In a capitalist free-market system, profit over everything seems to be the battle cry of big business and corporate strategy. However, those looking to make a positive difference and give back to the community have created a market for themselves through an innovative model of social entrepreneurship. Going into business now has a friendlier face, and an alternative bottom line—and it’s social enterprise.

Multiple terms and slightly varied definitions exist, but generally, social enterprises are businesses that have a social, cultural, or environmental benefit attached to them. Regarded as having a double or triple bottom line, they are ventures that generate revenue while adding value to their communities. Throwing the “rational economics” rulebook out the window, social enterprises are colloquially known as businesses for impact. They are motivated by a commitment to social change through the power of good business, rather than the largest possible profit. Social enterprises operate in a variety of industries, from health and social services, to finance and trade—and they are disrupting the way business is done.

In Toronto, there’s TurnAround Couriers. The company exclusively hires youth who face barriers entering the labour market, providing employment opportunities to those in need, investing in their employees’ education, and providing them with health benefits. Environmentally conscious missions, like Mattress Recycling, are also popular among Canadian social entrepreneurs. Operating out of a facility in Hope, B.C., just east of Vancouver, the company charges a small fee to recycle 90 percent of mattress materials that come through their doors. Since 2008 they have helped keep over half a million mattresses out of landfills.

Canada has been criticized in the past for being about 10 years behind other western nations when it comes to development of the sector. Definition and consistency has been a significant roadblock for social enterprise in this regard. From province to province, terminology varies quite drastically. Only in 2016 did Canada finally announce an official definition alongside a national directory, defining social enterprise as “an enterprise that seeks to achieve social, cultural, or environmental aims through the sale of goods and services. The social enterprise can be for-profit or not-for-profit but the majority of net profits must be directed to a social objective with limited distribution to shareholders and owners.”

Before social enterprises became popular in Canada, one woman was able to corner the media market. Elisa Birnbaum is a pioneering voice for social enterprise, advocating for coverage at a time when there was an obvious lack. As a freelance writer and communications consultant, she has been helping social enterprises gain recognition through her reporting for nearly a decade. Her work in the industry has culminated into a book, In the Business of Change: How Social Entrepreneurs are Disrupting Business as Usual, out this May. “It took me a long time to get mainstream media interested in these stories I was pitching them,” she divulges, “I was the first person to write about social enterprise for the Globe and Mail, and it took me about a year to get them to accept that this is something worth talking about.” Now that the movement has gained traction in Canada, mainstream media is much more inclined to publish stories relating to social enterprise.

Birnbaum and her business partner Nicole Zummach started SEE Change Magazine in 2009, an online magazine and platform for social entrepreneurs, as a response to the earlier gap in coverage. Birnbaum’s experience speaks to the journey social enterprise has had gaining recognition in Canada over the last decade. In the past, she was met with blank stares at the mention of the term. “Now I can bring up social enterprise to the average person and nine times out of 10 they will acknowledge and know what I’m talking about,” she says.

Media coverage of social enterprise has been an important tool in familiarizing laypeople with the term. A greater understanding among consumers, Birnbaum suggests, can help to attract government support and regulation, which is crucial to accelerate growth and investment in the industry. “In the U.K., they’ve carved a much stronger understanding after almost a half a century of using the term,” she explains, “and they have established dedicated legal models under which social enterprise lie.” In Canada, the situation is different; little policy exists to regulate social enterprise at the municipal, provincial, or federal level. “Where any specific policies do exist,” she explains, “there’s a lack of consistency among jurisdictions. What’s more, there’s no distinct incorporation (and thus no distinct legal entity) for social enterprise, which makes it difficult to develop policies.” Government policies and action plans are critical to the development of social enterprise; they help to regulate and define the industry, facilitate collaboration, foster investment, and encourage entrepreneurs using an alternative business model.

The U.S. and the U.K., unlike Canada, were early adopters of the model, quickly recognizing the catalyzing potential of the social enterprise movement to incite positive social change. National institutions cropped up to regulate the burgeoning field of social enterprise in each country in the 1990s. As a result, they both have well-developed policy structures and governing bodies in place to support and regulate its growth. Canada has been playing catch-up in this respect—only in the past few years have the provinces began to formally recognize the sector through legislation. B.C., for example, was the first to introduce formal policy surrounding social enterprise in 2012, amending the Business Corporations Act to include the community contribution companies, or C3, model. Other provinces have been slowly following suit, such as Ontario, where the government has released a 2016–2021 social enterprise strategy to target the growth of the sector. However, there is still no formal governing body that exists on the federal level to regulate and monitor the industry in the same capacity as it would for fair trade products. With no official demarcation of authenticity, the sector is vulnerable to a form of greenwashing; companies may advertise as social enterprises to attract customers but fail to follow through on the perceived mission.

Social enterprise has come a long way in Canada in the past 10 years. A 2016 survey showed that there are more than 1,300 social enterprises in Canada, they employ over 254,000 people, and provide services to an additional 5.5 million. With continued investment and government support, social entrepreneurs will be situated to take over a greater share of the market, and create real and lasting change in their communities and beyond.

Shyra Barberstock was 21 years old when she met her Anishinaabe birth mother and finally gained Kebaowek status. Until then, she was unaware of her Kebaowek First Nation roots, having grown up with her nonIndigenous adoptive family.

“As you can see I’m very fair skinned,” says Barberstock. “Had I not met her, I may never have realized that I was Anishinaabe.”

Seventeen years later, Barberstock, along with her husband Rye, a member of the Mohawk nation, has made a career of connecting Indigenous people in disparate communities. It’s all made possible through the couple’s joint venture, the Okwaho Network.

The project began as an Indigenous social network of sorts, a way to remove the geographic and financial barriers remote communities face in their attempts to connect. Soon it grew to attract Indigenous (and now includes non-Indigenous) members around the world looking to connect on a social or professional basis.

The network spurred consulting and speaking opportunities from the government, private sectors, and non-profit organizations interested in learning about Indigenous entrepreneurship.

The flurry of interest snowballed into what, in 2017, became Okwaho Equal Source Inc., a Kingston-based global startup focused on reconciliation through Indigenous-led social innovation projects.

Barberstock says she was destined for this sort of work. At her naming ceremony at age 21, an Elder told her she had a strawberry heart and gave her the name O’demin’kwe (O’demin: strawberry, kwe: woman). In Indigenous teachings, the strawberry is known as the heart berry, full of healing properties and the power to rouse peace and forgiveness, Barberstock explains. “[The Elder] said that I have a big heart and that my purpose in life is to follow my heart,” she recalls, adding that people gifted with a strawberry heart are tasked with guiding reconciliation within their family and community.

Certainly for Barberstock, her Indigenous name rings true in her business and her life. Even her partnership with Rye is a testament to reconciliation in action. “Mohawks are very different from the Anishinaabe,” she remarks. “Historically, they were enemies. We prove that reconciliation can happen.”

That’s not to downplay the complexity of reconciliation processes that are based on lived experiences and trauma, cultural history and dynamics.

In her 2017 master’s thesis, “‘A New Way Forward’: Reconciliation through Indigenous Social Innovation,” Barberstock challenges recommendation 92 of the 94 calls to action released by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada in 2015, which calls on corporate powers to adopt a reconciliation framework. She contends the narrative of the recommendation focuses on what non-Indigenous people should be doing, and argues that Indigenous people are actively contributing to reconciliation too. Her research presents a seldom heard Indigenous voice on the topic.

Through Okwaho Equal Source, Barberstock and her Indigenous-led team are making significant contributions to reconciliation. Recently, they were invited by La Asociación Colombiana de Universidades (Association of Colombian Universities) to share Indigenous knowledge and community-building best practices through “talking circles” with local delegates from academia, government, and the private sectors.

“Shyra is disrupting the space of social innovation,” says Luke McIlroy-Ranga, the president of Okwaho Equal Source’s operations in Australasia. “We want our youth to see people who represent themselves in entrepreneurial roles,” McIlroy-Ranga adds. He emphasizes the significance of bolstering Indigenous-run for-profits, especially in a world where most financial backing for Indigenous organizations favours charities.

Indeed, the Barberstocks used their honeymoon money and personal funds to build Okwaho Equal Source and the Okwaho Network—though they wanted to apply for funding agencies, they were often excluded from doing so.

“We understand that there are a lot of funding pockets out there for Indigenous projects, but a lot of the government funding is for not-for-profits,” Barberstock remarks. “We are a for-profit social enterprise with a non-profit heart.”

Moving forward, Barberstock plans to establish an exchange program with Okwaho’s sister hub in Sydney, Australia. She also hopes to build a bricks-and-mortar centre for full-time Indigenous students in Kingston, and hire qualified Indigenous staff to create a collective.

Already, she’s well on her way.

Amazon fulfillment centre in Seattle. Photo courtesy of Amazon.

It’s a great time to be Amazon. The digital commerce company has 238 cities vying for its attention, offering all sorts of goodies in hopes of being chosen for its second home. The new headquarters is expected to contribute at least $5 billion in construction and 50,000 high-paying, competitive jobs, which makes it a highly sought after prize. In addition to promising low taxes, affordable land, and a large talent pool, cities are also offering some truly absurd things.

Here are the 12 Canadian cities, in order of most likely to be chosen, hoping to host Amazon’s HQ2.

1. TORONTO/GTA

Toronto’s bid is a true collaboration, with the support of the Greater Toronto Area, as well as outskirt cities, such as Barrie and Guelph. The main campus would be located along the waterfront, but smaller campuses throughout the region will mean Amazon love for everyone.

2. CALGARY

Amazon already plans to open a 55,000-square-metre fulfillment centre in Rocky View County, north of the city. And, if their proposal offering low taxes doesn’t impress Amazon, perhaps Calgary’s promise to fight a bear for the company will hook them.

3. VANCOUVER

Amazon is already renting space in the city through a company called WeWork, and recently announced its intention to hire 1,000 new tech jobs in B.C. by 2020. The proposal itself mentions a cycling- and transit-friendly region, and proximity to the airport.

4. OTTAWA-GATINEAU

If selected, Amazon’s next headquarters will be built in Lebreton Flats, with access to the city’s new light rail, the University of Ottawa, sustainable mixed-use communities, and waterfront properties.

5. MONTREAL

Named one of the top high-tech cities in the world, Montreal proposes to focus on the high concentration of technology-centric jobs and a 20 to 25 percent cost advantage over other cities.

6. EDMONTON

Edmonton is hoping its experience in artificial intelligence will separate them from Calgary. Google-owned DeepMind, whose mission is to push the boundaries of AI, opened its first international research office in the city.

7. HAMILTON

Hamilton’s bid focuses on culture, diversity, history, and innovation. If you had to put a name to this proposal, it would probably be #Hamazon—at least, that’s what the mayor is hoping for.

8. WINDSOR-DETROIT

This bid is one of two joint American-Canadian proposals. While the majority of the campus will be located in Detroit, the two cities would be connected together by a cable car or gondola.

9. WINNIPEG

Winnipeg’s commercial and industrial land costs are low, as are hydro rates and corporate taxes, leading to a possible $1.76 billion in cash incentives for Amazon.

10. HALIFAX

Halifax’s pitch revolves around a high population of millennials from various universities looking to grow their startups. The city points to its “tech super hub” Volta as an example of how the city fosters entrepreneurship.

11. SAULT STE. MARIE

By the year 2100, Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. and its American counterpart in Michigan will be one of the few North American cities standing after climaterelated natural disasters hit—or at least that’s one of the arguments city council is using to persuade Amazon.

12. LANGFORD

Langford, a small city on Vancouver Island, is using its record on affordable housing, competitive wages, and recreational opportunities in their bid.

For our special 50th anniversary issue, Canada’s brightest, boldest, and most rebellious thinkers, doers, and creators share their best big ideas. Through ideas macro and micro, radical and everyday, we present 50 essays, think pieces, and calls to action. Picture: plans for sustainable food systems, radical legislation, revolutionary health care, a greener planet, Indigenous self-government, vibrant cities, safe spaces, peaceful collaboration, and more—we encouraged our writers to dream big, to hope, and to courageously share their ideas and wish lists for our collective better future. Here’s to another 50 years!

Almost 50 years ago, in 1970, my friend Stephen Clarkson asked 50 people to guess what things would be like in 50 years and published them under the clever title Visions 2020. I made the cut then and—who’d have guessed—have made it again. I predicted that the world would still be run by multinational corporations and, I must say, was remarkably prescient.

I could try to say the same thing. But I won’t. Instead, I’ll stand my prediction on its head and imagine what I hope will happen: what must happen if we are to survive in our age of catastrophes, of global warming, droughts, wildfires, rising sea levels, species extinction, pandemics, terrorism and wars on terror, cyber wars, and new horrors not yet named.

As for the monster corporation, it must wither away to create the room for the smaller institutions of community. Corporate rights, as embedded in trade agreements, must yield to human rights. Corporate globalization must give way to communities that are in solidarity, fundamentally egalitarian.

After the great wave of economic globalization prior to World War I, Karl Polanyi described how the economy, separated from the society in which it had long been embedded, had taken on a life of its own. From that utopian project came the Great Depression of the 1930s and fascism in Germany. But, in a great victory of democracy over capitalism, there had also come, as counter-movement, the American New Deal, albeit with many flaws, and its modest Canadian equivalent.

Learning nothing from history, globalization in the raw was born again. The separation of finance from society and democratic control led to the 2008 global financial crisis. The state saved the whole system but resisted attempts at reform.

Meanwhile, the world worsened. This time globalization had yanked nature, ecology itself, from society; the disasters that resulted from that were made manifest. The good news is that again movement has led to counter-movement. Tellingly, deep analysis has been accompanied by political action, Bill McKibben and Naomi Klein being leading examples.

In my distant days on the editorial board of This Magazine, I wrote the Innis Memorial Column named for the great Canadian economic historian and student of civilizations, Harold Innis. Innis was much concerned with the conditions essential for creativity and stability, which he saw as a proper balance of space and time, of matters spatial and matters temporal. Globalization, gathering force in his lifetime, meant control of space, of the global economy.

Innis made “a plea for time,” in an essay of that title in 1950. Though agnostic, he appealed to Holy Writ: “Without vision the people perish.” This agnostic would insist on the plural: “Without visions …” The singular smacks of utopia and, even in my lifetime, of totalitarianism of the left and the right.

This Magazine is to be thanked for anticipating this point, for inviting 50 “visions.” To survive for 50 years is a considerable achievement. We are entitled to celebrate. To do another 50 is itself a vision and a hope, a project well worth the effort. Call this my Innis Memorial Column redux, my own abbreviated plea for time. Time for history as collective memory. Time for dialogue, not debate. Time to reflect, not react. Time to heed and to help. Time to care and share. Time to contemplate and meditate. Time to create the good. Time to heal and not hurt. Time to spare.

And lest I forget: time to renew your subscription to This Magazine. Ask for the special 50-year rate.

For our special 50th anniversary issue, Canada’s brightest, boldest, and most rebellious thinkers, doers, and creators share their best big ideas. Through ideas macro and micro, radical and everyday, we present 50 essays, think pieces, and calls to action. Picture: plans for sustainable food systems, radical legislation, revolutionary health care, a greener planet, Indigenous self-government, vibrant cities, safe spaces, peaceful collaboration, and more—we encouraged our writers to dream big, to hope, and to courageously share their ideas and wish lists for our collective better future. Here’s to another 50 years!

In the cocaine-tinted days of shoulder pads and synth pop, urban professionalism propelled a mantra of “run government like a business.” The 1980s were a reactionary rebellion against what was seen as government inefficiency, and a terrible idea from which we’ve never recovered.

At the time, I was a teenager working my first job as a cook at a family restaurant in suburban Ontario and wondering about the future amidst daily headlines such as “13,000 face temporary layoff at GM,” “Shutdowns affect 835 employees at IPSCO units,” and “Half of head office staff at Kidd Creek lose jobs.” Those were all from just one day in 1986. The mid-’80s had record unemployment in Canada—around 11 percent when I got that steak cook job for three bucks an hour, and down a bit from when it broke 13 percent a year or two earlier. (By contrast, it’s about seven percent today.)

That’s the first reason not to run government like a business: Businesses are focused on profit regardless of the human cost. The second reason is that business isn’t necessarily a good model, even for businesses.

According to Industry Canada, 83,240 small and medium enterprises disappeared in 2013. And that was a good year. Thousands of companies go belly-up every year because their primary objective is to turn a profit, and higher risk breeds higher profits. Governments should not participate in such high-risk behaviours. They should provide stable, long-term services that a community needs. And therein lies the most fundamental reason why we need to stop running governments like businesses: They exist for different reasons.

Like many of my generation, I headed west during the 1991 recession. I landed in Alberta, which was still reeling from the late-’80s oil bust. As I took piecework jobs on construction crews, or stood on “Workers’ Corner” hoping for landscaping gigs to pay for groceries, many of my neighbours were clinically depressed. I visited them at Holy Cross Hospital because of their suicidal feelings or, on occasion, suicide attempts.

Then Ralph Klein’s cuts pushed the hand of the hospital’s directors, who took a “run it like a business” decision and closed the downtown hospital and its psychiatric ward, making a distant suburban hospital the nearest facility—abandoning the city’s most vulnerable residents.

Every city has stories like this.

In Ontario, where I live today, corporate taxes are at a record low thanks to a decade of cuts. Toronto has some of the lowest property taxes anywhere. Windsor has frozen property taxes for nearly a decade. There’s room to restore services if we believe that serving the people should be the priority of a government, rather than turning a quick budget buck.

And the quick budget buck is very much the latest trend in running government like a business. It began with public-private partnerships (P3s). They were supposed to take advantage of the efficient ways in which businesses operate, unlike sluggish, bloated governments. After a couple decades of tragedies, we know businesslike greed outweighs any inefficiency our governments may once have had. Ontario famously has the most expensive toll road in the world because of a ridiculous P3 contract.

P3s are popular with governments because they transfer up-front costs off the balance sheet and appear to shift risk to the private sector. That is not, as a recent University of Calgary School of Public Policy paper reveals, the reality. The Golden Ears Bridge in B.C., for instance, came in 25 percent above initial estimates. The cost of Kelowna’s W.R. Bennett Bridge jumped 44 percent. A rapid-transit line in Vancouver went from $1.35 billion to $2.1 billion. In fact, most P3 projects only come in on schedule and on budget because the schedules and budgets get adjusted along the way.

And now Canadian governments are in the throes of just handing public assets over to the private sector for short-term gain. These actions do nothing more than hide a deficit on the government’s balance sheet until after the next election. As with P3s, it’s not really about benefiting the public; it’s about political expediency.

Stop running governments like they’re businesses. Start running them like, well, governments.

Illustration by Matthew Daley

For our special 50th anniversary issue, Canada’s brightest, boldest, and most rebellious thinkers, doers, and creators share their best big ideas. Through ideas macro and micro, radical and everyday, we present 50 essays, think pieces, and calls to action. Picture: plans for sustainable food systems, radical legislation, revolutionary health care, a greener planet, Indigenous self-government, vibrant cities, safe spaces, peaceful collaboration, and more—we encouraged our writers to dream big, to hope, and to courageously share their ideas and wish lists for our collective better future. Here’s to another 50 years!

In our increasingly unequal society, the wealthy and corporations control an ever greater piece of the economic pie. Businesses are under no obligation to use these profits for the social good. Many are too nervous to invest in anything at all, so they sit on their cash. As this “dead money” lies idle, our collective creativity goes untapped, Canadians are starved for good jobs, and the urgent necessity of addressing climate change dissipates into flowery rhetoric.

Statistics Canada indicates that businesses in Canada held over $490 billion in dead money at the beginning of 2016.

That total represents only the most obvious form of “dead money”—cash and deposits. There are many more insidious ways of concealing stashed cash, as revelations from this year’s Panama Papers illustrate.

This dead money is an economic problem for all of us. When companies lack the confidence to invest, there are fewer good jobs and inequality tends to rise. Worse still, weak business investment creates a downward cycle: as lacklustre investment puts downward pressure on the economy, this bad economic news makes business expectations even more pessimistic, so business investment gets weaker still. This downward cycle cannot be reversed until confidence is regained.

The dead money problem in Canada has raised alarm bells. As a 2014 International Monetary Fund (IMF) report indicates, cash as a share of assets held by Canadian non-financial corporations almost doubled between 1990–2012. Even the IMF worries Canada is missing out on productive investing possibilities as companies sit on this cash stash.

This dead money problem could be a golden opportunity. If we freed up this cash to fund environmentally sustainable initiatives, we could create good jobs—ones that build infrastructure and products that shrink our carbon footprint. This green investment would stimulate economic growth and create better overall economic conditions. Instead, this dead money operates like an economic straightjacket.

We could do so much better. If companies cannot invest their idle cash for progressive purposes, we should either make them do it or do it for them.

Beyond some reasonable minimum cash balance required to run a corporation, companies that continue to sit on large idle balances should be compelled to invest them in green technology and green jobs. If they don’t, the government should tax the cash and direct that revenue to government-sponsored enterprises or community initiatives that get the job done.

Sure, corporations will scream that this violation of their private property rights will undermine competitiveness and destroy jobs. They will try to hide their cash. They will threaten to move their operations offshore. They will claim that their dubious investments are green and progressive.

Do not be alarmed. Business will always object if society encroaches on its ability to do whatever it wants, regardless of the social and environmental cost. Our environment and our society are in the crosshairs, and we can’t sustain any more “do-nothingism” for fear of offending business. If business was stepping up to solve the carbon emissions problem, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. But it is not. And if it won’t do it, we must.

Business did so very much to make this mess, and it cannot be allowed to sit on its hands now that the mess must be cleaned up. Nor should it be allowed to use the immense resources at its fingertips to sabotage the efforts of the rest of us who are more than ready to do the right thing.

Bamboo fabric is the perfect solution for the eco-chic shopper. The plant grows fast, with little water, few pesticides or fertilizers, and produces 30 percent more oxygen than trees. But does all that really mean guilt-free fashion—or is bamboo just a savvy marketing trick?

The Investigation

Last year, the Competition Bureau of Canada clamped down on the increasing number of textile dealers marketing bamboo clothing to nature-loving fashionistas. Under new regulations, manufacturers and retailers must label bamboo clothing according to how it was created. Since most bamboo fibres are made into a pulp using sodium hydroxide (a corrosive chemical base used in a variety of manufacturing processes) before being spun into yarn, this means a tag change to either “viscose from bamboo” or “bamboo rayon.” Lest a shopper still be fooled, such clothing can also no longer be marketed as eco-friendly or natural.

Tagreed Boules, a senior competition law officer with the Bureau, says the new rules were designed to alert consumers that bamboo clothing is not as pure as some retailers like them to believe. Both rayon and viscose fabrics indicate a chemical process, he adds, and are a more accurate description of the material used to make bamboo clothing.

Boules says the agency is taking an increased interest in companies that advertise products as environmentally friendly. As Boules explains: “Environmental claims must be substantiated. If a product claims to be biodegradable, is it the product itself or the container? How long would it take to biodegrade? This information must be readily available.”

The Verdict

Using bamboo as a fibre to make clothing does have advantages over other plants—it grows faster than cotton and uses less water and pesticides—but sodium hydroxide isn’t exactly “green.” If it burns on contact and is harmful when inhaled, it has no business in the green aisle. The good news: research is currently underway to develop a process less reliant on harsh chemicals.

A charging station concept by Better Place, a private company attempting to develop a business model for electric cars.

We’re not getting the job done with the Harper government, so where do we go next? Rebecca’s option of industry leadership in last week’s column may have raised some eyebrows for those of us working on policy like pricing carbon or regulation to get industries to do the right thing. And also for those who see industry as the bad guy—not an unreasonable view—since big companies produce an unreasonable amount of total greenhouse gases.

The truth is that companies need drivers to reduce pollution. One of those can be internal, through a corporate leader who gets it, who has started a company that meets her own values, or one who has seen the light, like Interface head Ray Anderson after reading The Ecology of Commerce.

These cases, however, are the exception. While you might see some big oil companies appear to be getting ahead of government by requesting a carbon tax, the next thing you read, the same company’s dealings with pollution and people in Nigeria or Alberta raise questions of ecological commitment.

On the other hand, some companies have made the commitment to green all the way. The clean technology sector is growing on the Toronto Stock Exchange. An area of growth, this sector has nowhere to go but up.

Corporate sustainability specialist Bob Willard has long talked to sustainability change agents about the kinds of factors that influence companies to move—and many do exist. From NGOs putting on the pressure to insurance companies more than peeking into the concept of climate change, big companies have been nudged for quite a few years now.

So how do citizens shift the economy to what we want—drastically reduced carbon, in the least?

Green companies need support. Governments may be more willing to support incentives to help clean companies and reduce subsidies to grey ones, than explicitly regulating or taxing pollution. One area of potential policy pressure.

But as citizens and potential consumers and investors, we can do more to support and expand those companies doing the right thing. And of course as people show choices with their pocketbook, they must doubly make that choice at the ballot box. Those without the privilege of financial resources (like NGOs) can support companies leading the green economy in other ways.

On the flip side is punishing the bad guys—making them change or lose profit share if they don’t.

Large industries, and increasingly financial institutions, have been the target of boycotts and campaigns to change their practices. These campaigns can work if being given support from all organizations that need work on climate causes. Campaigns should be given focus. One effective lobby targeting divestment from a tar sands company, with presence at shareholder meetings, newspaper ads and calls from prominent Canadians could get other companies looking at what they need to change.

Good neighbour campaigns take a more positive spin, through tactics like community letter writing to companies that should be doing better. These can be effective because of the personal tone, recognizing CEOs as people too, and putting social pressure through community ties.

Industry’s time to pollute needs to be up. With some more clever pressure from the people, things could shift from the bottom up.

Welcome to the new age of the environmental movement. We don’t chain ourselves to trees and sing protest songs—we use blackberries to notify the press about the latest report findings. With the exception of a few spirited protestors who scaled the parliament building or occupied a minister’s office, most of the effort from organizations in the fall leading up to Copenhagen concentrated on studies and reports and media-savvy communications tactics.

Increasingly, more people make full-time jobs out of protecting the environment, and many more still are involved in a part-time or volunteer basis. All of this collective energy isn’t for nothing—just like any other industry, we demand results. But it often seems that no matter if we’re talking about water protection, the Boreal or, in this case, climate change, we seem to measure whether we’ve been successful or not by one single measure—policy change.

In many ways using policy change as a measuring stick makes sense. Policies are tangible, measurable and, in theory, binding. Governments can either follow policies, or not, and suffer the consequences of public scorn if the issue’s hot enough. There has been no single more-demanded climate change outcome from the public than a clear, thorough, and meaningful climate change policy. But the federal government has made it clear: that shit ain’t happening.

In the heat of Copenhagen, when I was griping about some ineptitude of our Prime Minister in terms of battling with the carbon crisis, a reader suggested in the comments section of this series that my “obsession with leadership” was puzzling. Touché, reader. It certainly is frustrating, disappointing and possibly futile to expect that after all the hoopla leading up to Copenhagen that should have impressed upon our Prime Minister that Canadians indeed want a firm stance on climate change that he will suddenly draft the policy of our dreams after the fanfare has fizzled.

In a rerun of the Rick Mercer report that ran this weekend I heard the comedian quip that “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity, or in Canada’s case, the federal government.” Well then the Prime Minister and I must be two peas in a pod, because I keep coming back to the same thing in every blog post: this country cannot make any serious strides towards carbon reduction without a strong federal policy committing us to actual reductions.

Our reader’s point that the focus on the federal government was “puzzling” could also imply something I’ve suspected for some time: that I may be flogging a dead horse. But, I ask, what other conclusion can I come to than to insist that a federal climate policy is necessary?  We know that despite being sold green issues of Vanity Fair and hybrid SUV’s for the past several years, personal reductions pale in comparison to industry’s contribution to carbon emissions and that the problem has become too severe to expect that simply purchasing your next cut of meat from a local butcher will reduce the carbon load enough. Pardon me for not trusting myself or any other individual with the responsibility of making enough personal reductions while we teeter on global crisis.

But, perhaps where individuals are seemingly incapable of collectively making the right choices, there lies another body capable of making the tough decisions: industry. If there is a serious flaw with concentrating on policies, it is assuming that just because they are drafted and created (which is enough of a battle) that they will be followed, both inside government and out. It would not be enough for the Canadian government to create a strong climate change policy, commit it to paper and walk away, they would have to work with the private sector and ensure that they are able to work towards these targets. Policy won’t lead to industry standards, but industry just may be better poised to raise the bar on climate reductions where government has failed to do so.

While we have generally concentrated on accepting that the federal government needs to create legislation, there’s also no policy-making formula. Perhaps if industry leaders were to raise the standards the government would be shamed into creating the policies that the rest of the sector would have to follow. The swell of attention around climate change in the fall has been unprecedented by any other issue in the past several decades, and yet the federal foot has been put down, and it remains clear that policy won’t be leading us out of the gate. So we will either have to find new ways to create and measure our success, or if policy is to remain our yardstick, then perhaps we need to rethink who we are asking to lead us to it.

Toby Heaps demonstrates his style in Toronto. Photo by Steve Payne

Junue Millan is getting agitated.

It’s a hot day in May 2008, and Millan, an organizer on Ralph Nader’s quixotic presidential campaign, paces a downtown Los Angeles sidewalk. I’m sitting in the passenger seat of the Jeep that has been on loan to the Nader cause this week, shuttling campaign volunteers around the city.

“Where is Toby?” he says to me. “Text him to hurry.” Toby Heaps is the reason I’m here. My old colleague is working for Nader and I’ve come to see how American democracy works — or doesn’t. As I hit “send” on the text message — “ETA? Junue’s getting stressed” — Heaps finally exits an office building across the street at a full sprint.

Heaps, a Canadian activist and entrepreneur, and national coordinator of the Nader 2008 presidential bid, disappeared an hour ago on some last-minute business required to get Nader on the ballot in California. All that needs to happen is for a notary to officiate a batch of campaign papers. Millan doesn’t understand why it’s taking so long.

Without this paperwork, Nader has little chance of getting on the ballot in vote-rich California, required to run a truly national campaign. So if these notarized papers aren’t dropped off at the L.A. County registrar’s office in Norwalk before it closes in an hour, weeks of work will be lost, and the alternative — collecting hundreds of thousands more signatures throughout the state — would cost time and money the campaign doesn’t have to spare.

“Uh-oh,” says Millan, “something is happening. Something bad is happening.”

Heaps is running full-speed across the street, chest out, legs pumping, fear on his face. He dives into the back seat of the Jeep, shouting, “Go! Go! Go!”

The notary, a spindly black man in a too-big, old-timey suit, is in hot pursuit. He looks like Richard Pryor would have had he lived to be 110, and despite his age and seeming frailty, he chases Heaps across the street, shouting clear and loud the whole time, “Call the po-lice! Call the po-lice! Call the po-lice!”

By the time the notary makes it to the vehicle, still shouting, a crowd of onlookers — including security officers, guns drawn — has gathered around the car.

A tough-looking six-foot-plus-tall bystander addresses Heaps, now cowering in the back seat: “Give back what you took from that man. I saw you. You stole something and took off running. Whatever it is, give it back.”

My eyes are fixed on the gun-wielding security officers while Heaps hastily explains that the issue is payment. The notary wanted cash for his services; Heaps had none, so he tried — unsuccessfully — to negotiate another arrangement; an invoice, a credit card, anything. “He just kept saying, ‘I want my money, I want my money,’” says Heaps, the precious sheaf of documents clutched to his chest. “He doesn’t take MasterCard.” Then, turning to me: “Can I borrow $300?”

Welcome to Toby’s world.

Toby Heaps is a bundle of contradictions. Trained in economics, he’s a workaholic idealist with a mischievous streak, a vegetarian who’s spent time in the army, an athlete who won’t lock up his bike because of his fundamental faith in human nature (he’s been through 28 bikes in his 32 years — “not a bad ratio,” he says).

Heaps is best known in Canada as editor of the Toronto-based business magazine Corporate Knights, which focuses on what it calls “responsible business,” and is distributed quarterly in the Globe and Mail. Heaps founded the magazine seven years ago on the philosophy that businesses need to be rated and ranked on the quality of their behaviour. He’s a fan of the “carrot and stick” approach: good companies should be rewarded and recognized; bad ones named and shamed. Corporate Knights does both. The tactic is controversial, but Heaps has surprising influence.

Corporate Knights is a kind of lobby group as well as a magazine, and its full range of activities is not necessarily obvious to those outside its inner circle. Since the beginning, Heaps has sought to use the magazine as a vehicle to influence policy.

In addition to rating Canadian companies in the magazine, CK also does an international list of Global 100 companies, which is launched each year at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Three years ago, when Brian Mulroney was named “Greenest Prime Minister” in Canadian history, it was Corporate Knights that was behind the honour. The magazine organized the gala in Ottawa, attended by new prime minister Stephen Harper and hosted by Rick Mercer.

The Tory hugging and business boosting have put off some of Heaps’ leftish colleagues, who accuse CK of corporate cheerleading. An economist for the Canadian Auto Workers, Jim Stanford, for instance, respects Heaps’ entrepreneurial spirit — he thinks the left would be better off if more people were as energetic and creative as Heaps — but the two men do fundamentally disagree.

“The corporations view Corporate Knights, clearly, as a way that they can put an ad in to extol their social consciousness, but without having to do necessarily much more than that,” says Stanford. “The problem is that the whole corporate social responsibility movement is based on volunteerism, public relations, and consumer choice, and explicitly steers away from regulations, taxes, unions.”

But Heaps believes in the work he’s doing and the change he wants to see. He ignores obstacles and is ambitious in the extreme. It makes him a constant source of both frustration and inspiration for those who work closely with him.

“He’s so fast. He sees opportunities and pounces on them at times without thinking. He’s fearless,” says Corporate Knights publisher Karen Kun.

The magazine is just one of many social-improvement schemes Heaps has on the go at any given time, including a geothermal power venture in Canada and a solar-electricity scheme in Ghana. Heaps has built a small activist empire out of his enigmatic persona: he’ll rollerblade to business meetings, and depending who he’s dealing with, they don’t know whether to expect him to arrive in Birkenstocks or a suit. (In fact, he’s a golf-shirt-and-slacks kind of guy most of the time.) For non-crucial meetings, he has a reputation for being late — sometimes by several hours.

“Genius and craziness go hand in hand many times,” says Peter Diplaros, Heaps’ long-time friend and former colleague. “The amount of influence and respect that Toby’s been able to garner is vastly disproportionate to his age, so he must be doing something right.”

“He’s not your typical person,” say Kun, emphatically. “At all.”

Which makes him a perfect match for Ralph Nader.

In all the drama surrounding last year’s U.S. election, it was easy to miss the fact that Ralph Nader was running for president at all. Reviled by Democrats over the perception that he cost Al Gore the White House in 2000, Nader ran again in 2004 anyway and fared considerably worse, pulling in a microscopic 0.4 per cent of the popular vote nationwide.

But he remained undeterred. In early 2008, three days before his 74th birthday, the consumer advocate officially announced his candidacy on MSNBC’s Meet the Press. “Dissent is the mother of assent,” he told host Tim Russert, “and in that spirit … I am running for president.”

It seems inevitable that Heaps and Nader would have met. The two crusaders are obvious kin. Stubborn, relentlessly idealistic, they even look alike. Other campaigners tease that Heaps is the son that Nader never had. When I ask Heaps if he’s noticed the similarities between himself and his mentor, he just grins: “Yup.” That’s all he’s going to say about that. So, what happens, then, when you put Heaps and Nader together to plot something?

“Oh my god. You get chaos. But you get some fireworks … ideas are just coming out rapid-fire,” he says. “But Ralph is as scattergun in his approach as I’ve ever seen. He makes me look like a focused bazooka. But he’s one of these guys who can fire a scattergun and still hit the bull’s eye with most of the bullets. Or at least for a large part of his life he could, when he had the resources.”

The two men first spoke at length in 2002, shortly after Heaps founded Corporate Knights. Heaps wanted to interview his hero for the magazine, but Nader is as hard to reach as Heaps is persistent. “I phoned him about 60 times over the course of a month,” says Heaps. “And then finally he phoned me back while I was out getting a bagel.”

Over the course of the conversation, their shared interests became clear, and a week later a box of assorted books arrived, COD. “Books on credit-card fraud, all kinds of things,” recalls Heaps. “They were pretty good books, but I paid the mailing costs. That’s how he does things. He pays for the books; I pay for the shipping, even though I didn’t ask for them. That’s classic Ralph. He’s cheap, man.”

A few months later, Heaps invited Nader to come speak at a Corporate Knights-sponsored round table. The invitees were mostly CEOs, and Heaps wanted to prevent the conference from becoming too self-congratulatory — the famously blunt Nader obliged with a scolding address.

Politics, along with trouble-making and agitation, are in Heaps’ blood: his great-grandfather was A. A. Heaps, one of the leaders of the Winnipeg General Strike, who later became an MP and helped bring about Canada’s old-age pension and unemployment insurance. His father, Adrian Heaps, is a Toronto city councillor. Most of the people close to him believe he will go into politics. Maybe, he says, but not for a while yet. “It would be way less interesting to go into politics without substantial accomplishments behind you and a real steely resolve for a couple of things you wanted to do,” he says.

“If you get in without that, you end up doing not much of anything, I think. Which is what most politicians do.”

Nader, of course, is an exception. In 2003, Heaps offered to help Nader out in the event of another presidential bid, not really expecting to be held to his promise. “I tried to encourage him to run with Erin Brockovich in 2004 as his running mate,” says Heaps. “I told him if he ran to give me a call — I had no idea at that point what I was committing myself to.”

When Nader called a year later, “I just took off,” says Heaps. “I had my BlackBerry and my laptop and I was living in a tent for a while, so I was running Corporate Knights out of a tent with a BlackBerry.” Heaps criss-crossed the United States, collecting nomination signatures in mall parking lots and county fairs. “The agreement was that I’d go down for a few weeks. And one turned into two, turned into three, turned into four,” explains Heaps. “So I spent about six weeks with my car rental — 24,000 kilometres later I brought it back.”

After the election, Heaps returned to running CK and pursuing his other projects, but in summer 2007 it all started again with a call from Nader’s assistant asking for help. “I see the number and I’m like, ‘Aw, bugger.’ I know what it’s about,” recalls Heaps. Even through it would overturn his life yet again, it didn’t take Heaps long to commit to hitting the Nader trail one more time — his respect for the man and the mission trumping his better judgment.

“His fingerprints are everywhere on any kind of case law, and on any kind of progressive bills that have been passed in the last 30, 40 years,” Heaps says. “Nader is the most qualified human being, given his experience in America, to be president.”

While Heaps and Nader make a great team, on the surface their politics don’t exactly match. The overall pro-business outlook of Corporate Knights stands in stark contrast to the anti-corporate rhetoric of the Nader campaign. During the appearance on Meet the Press where he announced his candidacy, for instance, Nader referred to Washington as “corporate occupied territory,” referred to “corporate crime,” and used that favourite term of the anti-free-trade movement, “corporate globalization.” Despite the apparent differences, Heaps is happy straddling two roles, alternating between boardroom schmoozer and anticorporate crusader. He sees the two worlds as intimately connected. “Ralph’s saying, let’s fix the system — and he means right from the top, from the White House, which is the ultimate governance structure,” he says. “Whereas Corporate Knights, at least by its name, is more focused on changing that system within the boardrooms of corporate Canada. It’s not one or the other. You’ve got to do both.”

Working for Nader, Heaps gets to let loose a bit, too. “The rhetoric is a bit more anti-corporate than I think is fair, or than I believe myself,” he says. “But because I try to be so careful about the corporate egos [in Canada], it’s kind of fun to go into a world where the egos just have big bull’s eyes on them, and there are no rules about going after them … Basically, we’re playing chess here in Canada and when I go to work for Ralph, the gloves come off. The brass knuckles come on.”

In May 2008, I travel to Los Angeles to see what my friend and former colleague is up to in the United States. Our original plan had been to meet up in Washington, D.C., but Heaps called at the last minute to say he was on the West Coast instead, working on a plan to get Nader on the ballot in California. I’m not surprised, so I’m not annoyed. With Toby, sometimes it’s best to be Zen.

As my plane taxis to the gate at LAX, I give him a call. “Okay, so where am I going?” I ask.

“I’m in South Central L.A. You know, where the Rodney King riots happened,” he jokes. “I’m in a grocery-store parking lot. You’ll have no trouble spotting me — I’ll be the only honky here.” An hour later, I arrive at the Superior Super Warehouse at Western and Manchester, and Heaps, wearing a blue Nader ’08 Tshirt, is indeed easy to spot as he chugs a mango energy drink, kicks an errant soccer ball back to a child, and registers a voter. He is grinning, as usual.

It’s odd that one of Nader’s right-hand men is a Canadian, but it makes some sense given that Canada has much of what the Nader campaign would like for the United States: single-payer health care, a multi-party system, an international reputation as a peacekeeper, and so on. Heaps’ colleagues on the Nader trail tease him that he’s trying to import democracy from home. His friends in Canada generally think he’s wasting his time.

John, another campaigner, arrives at Superior Super Warehouse from Wal-Mart, where he’s been collecting signatures all afternoon. In order to get Nader on the ballot in California, the team is registering voters, and Nader’s pariah status makes it a difficult sell. John is surprised to see Heaps wearing his Nader campaign shirt because it’s more difficult to get people to stop when they see the candidate’s name.

From the outside, it may seem insane, this persistence in working on an obviously lost cause. But Nader’s supporters (and there are still a surprisingly large number of them) are driven by dedication to the issues he represents and the lack of an alternative. They believe history will recognize their efforts to break open the two-party system in the United States, and they fight hard. These are true believers, which is why they will stand in supermarket parking lots taking abuse and scorn just for the sake of a few more signatures to support their candidate. In the end, they get the signatures they need. Working on the Nader campaign leaves volunteers feeling they have contributed to the world, and it can also make for some great stories. Like that time a misunderstanding with a notary led to guns coming out.

At Heaps’ request to borrow $300 to pay the notary, I put my hand into my bag, and one of the gun-wielding security guards barks, “Don’t go reaching for anything.” I put my hands up, explain that I’m looking for my bank card, and ask for permission to exit the vehicle. A security guard trails me down the block and across the street to the closest bank.

Back in the Jeep, I hand the money to Heaps, still guarding his documents. The cash counted out through the window, the problem is resolved: the notary says a polite thank you and walks away. With the bystander still yelling for us to wait for the police, Millan pulls away and we speed toward the registrar’s office. Traffic is mercifully light, and we make it on time, filing the petitions with two minutes to spare.

Just outside Norwalk, Heaps calls Nader to share the good news. When he hangs up, he relays a compliment that makes the mission feel worthwhile: “Ralph says, ‘Good work, guys.’”

It was a small victory, but as in 2004, President Ralph Nader was never really a possibility.

In January 2009, shortly before Barack Obama’s inauguration, I meet Heaps to talk about the outcome of the election. “Barack Obama won the election in spite of our efforts. Ralph Nader did not,” Heaps deadpans. “We’re all a little disappointed.”

Joking aside, Heaps is still feeling raw from the results. Nader pulled less than one per cent of the total — about 700,000 votes. This despite CNN polls putting him at four per cent a week before the election. He got substantially more votes than in 2004, but that’s because Nader was on the ballot in more states than last time around — California in particular.

I ask Heaps if there was any part of him that believed Nader could actually win, and he takes a long time to respond, thinking, grinning, formulating. “In the very deep recesses,” he says and laughs.

It’s that combination of smarts and naïveté, a faith many would call foolish (the same one that keeps losing him all those bikes), that makes Heaps a force. He lacks that part of the brain that says things are impossible, and while his friends and co-workers sometimes find it maddening, it allows him to accomplish things that others wouldn’t even bother attempting. In addition to the magazine and his green-energy ventures in Toronto and Ghana, Heaps is trying to get a Corporate Knights think tank off the ground. His association with Nader got him a shared byline on a Wall Street Journal op-ed, too, advising Obama to push for an international carbon tax, a policy Heaps has been advocating for years.

Overall, the Nader campaign was worthwhile, Heaps says, if for no other reason than to remind our benighted American neighbours about the important issues the two main parties wouldn’t touch. While Heaps may still be smarting from the election outcome, he’s got plenty of distractions to keep him busy. For example, today he’s waging war against Big Potash — a legal cartel of fertilizer companies that have together raised prices beyond the reach of farmers in the developing world. He’s spent the morning on the phone asking hard questions in his quest for damning information. It’s the kind of chase Heaps lives for, another day in Toby’s world. As he says, “Greed undoes them every time.”