New Century, New Risks: Challenges for Social Development in Canada - November 18-19 2004

Breakout Session 4A: Collaborative Action

Moderator: Andrea Maurice, Queen's University

Al Hatton, United Way of Canada

Al Hatton offered reflections on his experiences with collaborative action in the voluntary sector. First, he said collaborative action is often forced because of urgency, partially because urgency reduces the apparent differences among groups. He went on to state that "the earlier on you try to involve more actors, the less effective collaboration is." Second, he said that collaboration cannot be accomplished by any one group, citing as an example the impacts of income tax on voluntary agencies. No one organization could adequately address the adverse effects of the taxation, but together, there was power in numbers.

Hatton acknowledged that often there is a lack of clarity of goals from the outset of collaborative efforts. Collaborators often tend to look at the lowest common denominator, which frustrates people. He argued that it is better to set goals high, while still achievable, because it gives people something to work towards. "We should avoid confusing means with ends," he said. Success of collaborative efforts increases when means and ends are clearly distinguished from one another. Collaboration takes special leadership that is open, selfless, transparent, and honest. He emphasized that collaboration should not be about control but about empowerment for voluntary organizations and, in the end, the communities and individuals that they serve. Lastly, Hatton acknowledged potential difficulties in collaboration including power differentials between groups and/or individuals, personality conflicts, and issues of money. He contended that too much money—rather than too little—usually creates more problems in collaboration efforts because differences begin to arise about how to spend it. "When you have none, your goals are clear. When you get some, they become less so."

Rachel LaForest, Queen's University

Rachel LaForest said that less collaboration is taking place even though the opportunities are plentiful. She attributed this, in part, to a greater credibility given to research than to life experience. Citizen engagement is somewhat problematic currently because the government tends to focus on individual relations with citizens while failing to recognize the importance of community organizations who act as intermediaries between government and citizens. If community organizations are not recognized as important, marginalized groups of people will suffer because their voices will often not be heard. LaForest posed two questions to the audience:

• What is the role of the community organization sector in society?—all the time or only at crisis times?
• What must happen within the voluntary sector to make collaborative action happen?

Discussion

A participant expressed an urgent desire to involve youth more in the discussion about social development, since they are the ones who will be most affected by such development in the future. Hatton replied that often youth find it difficult to understand complex and hierarchical institutions and, thus, do not become involved. This tendency should be addressed by all institutions in the future if youth are to be actively engaged.

Another audience member championed Hatton's claim that more money leads to more problems. "Money leads to the creation of structures that end up oppressing what they were fighting against," he said. Funding agencies should not be allowed to dictate what is done, and a major challenge for community organizations is to maintain their autonomy while receiving funding from various interest groups. He went on to clarify that voluntary organizations do not give a voice to communities but, rather, that communities need to take their voices, asserting that people are not equal partners in these organizations.

A representative from Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC) responded to the first audience member who wondered about the involvement of youth, by citing the success of a project in which youth took an active part. The project invited youth to Ottawa to learn how they could affect change in their provinces' non-smoking policies. Youth were actively engaged and molded the final report.

Several panel members applauded LaForest's point of the importance of good relationships between community organizations and government. Hatton added that speaking up is often seen as bad, when it should be seen as something good. "We must speak up. Democracy is eroding, making it harder for voices to be heard and for politicians and leaders to do anything. We must stop this and we must not be paranoid about our advocacy!" he concluded.

One participant raised the incongruent nature of relations between government and citizens and government and employees. He said that while focus is usually on empowerment of citizens, equal focus should be given to empowerment of employees—"we cannot give power to citizens but treat employees like tumours."

LaForest, along with at least one other audience participant, pointed out that Québec tended to be a forerunner in successful collaborative efforts in the voluntary sector. "There is the misconception that as soon as you have federal funding, you lose autonomy," LaForest stated. "Québec organizations are funded by government but are still autonomous and are able to be inside at the bargaining table while at the same time outside lobbying against government."

Hatton and LaForest discussed the Voluntary Sector Initiative (VSI). This is an attempt at bettering the relationship between government and voluntary organizations through addressing issues such as funding practices, policy dialogue, technology, volunteerism, and research about the sector. LaForest claimed that the government has not been as strong as it could be in the initiative, a sentiment that seemed to be echoed by Hatton. They mentioned an upcoming meeting in Ottawa about how organizations can make the best use of the VSI as an important opportunity in increasing the usefulness of the initiative. They also pointed out that the minority government is currently running the risk of not being re-elected—perhaps this is an opportunity to assert voluntary sector issues that may not ordinarily be heard.