As seen on thestar.com

Province’s hospitals and universities could inject hundreds of millions of dollars into local communities through smarter spending, report says.

By: Sara Mojtehedzadeh Work and Wealth reporter, Published on Mon Aug 24 2015

He’s a man with a vision, and Andrew Arifuzzaman’s latest ambition is to bring the University of Toronto’s Scarborough campus out of the woods. Literally.

“UTSC has been here in the community for 50 years,” says its chief administrative officer. “But up to eight years ago, it was literally behind a forest.”

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO SCARBOROUGH
University of Toronto Scarborough is trying to pump economic opportunity back into its community. One initiative is asking businesses with university contracts to take on young people like Kareem Francis, 26, a member of the Hammerheads program that gives construction training and apprenticeships to at-risk youth.

According to a report to be released Monday by the Atkinson Foundation and theMowat Centre, bringing big public institutions closer to their communities could be one of Ontario’s best hopes of tackling poverty.

“If institutions can begin to work together and create good economic opportunities for companies to succeed locally, I think that’s a great opportunity for everybody,” says Arifuzzaman.

“The university could be very important to helping revitalize what Scarborough is.”

That embodies the spirit of the so-called “anchor mission,” outlined by the Atkinson/Mowat report. Anchors are public bodies like universities, hospitals and municipal governments that are rooted in a particular community and are unlikely to ever leave.

The report suggests that if the province’s higher education and medical institutions spent more of their collective $9.9-billion goods and services budget locally, they could kick-start local economic growth and job creation.

“Diverting just 2 per cent of these expenditures to local small business and communities could inject $230 million into local communities,” the study says.

Currently, when Ontario’s public sector is tendering contracts for goods and services, it focuses mainly on who makes the cheapest bid. But anchor mission advocates say it makes more long-term sense to prioritize local and minority-owned businesses where possible — to create more vibrant, self-sufficient and egalitarian economies.

“It’s really a smarter way to use existing funds, especially at a time of increasing public debt and rising demand for services,” says Nevena Dragicevic, the report’s author and a policy associate at the Mowat Centre.

The Star has previously profiled the success of such anchor missions in Cleveland, a Rust Belt city whose universities and hospitals joined forces to buy about a quarter of all goods and services locally and to contract more local and minority businesses in infrastructure projects.

The effort, which also includes skill development programs and worker-owned co-operative businesses, is revitalizing low-income neighbourhoods hollowed out by long-gone manufacturing jobs and a housing market crash.

This month, a delegation from the City of Toronto and top philanthropic bodies, universities, and hospitals in the GTA visited the place now known as Comeback City to learn from its achievements.

“I was so impressed with what’s going on in Cleveland,” adds Arifuzzaman, who joined the weeklong trip. “You really get a sense that there’s something changing there.”

He is hoping to affect similar change at University of Toronto Scarborough, which is in the midst of a seven-year expansion plan with construction projects with the potential to create 2,500 full-time jobs.

One new initiative includes getting construction companies with UTSC contracts to take on students from the local Hammerheads program, which gives construction training and apprenticeships to at-risk youth.

Kareem Francis, 26, credits his mentors at Hammerheads for getting him out of his low-wage job as a mover and into a well-paid apprenticeship with VF Mechanical, which is currently doing work on the new UTSC environmental science building.

“They gave me a sustainable career,” says the Scarborough dad. “This program is definitely good for communities where youth don’t necessarily have a solid direction as to where they’re headed.”

Like the leadership at UTSC, Denise Andrea Campbell, the city’s director of social policy, wants to bring a little bit of Cleveland to Toronto. With city council considering a new poverty reduction strategy that talks of economic inclusion and community wealth building, Campbell says it’s time to spend public sector money in a smarter way.

“We’ve got a lot of successes but not a coherent integrated strategy. And that’s why Cleveland is inspiring to Toronto, for sure.”

By the numbers

$130 billion: amount the province will spend on infrastructure projects over the next 10 years.

$4.2 billion: amount Ontario universities spent on goods and services in 2011.

$5.7 billion: amount Ontario hospitals spent on goods and services in 2011.

$1.5 billion: average amount City of Toronto spends annually on procurement.

133,000: number of people employed by Ontario colleges and universities.

Successful anchor strategies

• Buying more goods and services from local businesses.
• Hiring a greater percentage of the workforce locally.
• Providing workforce training for local workers.
• Helping develop local businesses’ capacity to bid for and win lucrative contracts.
• Using real estate development to promote local retail, housing and community land trusts.