2. Inclusion and growth
Tensions and opportunities
Investments I n publ I c infrastructure in Canada have long been viewed as investments in future prosperity. Significantly, however, prosperity—or economic growth—can be inclusive or exclusive, with massive implications for well-being. In addition to supporting resilience and sustainability (see more below), an inclusion lens can provide a vision for growth that benefits everyone and our planet.
One must first recognize that public infrastructure represents far more than a means of economic growth. Water filtration plants and sewage systems are examples of upstream public infrastructure investments that contribute to public health. Investments in social housing contribute to belonging and personal safety—safe and affordable housing is a basic human right and a core social determinant of well-being. Investments in affordable and accessible public transit enhance social connectedness and engagement, enabling people to get to work, to go shopping and to participate in community activities in ways that are sustainable and make peoples’ lives better.
The opposite is true, too. Prioritizing investments in roads and highways over complete streets makes communities less inclusive by compromising enjoyability and safety for those who use public or non-motorized forms of transportation. Failure to resolve long-standing contaminated water problems in Indigenous communities is not only a blatant compromise of public health, it reinforces and perpetuates inequities that are baked into
colonialism. Shifting public infrastructure investments in health care, longterm care, child care, and other care services into public-private partnerships (P3s) prioritizes profits over public good, with well-established negative consequences for communities.5
In short, our built environments, the care economy and ownership models can either promote inclusion—and, thus, resilience, sustainability, and well-being—or negate it. Inclusion is the glue that binds. Yet, in the context of infrastructure planning, inclusion is often ignored or it takes a back seat to growth.
Privileging growth over inclusion, or pitting them against each other, presents an enormous lost opportunity. In its recent report on considerations for an inclusive economy, McKinsey & Co. address this perceived tension between inclusion and growth, noting that “the false belief that [growth and inclusion] should be addressed separately…has hampered efforts to pursue and achieve inclusive growth.” In fact, they go on to say, “insufficient economic inclusion is a threat to prosperity.”6 Indeed, exclusion from social and economic mobility threatens prosperity, especially the goal of shared prosperity.
Thus, prosperity itself demands an inclusion lens to economic growth. Unfortunately, this rarely occurs, because the pursuit of economic growth for its own sake is rarely questioned. In other words, we rarely ask: Growth of what? For whom? Who decides?
Our focus on economic growth often centres on Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Yet the GDP fails to measure the consequences of prioritizing growth over resilience, sustainability and inclusion. For example, growth based on natural resource extraction jeopardizes sustainability for all species and for the planet. Growth based on oil and gas fuels boom/bust cycles, jeopardizing community sustainability and resilience. Growth based on delivering more and more profits to corporate shareholders jeopardizes economic inclusion, and thus other forms of inclusion, because those higher profits are extracted from workers’ wages, fuelling extreme income inequality.
Even Simon Kuznets, who developed the GDP as a measure of economic growth, acknowledged its limitations, emphasizing that “the welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measure of national income.”7 Contemporary scholars agree. In his monograph Imperialism in the 21st Century, John Smith wrote, by using the “GDP as a measure of economic performance, our governments pursue policies that strengthen the market at the expense of informal economic areas, such as household services, the care economy, and the gift economy.… GDP data imperfectly portray a
FIGURE 1
INCLUSION IS THE VALUE THAT INTERCONNECTS WITH RESILIENCE, SUSTAINABILITY AND GROWTH
SUSTAINABILITY
RESILIENCE
INCLUSION
GROWTH
world marked by gross inequality between rich and poor countries, yet at the same time conceal the exploitive, imperialistic relation between them.”8
A narrow focus on GDP growth assigns all value to market growth, to returns to capital, whether or not it is sustainable in the short- or long-run. Such a narrow focus requires exploitation of human and natural resources. It relies on perpetual resources and denies the quiet, and not so quiet, limits of this earth. As a goal on its own, growth can thus work at cross-purposes to goals of resilience, sustainability, and inclusion. It does so through policy incoherence, where the objectives of policy in one sector offset, or work against, those in other sectors; and failure demand, where activities pursued in the interest of economic growth cause harm to people and the planet, which then require governments to spend money to try to fix those harms.9
By centering inclusion, we can address these considerable drawbacks of the GDP and an outsized reliance on it. Inclusion can inform our benchmarks for growth (who benefits and how?), for resilience (income adequacy is key to human resilience, greater equality is key to community resilience), and for sustainability (inclusion is the bedrock). Inclusion is about maximum benefit for the majority of the people.
Overall, inclusive infrastructure planning doesn’t simply look at physical infrastructure, although how we build roads and plan inner cities and service rural, Northern and remote communities fundamentally shapes inclusion or exclusion. Inclusive infrastructure planning also looks at the social infrastructure that people within any community need to engage, to belong, to survive and thrive.
Inclusive infrastructure and building back better
The global COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the significant inequities entrenched in our systems. Who is most likely to be exposed to the virus, to get sick and die, and to be most negatively impacted by insufficient public health measures to contain spread has not been random and arbitrary. It is strongly patterned along dimensions of exclusion and situated within political and socio-economic contexts.
In many cases, these inequities are connected to infrastructure and community planning. For example, COVID-19 deaths in long-term care facilities remain “a tragic symbol of neglect” of our elders; speaking to the political economy of care, these fatal COVID-19 outcomes were far worse in for-profit facilities than in those operated on a public or non-profit basis.10
Low-income communities with dense populations in Canada were among the hardest hit by the first few waves of the pandemic.
We can accept and perpetuate these inequities or we can embrace the opportunity for a bold vision. Motoko Aizawa submits: “The global health crisis has left us no choice but to demand a transformative future where more adaptable, flexible, multi-purpose and inclusive infrastructure can help society stay resilient in the face of looming threats.”11 Indeed, there will be more pandemics. There will be greater pressures on communities to adapt to consequences of the climate emergency. There will continue to be inequities in how these events are experienced and who is most impacted by them.
A focus on inclusion can help to strike a balance between being prepared for the worst and imagining the very best: a Canada where all infrastructure planning is premised on inclusion principles, such as equity, belonging, ability to access everything that a community has to offer and to fully engage in society.
To do so, Aizawa emphasizes the importance of “systems thinking” to these challenges, including “lessons learned from turning convention centres, sports arenas and airports into hospitals. Of transportation systems that bring people to hospitals, as patients and as essential workers. Of our changing views of stranded assets—restaurants, malls, train terminals, airports—which can be found everywhere at the moment. And there is a renewed interest in getting the right mix of economic and social infrastructure with better connectivity.”12
Indeed, the need to address both social and physical infrastructure in an inclusive way could not be more pressing. In Mission Critical, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ 2022 Alternative Federal Budget, which is grounded in principles of inclusion and equity, we identify several specific examples and considerations for inclusive infrastructure, including:13
• Prioritize social infrastructure such as public health, affordable housing, broadband access, early childhood and post-secondary education,
• Recognize the invisible work of caregivers in child care centres, home care agencies, and shelters for those fleeing violence, among others,
• Recognize that traditionally feminized caretaking is just as essential to the functioning of the economy as roads and bridges are,
• Ensure that design of roads and sidewalks encourages walking and cycling rather than vehicle traffic jams,
• Ensure that every neighbourhood has life-enhancing and inclusive features, such as public parks, green space (e.g., forests, meadows) or blue space (e.g., community pools),
• Insist on public transit systems that are accessible, free of charge, and take into account gendered, classed, and generational elements of transit use.
3. Inclusive infrastructure
Conceptual frameworks for connecting the dots
b u I ld I ng on our narrative above, and hopefully coming as no surprise to the reader, we argue that a vision for inclusive infrastructure must be situated within a broad vision for an inclusive society. We are in a very significant historical moment, in which we can advance a bold and broad vision. Recent and substantial changes to public health (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic), our environment (the climate crisis), and our democracies (e.g., the Russian invasion of Ukraine) reflect decades of a global neoliberal economic paradigm which, through its emphasis on privatization, deregulation, and trade liberalization, has eroded our communities and our publics. Although cracks in the neoliberal façade are showing, a coherent, alternative paradigm has not yet emerged.14 There is an important opportunity to engage deeply to work toward the kind of society that we want (e.g., one anchored in inclusion as a central value) as well as where and how existing activities (e.g., infrastructure) will fit.
Fortunately, citizens and experts have risen to the challenge of articulating visions for a new paradigm that is premised on an inclusive society, from which implications for inclusive infrastructure can easily be drawn. Below, we highlight conceptual frameworks originating from three sectors—public health, economics, and climate change—that, despite their different origins,
FIGURE 2
COMMISSION ON SOCIAL DETERMINANTS OF HEALTH CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
SOCIOECONOMIC AND POLITICAL CONTEXT GOVERNANCE
MACROECONOMIC POLICIES
SOCIAL POLICIES
LABOUR MARKET, HOUSING, LAND
PUBLIC POLICIES EDUCATION, HEALTH, SOCIAL PROTECTION
CULTURE AND SOCIETAL VALUES
SOCIOECONOMIC POSITION
SOCIAL CLASS GENDER ETHNICITY (RACISM)
EDUCATION
OCCUPATION
INCOME
STRUCTURAL DETERMINANTS
SOCIAL DETERMINANTS OF HEALTH INEQUITIES
IMPACT ON EQUITY IN HEALTH AND WELL-BEING
SOCIAL COHESION AND SOCIAL CAPITAL
MATERIAL CIRCUMSTANCES
LIVING AND WORKING, CONDITIONS, FOOD AVAILABILITY, ETC.
BEHAVIORS AND BIOLOGICAL FACTORS
PSYCHOSOCIAL FACTORS
HEALTH SYSTEM
INTERMEDIARY DETERMINANTS
SOCIAL DETERMINANTS OF HEALTH
Source: https://www.who.int/social_determinants/corner/SDHDP2.pdf
are highly consistent and complementary in terms of providing structure and inspiration for a trans-sectoral vision.
Conceptual framework example #1: Social and ecological determinants of health
Our health and well-being are strongly influenced by the circumstances in which we are born, grow, live, work, and age, including the quality and integrity of our natural environments. This is the premise of an important and voluminous body of work on the social and ecological determinants of health.15
Despite an unfortunate and pernicious tendency by members of publics and politicians to conflate ‘health’ with ‘health care’ or with individual behavioural choices, there is, in fact, long-standing recognition in Canada and elsewhere that health and well-being are strongly connected to broader social, economic, and political circumstances, and that achieving health for all requires an interconnected vision; one that connects the dots between these domains in a way that aligns strongly with equity and inclusion as guiding values.
The 1986 Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion, for example, recognized that health (understood as a resource for everyday life that includes physical, mental, and social well-being) depends on several fundamental conditions, including peace, a stable ecosystem, sustainable resources and equity. The charter was explicit in recognizing that providing conditions for health for all requires going beyond health care, to build healthy public policy (i.e., recognize the consequences for health and well-being of decisions in all government sectors and levels); create supportive environments (i.e., take a socio-ecological approach, which includes protecting natural environments, conserving natural resources, and ensuring that work and leisure are a source of health); and strengthen community action (i.e., provide conditions for empowerment of communities), among other action areas.16
About 20 years later, the World Health Organization convened, “in the spirit of social justice”, a Commission on Social Determinants of Health focused on health equity (i.e., differences in health between social groups that are judged to be unfair and avoidable). The commission, which was tasked with compiling evidence and fostering a global movement, famously asserted in its 2008 final report that “social injustice is killing people on a grand scale” and that health inequities are “…not in any sense a ‘natural’
tAble 1 Examples of priority areas and activities identified by the World Health Organization Commission on Social Determinants of Health (2008) to achieve health equity. Inclusive infrastructure plays a central role in this vision.
Focal area
Improve daily living conditions
Equity from the start
Healthy places, healthy people
Fair employment and decent work
Social protection across the life course
Universal health care
Examples
High-quality, accessible, affordable childcare and early learning
Manage urban development to ensure greater availability of affordable housing; ensure that urban planning promotes healthy and safe lifestyles for everyone; ensure that policy responses to emergencies (e.g., climate emergency) are guided by equity
Emphasize full and fair employment; ensure safe, secure, and fairly-paid work; improve working conditions for all workers
Ensure social protection that supports a level of income sufficient for healthy living; and that includes those normally excluded
Strengthen public sector leadership for health care that is equitable and that emphasizes health promotion and prevention
Tackle the inequitable distribution of power, money, and resources
(Health) equity in all policies, systems, and programs
Fair financing
Market responsibility
Gender equity
Place responsibility for action on equity at highest levels of government; establish equity as marker of government performance
Strengthen public finance for action on social determinants of health; fairly allocate government resources to that end
Reinforce the primary role of the state in the provision of basic services, and the regulation of good and services that harm health
Address gender biases in structures of society (laws, organizations, measurement); develop and finance policies and programs that close gender gaps
Political empowerment Empower all groups in society through fair representation in decision-making; enable civil society to organize and act in a manner that promotes and realizes political and social rights affecting equity
Good global governance
Embed equity into international agreements; strengthen WHO leadership in global action on social determinants of health
Measure and understand the problem and assess the impact of action
Action towards enhanced capacity for monitoring, research, and intervention
Ensure routine monitoring systems for equity; invest in generating and sharing new evidence on social determinants of health and effectiveness of measures to strengthen equity; provide training and raise public awareness about equity.
phenomenon but [are] the result of a toxic combination of poor social policies and programmes, unfair economic arrangements, and bad politics.” The commission’s overarching recommendations to achieve health equity, to “close the health gap in a generation”, were: 1) Improve daily living conditions; 2) Tackle the inequitable distribution of power, money, and resources; and 3) Measure and understand the problem and assess the impact of action.17 As shown in Table 1, this framework provides a way to organize thinking about and approach infrastructure in ways that embed considerations of equity and inclusion.
More recently, an intersectoral approach to well-being and health equity has evolved as a health in all policies approach, which systematically considers the health implications of public policy decisions across sectors, to seek synergies and to avoid negative consequences for well-being and health equity.18 There have also been recent efforts to strengthen the integration of social and ecological determinants of health,19 including through the lens of well-being economics (see more in the next section).20
Collectively, frameworks stemming from work on social and ecological determinants of health emphasize upstream factors that are the root causes of poor health and inequities in health. They thereby direct attention to improving health and well-being for all by improving social, economic, and political circumstances. Inclusive infrastructure, including structures, supports, and services that benefit everyone, has a clear and significant role to play in this vision.
Links to social outcomes frameworks
An example of social and ecological determinants of health frameworks at play is Australia’s Northern Territory’s social outcomes framework,21 which aims to ensure that “all Territory individuals, families and communities are inclusive, healthy, safe, resilient and thriving.” The framework is based on seven domains that are aligned with social and ecological determinants of health: (1) Territorians are able to live healthily and safely, (2) Territorians have appropriate and secure housing, (3) Territorians are connected to culture and community, (4) Territorians are able to learn, contribute and achieve, (5) Territorians are safe, (6) Territorians are financially secure and have material basics, and (7) The Territory has a natural and built environment that supports a high quality of life. Implementation of the social outcomes framework in the Northern Territory is premised on a “whole of government” approach to achieving the framework’s outcomes.
Whole of government approaches, according to the United Nations (UN)22 involve “the movement from isolated silos in public administration to formal and informal networks.” A trend toward such integrated approaches, the UN says, is “driven by various societal forces such as the growing complexity of problems that call for collaborative responses, the increased demand on the part of citizens for more personalized and accessible public services, which are to be planned, implemented and evaluated with their participation, and the opportunities presented by the Internet to transform the way the
government works for the people.” The United Nations noted the need for a national strategy, strong leadership, and defined shared needs.
In its social outcomes framework, the Northern Territory sets out a broad range of outcome indicators and measures that would cut across the whole of government. Several indicators directly connect to inclusive social and physical infrastructure considerations; for example:
• Increase the proportion of Territorians living in appropriate (i.e., safe, affordable) housing,
• Increase the proportion of homeless Territorians exiting specialist homelessness services to stable housing (i.e., secure tenure),
• Increase the use of active transport by ensuring that infrastructure does not create barriers to social inclusion,
• Increase the use of public transit,
• Increase active living and social inclusion through planning and design in land use plans,
• Increase the number of attractive, safe and inclusive public spaces and neighbourhoods,
• Increase environmentally friendly buildings,
• Increase and diversify recreational opportunities in urban/built areas,
• Increase the quality ratings of schools and child care settings.
The goal of this framework, which is clearly grounded in social and ecological determinants of health, is greater social inclusion and well-being. To achieve this goal, it takes a whole of government approach, where no single government department is responsible for its implementation; consistent with a broad vision of an inclusive society, in which inclusive infrastructure figures prominently, responsibility necessarily cuts across all of government.
Conceptual framework example #2: Well-being economics
Economics, broadly defined as the social science concerned with production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services, as well as wealth,23 underpins government policies and practices that influence peoples’ lives
in many ways. Examples include income transfers, which influence income security and material resources; tax policy, which strongly shapes a population’s distribution (level of inequality) of income and wealth; spending decisions, which determine quality and access to public services; and the nature of interaction with private companies (e.g., regulations, subsidies), which can support or harm (e.g., in the case of companies that exploit and thereby exclude workers) well-being and inclusion.
Although ‘the economy’, in public discourse, is often portrayed as singular, fixed, neutral and technical, this is not an accurate depiction. 24 All societies have an economy, whose purpose is determined through highly social and political processes.
As we discuss in our introductory comments at the beginning of this document, our current economy of neoliberal capitalism has the purpose of monetary growth (often measured using the GDP): it serves to protect and promote the accumulation of private wealth, and it uses economic policy to do so. Unfortunately, this economic paradigm is very problematic from the point of view of inclusion. The benefits of economic growth accrue mostly to those who already have high levels of income and wealth, while incomes at and near the bottom of the income spectrum in Canada, and elsewhere, have stagnated. This results in growing levels of inequality, which directly erode inclusion.25 Our narrow focus on economic growth also leads to ecological degradation on a massive scale because, rather than valuing the benefits of nature to society, our economic paradigm permits, and even encourages, activities that destroy our ecosystems, the local and global implications of which are highly inequitable and insurmountable if not urgently addressed.26
Progressive, or heterodox, economists question these hegemonic foundations of our society. They advance critiques of dominant economic policies and institutions based on their consequences for well-being and inclusion, and they offer alternatives. Significantly, by placing economics into historical and socio-political context, progressive economists make the hegemony visible, open to broader understanding and discourse, and, thus, open to change. Progressive economics thereby embraces a democratic (or inclusive) economics, which recognizes that everyone is part of, and thus has a voice in, the economy.27
An example of an alternative to neoliberal capitalism is a well-being economy. In contrast to the purpose of our current economy (narrowly defined monetary growth), the purpose of a well-being economy is to improve and support the quality of life of all people and the planet. Its guiding principle is, thus, community well-being, conceptualized as a resource for everyday
living that supports meaningful participation in social and political life for all (i.e., inclusion). It gives primacy to equity (fair distribution of resources and opportunities, so that everyone can participate in society with dignity) and ecological sustainability (reducing impact on the natural environment and preserving biodiversity), thus contrasting sharply with neoliberal capitalism, which works directly against these goals.28
Doughnut economics, developed by progressive economist Kate Raworth, provides a model, or conceptual framework, for a well-being economy that can provide structure to guide inclusive infrastructure. The framework recognizes that humanity’s greatest challenge is to meet the needs of everyone, within the means of the planet. As shown in Figure 3, the “doughnut” illustrates the dual imperatives of ensuring that no one is left behind when it comes to the essentials of life (e.g., food, housing, high quality health and social care, political voice; this is the inner ring of the doughnut) while not exceeding the planet’s life-supporting systems, on which we collectively depend (e.g., air pollution, biodiversity loss, climate change; the outer ring of the doughnut). The red sections show our current imbalance, which include both failure to meet social foundations (foundations for inclusion) while simultaneously exceeding the ecological ceiling.29
The doughnut economics framework can be applied to different levels of government. For instance, the City of Nanaimo in British Columbia adapted the doughnut model for its municipal government. It now provides “a cohesive vision for all City initiatives and planning processes.” The city created a customized doughnut, along with a city portrait (a holistic snapshot of the city through four lenses: social and ecological; local and global) as a way of adapting the framework to its unique environmental, social/cultural, economic and political contexts. Alignment with inclusion is clear from Nanaimo’s Strategic Plan Vision, which is “to be a community that is livable, environmentally sustainable and full of opportunity for all generations and walks of life.”30
The Nanaimo example reveals many implications for inclusive infrastructure that are tailored to the local context. These include, but are not limited to, land use decisions, which are focused on increasing walking, biking, and transit; building walkable, dense neighbourhoods and reducing sprawl and transportation-related carbon emissions; and reducing homelessness by increasing rental housing and diverse housing options for different living arrangements and life stages.31
BIODIVERSITYLOSS AIRPOLLUTION
FIGURE 3 THE DOUGHNUT OF SOCIAL AND PLANETARY BOUDARIES (2017)
OZONELAYER DEPLETION ECOLOGICALCEILING
CLIMATE CHANGE
SOCIALFOUNDATION
PEACE & JUSTICE POLITICAL VOICE EQUALITYSOCIAL GENDEREQUALITY HOUSING NETWORKS ENERGY
INCOME&WORK
EDUCATION
OCEAN ACIDIFICATION POLLUTIONCHEMICAL
Source: https://www.kateraworth.com/doughnut/
Links to inclusive economy
Related to the doughnut economics framework is a growing focus on inclusive economy initiatives at the local level.
Inclusive economy initiatives, also known as community wealth building, are growing in popularity. Two key models stand out: the Preston Model and the Cleveland Model. Both models were informed by The Democracy Collaborative, based in Cleveland, Ohio. In their book, The Making of a Democratic Economy, Marjorie Kelly and Ted Howard discuss these two models as a new paradigm for economic transformation. Both models are predicated on leveraging the inherent economic power of anchor institutions to deliver broader social and economic benefits to the communities in which those institutions operate, with a focus on greater social inclusion and democratic economic processes. According to Kelly and Howard, the principles of a democratic economy include:32
• Community, where common good is prioritized,
• Inclusion, which is premised on creating opportunity for those long excluded,
• Place, which focuses on ensuring that building community wealth stays local,
• Good work, which puts labour before capital,
• Democratized ownership, which emphasizes creating enterprise designs that are community-owned,
• Sustainability, to protect the ecosystem as the foundation of life,
• Ethical finance, which means investing and lending for people and place.
The Cleveland Model was built on the idea that community wealth should stay local. Cleveland leveraged $13 billion in anchor spending among three institutions: University Hospitals, the Cleveland Clinic, and Western Reserve University. Spending leakage analysis indicated that most of that anchor spending wasn’t staying in the immediate community. Accordingly, the Democracy Collaborative, the Cleveland Foundation, the Ohio Employee Ownership Center, the City of Cleveland, and the city’s major hospitals and universities partnered to “implement a new model of large-scale workerowned and community-benefiting businesses.” This model is working: “The
Evergreen Cooperative Initiative is beginning to build serious momentum in one of the cities most dramatically impacted by the nation’s decaying economy.”33
Kelly and Howard document how anchor support for Evergreen Cooperatives helps to create a worker-owned business model to provide services, such as painting and LED lighting installations for anchors. It also created the Evergreen Cooperative Laundry to do all laundry for the Cleveland Clinic. “Overnight, 100 new employees were on a fast track to ownership. Employment at Evergreen Cooperative Laundry tripled.”34
The City of Preston, UK, was inspired by the Cleveland Model. It created the Preston Cooperative Development Network, declared itself a living wage employer, and diverted more of its public spending to local enterprises. In 2012–13, just 5% of Preston Council spending was spent locally. By 2016–17, local spending had increased to 18%. Moreover, this improvement extended beyond the immediate area: “across the country of Lancashire, where Preston is located, anchor spending went from 39 to 79 percent, an increase of £200 million. This shift supported 4,500 jobs.” Unemployment fell, incomes rose, and in 2018 Preston was named the most improved city in the UK by Pricewaterhouse Coopers and Demos.35
Inclusive economy in the Canadian context
In a joint project between the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the Atkinson Foundation, and Inclusive Economy London and Region (Ontario)—which was also inspired by Cleveland and Preston—we created four pillars of inclusive economy initiatives: (1) Public anchor collaborative, (2) Community ownership collaborative, (3) Community benefit agreements, (4) A living wage.36
It is clear that all four pillars can be seen as mutually reinforcing. If governments leverage their power as public anchor institutions within communities to create social procurement policies aimed at directing public goods and services spending toward local, community-owned enterprises, the community captures more of the benefits of those public investments. Similarly, governments that attach community benefit agreement criteria to infrastructure request for proposals (RFPs) foster a culture that rewards companies that hire and train more workers from equity-seeking backgrounds. Governments and public institutions that adopt a living wage policy for every public sector employee directly contribute to reducing working poverty and set a higher standard for private enterprises.
1. PUBLIC ANCHOR COLLABORATIVE
Governments as public anchor institutions within communities can create social procurement policies aimed at directing public goods and services spending toward local, communityowned enterprises
FIGURE 4
FOUR PILLARS OF INCLUSIVE ECONOMY INITIATIVES
2. COMMUNITY OWNERSHIP COLLABORATIVE
Public anchor institutions could select communityowned enterprises for procurement and community benefit agreement purposes
3. COMMUNITY BENEFIT AGREEMENTS
Governments that attach community benefit agreement criteria to infrastructure RFPs foster a culture that rewards companies that hire and train more workers from equity-seeking backgrounds
4. A LIVING WAGE
Governments and public institutions that adopt a living wage policy for every public sector employee directly contribute to reducing working poverty
These four inclusive economy pillars are an example of how a conceptual framework can centre inclusion without sacrificing growth, sustainability or resilience; indeed, it can strengthen these important goals.
Conceptual framework example #3: Just Transition
The mounting climate crisis is forcing governments to act quickly to put in place new green infrastructure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to ensure existing infrastructure is protected against extreme weather events and other climate-related risks. The scale of new investment is unprecedented. To achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, as the Canadian government has promised, will require on the order of $2 trillion—or $60 billion per year—in new infrastructure.37
One of the silver linings of this necessary, expensive action is enormous productive economic activity. Achieving a net-zero carbon economy will create hundreds of thousands of jobs all across the country.38 However, for Canada’s net-zero economy to be a more inclusive economy than it is today will require more than physical infrastructure. Canada also needs adequate social infrastructure to ensure workers and communities aren’t left behind in the shift away from fossil fuels. One of the greatest challenges of the clean energy transition is not only that new green infrastructure must be built, but also that old fossil fuel infrastructure must be wound down.
This section takes the preceding discussion on the importance of inclusive social and physical infrastructure and applies it to the specific context of Canada’s unfolding energy transition. We introduce the concept of a just transition and explore how this framework can help Canada manage an equitable wind down of the fossil fuel industry and an inclusive, productive expansion of an alternative clean economy.
Inclusion risks in a low-carbon transition
There are two main inclusion risks from an energy transition that focuses on physical infrastructure without adequate consideration for supporting social infrastructure.
First, the cost of transitioning out of coal, oil and natural gas may fall disproportionately on already marginalized people. There are between 150,000 and 200,000 people working directly in the fossil fuel industry today.39 However, closer to a million people depend on the industry indirectly.40 When
a facility, such as a coal-fired power plant, shuts down, it is not only coal workers who lose their job. The effects ripple throughout an entire community, starting with directly related jobs, such as construction contractors, and then spreading throughout the rest of the local economy, from food services to recreation to health care. In rural communities, in particular, which are often highly or entirely dependent on a single resource project, the closure of that project affects everyone.
Informed by a long history of poorly managed resource busts, Canadian governments are increasingly stepping in with social policies to support displaced energy workers. However, the design of these programs may, ironically, make inequality worse. For example, the Coal Workforce Transition Program that was put in place to support Alberta coal workers was restricted to full-time workers at specified facilities, even though those workers, who were more likely to be white, Canadian-born men, were among the most economically secure members of their communities, with the greatest mobility and transferable job skills.41 In contrast, workers displaced from indirectly impacted industries, such as food services and accommodation, who were more likely to be women, immigrants, racialized or otherwise marginalized, received no additional support. The provincial government went so far as to pay high-income coal workers to relocate—through a stipend for moving costs—while leaving behind lower-income workers in their communities.
Second, the benefits of transitioning into lower-carbon alternatives may disproportionately accrue to people who already enjoy significant economic and social privileges. Many of the industries that are poised for dramatic growth in a clean economy, such as construction, electricity generation, and transportation manufacturing, offer good jobs that are often unionized, with high salaries. Unfortunately, these fields largely exclude women, immigrants and racialized workers. Indigenous workers are represented in these industries, but they are disproportionately relegated to lower-income, lower-skill labour roles.42 As billions in promised public and private investments flow into new physical infrastructure in the coming decades, the employment benefits will largely flow to the same white, Canadian-born men who dominate these industries today.
The lack of diversity in the skilled trades reflects glaring gaps in Canada’s social infrastructure. Not only are workers from historically marginalized groups less likely to enrol in the trades, even if they do, they are less likely to complete an apprenticeship and to secure a good job afterward.43 Governments have failed to make these essential and secure career paths accessible and appealing to people from non-traditional backgrounds. That
is a problem from a social equity perspective, but it is also a problem from a purely economic perspective. Employers are already struggling with labour shortages as the largely white, male workforce ages, so a failure to expand the workforce to reflect the diversity of the broader Canadian labour market will make it harder to actually get necessary physical infrastructure built. (See the section on inclusive economy initiatives above; community benefit agreements are relevant to this challenge.)
In sum, while a focus on physical infrastructure is essential to transition out of fossil fuels, an absence of supporting social infrastructure may exacerbate underlying inequities in the labour market and the broader economy while simultaneously undermining the potential to deliver on an ambitious physical infrastructure agenda.
Advancing inclusion through a just transition
We can address both sets of concerns by employing the concept of a just transition, which is a “framework for minimizing the potential harm to workers and communities caused by the shift away from fossil fuels while maximizing the potential benefits that decarbonization entails.”44 The idea of a just transition emerged out of the organized labour movement’s concern with the effects of environmental policies on their members’ livelihoods. Over time, the term has taken on more diverse and expansive meanings as it has been adopted by states and civil society actors around the world. These varied definitions of a just transition generally agree on the following high-level principles, ordered here from the most conceptual to the most tangible:
1. Just transitions respect rights, including human rights, labour rights, Indigenous rights and the rights of future generations,
2. Just transitions involve affected workers and communities as partners, not only as stakeholders, in determining their own paths forward,
3. Just transitions expand the social safety net to ensure affected workers and communities don’t bear an unfair burden,
4. Just transitions create new economic opportunities for affected workers and communities, and,
5. Just transitions focus on proactive and inclusive workforce development to ensure the economic benefits of transition are widely shared.
The corollary to a just transition is, of course, an unjust transition in which jobs disappear “without replacement or support for those displaced.”45 Unjust transitions are the default state for boom-and-bust resource industries in the absence of government intervention, because private actors respond to market signals, such as a commodities price crash, by disinvesting without consideration for the well-being of the communities that depend on them. 46
In contrast, a just transition depends on active democratic management. In the context of Canada’s energy transition specifically, a just transition means workers and communities are involved in planning for and executing the wind down of old fossil fuel infrastructure and the corresponding expansion of alternative green infrastructure. In assessing whether these changes in physical infrastructure are inclusive, the five principles of a just transition invite us to ask certain questions, such as:
1. Does this infrastructure respect and advance the rights of people in this community, from traditional Indigenous landholders to the workers involved in its construction and operation to its end users?
2. Was this infrastructure designed in partnership with the communities it is impacting and the communities it is intended to serve?
3. If anyone is displaced by this infrastructure, are they afforded the social and economic support necessary to continue living their lives with dignity and security?
4. Is this infrastructure creating jobs and economic opportunities in the community in which it is being built, especially for workers who are displaced from other industries?
5. Is this infrastructure being leveraged to provide jobs and training opportunities to workers from historically marginalized groups?
All five principles, and the questions that they require us to consider, are grounded in the importance of social inclusion, which is the raison d’être of social infrastructure. To achieve a just transition requires respect for and the participation of all members of affected communities, especially the most marginalized, which cannot happen without deliberate institutional support. Similarly, the cost and benefits of transition cannot be fairly shared without the right social infrastructure in place.
Like the idea of a well-being economy more generally (see above), the idea of a just transition foregrounds community resilience without compromising on the importance of ecological sustainability. A just transition is not an
excuse to move more slowly on climate action. Indeed, a robust just transition strategy enables more rapid action to cut emissions because the social externalities of those policies are proactively accounted for.
4. Conclusion
t h I s d I scuss I on pA per examines the interconnectedness of inclusion, resilience, sustainability and growth. It “connects the dots” by showcasing several conceptual frameworks that could guide inclusive infrastructure planning.
Specifically, it shows how inclusive economy models can guide government decision-making when procuring new infrastructure projects, to ensure that the value of that public investment contributes to community wealth building. It points to the social and ecological determinants of health as an underlying framework for understanding how inclusive infrastructure can be conceptualized in Canada. It describes the “doughnut economics” model of interconnectedness that is economic at heart and intrinsically inclusive in nature. And it shows how a just transition framework can inform green, inclusive infrastructure planning from the perspective of tackling the climate emergency.
Taken as a whole, we submit that shifting the focus to inclusion ensures greater success in pursuing resilience and sustainability and it provides a robust set of principles to guide growth. It also seizes the moment. A historic paradigm shift is underway, driven by a potent combination of a global pandemic caused by an airborne virus that will inevitably require a refocus on the safety of public buildings (e.g., air circulation); geopolitical uncertainty emanating from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; the combined impact on supply chain disruptions, including a focus in the U.S. on ‘made in America’ procurement strategies; persistent and extreme income inequality
that tears at social cohesion; and that other existential threat, the climate emergency. Altogether, these intersecting crises necessitate major government investments in the lives of all people and of the planet.
In a related forthcoming paper, our colleagues at Civicplan will examine international conceptual frameworks that have been incorporated into infrastructure planning and will provide real-life Canadian case studies of infrastructure planning that have attempted to build the goal of inclusion into the project.
Future research should and can focus on developing practical measures of an inclusive infrastructure framework, including modeling one or several conceptual frameworks presented in this paper and in our partner Civicplan’s paper to create made-in-Canada scenarios on cost-benefit analysis, employment and equity analysis, as well as the development of practical key performance indicators.
Notes
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3 Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Mission Critical: The road to a just and equitable recovery. November 2021. https://policyalternatives.ca/publications/reports/alternative-federal-budget-2022.
4 Raphael, Dennis; Bryant, Toba; Mikkonen, Juha; Raphael, Alexander. 2020. Social Determinants of Health: The Canadian Facts (2nd ed). https://www.thecanadianfacts.org
5 Stanford, Jim. 2015. Economics for everyone: A short guide to the economics of capitalism (2nd ed). Pluto Press.
6 Dua, André; Julien, JP; Kerlin, Mike; Law, Jonathan; Noel, Nick; Stewart III, Shelley. April 28, 2021. The Case for Inclusive Growth. McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/ public-and-social-sector/our-insights/the-case-for-inclusive-growth.
7 World Economic Forum. December 13, 2021. “A brief history of GDP—and what could come next.” https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/stakeholder-capitalism-episode-1-a-brief-history-of-gdp/
8 Smith, John. January 22, 2016. Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century: Globalization, superexploitation, and capitalism’s final crisis.
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11 Aizawa, Motoko. July 10, 2020. “The value of inclusive infrastructure in a post-coronavirus world.” International Institute for Sustainable Development. https://www.iisd.org/sustainablerecovery/the-value-of-inclusive-infrastructure-in-a-post-coronavirus-world/
12 Kelly, Marjorie; Howard, Ted. 2019. The Making of a Democratic Economy. Berret-Koehler Publishers Inc.
13 Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Mission Critical: The road to a just and equitable recovery. November 2021. https://policyalternatives.ca/publications/reports/alternative-federal-budget-2022.
14 Osberg, Lars. March 2, 2021. From Keynesian Consensus to Neo-Liberalism to the Green New Deal: 75 years of income inequality in Canada. Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, https:// policyalternatives.ca/publications/reports/75-years-of-income-inequality-canada.
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17 Commission on Social Determinants of Health (CSDH). 2008. Closing the gap in a generation: health equity through action on the social determinants of health. Geneva: World Health Organization. https://www.who.int/teams/social-determinants-of-health/equity-and-health/ commission-on-social-determinants-of-health
18 World Health Organization (WHO). (n. d.). What you need to know about Health in All Policies. https://www.who.int/social_determinants/publications/health-policies-manual/key-messages-en.pdf
19 Canadian Public Health Association (CPHA). May 2015. Global change and public health: Addressing the ecological determinants of health. https://www.cpha.ca/sites/default/files/assets/ policy/edh-discussion_e.pdf
20 McLaren, Lindsay. March 24, 2022. Wellbeing budgeting: a critical public health perspective [invited commentary]. National Collaborating Centre for Healthy Public Policy. https://ccnppsncchpp.ca/docs/2022-Wellbeing-Budgeting-A-Critical-Public-Health-Perspective.pdf; World Health Organization (WHO). WHO Council on the Economics of Health for All (est. 13 November 2020). https://www.who.int/groups/who-council-on-the-economics-of-health-for-all
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30 City of Nanaimo, Reimagine Nanaimo Team, March 8, 2021. Information report: Update on Doughnut Economics Framework. https://www.nanaimo.ca/docs/property-development/ reimagine-nanaimo/rpt_gpc210308updateondoughnuteconomicsframework_published.pdf.
31 Gold, Kerry. March 30, 2021. Nanaimo first Canadian city to adopt ‘Doughnut Economy’. Sustainable Biz, https://sustainablebiz.ca/nanaimo-first-canadian-city-adopt-doughnut-economy/.32 Kelly, Marjorie; Howard, Ted. 2019. The Making of a Democratic Economy. Berret-Koehler Publishers Inc.
33 Kelly, Marjorie; Howard, Ted. 2019. The Making of a Democratic Economy. Berret-Koehler Publishers Inc.
34 Kelly, Marjorie; Howard, Ted. 2019. The Making of a Democratic Economy. Berret-Koehler Publishers Inc.
35 Kelly, Marjorie; Howard, Ted. 2019. The Making of a Democratic Economy. Berret-Koehler Publishers Inc.
36 https://www.inclusiveeconomylondon.ca/
37 RBC Thought Leadership, The $2 Trillion Transition: Canada’s road to Net Zero, Royal Bank of Canada, 2021, p. 4.
38 Tyee Bridge & Richard Gilbert, Jobs for Tomorrow: Canada’s Building Trades and Net Zero Emissions, Columbia Institute, 2017, p. 7.
39 Jim Stanford, Employment Transitions and the Phase-Out of Fossil Fuels, The Centre for Future Work, January 2021, p. 4.
40 min Wang, The decline in production and investment in Canada’s oil and gas sector and its impact on the economy, Statistics Canada, 2020, p. 5.
41 Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood & Zaee Deshpande, Who is include in a Just Transition? Considering social equity in Canada’s shift to a zero-carbon economy, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives & Adapting Canadian Work and Workplaces to Respond to Climate Change, August 2019, p. 21.
42 Mertins-Kirkwood & Deshpande, p. 21.
43 Mertins-Kirkwood & Deshpande, p. 23.
44 Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood & Clay Duncalfe, Roadmap to a Canadian Just Transition Act: A path to a clean and inclusive economy, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives & Adapting Canadian Work and Workplaces to Respond to Climate Change, April 2021, p. 9.
45 J. Mijin Cha et al., “A Green New Deal for all: The centrality of a worker and community-led just transition in the US,” Political Geography (no. 95), 2022, p. 1.
46 Marc Lee & Seth Klein, Winding Down BC’s Fossil Fuel Industries, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives BC Office & Corporate Mapping Project, March 2020, p. 30.
