The Purpose of Music

An acquaintance recently stumbled across some old musings of mine on the Arts Journal site. It brought memories flooding back of memorable conversations with enigmatic, deep, controversial composer John Tavener.

originally posted @ August 6, 2004 10:46 am as a comment on Arts Journal

During two years as General Manager of Soundstreams Canada, a new music concert presenter in Toronto, Canada--the conversation we hosted that most animated the music community here was a lecture given by Sir John Tavener. He was in town at our invitation for a concert we were presenting of his music. It might be added that unlike the small attendance at most new music concerts, this was an SRO concert. We crowded about 1200 into an 1100 seat cathedral and had to send hundreds home in disappointment. Clearly this is a voice that is reaching people musically.

Prior to John's arrival, he and I had discussed by phone, the fact that both the music community and the theological community wanted to sponsor a lecture and there was insufficient time in the schedule for two such events. At his suggestion, and with the cooperation of the two sponsoring faculties, we had combined the two into a lecture entitled, "The vocation of the sacred artist".

In the lecture Tavener presented the view that music had a purpose and that purpose was to reach the soul of individuals in an uplifting, encouraging and enobling way. The purpose of music was fulfilled when the audience left the concert hall feeling troubles lifted and with a desire for a better world, filled with beauty. He continued in voicing the opinion that music had lost its way when composers began to use music as a way to express their personal tragedy and turmoil, unloading that depression and tortured visions on the audience. In so doing, he continued, the composer was contributing to a negative world-view and the entropy of a corrupted civilization.

Although I found myself uncomfortable with a certain black-and-white nature to his arguments, I found myself fundamentally agreeing. The idea that "if the world is to be saved, it will be saved by beauty"-- a Tavener quote that so struck me that I made it the featured quotes in our marketing campaign--was certainly the central theme to my own love of music and what I want to achieve in music and also what is at the root of my own assessment of "good music" and "bad music". I don't necessarily want music to make me "feel good" but I want to leave the concert hall with the sense that my soul has been touched and nourished.

Tags: Music, Spirituality, Arts Arts Management, Tavener, Truth New Music

Rostropovich, the world loses an authentic artist

Mstislav Rostropovich, dead at 80, fulfilled in life--not just some--but all of the functions that great artists play in our society. First and foremost he was a virtuouso master of his instrument, but that alone did not make him an important force in our society or in the living life of music.

He not only requested, he demanded that the composers of his own time created new works for his instrument and his virtuosity and style of playing was a living part of the creation of new music. In premiering 245 new works for cello, he took risks and played some works that audiences never wanted to hear again, but also gave birth to some wonderful music that are already standards in the cello repertoire.

He embraced the role of artist as truth-teller, independent of political pressure. Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, said of Rostropovich in 1990 that "he took a stand … for the basic truths of life, and he did not compromise." He not only spoke out against political suppression and control of the arts in the Soviet Union but took great personal risk in sheltering dissident novelist and Nobel Prize winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Retaliation for this act of courage led to the great cellist being ostracized by the Soviet arts establishment at the time.

Celebrated as both a hero and an artist, Rostropovich could have dedicated himself to a few concert appearances and recordings but instead he kept pioneering new music but also was dedicated to the development of young musicians as a mentor, conducting and working with a number of youth orchestras and presiding over a great number of masterclasses.

It is interesting that Rostropovich's father was a student of Pablo Casals, because he was definitely a cellist in the Casal's mold. Brave and uncompromising, Rostropovich spoke truth to power in words, deeds and music.

The challenge is there for all of us in the arts to have the courage to follow in his footsteps.

See also: The LA Times, The Washington Times, Robert Amsterdam's blog on Russian Politics,, The Guardian

Tags: Music, Leadership, Arts Arts Management, Rostropovich, Freedom New Music

Non-profit Board responsibility for Human Resource Policy

The second in a series on arts management.

The World Bank has been in the news recently with the focus on the misdeeds of its CEO, President Paul Wolfowitz. As the revelations have come forward in the news, it has been publicized that a whistle-blower brought allegations of conflict-of-interest and other irregular human resources practices to the bank’s Board of Directors who took no action on these allegations. In retrospect, the Board looks pretty foolish and was certainly not fulfilling its stewardship role.

What is your board’s policy on whistle-blowing? What role does your board have in assuring that proper human resource management practices are being followed? If you can’t answer those questions, then this article is for you.

Board responsibility for human resource policy:
Boards do have a responsibility to assure that their organization is following fair and legal human resources policies. Beyond assuring the health of their organization and being good employers, the board’s oversight of human resource policies has fiscal implications and boards generally understand their responsibility for fiscal stewardship. High staff turnover costs money in training new staff and the expectation that new staff will be less effective during the period while they are familiarizing themselves with the job and key tasks. Egregiously inappropriate human resource management puts the organization at financial risk in a variety of ways: human rights complaints, employment standards complaints, wrongful dismissal law-suits, and fines and penalities for late or incorrect employment benefit deductions are obvious financial repercussions of poor human resource management. Less obvious is the loss of sponsorships, donors and grant funding when the “buzz” in the community about your organization is that it is ineffectively managed and a poor employer.

Separation of Board and Management responsibility:
“But what about the separation of management and board responsibilities?” you ask. “Isn’t human resource policy a management role?” The role that board plays in human resource management can vary, but it is an important one.

The role that board plays in human resource policy needs to be clearly defined in the organization. And the personnel policies of the organization also must be clearly defined.

This is one aspect of non-profit governance where Board and Management must work together and where responsibility is shared. Boards can sometimes overstep their bounds and compromise the role of manager by becoming involved in day-to-day supervisory management issues. But washing their hands totally of human resource policy issues—often in a mistaken belief that this is the way to show support for management’s role—is unacceptable. Doing so is to abdicate a key responsibility of the Board for stewardship of the organization’s financial position and reputation in the community.

Defining the Board’s role in human resource policy:
What defined roles can a non-profit board assume in human resource management? The answer depends on the size of the board, the size of the organization, the role of the board and the strengths within the board. Initially in a new organization or an organization without any human resource policies, the board will likely want to develop and assume responsibility for writing a human resource manual of policies, ideally in cooperation with management and department heads. In developing the organization’s first human resource manual the Board should 1) look for resources from national/provincial agencies supporting non-profit organizations, 2) collect manuals from other similar organizations to its own, and finally 3) look for evidence of existing policies within its own organization.

Finding existing policies in your organization:
How do you look for policies within your organization when you don’t yet have a human resource manual? Ask everyone in the organization to send you copies of memos and decisions that have been made on any human resource issue. If employees have been allowed to carry vacation time accrued for a year in your organization, you don’t want to write a policy that allows for no accrual of vacation time. You want to be consistent and fair in your development of policies. You may be pleasantly surprised by the amount of policy that is in place within the organization. By bringing these policies together in a manual, you make them accessible to all and reveal the few places where policy development is needed.

Ongoing Board oversight of human resource policy:
Boards can write policies, approve policies or merely warrant that proper personnel policies are in place. But in all cases they should be aware of the existence of a human policy manual and assure that those policies are appropriate and appropriately followed. Often a committee of the board, made up of individuals with particular expertise in human resource management is charged with the job of writing and oversight of human resource policy. This committee may be mandated to write all policy or take on only key policy areas as articulated by the Board.

Health and Safety policy:
Non-profit boards often forget health and safety issues when writing human resource policy. Don’t make this mistake. Beyond office workplace safety issues such as repetitive strain injury, non-profit organizations often engage in activities that can place employees at risk. You want to be on the record as mandating that employees follow safety precautions when lifting heavy materials, operating machinery or traveling on company business. You want to assure that federal and provincial safety standards are known and followed. If your workplace is large enough to require a Health and Safety Officer, insure that your Personnel Policy Manual articulates the procedure for selecting one. Accidents will happen, but you want to assure that you have policies in place to protect employees from being asked to engage in unsafe practices. Non-profit workers have reported violations such as being asked to work in food bank warehouses without safety boots or hard hats while stacking crates that could crush them if they toppled. Arts workers have been asked to ride unsecured in the backs of trucks carrying exhibition materials weighing tons, and workers have been made sick after being exposed to toxic levels of print fumes from working in unventilated conditions with boxes of thousands of freshly printed brochures.

Conflict resolution:
What is the Board’s role in workplace conflict resolution? Conflict resolution should be a part of the employment policies articulated in the personnel policy manual. The volunteer board understandably does not want to hear day-to-day employee complaints. If they are, this is symptomatic of a flawed system of dealing with complaints in the workplace. But it would equally be a mistake to shut down dialogue with employees. A policy of never listening to employees would pave the way to a future embarrassment similar to the one facing the World Bank Board this year. They were presented with the evidence of management wrong-doing and they shut down the employee bringing them this evidence. As a result the employee went to the press.

Progressive system of dispute resolution:
Within the personnel policy manual there should be a clearly articulated progressive policy for employee complaint resolution in the same way that there should be a progressive discipline policy for employee violation of company policies and job role expectation.

What does this mean in practice? It should mean that the first step in any employee complaint is that the employee first discusses the matter with their direct supervisor, or where that is inappropriate (for example if the complaint were to involve harassment by that very supervisor) then to go to the next level of authority. Response to the complaint with a suggested plan of action should be delivered to the employee within a reasonable time frame that should be spelled out in the employee manual. Should the employee not be satisfied with the action plan, the organization should provide a vehicle for a final appeal process. It should be clearly stated in the employee policy manual that no punitive action for employee complaints will be tolerated by the organization.

Board role in dispute resolution:
The Board should provide some means for employees to carry complaints forward beyond the management level. By the time employee complaints are heard by the Board, usually two or more attempts to resolve the complaint will have been made at the staff level, departmental and upper management. It should be noted that it could be construed as a violation of the employee’s right to privacy to force the employee to discuss their complaint in front of the whole Board. Instead it is often advised that the Board develop a Personnel Committee to meet with employees in a confidential manner and to share their deliberations with the Board, without violating confidential information about individual employees. Such a committee will usually be comprised of two or three individuals that the Board views as having the best skills for such a committee.

It should be noted that in a unionized setting, the Board's Personnel Committee will work within agreed upon arbitration processes.

Other duties of the Personnel Committee:
Other duties of the committee will include annual evaluation of the Executive Director or General Manager, periodic reviews of compensation levels in the organization relevant to the sector, reviews of organizational structure/departmental structure, and the important task of exit interviews. Exit interviews provide a series of snapshots of the organization from different vantage points from people who can provide impartial viewpoints as they no longer have a vested interest in protecting their jobs or advancement within the organization. A policy of exit interviews is effective only when conducted with all possible employees. It is less useful when the Board only chooses to interview either positive or very angry exiting employees.

In smaller organizations, one or more representatives of the Personnel Committee may be involved in employee evaluations and in all cases the Board should assure a fair, objective, consistent evaluation process and that evaluations are in a standard written format with opportunity for employee response.

Key indicators of an organization with effective human resource policies:

1. A Board approved consistent and regularly updated employee policy manual that is provided to all employees.
2. Employees are aware of company policies, can articulate them on query, and compliance is high
3. Most complaints are resolved at the departmental or management level without Board intervention. The occasional complaint that comes to the Board level is dealt with according to established policy.
4. Management and Personnel Committees work together on human resource policy and have good lines of communication
5. Annual evaluations of management and staff are consistent, fair and transparent. The results are written and staff response is invited.
6. The organization never or very seldom experiences law suits for wrongful dismissal, complaints to outside bodies regarding employment practices.
7. Staff turn-over is low in comparison to other similar organizations.

If all or most of these key indicators are present in your non-profit, congratulations, your board is doing all it can to promote a healthy, effective organization with high employee productivity and little risk of financial repercussion due to violations of workers rights.

Key indicators of an organization that needs to work on human resource policy.

1. No policy manual exists, or if it exists it is hard to find, inconsistent, has large gaps in policies.
2. Employees are unaware of company policies or employees have conflicting understanding of company policy based on local memos and departmental policies. Confusion leads to disregard of company policy and low compliance.
3. The organization lacks an effective dispute resolution process. There is no “court of last appeal” in the organization. The Board either hears nothing about disputes within the organization or periodically is inundated by employee complaints, deputations by employees. The Board lacks any policy for dealing with these employee complaints and either shuts them down, ignores them or takes on management roles in dealing directly with situations in the workplace.
4. Management and Board have no authentic communication on personnel issues, there is no committee of the Board charged with personnel issues. Board has a “not our business” attitude, shuts down or deals punitively with whistle-blowers, or alternatively, interferes in the daily business of management by instituting decisions on employee policy without consultation with the manager. No exit interviews are conducted. Staff are warned that communication with Board members is inappropriate and will be punitively dealt with.
5. Evaluations are sporadic, inconsistent, verbally conducted without written format or report. There are no objective measures applied nor is there opportunity for employee rebuttal or response. Evaluations seem punitive, only occurring when a manager has negative news to impart. Evaluations are without oversight. Alternatively, evaluations only contain good news and feel-good messages and board involvement is only requested to rubber-stamp good news pronouncements from uniformly positive evaluations.
6. The organization has experienced a high level of wrongful dismissal complaints, status of employment complaints, allegations of human rights violations, employment standards complaints, etc.
7. High staff turn-over is common-place in the organization. The organization has recently experienced a mass exodus of employees fed up with workplace unfairness and management inconsistency.

If your organization has to say “yes” to only one of these 7 points, likely you have one area of human resource management that you need to address in order to assure that you have an effective human resource policy. But if you answered “yes” to two or more points, your Board is leaving the organization open to potential financial loss and/or reputation loss. At the very least you are not doing your best to keep the resources of high-achieving, experienced employees productively employed in your organization. You are letting your employees down and compromising the Mission of your organization.

Some resources for the non-profit Board in Human Resource Policy:
A Checklist of Human Resource Policy Indicators for Non-Profit Boards
A Guide to Human Resource Policy for Non-Profit Boards, from Human Resource Council of Canada

Developing a new Arts Manager role

(The first in what I plan to be a series of articles on arts administration and volunteer board development.)

Many arts organizations begin their existence with a single artist--an Artistic Director/Founder supported by a volunteer board and perhaps some paid staff members in administrative support roles. Some arts organizations begin and end with this configuration, not living past the lifespan of their founding artist.

Others through growth or succession-planning begin to contemplate hiring their first General Manager or Executive Director . If your organization is at this point then this article is for you.

It's natural that in the selection process that Boards focus on finding the best candidate for their position and articulating the new role of General Manager or Executive Director in their organization. Most do this well and there is a lot written about finding the right candidate.

However, what most organizations in this position don't think about doing--and where there is little guidance available--is to take the time to consider how the Artistic Director's role is going to change, how the Board's role is going to have to change to accommodate the new manager, and how the day to day life of the organization will change.

Without prior organizational planning and consultation about what responsibilities and authority the Artistic Director wants to surrender or is willing to surrender, the new General Manager or ED is going to be launched on a collision course and the organization will have a rough adjustment process. It will be very difficult for the new manager to be the change-management facilitator. Failure rates for first managers are high.

You know you want your manager's job description to complement the role of the AD, but, do you really know what your founding Artistic Director does in the organization or are you basing this on assumptions? Don't just ask him/her. You need to actually observe how time is spent. It may prove to be a different picture than the Board imagined. This observation can be accomplished best by job shadowing on a few days scattered through as long a period as possible. At the very least, much less reliably, ask your AD to keep a time chart for a week to indicate how time is spent.

What excites your Artistic Director? What part of the job do they really love and will they find hard to share or relinquish? Again, don't just ask them, but observe and reflect on past experience. They may believe that they love artistic planning but if planning is always late and haphazard but grant applications are always masterful and ontime, then the assertion that artistic planning is top priority might be suspect. Our actual priorities are not always the same as what we believe our priorities should be. Ignore this and you may hire an excellent grant writer as a manager but your AD, who it turns out loves the "thrill of the hunt" that grant applications entail, may refuse to surrender the grantwriting. Meanwhile your artistic and production planning may continue to be late and haphazard because no one in the organization is priorizing that work. If you have an AD who is best at some of the administrative roles associated with a manager, maybe you need a different configuration to complement that business savey. Perhaps you need an Artistic Administrator or Producer role.

Once you have done your homework on the strengths, weaknesses and interests of the AD, you are ready to construct a job description for your new manager that complements your Artistic Director. Be aware of clusters of responsibilities so as not to create fragmented roles that are unworkable.

Next consider the authority that must match the responsibilities that you have given each role. Imagine and forsee likely scenarios. For example, if you have given the Artistic Director full power over artistic planning and the new manager the responsibility for maintaining the organization's positive bottom line, what happens when the Artistic Director proposes a project that is not in the budget? Can the manager veto the project? Does the Board need to amend the AD's job description to require him/her to seek budget approval? This is a central issue that is the downfall of many AD/ED relationships. It needs to be understood by all members of the Board that vetoing a project because it is too costly or too late in the planning cycle for successful integration in the season, is not artistic interference. If the authority is not given to the manager in this instance then what will the process be? Will the Finance Committee of the Board make the decision?

Who ultimately is in charge? This may seem like a simple question but I have experienced an organization where the Board President on hiring the new manager believed that new role was one of sole organizational leadership, the new manager believed their role was one of joint leadership and the AD believed that he continued to be the overall organizational leader. Spell this out and make sure everyone is on the same page. Does your organizational chart reflect the correct structure? Have you changed the organizational constitution and bylaws if needed to reflect the new management role? Is your salary structure consistent with the organizational chart? For example, do you have someone paid as an outside consultant who is shown as an employee or manager on your org. chart? It is always dangerous and unethical to misrepresent an employee as a contractor but it is particularly inappropriate to have an outside contractor making day to day financial decisions and signing contracts for your company on a permanent basis. Yet some arts organizations don't consider the implications of having staff report to a contractor. Some board members may be unaware that their ED or AD is paid through a private service contract.


Who supervises junior staff? If you assume it will be the new manager, does your AD appreciate that he/she can no longer ask the nearest person to research something for him/her? Be realistic. There may be need to assign some staff support to the AD but that should be spelled out. What happens when this step is neglected? In all likelihood, the AD will continue to function as they have in the past, directing junior staff as they see fit. Junior staff will have two bosses with conflicting assignments. Good staff will suffer while opportunistic staff will manipulate in various ways. Your new manager will have their authority compromised in a way that will be hard for them to recover from.

Consider the planning/activity cycle for your organization in light of the job description you are giving your new manager and consider where you may need to finetune other job descriptions. If you have asked the new manager to provide a budget by April of Year One for the Year Two starting August 1, then when does your Artistic Director have to provide a completed program? A deadline for artistic planning must be set a month or more before the budget deadline. If you have set a deadline for the development of a season brochure or catalogue then artist decisions and contracting must be completed well before this deadline. Failure to consider these relationships in the planning cycle will leave your organization in the dark as to why things are delayed.

If information is power, what about corporate communications? Is your AD willing to keep a manager in the loop on program planning? Or will the new manager learn first about projects by seeing work junior staff has been asked to perform? The communications requirements that you set in place at the outset will determine the directional flow of communications.

Is your Board ready and able to support the new manager's role? Do you have a management committee in place? Is your Board stacked with personal friends of the AD, making it difficult for impartiality should conflicts arise? If so, you might want to consider expanding the Board with some new members. It's great to share the AD's vision as a Board, but you are also going to have to support your new manager. Lastly are there management roles that the board has taken on that now have to be signed over to the new manager. Often finance committee and marketing committee roles become less "hands on" with a new manager and this adjustment has to be foreseen and planned for.

Once you have considered all these questions, you should be in good shape to find a good manager for your organization and not lose time spinning your wheels in change mangement.

Tags: Arts Management, Leadership, Board Development

CBC changes--Letter from the President of the Canadian League of Composers

published with permission of the author:

Dear members of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage,

I am writing to you as President of the Canadian League of Composers, and request that you enforce the Broadcast Act of 1991 with regard to CBC radio.

Recent changes in CBC's broadcasts diminish the long-standing working relationship between Canadian composers of concert music and the CBC, as well as their required commitment as public broadcaster to provide rich, original content that reflects the diversity of Canada.

You may refer to my report on the meeting I had with CBC Senior Management <http://www.stopcbcpop.ca/CBC_New%20Music_Dec05.htm>.

Please note the lack of commitment to the Canadian Music composed by our membership of 400 composers (which, when added with the Canadian Music Centre's Associate Composers equals 1000 artists).

Most importantly, recent changes at CBC Radio Two meant the cancellation of Two New Hours, the only program dedicated to Canadian Art Music. It had a devoted and plentiful following, and its loss is devastating to our field. Moving more closely to the commercial broadcasting category of "Adult Contemporary". the CBC begins to emulate commercial radio, counter to its mandate as a culture-driven--not numbers-driven broadcaster. Radio One's programs Freestyle and The National Playlist are two recent examples of the move to commercialism prior to the recent changes at Radio Two.

Significantly, Canada was instrumental in formulating and signing a recent UNESCO act pledging to support and respect diversity of creation in all its forms. In making the current changes, we feel that the CBC is, by including content available on commercial radio, reducing the diversity of public broadcasting. Canadian poets, scientists, writers, composers, etc. are losing their place on Canadian Public Radio, and we request that the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage carefully review and enforce the CBC mandated role in our culture.

Unfortunately, as stakeholders in the CBC, we were not informed of this meeting, and are therefore unable to arrange our presence on such short notice, but as president of the organization representing Canadian Composers, I represent to you the collective views and concerns of our membership.

Sincerely,

Dr. Paul Steenhuisen

Tags: CBC, New Music, Public Radio

CBC kills Two New Hours

Two New Hours producer, David Jaeger with Norwegian composer/performance artist Maja Ratjke (left) and Canadian composer Melissa Hui (right) in happier times .

Canadian music has been dealt a serious blow by CBC in their decision to axe the award-winning show Two New Hours, the last broadcast bastion for the live presentation of new Canadian art music. This program was truly world-class, occupying a prestigious place in the international music community and among international classical broadcasters. Knowledgeably moderated by host Larry Lake and produced by Canadian composer, David Jaeger, it was a jewel that has been thoughtlessly cast aside.

Will CBC stop presenting Canadian art music entirely? No, it seems not, but the replacement show, The Signal, in its initial show has broadcast only a small sampling of serious Canadian music from recording. By relying on recordings rather than taping live concerts as Two New Hours did so successfully for 30 years, CBC is presenting the works of composers who have already met with some success, rather than being a launching pad for new voices. It has ceased to be a partner in the creation of a unique Canadian musical voice and canon.

How do we create a Canadian canon of music with so little support from our national public broadcaster? Canadian icons like R. Murray Schafer came to international attention in large part through their concerts being broadcast by CBC and through CBC exchanges with international public broadcasters.

What is happening at CBC? Their corporate communications all cite a need to appeal to a younger demographic and have a larger market share. Surely this is a problem for commercial radio rather than public radio. Is not the mandate of public radio to serve the interests of the development of a national body of art and to serve the interests of minorities within the population--those NOT served by commercial media. Surely there is a plethora of commercial radio stations serving the interests of teens and young professionals with a taste for pop culture. One might say, "serving the lowest common-denominator".

As an arts administrator I have become familiar with the basic criteria of Canadian national and provincial public funders when it comes to grants for Canadian performing arts. If it is populist it is deemed to not require public support, or require less support--the marketplace will fund it. If it has artistic merit but is unlikely to find an immediate audience--so not commercially viable--it is deemed to need support from the public sector. To give just one example: in 2001 I was serving as interim General Director of Opera Ontario when Canada Council of the Arts threatened to cut our funding in large part, because our opera seasons were--at that time--deemed as too "popular" in presenting standard opera repertoire rather than taking risks with new opera and less-performed works. We were encouraged to increase our presentation of Canadian works and Canadian artists to receive public funds. We made adjustments and commitments to new programming and a policy of presentation of Canadian artists to re-coup those funding cuts.

So why is CBC, a publicly-funded radio station being allowed to pursue a course of populist programming, when a regional opera company could not? And indeed once the CBC management has managed to wreck a national treasure--one of the things Americans have envied us for--and deliver radio and television just like their commercial "competition" will politicians not turn around and say, "why are we funding this"? I sure would.

Does the rush to serve the youth market even make sense?

It may have escaped the marketing braintrust at CBC but the older demographic that they have traditionally appealed to is not disappearing, but rather growing, as the baby boom matures--and older citizens will always be with us. The CBC seems to be saying, "if we don't attract young people, our audience members are all going to be dead in 10 years" but this is a very simplistic analysis. Every day people are getting older, so there are new people always entering the mature demographic that has a taste for thoughtful, challenging programming in news, opinion and the arts. And serious music has always appealed to a larger proportion of the older demographic than youth. This has been true for centuries.

The CBC move to axe Two New Hours was made quietly and swiftly before effective opposition could be mounted. Now that the changes at CBC Radio Two are in place, there is opportunity for the mature, sophisticated music community to speak out if their interests are no longer being served by their public broadcaster. We need to reclaim our public broadcaster. In the meantime, oddly enough, in the Toronto market, the classical music community is being best served by WNED FM from Buffalo, NY.

Radio culture used to flow the other way across the border.

Want to speak out?

Lobby your MP to keep CBC Radio Two free of commercial pop music

Find your MP here

Contact Mark Steinmetz head of CBC Two programming

Contact members of Heritage Canada committee responsible for commenting and recommendations on the role of CBC as a public broadcaster in preserving Canadian culture

Read another more informed and involved voice on the demise of Two New Hours.

(I will add more links to this post as I find them)

Tags: CBC, New Music, Public Radio

Mel Swart

There were a wealth of newspaper tributes to Mel Swart this week--one of the founders of Canada's New Democratic Party, dead at 87. I won't echo the tales that everyone has heard.

But I have a few personal memories that stick with me. Mel's example of a life-lived together with his various words of wisdom have always been a big part of my own definition of democratic politics at its best. And that's important to reflect on in times when we most often see democratic politics at its worst.

I'd met Mel first in the 1980's but I only really got to know him when I was working on Peter Kormos' 1996 campaign for the leadership of the Ontario New Democrats. This was an enterprise that most of us on the campaign team knew had a slim to no chance of ultimate success. Despite this realistic assessment, our view was that this initiative had to be undertaken in order to get some items of principle onto the convention floor for discussion. And in that latter task, we succeeded beyond our wildest dreams-- as issues which had been shut out of the leadership debate came to be its central focus.

During the campaign, I ran into people who said things to me like, "You're insane." "You people can't hope to win." "What are you doing?"

What these people didn't understand or had forgotten was the many successes of the NDP in opposition. You don't have to win to have a voice and, ultimately, the success of the ideas outlives the success of individuals.

Mel was the fundraising chair for that campaign. I was the media chair. I remember calling Mel on the phone the first time and cracking up at the phone message. First there was about 10 seconds of nothing but wind sound and then a crackling voice like an old Edison cylinder that began with ... "This is Mel Swart talking to you on a (pause and carefully enunciated) telephone answering machine... " crackle pop.. I asked people, "How long has Mel had that answering machine, anyway?" It turned out--to my surprise--that it was brand new.

Throughout the time that Mel had been an MPP in Ontario he'd never had an answering machine at home, was always listed in the phone book and answered his own phone. Only when he "retired" did he feel that it was permissable for him to put the public at a little distance by purchasing an answering machine. It was his unfamiliarity with the device that caused him to be awkward in recording his message.

In this regard and many others, Mel really believed himself to be a "public servant" and lived that way. It just didn't seem right to him that he should not be as available as possible to the people that elected him to help them in any way he could and he was famous for pinching every penny of the legislative budget he was given. He never took an apartment in Toronto. Instead he drove two or more hours back and forth to his home riding of Welland everyday, sometimes making it in time to attend mid-week events and meetings. Of course there are also a lot of stories of him crashing on his office couch and being seen tiptoeing to the Member's loo in the wee hours.

Perhaps the thing that sticks with me most was an anecdote that Mel related that seemed humorous at the time but took on broader meaning as I have reflected on it over the years. A group of us were shooting the breeze about campaigning in general when Mel said,

"Well people want to talk more than they want to listen. So when you've got nothing they think want to hear I think it pays to listen. I worked a few times on some just hopeless campaigns and I'd walk up and say just one thing, 'what are you thinking about the election.'"

"And then I'd shut up and let them talk."

" They'd spout off for a few minutes and no matter what they said, I'd just smile and say, 'You sound like a New Democrat to me!'"

" I'd leave them scratching their heads wondering what they had said that fit with our political program and my hope was that it got them thinking and listening more to what we were about. I don't know whether it did or whether it didn't, but it sure was better than arguing and leaving them angry and closed-minded."

It's a funny story and a clever strategy but it's more than that.

Mel was telling us that politics IS more about listening to the people than trying to ram any "key messages" down their throats. And politics at its best is about developing some positive ideas--a political program--and engaging people in thinking about those positive ideas and reflecting on them. Would this set of policies would improve things for their family and community? His advice was to engage people in supporting your positive ideas and you don't have to waste your energy in in negative attacks on the policies of other parties.

Mel was passionate about ideas but always able to separate a difference of opinion from respect for individuals. He could hate an opponent's viewpoint on one issue while liking the individual and respecting him/her on other achievements or opinions. This statesman-like stance is so at odds with the unfortunate divisive politics that have become the norm. Communities are helped when politicians across the political spectrum can work together on issues in common.


It's unfortunate that in recent years the NDP has been better at throwing people out than attracting new people to share in a positive vision. Most recently the furor surrounding an initiative to attract spiritual progressives comes to mind. Mel was all about listening, about bringing more people into a big tent of progressives that shared key values. It was that positive, inclusive, spirit that made me want to work for the NDP as a campaign worker, volunteer and staff member. I hope as we individually and collectively reflect on Mel's legacy it helps us all to find that spirit again.

Tags: NDP, Politics, Canada

CUIS Issue Follow-up

I have to report a change of heart at CUIS.

After blogging about my experience with CUIS, I forwarded a link to the entry to a communications person with a note about my disappointment.

Within an hour or two I received an email and then a phone call from a CUIS contact person reversing the decision to cancel my mother's home insurance. Did my blog entry make a difference? Who knows. But, this blog's stats show three log ins from the insurance provider in that time period. Screenshot of stats page below.

Certainly if I had done nothing my mother's insurance would have been cancelled.

I was told that there had been an error made by a "new call centre employee" and that this was totally opposed to the company mission. Well, I'd like to think that was the case but I dealt with three individuals over the past few weeks and each of them conferred with a supervisor before giving me an answer. One never called me back. The other two gave me the same answer--the policy would be terminated-- and I was told that a letter had been issued from the company to this effect, surely needing approval from a higher level. This leads me to think that anyone calling the contact number on their policy with a similar situation would receive this result. And unless they were able to access a higher level of decision-making through their own advocacy would lose coverage.

I congratulate CUIS on their speed at rectifying a poor decision but remain skeptical that this was an isolated poor call. It just shouldn't be this hard to get an insurance company to stand by a lifelong customer. But I'm sure glad that they made the right call in the end.

Warning for Families of Seniors insured with CUIS

Added Mar. 3. Be sure to read the follow up.

++++++++++++

Original Post:

What happens if your aging Mom or Dad take awhile to decide that they are no longer able to live in their own home?

The home might sit empty while Mom or Dad bounce back and forth from hospital/nursing care and while the family decides what to do. Usually you notify the home insurance company and pay extra for a temporary vacancy Rider while things are sorted out.

However CUIS refuses to issue such a Rider in these circumstances as proven by my own experience. And it's difficult to impossible to find a new insurer in these circumstances.

Yes CUIS the company associated with the Canadian Credit Union movement and with organized labour refuses to insure the homes of vulnerable seniors in their hour of greatest need.

With 18 days notice they are terminating the home insurance policy of the widow of one of the Stelco Workers that took part in the General Strike of 1946 in Hamilton Ontario.

If you think that's a shame give them a call at 1-800-810-2847. If you are insured with them and might face this situation in a few years change your insurance provider and let CUIS know that their callousness to one old lady and her family made you switch your policy now.

Tags: elderly, insurance, Elder Care

New money for the Arts in Canada

Artists, arts audiences, and arts lobbyists were gratified by the announcement in the Canadian federal budget of new money for the Arts in Canada, with $50 million to be applied in the 2006-2007 fiscal year and an additional $30 million for 2007-2008.

Organizations waiting in line for their first Canada Council operating grant got excited that this might be their year to gain some secure operating funds instead of depending on the ups and downs of one-time project funding exclusively.

Not so.

In Canada Council's newsrelease of October 2006, the method for allocating the funds was not spelled out although it was suggested that one possible way of allocating funds would be through,"a special competition (in the case of arts organizations which currently receive operating funding) or through the Council’s regular programs for individual artists and activities aimed at increasing public access to the arts."

Nowhere in the public announcement carried in newspapers across the country, nor in Canada Council's press release was it made clear that in fact the Council was going to priorize giving money to its existing operating clients. Yet when the , guidelines were announced to apply for the new funding this was the language "Guidelines. Who is eligible? Organizations currently receiving annual or multi-year operating funds may apply.

And what if your organization is not receiving annual or multi-year funding? The answer, "No further action is required at this time".

While the Council suggests that additional money is being allocated to project grants to help non-operating clients, I could not find anywhere on the site how much money is being allocated to which programs.

Note that to become an operating client of the Canada Council, an arts organization must already be in receipt of funding from their provincial arts council. To become a provincial client, you must be supported by any municipal funding body for which you may be eligible. Canada Council operating clients are among the oldest and richest arts organizations in the country.

My organization, the Toronto Philharmonia, has been in existence for 35 years, 30 years as a community orchestra--called at that time the North York Symphony--and spending the last 5 years as a professional orchestra. During that time we've given an annual classic music series, provided educational programs to local schools and offered adult education opportunities in music appreciation. Hardly a newcomer to Canadian arts.

But we are not operating clients of Canada Council. We've been told that we stand a scant chance of being funded under the professional orchestras program simply because there is a lack of funds in the program and our location in the mega-city (although serving the former borough of North York)makes us a low priority for funding. While nationally, music organizations receive an average of 30% of their budget through government funding, our orchestra has to raise 90% of its funding through private funders and ticket sales. Yet we are ineligible to apply for a share of the new funding. Is this fair? Is this what you expected to happen when the new arts funding was announced?

Once again, it appears that the rich arts organizations will get richer while smaller arts organizations serving local communities get the short end of the stick. If you don't think this is fair, please feel free to comment here but also let your local MP know that you'd prefer that new arts funding be distributed to the poorest arts groups in the country, not the richest.

Tags: Canada Council, Arts Funding, Arts Policy

Adult children's responsibilities for elderly parents

"When it comes to a child's legal duties to a parent, the courts are scarily unclear" notes a recent NOW Magazine article .

When you review articles and studies on the challenges facing the elderly in our Canadian society the emphasis is almost always on assuring that the elderly are treated with respect, maintain the ability to choose their own care as long as they are capable and are free from abuse by family or caregivers. A worthy goal that we all support.

But what obligations and rights do the adult children have when elderly parents assert their independence to live alone in unsafe conditions when their physical and mental capacities are diminished? In my own experience, the adult children are placed very much between a rock and a hard place. They feel the responsibility to preserve their parents' health, safety and protection from predatory opportunists but lack any power to make decisions to protect their parents from harm. It is a life filled with stress and worry for the adult child, interspersed with unpredictable and disruptive crises.

No matter what relationship may or may not exist with the parent, nor physical proximity to the parent, the expectation of the health care network will be that the adult child will provide the support to prop up what may be a silly and dangerous choice by your aging parent to live at home. This can translate into a daily barrage of phone calls from all levels of health care support services, concerned neighbours, volunteer visitors and others. What rights do adult children have to say, "this situation is no longer supportable? It is unsafe for you and outside of my ability to sustain for you?" "It is time for you to move to a supported living environment?"

Absolutely none.

Neighbours and community supports may be over-taxed and concerned for your parent and advise that the elderly person be housed in a supportive environment. However the adult child is powerless to force this choice on the elderly person and must cope the best way they can.

Even when the hospital or caregivers decide that your elderly parent is unable to make appropriate choices for their accommodation, this is open to legal challenge by the elderly person and in my own experience, an elderly person who was unable to recognize their grandchild or remember what they had for lunch that day, or where they were, was able to be declared competent to make their own decisions by a legal panel.

Simply put, the adult child finds themself in a position where they are possibly legally obligated to assure the safety of their elderly parent but prevented from making any rational decisions to assure that safety. The result is a nerve-racking existence in which one waits for the next call about a debilitating fall, or dealing with fallout from the signing of some contract with a confidence artist, or phone calls from distraught neighbours who are concerned or aggravated by bizarre behaviour.

When leaving elderly parents to their own devices is viewed as abandonment, coercing them into supportive housing is viewed as usurping their rights, and community supports fail to meet the need, the adult child is left with a situation in which the only "right" option is to give up their own life and career to nurse the elderly parent. This is suggested by health care professionals at a surprising rate and women who assert their right to maintain a career in mid-life rather than nurse their elderly mother can expect to face at least some negative comments and guilt-tripping from their parents support network.

In a society in which we no longer demand that mothers interupt their lives to be fulltime caregivers to children, why are we placing adult children--usually middle-aged women-- in this situation, understanding that some elderly parents may live miles away from their adult children's communities and even have been estranged for years? Not all families are happy ones and not all adult children wish to care for parents that they may have no fond memories of.

In my view responsibility has to equal authority. If an elderly parent has the authority to make a decision to remain in their own home then responsibility for making that situation work has to remain with them. If an adult child is increasingly given responsibility to support the parent in the home, then authority should be ceded to that caregiver to enable them to make the decision to change the elderly parent's living situation when necessary.

The elderly person should have the authority to make decisions for themselves but not to impose those decisions in ways that adversely affect the lives, marriages and careers of their adult children, sometimes for several years of disruption.

Bottled Water Boycott

I have been viewing with interest the development of a broadbased boycott of bottled water. When the United Church of Canada announced their endorsement of a boycott of bottled water, the issue hit the mainstream in Canada.

I find this a very heartening sign in several ways. First it signals that there are growing numbers of people who believe that some of the basics of life really should not have a price tag. Secondly it signals once again a growing alignment of the religious Left with the political Left, a coalition that is necessary to gain the broadbased support to challenge the populist support of the far Right.

Lastly, this issue is a very sophisticated one to have the populist appeal that it does. It is commonly taught in political campaign schools that the vast majority of the public cannot hold two ideas in their minds at the same time so political arguments cannot pose complex chains of logic...despite most political issues requiring two or more steps. Usually analysis of election results show that people have bought very simple arguments such as, "It's time for change", "Throw the bums out, they're crooked", or "Let's give them another chance" and tapping into those simple powerful messages is the way to win elections.

But let's look at the messaging in the bottled water boycott.

1. When I drink bottled water, I care less about the safety of tap water.
2. If everyone cares less about the safety of tap water, it may decline in quality.
3. If it declines in quality those who cannot afford bottled water will get sick from tap water.
4. Therefore bottled water is immoral, unethical and I will not buy it.

Fully four steps of political reasoning involved in this issue. Wow! And it is gaining momentum. We should all be encouraged.

Tags: Canada Council, Dance, Arts Policy

David Earle Wins Walter Carsen Prize

Something is going seriously RIGHT at Canada Council for a change!

This year's winner of the Walter Carsen Prize for lifetime achievement in the Arts is veteran choreographer, David Earle.

David is a brilliant choreographer and someone who has contributed so much to the education of young dancers also. But it is amazing in that he is an iconoclast who has followed his own path and practiced his craft largely outside of the metropolitan Toronto area where his career began. He took himself out of that melieu many years ago and has achieved as a result a unique artistic vision that is true to his soulful intelligent perceptions, uninfluenced by the passing fads of the cluttered, noisy big city arts scene. DanceTheatre David Earle is in residence in Guelph Ontario.

It's interesting that last year's winner was R. Murray Schafer, another brilliant artist who has most often chosen to work in smaller centres. Once in conversation with Murray, (I don't know whether he's written this thought down anywhere) he said that Canada has an erroneous idea that original art is usually generated in large metropolitan areas but historically that's not been the case. It is more often the case that the more isolated artist makes breakthroughs when they are free from constant influences of the artistic conventions of the day and pressures to conformity.

I think that the wonderful thing about the concentration of the arts in large cities is that it promotes excellence of practice through increased opportunities of artists to perform and present their work and through access to mentors and exemplars of excellence. But it does not usually give rise to great individuality.

Occasionally the arts world has been quite critical of R. Murray Schafer and David Earle. They've followed their artistic visions in directions that some arts critics have positively reviled. But looking at lifetime achievement arguably the most prestigious panel in the land has had the guts to say twice now that the outsider has contributed more to the course of Canada's artistic life than any number of conformists. Good for them and congratulations, David. You are truly the god of the dance!

New idea in the fight against false self-employment

Here's a new strategy for activists who want to fight back against this employment problem in Canada.

When businesses represent workers as self-employed when they meet all the requirements of employees, who should know better? Who should advise the employer that they are taking financial risks? Who is charged with the responsibility for ensuring that companies don't get socked with unexpected costs like paying back EI and CPP for several workers?

If your past or present deadbeat employer retains an accountant or has an accountant on their Board of Directors, why not file a complaint to that professional association. These individuals are supposed to be the financial watchdogs for the company's who employ them or the organizations that ask them to sit on their board of directors. If enough accountants are made the subject of complaints on this issue, perhaps the whole profession will wake up and treat this seriously.

If your company employs a CA find your provincial Chartered Accounting organization by visiting The Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants or if your company employs a CGA visit The Certified General Accountants of Canada to find your provincial association and complaints process.

Has a Canadian employer deprived you of contributions to EI and CPP?

If you've been a victim of the growing problem of false self-employment there IS something you can do.

While legitimate self-employment has some benefits for workers, too many vulnerable Canadian workers are being deprived of access to EI benefits when their jobs end and also deprived of employer contributions to their CPP making affected workers poorer when they retire.

When this happened to me I was very discouraged to find very little information available to help me. When I did find out that I could ask CRA (Canada Revenue Agency) for a determination of employment status, I was still discouraged by reports that this process could take 1 or 2 years before making its way through the bureaucracy.

I was angry. My employer was a non-profit, charitable organization supposedly concerned with social justice yet was treating employees inequitably and additionally ripping off the social safety net of the country. After friendly persuasion and patience got me nowhere, I decided to take action. I had been vocal about the inappropriateness of a staff member being paid as a self-employed contractor for some months without any notice being paid.

When I presented my employer with "Employed or Self-Employed a document from CRA, I succeeded in having my employer contributions started but the employer was still resistent to paying back contributions owing. I followed up by filing the appropriate CRA form to request an employment status ruling. So I am happy to report that my case was settled in a mere one month with the employer required to pay back CPP and EI payments.

Bubble Battle in Toronto

NewMindSpace, self-described purveyors of "cultural interventions and urban bliss dissemination, " brought their latest playful event to urban spaces in Toronto on the afternoon of July 2 with Bubble Battle, a flash mob of bubble blowers of all ages who filled the air at Queen and Bay with bubbles small, large, round, elongated. . . and mostly plentiful. The bubblers arrived on foot, via Subway and in small bicycle herds, sporting a collection of bubbling gear that was worthy of a Doctor Seuss book.


In Toronto these days, Queen Street is the happening place for artists and the alternative culture. It's a far cry from the staid, upscale galleries and cafes of Yorkville. These artists are alive and creating. They haven't been stuffed and mounted for display yet.


Bay Street on the other hand is the financial main thoroughfare of the city. A street of grey towers with hardly even a cafe along its downtown expanse to break the gloom.

So perhaps it was fitting that Toronto's "Bubble Battle" took place at the intersection of Queen and Bay. To mean, it was the only explanation of the word "battle" since certainly no one was battling anyone in the festive crowd that assembled. The bubbles and the mood of the assembled masses were a great antidote to the greyness of the city.

MORE PHOTOS.

Ornstein Report : Ethno-Racial Groups in Toronto, 1971-2001: A Demographic and Socio-Economic Profile--Laidlaw Panel Discussion April 25,2006

On April 25, 2006 the Laidlaw Foundation presented a forum at Innis Town Hall focusing on the findings of Dr. Michael Ornstein published in his report: Ethno-Racial Groups in Toronto, 1971-2001: A Demographic and Socio-Economic Profile, conducted and published by the Institute for Social Research at York University.

I really appreciated the way Ornstein addressed various myths and surmises that even people of great good will might have about the difficulties faced by both visible minorities and immigrants in Toronto. And it was great to hear the distinction made by panel participants between the problems of immigrants and the problems faced by visible minorities--where those problems are shared and where they are separate issues. Commentators were correct that the waters get muddied where these issues are confused.

Dr. Ornstein’s report is available for download on the Institute for Social Research web site: . Panelists discussing Dr. Ornstein’s findings and responding to audience questions were: Rick Eagan (St. Christopher House and the MISSWA project), Debbie Douglas (Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants) and Amanuel Melles (United Way of Greater Toronto).

Ornstein remarked that the role of social research statistics are to “provoke, intimidate and encourage” which he elaborated to suggest that such research provokes discussion of solutions, intimidates those who would promulgate myths and undermine positive initiatives and encourages community-builders.

For the most part the report and panel presentations were well-received by audience members, although one member of the audience criticized the report and presentation in not examining the roots of white privilege sufficiently and suggested that certain initiatives were racist in their intention and/or results. In this regard the audience member named the Safe Schools Initiative as unfairly excluding black students from school. Hmm. Since all students have an equal right to be free from bullying in their schools, this lone commentator’s remarks seemed rather off-base and out of step with the positive community-building spirit of the forum and subsequent efforts likely to gain momentum through the Ornstein report. Other commentators congratulated Ornstein on exposing the myth that the difficulties faced by visible minorities in Toronto were solely those of settlement due to recent immigration.

Congratulations to the Laidlaw Foundation on funding this research and making the public panel discussion possible.

Spirituality and Politics of the Left

I was a bit boggled by some comments in a recent article in The Toronto Star Faith in the Left . The Star reported that some New Democrats such as Tarek Fatah were suggesting that they might leave the party over recent initiatives to reconcile the party with those of us in the religious Left.

One is left wondering if Fatah, or others disturbed by recent initiatives in the NDP to reach out to the Religious Left have ever read the famous "New Jerusalem" speech of Tommy Douglas or understand the deep underpinnings of faith that were at the roots of democratic socialism in Canada? Does the term "Social Gospel" ring any bells of memory in the Party these days?

Beyond this particular issue, I was saddened by the all-too-typical narrowness of vision. For a party that espouses inclusivity, equality, and tolerance, the NDP can be remarkably intolerant a lot of the time. It seems to this New Democrat that if we keep throwing people out because they are "Too Left" like the Waffle or more recently, Barry Wiesleder& friends, or because they advocated strategic voting like Buzz Hargrove, . . . or whatever sin of the month. . . and God (if you'll excuse the expression) help us if you seem like could win an election because that probably means that you smell like a Liberal. . .so you should certainly be thrown out. AND in addition to this habit of throwing people out, other New Democrats keep storming out of the party voluntarily because they don't agree with all policy directions, we'll be left with a mighty small party.

Save on conventions, hold them in a phone booth.

Maybe that's alright. Maybe the Left needs a new beginning.

What is it with the current state of Left Wing politics in Canada that we can't establish one big tent that we can all feel comfortable under?

I'm reminded of the advertisement from the United Church of Christ that showed people being ejected from traditional churches. Are there those in the NDP that would similarly like to exclude people on the basis of religious faith? Is there a finger on the ejector button? Or are we only to be allowed in as second-class citizens and asked to park our religion at the door? That would be too bad, because leaders like Tommy Douglas and Martin Luther King arose BECAUSE of their faith and not despite it.

Tags: Left, NDP, Faith_based

Ageism

Maybe because yesterday was my birthday I'm thinking about the ageism that I've been encountering in recent years.

The Ontario Human Rights Commission asks the following:

Have you ever encountered questions, such as…

"Do you really think you could handle this job? You know it takes a lot of energy and enthusiasm. Besides, we are looking for someone with career potential."

"You don't need this training program. At your age, what would the benefit be?"

"Well, you are getting on. What do you expect at your age?"

When I read this I had to say, "Oh wow, have I!" About as soon as I turned 50 I began to hear exactly those remarks from some employers.

The Ontario Human Rights Commission tells us that "Such comments reflect ageism -- an attitude that makes assumptions about older persons and their abilities and puts labels on them. Ageism is also a tendency to view and design society on the basis that everyone is young. Age discrimination is a consequence of ageist attitudes."

I love the language about a tendency to design society on the basis that everyone is young. I remember a conversation that I had once with a younger co-worker who was asserting quite vehemently that a particular activity she was coordinating would suffer if older adults were included with younger adults--because it would be "less fun", the older adults would "feel uncomfortable" and be "less adaptable" and other generalizations. Boy, does that run contrary to my own real life experience. From the time I was a teen myself, some of my best times and growthful experiences have been obtained participating in groups with a healthy mix of ages. No generation is without its fun and adaptable members and no generation has cornered the market on sourpusses either!

It's worth repeating, "Ageism is also a tendency to view and design society on the basis that everyone is young". Oh, that makes me feel so sad, because I've always loved the company of the very young and the very old in my life. Yet I recognize that in the media, in advertising, in the structure of many activities we create this false generational rift. And the less time we spend with people of other age groups the vaster our ignorance and prejudice becomes.

One of the places where I most run into ageist assumptions is in the area of technological literacy. I often find employers and others making inaccurate assumptions about my computer savey. When they become aware that I am very computer literate, surprise is expressed. I've been complimented on being a "life-long learner" as though normal computer literacy in the workplace is unusual for a 50-something worker.

Again, my own experience is just the opposite. Those of us that came into the workforce around the same time as computers or just before, had to struggle with DOS, write batch files, work in word processing programs using on-screen codes that were the pre-cursors of html, and have a hands-on knowledge of our computer's system configuration. With this experience, we are well-positioned to trouble-shoot problems, learn and understand html code, and design and work with databases. By contrast I have trained a number of young workers whose sole computer experience has been gameplaying, surfing the Internet, and email. While those young workers who have specific business training generally come to the workplace well prepared to use business applications, many employers hire young workers from other programs of study assuming computer knowledge that is simply not there. Often it is those of us who have been in the workplace for some time who train these workers to mailmerge, make mailing labels and to use desktop publishing programs.

I have been told that mature students entering the community college system in Ontario, are more likely to be exempted from an intro computer course on the basis of their scores on a test of computer knowledge than students coming to community college directly from high school. This does not surprise me although it flies in the face of the myth that any given 12 year old is more computer literate than any given 50 year old.

So I found it thought-provoking to read the information sheet located on the Ontario Human Rights Commission's website. There's a printable pdf version of the sheet available--suitable for posting in any workplace. Worried that posting such a sheet might be unwelcome in your workplace? Do you really want to work for an employer who discriminates on the basis of age and is blind to the strengths of older workers?

Let's post this sheet broadly about the land and make sure that everyone knows that ageist remarks aren't just tasteless and baseless--they are a violation of Ontario's Human Rights Code.

Employed or self-employed? False-self employment is a growing poverty and equity issue for women workers.

Asked recently by the LEAF National Committee to complete a survey that included a recommendation of an issue warranting study by this national organization working in the area of women's legal issues, I suggested the issue of false self-employment. This is a growing issue for workers, affecting far more women workers than men, and one where women have found it difficult to obtain reliable information.

In Social Determinants Of Health: Canadian Perspectives, published by Canadian Scholars' Press in 2004, Dianne-Gabrielle Tremblay's analysed the effect of globalization upon employment security.

She looks at the "new boundaryless careers" — no longer based on a vertical promotion ladder but instead nomadic with horizontal movement and new forms of organization and collaboration: team work, networks and virtual communities.

While this flexibility may be positive for certain sectors, she writes, it entails "precariousness, lack of stability and the lack of a career for others" as well as "`false' self-employment, that is those who are dependent on one or more order-givers."

The whole concept of "job security" is in doubt, she suggests, and this is a major factor in health and well-being. Furthermore, she notes, "This is especially the case among Canadian women."

In the same year, 2004, Dr. Karen Hughes, author of Female Enterprise in the New Economy published by University of Toronto Press presented to the Canadian Standing Committee on the Status of Women. She identified false self-employment as a growing problem in which workers had neither the flexibility and empowerment of true self-employment nor the security and benefits of an employee entitled to the protection of Employment Insurance and CPP contributions. And when women have worked under a false self-employment arrangement and lose their jobs or retire, they are poorer than those women who had an employer who contributed to EI and CPP as required. So this really is an issue affecting women's economic health and equity in our society.

I'm surprised that two years later, it is hard to find a lot of information about false self-employment while it is a practice that continues to grow in an increasingly globalized marketplace.

While more than half of self-employed workers report that they are involuntarily self-employed and would prefer employment, it's fair to note that true self-employment works well for a lot of women. They are able to set their own hours, accept as many or as few jobs as they like, work flextime, work from home in some cases, while they are able to take appropriate tax deductions for their business expenses: tools, office, car and travel costs. Taking these deductions, they can invest in their own RRSP plan and also build savings to offset periods of shortage of work. This is a viable work choice for these workers.

How does false self-employment differ from this scenario? False self-employment occurs when the employee answers a job ad and the employer says, "you understand this is contract work?". This can be confusing. Many prospective employees might think that this only refers to the time period of the contract. That this is shortterm work. However the employer will then use meaningless codewords like "service agreement". What the employee is being told--whether they understand it or not--is that if hired they will be expected to perform like an employee (work regular hours in the employer's place of business, use company equipment, not accept work from other employers, be subject to company rules and evaluation procedures, etc.) BUT they will not have income tax deducted from their paycheque, no EI benefits will be paid on their behalf, and no CPP contributions will be made.

The worker may be misinformed that this is a legal practice or convinced that "everyone is doing it" in a particular business sector. The worker may be misinformed by the employer about the way that a lack of employee status could be of benefit to the worker--strategies that actually involve tax fraud and liability for the worker.

The employer engaging in this employment practice is breaking Canadian tax law, plain and simple.

The pamphlet that outlines the difference between an employee and the self-employed is available for download here. In brief summary: if you work more than 50% of your paid work hours in the employers' premises, if you use their tools, if you report to a boss, if you can't accept other contracts, if you can't determine your own hours of work, if you are paid a wage rather than taking profits from your business, if you can't hire someone else to do your job for you (sub-contract) then--you are most-likely an employee under law. If you are a Canadian worker and believe that you are an employee but your employer is classifying you as self-employed to avoid paying benefits you can file a form to request that Canada Revenue conduct an investigation to determine your employment status.

Who are the employers who are engaging in this shoddy practice--dodging paying their fair share towards the social safety net in our society? It's surprising but a number of non-profits and arts organizations supported in a large part by government grants are among the worst offenders. There seems to be a mindset there that because their cause is so important, it's okay to treat workers in a cavalier fashion, and that any worker who wants even the minimal protection afforded Canadian workers is somehow selfish and less-dedicated to whatever "cause" the organization supports. Or, in some cases, the organization's Board of Directors has a misguided notion that they will be less financially responsible if they avoid having an employer relationship with a lone administrator or general manager of a small non-profit. Boards may believe that they have less financial risk by mis-representing the employment relationship. Sometimes there is a belief that it will be easier to terminate a worker if unsatisfactory or if a grant ends.

But what's the truth?

First, organizations who espouse high ethical principles should start with their own workers and contribute to the overall health of society just on principal. But pragmatically, when organizations or companies misrepresent the employment status of workers they are not helping themselves but rather exposing themselves to financial risks. If it is found that a worker's status has been represented, the employer can be forced to pay both the employee and employer's share of all remittances owed to the Receiver General for the employment period in dispute. Rather than skinting the government and saving money, the employer may have to pay double. In addition, any action the employer takes that may be in violation of provincial labour law can be liable to penalty if the Employment Standards branch rules that the worker's status was that of an employee under law. Companies have to ask themselves whether fooling some workers some of the time into believing that they have no rights if they sign a self-employed contract (while working as employees) is worth the financial risks, potential bad publicity and plain bad karma.

But what if the worker wants to represent their work as self-employed?

Certainly it might be very tempting for low-income earners to want to avoid paying their share of income tax and benefit contributions. But is it fair of employers to lure gullible, cash-strapped and ill-informed workers into a dangerous deception? If these workers fail to pay taxes at all, hoping to slip under the radar, they are liable to huge fines and back taxes at a future time. If the worker misrepresents themselves as self-employed and claims self-employed deductions such as computer, office supplies, home office and car expenses, they will have a huge problem supporting these deductions when it becomes clear that they spent their full work day in the employer's premises, using the employer's equipment. The worker is forced to lie through their teeth and take all the risks of that in order to gain the benefits of the self-employed status that the employer has falsely assigned to them. Not only is the employer lying but the worker is tempted, even coached by some employers, to lie in order to avoid a crushing tax bill. Should the worker refuse to lie, pay their taxes as the employed person that they were under the definition of Revenue Canada--while being unable to produce a T-4 slip as required--alarm bells will ring and once again the employers who thought to avoid responsibility, cost and make their lives simpler--will find their lives suddenly very complicated.

I'd like to see LEAF and other women's and workers' rights organization make more information available on this subject and where warranted take employers to court. I see education as key because I believe that both employers and workers are very misinformed on this issue. When government-supported non-profits engage in this practice it seems doubly wrong. It's a case of biting the hand that feeds you. Provincial and federal governments are losing money for social programs when workers are forced into false self-employment. I'd like to see policies in place that require the re-payment of government grants by organizations who avoid their financial responsibilities to workers. I'd also like to see clear employment protections in place for workers who whistle-blow on employers engaged in employing workers while not affording them their legally required employment benefits.

I'd welcome emails from anyone facing this situation and I am considering ways of taking this issue forward politically. If there is any group out there already doing this, I'd like to know about it!

Rabbi Michael Lerner speaks in Toronto

Last night, April 4, at Innis Town Hall at the University of Toronto, Rabbi Michael Lerner--author of The Left Hand of God: taking back our country from the religious Right—tackled a question a lot of us on the political Left ask from time to time. Why do working class people so often vote against their own self-interest? But being American, Lerner no longer speaks of the working class and so he asked the question about an ill-defined “middle class”.

It was an opening that set the tone for the evening. The questions that Lerner tackled in his well-reasoned lecture were of global perspective, but his particular focus and experience were clearly American.

At the root of political dissatisfaction, he argued, is a spiritual crisis that affect our whole western society. One of the symptons is that people feel their friendships and relationships are becoming "thinner" and more selfish. People are taught to “network” instead of forming real friendships-- to only give what they can expect to get back. The broad acceptance that this is the way the world works leads to individual cynicism about the quality of friendship and to great loneliness. Lerner's research shows that people yearn to be valued and loved for themselves and their deeper qualities.

Meanwhile romantic relationships exist in what Lerner refers to as the “dating Supermarket” in which individuals taste new partners for what adventures in experience they might bring. Marriage commitments are based, he says, on a judgment call about who will meet the most needs out of the pool of all possibly obtainable partners. Both partners realize they could be beat out by future competition. This leads to huge insecurity and the older, poorer, and less attractive the individual the higher the insecurity factor.

In the work world, employees feel that they are disposable cogs in the wheel. While people long for more meaningful work, the unions tend to only see and hear the demand for higher wages. When working people cannot find an intrinsic sense of value in their work, they can only push for higher wages to try to buy some time in the future to explore more meaningful things in life.

The Religious Right, Lerner argues, has sensed this spiritual hunger and spoken directly to those that feel de-valued in our society. Lerner finds a surprising similarity in their message to that of the Women’s Movement of the 60’s. The Women's Movement in speaking to women’s anger about being de-valued told women, “you’re not the problem. It is Society that is lacking the proper values and attitudes.” In like fashion, the Religious Right is saying to the over-worked and under-valued working class, “you’re not the problem. You’re not a failure. It is society that has the wrong values.” And while the Left would agree that working people are not the problem and society has the wrong values, the Religious Right goes on to blame this lack of human values on various scapegoats--an "other" that they can de-mean. In the USA, the “demeaned other” has included: blacks, gays, feminists and, with growing support and confidence has now expanded to "all liberals." All that it takes is to pin the “selfish” label on the demeaned group, to make them appear to be a part of the “me-first” spiritual crisis that has led so many individuals to feel rootless and invisible. At the same time the Right is supporting supremely selfish actions domestically and internationally.

How do they keep getting away with this clear contradiction?

In large part, Lerner argues, because the Left does not see the pain of the spiritual crisis. And the Right steps into that void. Here, Lerner's arguments resonated with the view articulated in the 2004 bestselling book, What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America by Thomas Frank . But in addition to not reaching out to the spiritual crisis in America, Lerner, states that the Left compounds their error by turning off people of faith. Any spiritual talk turns a lot of Left-wingers off. They hear it as some sort of New Age mush without intellectual rigor, or they mistake it for a form of Right Wing fundamentalism. And on top of the Left’s misunderstanding of individuals with a spiritual mindset, Lerner notes that the Left has a tendency to be religiophobic to the point of conveying to religious people that they can only be accepted into Left-wing political organization if they “park their spirituality at the door.” And it would appear that he hit a nerve of common experience in the Toronto audience as there was an exclamation of recognition and an outburst of “yes(!!)” as he made this observation.

Lerner is involved in organizing a political movementsThe Network of Spiritual Progressives and was partly in town hoping to recruit more members into this fold. He saw the goal of his organization as focused on two issues: 1) Calling and exposing the misuse of God by the religious Right to justify their war-mongering and selfish agenda, and 2) Challenging the religiophobic views of the traditional Left.

On the last point, Lerner suggested that even self-interest ought to lead the Left to moderate its critical and belittling attitude towards individuals with religious beliefs as he noted that the majority of Americans are believers. But, in turning once again to the model of the Women’s Movement, he suggested that it is not going to be enough for religious people to be merely “tolerated” in Left political organizations. Just as women educated those political movements that they brought skills and a perspective that was unique and valuable to the Left, so religious individuals bring a valuable perspective. Lerner remarked that the Left was never stronger in the US than when it had great religious leaders like Martin Luther King, jr. as key spokespeople. I wanted to yell out, “Tommy Douglas in Canada!” And I wish I had because in the midst of a great, thought-provoking speech I kept wishing for more of an informed nod to the Canadian experience and--as a member of the traditional religious Left—more of an informed look at the experience of existing religious Left organizations such as the Catholic Worker Movement, Christian Peacekeepers, the Society of Friends (Quakers), or as one young women in the audience requested, a look at the Unitarian experience. The response to this question, that involved some very specific US experience with the leadership of some Protestant religions seemed hugely off-base to much of the puzzled Canadian audience. Not only did Lerner not address the question about what the Unitarians could do differently to communicate their political message better, he seemed unaware of their strong political stand in Canada—and the fact that Unitarians are neither Protestant or Christian in any narrow sense.

In all a useful and thought-provoking lecture and I left with the book in hand. However, on the basis of this lecture, I feel that if Lerner’s movement is to travel outside of the USA, there is going to have to be more informed understanding of the history, political challenges and strengths of the international community. But perhaps even more, Lerner and his movement, need to understand, include and ally themselves with those of us in the religious Left who are part of existing movements with long traditions—some stretching back to post-Reformation traditions. But certainly his main message was in harmony with a lot of us in attendance, a lot of pamphlets giving information on joining the Network of Spiritual Progressives were picked up at the event. Perhaps Toronto will give its own multi-cultural, multi-faith perspective to what is--at core--a great idea whose time is past-due.

In the Company of Women

This past week I actually managed to get myself to a LEAF (Women's Legal Education and Action Fund) Toronto meeting after months of schedule conflicts that have prevented me from getting there and helping push along the work of this organization that has been key to so many important court decisions and educational initiatives impacting on the rights of Canadian women.

It was phenomenal to be once again in the company of a group of social-activist, intelligent and yes despite the popular misconception that feminists have no sense of humour. . . funny women.

Ideas flew fast and furious. (And NO, right-wing, anti-equity readers I'm not going to tell you what those ideas were, so you can leave now.)

I probably was perceived as a bit of a babble-head but it had just been SO LONG since I'd been in the midst of like-minded women. (Apologies for babbling to all you LEAFERS reading this.)

Our chairperson had a small baby so I'm sure that babykins thought that this group of women surrounded him with the sole purpose of a baby-admiration society. He was more interested in peek-a-boo and party than nursing, that's for sure! It was a multi-tasking women's ballet of baby play, supper assembly, serious social action and occasional cat-herding (real cats) as family cats stalked the buffet table lasagne.

Ah, it was an organizing meeting such as only feminists cook up. It was productive, it was fun and I felt like.. . . "I'm HOME!!"