more and to produce more and more waste in ways that lack resilience and are unfair, undemocratic and unsustainable. 

The good news is that positive and healthy economic alternatives already exist and are actively being further explored and tested. I am inspired by our endless human imagination in advancing fundamental systemic change.

There are many key elements of new economies and here are three that can spark public conversations:

1. Slowing down and taking the long-view: In new economies we know when short-term and a vibrant pace is appropriate, and when a measured pace and long-term approach guides better decisions.  By slowing down, we can quiet the constant drive for more and listen to each other and to nature as we develop solutions.  We correct our pervasive short-termism in order to recognize that long-run and long-lag problems (as Jamais Cascio rightly notes) require us to lengthen our decision-making perspective and adopt a resilient and adaptive approach.
2. Tracking the numbers: New economies are designed with evidence-based feedback loops. We want to know, and not assume, that our actions are leading to increases in and maintenance of the things we want (e.g., community, resilience, healthy ecosystems) and reductions in the things we don’t want (e.g., inequality, waste, toxins). By tracking the numbers, we can catch undermining effects – such as increasing efficiency in cars and then polluting the same amount by driving more – and focus on implementing transformative long-lasting solutions – such as designing walkable cities.
3. Diverse designers, especially vulnerable peoples: It matters who is at the table in shaping the alternatives to our current economic challenges. Those who have vested interests in maintaining dysfunctional aspects of our current economy are not well-placed to explore other options.  Those who are most vulnerable and marginalized hold critical perspectives and capacities that open up possibilities for just, equitable and restorative economies.  In fact, we need a variety of voices – redesigning new economies is about creating collaborations across unlikely allies including between grassroots movements and the mainstream.

The following are just a few of the many resources that provide further insight into the shape of new economies:

• Bill Rees – http://williamrees.org/in-the-press/
• Janine Benyus, Biomimicry – https://biomimicry.net/
• The Story of Solutions – Annie Leonard – https://storyofstuff.org/movies/the-story-of-solutions/
• One Planet Economy – http://www.oneplaneteconomynetwork.org/eureapa.html

I join others in conserving the structures, behaviors, and values that align with new economies and transforming those that are dysfunctional. This requires us to apply a systems approach, to connect and build bridges across movements in order to amplify our work, and to promote positive visions of better futures to make sustainable livelihoods attractive, and inspire the world to think and act as one Earth.

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Vanessa Timmer is co-founder and Executive Director of One Earth, a nonprofit ‘think and do’ tank based in Vancouver, Canada, whose mission is to transform production and consumption patterns locally, nationally and internationally to be sustainable, healthy and just within the limits of living systems.

Vanessa is a social entrepreneur dedicated to positively transforming human and ecological relationships. She weaves together sustainability and systems thinking, and believes that envisioning positive futures is a powerful draw for social change. Vanessa is an Associate at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government researching innovation and sustainability, with graduate degrees from Oxford and the University of British Columbia. She was awarded the 2013 Top Forty under 40

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This blog is the first of the ‘Voices of New Economies’ series within Cities for People – an experiment in advancing the movement toward urban resilience and livability through connecting innovation networks. This Voices series is collectively curated by One Earth and The Canadian CED Network. We are launching Voices of New Economies as part of New Economy Week 2014, hosted by the New Economy Coalition. Throughout this week, a series of 5 questions guide our exploration of what it would take to build the economy we need – one that works for people, place, and planet.

Today’s Voices story celebrates Indigenous People’s Day, with author Carol Anne Hilton responding to the first question in the New Economy Week series: How can we honour and learn from the rich histories of communities building New Economy institutions on the frontlines of fights for racial, economic, environmental justice?

The invisible thread that ties the development of Canada and our current economy plays out daily in the story of the First Nation relationship in the Canadian media. These pivotal moments can support the opportunity for our continued definition of modernity, to right our past relationship, and to define our current relationship.

My work in Indigenomics acts as a vehicle for understanding, creating meaning and expressing our indigenous relationship to economies. First Nations are defining our modern presence and our need to delineate our future through participation in the Canadian economy. With the recent win of the Tsilhqot’in Decision, and numerous other court rulings such as the Nuu chah Nulth case, the re-definition of wealth within the economic system of this country through the First Nation relationship is emerging.  What is directly in front of us is the question “What new thinking is now required of us?”

First Nations consent and insight into the decision-making process of regional and global economies is an essential part of this process.  The legal and economic context is directly related, while never mistaking the role of justice as a pillar of humanity.

This time calls on us to be asking the difficult questions while exploring the discomfort zone of a colonial legacy. In the context of Indigenomics, three essential elements of new economies are:

• Strengthened relationships;
• Deeper purpose and relevance to the future;
• Collaborative shift in measurement of new economies.

Never in the history of humanity has there been this opportunity to redefine economies. What a beautiful opportunity to re-define wealth!  We cannot have a meaningful conversation if all participants do not understand the language and dimension of this economic relationship. The time is now to build a collective toolbox to fill with our deepest questions – to find out why, how, and what is possible in the search for deeper meaning and relevance to new economies.

Toolbox Content

• UN Declaration on Rights of Indigenous People
• 2008 Canadian Apology to First Nations people
• The 8th Fire Series
• Free, prior informed consent outline- what is it and why does it matter?
• Summary of Tsilhqot’in Decision

These topics are a key starting point of bridging understanding and context.  Whatever you name the new economies – Purpose, Circular, Collaborative, Sharing –  we need to be aware of who is at the table, and who must be included. What is being named here is a value set – an outline of purpose of how we experience economies. This is the shift to connectivity, to local relationships. I recently met a mayor of a small town who told me that since the establishment as a municipality, not one single mayor had ever set foot on the local reserve. He crossed the line equipped with the question- “What can we do together?”

It’s time to cross the fabricated lines and start a new relationship of working together – the heart of our work in New Economies.

The story the Canadian media tells about this economic relationship leaves far too much room for uninformed opinion – the smallest unit of measurement.  The real measurement is the shift towards impact. What is emerging today, people are simply expecting more of our economies.  It is time to move beyond fear.  Lets have the courage to do this together – all my relations.

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Carol Anne Hilton, MBA and CEO of Transformation – is a recognized leading First Nation’s business entrepreneur from the Nuu chah nulth Nation. Carol Anne has a solid understanding and application of First Nation’s economic development best practices and brings extensive knowledge and experience in community development, business management, corporate relations, engagement strategies and project management. Carol Anne works to incorporate an Aboriginal worldview while bringing First Nations, industry and government together to design new approaches for sustainable, inclusive development. Carol Anne was a founding Director of the BC First Nations Health Society/ Interim BC First Nations Health Authority.

Carol Anne currently serves on the Community Social Planning Council, Chairs the Community Micro Lending Society and serves as a Director of the World Fisheries Trust.

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Originally published in the Winnipeg Free Press on October 2, 2014

The minimum-wage hike, to $10.70 per hour, that kicked in this week means full-time workers would earn just over $20,800 annually. This leaves a family of four, with both parents working, with an income more than $1,500 below the poverty line.

Single-parent families are worse off, at more than $8,000 short of the poverty line.

It is widely agreed a job can be the best pathway out of poverty. But this is only true if wages meet basic needs.

Approximately 38,600 Manitobans work for minimum wage, and they are not just teenagers looking to earn extra cash. Most are older than 20, and nearly half work for companies with more than 500 employees. Given so many minimum-wage-earners are adults, we need to ask why our minimum wage does not provide a sufficient income to raise a family.

A living wage is just over $14 per hour in Winnipeg, based on the costs of living here. This enables a family of four, with two working parents, to meet its basic needs. The living wage for a single-parent family is even higher, and there are 2,300 single parents working for minimum wage in Manitoba.

The living wage is based on a bare-bones budget without the extras many of us take for granted. Costs considered include food, clothing, rent, transportation, child care, health care, adult education, some household expenses and a small emergency fund. It does not include interest payments, retirement savings, home ownership, savings for children’s education, or the costs of caring for a disabled, ill or elderly family member.

The province should be recognized for making regular incremental increases to the minimum wage. There is, however, a long way to go before all minimum-wage families can live above the poverty line. But poverty-line wages do not build healthy communities or stimulate the economy. The province should take more aggressive action to close the gap between the minimum wage and the living wage.

Stronger government social policies and programs that benefit single-parent families with low incomes can help fill the gap by shifting certain costs off families’ shoulders — a universal provincial child-care program would substantially lower the wage single-parent families need to meet their needs.

In addition, the province and city should adopt a living-wage policy that ensures their own employees, and those of the businesses they contract with, are paid the living wage. Jurisdictions across the world have begun to implement living-wage policies, and New Westminster, B.C., is the first in Canada.

Employers can also demonstrate leadership by paying the living wage now. This can be achieved through wages or a combination of wages and non-mandatory benefits. Living-wage employers, such as KPMG, Deloitte, and Vancity Credit Union, can benefit from decreases in absenteeism, higher worker productivity and better worker retention.

Substantive minimum-wage increases and living-wage policies are much more effective at decreasing poverty than increasing the personal income tax exemption, an approach perennially advocated by business.

For example, Manitoba Federation of Labour calculations show a $1,000 increase in the basic personal tax exemption would save minimum-wage workers $108, whereas a 50-cent increase to the wage would improve the workers’ annual income by $1,040 per year.

Furthermore, the increase in the basic personal income tax exemption would apply to all Manitobans rich or poor. This and other ‘fixes’ to our tax system proposed by business would remove millions of dollars from revenues needed to pay for social programs and income transfers that help low-income Manitobans.

Our tax system does not need to be fixed — the net income of Manitoba’s lowest income-earners increases as a result of our tax and transfer system.

Business will always resist minimum-wage increases, arguing they lead to job loss. But the most robust economic studies show the net benefits to low-income people and the economy are far greater than any temporary job loss that might result from increasing the minimum wage.

Closing the gap between the minimum wage and the living wage is a win-win strategy that provides income security for Manitoba families while stimulating our economy.

Kirsten Bernas is Research and Policy Manager with CCEDNet in Manitoba. She received a BA (Honours) in Economics from the University of Manitoba as well as an MA from the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa. Kirsten represents CCEDNet on the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives‘ Alternative Federal Budget Steering Committee, Make Poverty History Canada’s Steering Committee, Make Poverty History Manitoba‘s Executive Committee, and on the Winnipeg Food Policy Working Group

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Lynne Fernandez is Research Associate and Project Coordinator with the the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives in Manitoba. She has a Master’s in economics from the University of Manitoba, where she discovered that the so-called “dreary science” could actually be very interesting. She has a particular fondness for labour and environmental issues, as well as community economic development, government policy and economic history. Lynne works as the Errol Black Chair in Labour Issues.

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