Graeme Morton of the Calgary Herald covers the Cardus consultation, Planning in Good Faith in the September 21, Calgary Herald: CALGARY - With a Calgary skyline dominated by construction cranes and glistening towers of commerce, what room and role is there for our churches, synagogues, temples and mosques? That was the question which brought together local faith leaders, civic politicians, designers and architects earlier this week for the Living in Good Faith forum. The session, sponsored by the Hamilton-based Work Research Foundation, was not designed to generate quick answers but to start the dialogue flowing on the future of spirituality and city life -- stained glassed urbanism if you will. The local conference follows on the heels of the foundation's in-depth report on the role of faith in society in Toronto. "Religious communities are interwoven into the culture of our cities, so it begs the question what can they add to the urban experience," said Michael Van Pelt, the foundation's president. "You rarely see churches being recognized as a social pillar of society these days," he added. "But in just about every volunteer, cultural or social agency in this city, you'll find an undeniable contribution from Calgary's faith community." Van Pelt noted research by University of Lethbridge sociologist Reg Bibby which showed more Canadians (30 per cent) were involved in a religious organization as compared to similar groups representing sports, unions and professions, culture, education or politics. And yet the popular perception remains that faith has been badly eclipsed in this secular, individualistic and materialistic new world. One of the forum speakers, Rev. Eric Jacobsen, a Presbyterian pastor from Tacoma, Wash., said faith communities have created a network of relationships which makes them prime candidates to advocate for the homeless and marginalized. However, Jacobsen admitted that a collective belief in the Biblical instruction to be keepers of our brothers and sisters can be difficult in this disengaged age. "Does public life exist today, or are we just out there to shop or get something to eat?" asked Jacobsen. Panelist Dr. Terry Downey, president of St. Mary's University College, cautioned Calgary has a long way to go before it arrives at any urban version of the promised land. "This city has incredible wealth, but there's not much beauty for the homeless and mentally ill who are on the streets," said Downey. The pressures of a rapidly growing city are creating scenarios where the self-centred face of human nature comes to the surface. "In the last 50 years, the whole theme of urban life has often been one of segregation of people, not of integration," said Ald. Brian Pincott. "We need to discover and ultimately embrace 'the other' in our society, whether it's in financial or faith circles, and right now we're not very good at that," he added, challenging church communities to "show us the way." Nestled among the office towers and condos, Calgary's downtown core still contains a number of vibrant, historic churches, faith communities such as St. Mary's Cathedral, First Baptist, Grace Presbyterian and Knox United. Others, such as the former Wesley United, have succumbed to dwindling attendance and found new purpose -- in Wesley's case as Calgary Opera's headquarters. David Down, the city's senior architect/urban designer, said many churches remain iconic buildings, instantly recognizable in their communities. He notes a predicted dramatic increase in the number of people living downtown could revitalize existing churches and create demand for new ones. However, Down admits the Centre City plan for the future of the Beltline and the core, "deals with faith organizations only in a cursory way." Down said that large religious buildings opened in recent years, such as Centre Street and First Alliance churches and the Baitun Nur mosque, have all been located in light industrial or commercial areas, not residential neighbourhoods. Peter Burgener, a well-known city architect, told the forum churches continue to stand out as landmarks in a congested urban environment. "Church is all about community building; it's a place to go when no one else will care for you," said Burgener. "The spires of churches continue to reach up to the heavens. They serve as a vertical punctuation mark on our skylines."

A Submission to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario Introduction The issue of whether it is "discriminatory" for a physician to refuse to refer a patient for a procedure that the physician does not wish to perform or be associated with is once again on the front burner. We are aware that there has been wide-spread concern about whether (and to what extent) the conscience and beliefs of physicians are being taken into consideration by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (COPSO). The Ontario Medical Association (to name but one group) has expressed concerns with the way in which COPSO is responding to the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) letter of earlier this year in its Draft1. Because there have been concerns and because the issue is one of wide-spread importance to all citizens in Ontario (and other provinces) it is a good thing that the time both for making submissions and for their consideration has been extended by COPSO and I thank you in advance for this opportunity to do so. The Issue Barbara Hall, the Chief Commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, has written a letter to the National Post (September 7, 2008 "Doctors Must not Discriminate") outlining her view that there is a requirement to refer. She is not a medical physician; neither is she a philosopher or capable, apparently, of the kind of thinking that is necessary in this area, as her letter shows: Like other professionals, doctors are entitled to make decisions about the services they offer based on their clinical competence. And, doctors, like patients, are also entitled to accommodation of their religious beliefs as much as possible. In some situations, like a medical clinic, it might be appropriate to refer a patient on to another professional who will help them. But patients should not have to shop around for medical treatment they were denied for non-clinical discriminatory reasons. (emphasis added). For "non-clinical discriminatory reasons", read: the exercise of conscience or religion. In fact, there are many technically "non-clinical" reasons in medicine why people cannot always get what they want. For example, an older person may well not get the transplant over a younger patient who is more likely to benefit—a discrimination or distinction based upon "age" yet one that we justify. There are many such examples. The accommodation of differing beliefs is just one more area in which there may be something that comes between what a patient wants and can reasonably expect. But the point here is that Chief Commissioner Hall thinks it is acceptable, as a general principle, to discriminate against those who have one set of conscientiously held or religious beliefs on behalf of others who have a different set of beliefs. In addition she asserts that such conscientious or religiously based reasons for action are discriminatory. Human Rights, it seems, now entails monitoring conflicting beliefs in society, turning them into one half of a human rights issue, and then, by eradicating the possibility of dissent (for that is what a physician's ability to refuse to refer amounts to) forcing some citizens to effectively implicate themselves in the beliefs of other citizens. Under the Canadian Constitution all rights must be consistent with the concept of a "free and democratic society" so one must wonder how Chief Commissioner Hall's conception of the truncation of these freedoms can survive scrutiny. On this interpretation of the Chief Commissioner and as represented in the Draft there is the real spectre of no meaningful public freedom of conscience or religious belief for doctors. Such a radical truncation is intolerable in a free and democratic society. The right of citizens to express their consciences and beliefs is not something that must be "parked in the waiting room." If society wishes to have conscientious physicians, it cannot at large dictate how those consciences are free to operate about matters that raise deeply personal beliefs. To remove the capacity to refuse to refer, in the manner suggested by Chief Commissioner Hall, Dr. Zuliani in his letter and in the Draft is a gross interference with the proper scope of a physician's rights. This direction of non-referral is the drift of recent communications and direction from the OHRC to the COPSO and the College's Draft Response and the reason why the Centre for Cultural Renewal felt it necessary to make this submission. Here is how your College responded, through its current President, to an article by Lorne Gunter and an editorial in the National Post last August: All services that doctors provide—including decisions to accept or refuse individuals as patients, decisions about providing treatment or granting referrals to existing patients and decisions to end a doctor-patient relationship—are subject to the obligations of the Human Rights Code. Contrary to your editorial, the college does not expect physicians to provide medical services that are against their moral or religious beliefs. If physicians feel they cannot provide a service for these reasons, the draft policy does expect physicians to communicate clearly, treat patients with respect and provide information about accessing care. (See: "Doctors' Hands Not Being Forced," National Post, August 22, 2008 by Dr. Preston Zuliani, president, College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, Toronto.) Analysis and Submission It would appear that, for "provide information about accessing care" Dr. Zuliani, on behalf of COPSO means, like Chief Commissioner Hall, "refer." If that was not what was meant and something like a neutral phone referral information service was what was anticipated, then the College should say so more clearly. To agree with the blunt approach of Chief Commissioner Hall, as the Draft appears to, is not sustainable or advisable. With respect the policy of other bodies, such as the Canadian Medical Association and certain provincial medical associations, which clearly state that there is no duty to refer, are superior in so far as they strike a better balance between the needs of patients and the beliefs and consciences of physicians. (I cite the relevant policy from the CMA showing this later on in this Submission). If the College is genuinely concerned about the provision of information regarding care there are other less intrusive and destructive ways of accomplishing this goal. For example, the College could extend what it already has in place; namely to create a "physician's referral service" that would direct inquiries from the public to physicians and surgeons who work in the relevant areas. This number could be provided in a handy form (flyers, posters etc.) for physicians to have available in ways that are not issue specific for the physician thereby creating the moral problem which exists with referral. This number and listing (akin to that established by some Bar Associations for lawyers) could assist patients in finding information about how to "access information about health care." This way the individual physician who has an objection to this kind of referral in specific circumstances would not find him or herself in a difficult situation and the concerns about access to medical care (the purported reason for the concerns in relation to "ending the physician-client relationship") would be addressed.2 Availability of alternative sources for information about physicians and their areas of practice would then be coming from a central source and not from a physician who finds him or herself in a position of conflict in relation to the specific issue. The central point here may be framed as a question. If I am a physician with a conscientious or religious objection to something that a person wishes me to do, must I help the person find someone who will do that thing? The Draft seems to assume the answer to this is "yes" but there is no principled reason why that answer is the right one and strong arguments that it is wrong. A better way of balancing the "conflict" can be reached and that is what we should strive for. There is something deeply political about the approach being taken by the Draft and by Chief Commissioner Hall in her public pronouncements. While the suggestion is that the requirement of referral is driven by concerns about non-discrimination this does not stand up to scrutiny when it is realized that there are other means available (as set out above) to protect both interests as much as possible. One cannot escape the sense, in reading the Draft, that religion or conscience objections are a "suspect category" that COPSO (following similar suspicions at the OHRC) wishes to have minimized as much as possible in order to obtain other health care outcomes—such as easier and wider access to controversial practices. One of the central policies of non-discrimination and a free and open society is a proper recognition of modus vivendi—how to organize around divergent beliefs, not create spurious rank-orderings to make one persons beliefs (in this case the concerned physician's) effectively disappear. The issue in this area is how to provide maximum respect for differences related to beliefs that it is legal to hold. Issues such as abortion, contraception, euthanasia, whether a man should be in the physician's office when a pap smear is done, reproductive technology, capital punishment etc.—are all belief conflicts and are deeply involved in what we believe or do not believe, and physicians can be implicated in them all unless the right to dissent is recognized and protected. That you think something is just fine and unobjectionable while I think it is monstrous does not mean that your "all's right with the world" or "I have a right to demand what I want" view can force me to make what you want happen. That is what underlies this current debate. The Draft currently under consideration subordinates the rights of a physician to those of a patient under the idea that "putting the patient first" requires obviating personal beliefs or conscience. There is no sound basis for such an understanding. Nothing in the patient/physician relationship requires such a wholesale subordination of the physician's beliefs. Here is the troublesome passage from the Draft. ii) Moral or Religious Beliefs If physicians have moral or religious beliefs which affect or may affect the provision of medical services, the College advises physicians to proceed cautiously. Personal beliefs and values and cultural and religious practices are central to the lives of physicians and their patients. However, as a physician's responsibility is to place the needs of the patient first, there will be times when it may be necessary for physicians to set aside their personal beliefs in order to ensure that patients or potential patients are provided with the medical treatment and services they require. Physicians should be aware that decisions to restrict medical services offered, to accept individuals as patients or to end physician-patient relationships that are based on moral or religious belief may contravene the Code, and/or constitute professional misconduct.3 It is important not to lose sight of a basic principle here. Canada endorses accommodation for conscience and religion (the co-joined right "conscience and religion" is what the Charter of Rights and Freedoms refers to at Section 2 (a)). This is a right all citizens have regardless of their occupations. Perhaps the Draft could say something positive about conscience and religion being important rather than casting a "chill" across the whole area. No amount of demanding, pushing, complaining, cajoling, gossip, innuendo, begging or punishment can take away the right every Canadian has to act according to their consciences and religion. Whether a person can always be accommodated in such an exercise of conscience or belief is another matter—the employer (if it is an employment situation) must accommodate up to the level of "undue hardship." A physician must show that he/she acted responsibly in making it clear in a courteous way to the patient what the limits are of his/her medical practice. Citizens Owe Each Other a Measure of Respect as Well The patient, like every other citizen, has duties as well as rights. Part of the duty of one citizen is not to force another citizen (in this case a physician) to abandon his/her beliefs or act in breach of them. That is what Commissioner Hall, the letter from Dr. Zuliani and the Draft all fail to consider. Ethics and accommodation constitute a two-way street. They are not, in how the conflicts are set up, a one-way superhighway marked "what patient wants patient gets"—medicine does not and should not work that way. Yet that seems to be the assumption underlying the current Draft. Where the principles are properly applied, physicians do not lose their right to dissent, to disapproval and to non-involvement just because of the doctor-patient relationship. To allow that would be to give a "trump right" to patients. Yet no such "trump" exists. Patients have the right to good medical care, but they do not have the right to demand that any given physician perform services to which that person may have an ethical or religious objection. There is no duty to "put one's religious or conscientious views to one side" in the manner suggested by the Draft. In fact, it would be equally accurate to put the matter this way: "if you don't like the scope of your physician's practice go somewhere else." All the physician has a duty to do is be clear with the patient that he or she will not do certain things—things the doctor has every right as a free and autonomous citizen to refuse to do. Physicians can be required not to discriminate against patients on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion or what have you. They can also be required not to proselytize or to act in inappropriate ways with patients. Equally, they cannot be required to place themselves in the chain of causation of procedures or practices they are opposed to for reasons of conscience under some supposed "second-order" ranking of their own beliefs.4 Maybe something else underlies this tightening up of the instruments of the administrative State? Might there be a growing concern that many physicians don't want to do certain things that other citizens want? Could this be part of how "politics" in the widest sense works out in societies? I think so, and would assert further that that is why some people fear the freedom of free physicians. But it should not be the role of COPSO to act against the diverse interests of the Members of the College no matter how strident some of the voices within it are for their own beliefs to be advanced. Dissent and debate are how society (and its associations) should work. The fine line that is being completely erased by those like Chief Commissioner Hall who wish to make physicians into the pull-strings of patients is that the patient can only require that physicians act on their best clinical and personal basis honestly and openly. It should be perfectly acceptable for a doctor to say "I do not do X,Y & Z in my medical practice, if you wish X.Y and Z you must find a physician who does this. I can also not refer you for this to another physician, you are free to find such a person on your own." If I believe euthanasia is immoral because, according to my beliefs and analysis the intentional taking of a human life is wrong, then it is pretty clear that if I am required, as Chief Commissioner Hall says I am (and Dr. Zuliani and the Draft suggests), to ensure that it happens anyway by writing down the address of the doctor whom I know does it and giving this to the patient, I am directly involved in doing it. The death of the patient, if it follows from my referral, happens, in part, because of my referral. As I am in the chain of causation I am implicated, I am supporting it by my actions and my ability to refuse is nullified. This is why the "right of non-referral" is such an important right. Hiding the moral conflict behind the terms "referral" "discrimination" or "providing information" or avoiding the fact that there can be deep moral disputes behind such things as "providing information on accessing health care" the way COPSO in its Draft and Chief Commissioner Hall in her letter suggests, is just a way of saying "your conscientious scruples are irrelevant—make the sought for outcomes happen in all cases whether you are opposed or not." On the other hand, it can be seen that if I have no involvement in something I am not in any way implicated in what happens nor am I interfering in a person getting what they seek; it is the only neutral position. Required referral, on the other hand, is not neutral. The Canadian Medical Association has been around this issue before: they do not require referrals. On what possible basis other than brute power of an over-weaning administrative force could Chief Commission Hall and the OHRC think they know better than the doctors themselves? Answer: they have the power, or think they do. They also appear to have some allies in COPSO. This attitude, however, is not the friend of diversity and amounts to an egregious discrimination against a genuine pluralism of beliefs as well as an attack on the independence of professional bodies such as COPSO. The CMA policy on abortion states as follows: A physician whose moral or religious beliefs prevent him or her from recommending or performing an abortion should inform the patient of this so that she may consult another physician. (CMA, Policy on Induced Abortion, December 1988) Note, in this policy, how the physician's responsibility ends, as it should, with simply informing the patient of the doctor's "moral or religious" objection and it is up to the patient to consult another physician, not the doctor to refer her to one. It is this approach that the Draft over-rides. Conclusion: A Right of non-referral is mandated by sound Ethics and Law A recent article in the Student BMJ captures the correct approach on the question of the accommodation of conscience and belief in a medical context: Conscientious objection in medicine is rarely an easy way out. It may add to paper work, complicate relationships with colleagues, and leave the doctor feeling vulnerable and isolated. However, history shows that rapid changes of law is reason enough to uphold the doctor's right to raise conscientious objection. We may never all agree on what is the right thing to do in difficult clinical and moral situations. But we need more doctors, not fewer, who are willing to defend what they think is right.5 Based on the foregoing analysis, it is submitted that your College should as a matter of sound ethics and law endorse a policy that respects the rights of conscience and religion guaranteed to every Canadian (including physicians and surgeons) under our Constitution including the right of non-referral. Such a failure to respect rights is not the best basis for a profession to operate—particularly at a time when there is a shortage of physicians, many of whom have a choice of where they might want to settle and practice and for many of whom the practical aspects of conscientious beliefs accommodation (or its absence) may be an important consideration. If we want conscientious physicians we must respect the exercise of conscience, not attempt to drive it into irrelevance as is being suggested by the OHRC and the Draft under consideration. Respectfully Submitted, Iain T. Benson Barrister & Solicitor Executive Director Centre for Cultural Renewal, Ottawa,Canada Notes 1 See Draft; Physicians and the Ontario Human Rights Code, undated, http://www.cpso.on.ca/Policies/consultation/HumanRightsDRAFT_08.pdf last accessed September 11, 2008. For the OMA concerns see: Charles Wells "OMA fears intrusion into MD's Beliefs", National Post, Saturday, August 23, 2008 at http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/story.html?id=743272 (last accessed September 10, 2008). 2 The approach taken in the existing College "Sample Notification Letter" strikes a good balance here. That language is as follows: For assistance in locating another physician, you may wish to contact the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (416-967-2626 or toll free 1-800-268-7096 ext. 626) or visit the College website at www.cpso.on.ca and access the Doctor Search service. (see: http://www.cpso.on.ca/policies/ending.htm last accessed Sept 11, 2008) 3 http://www.cpso.on.ca/Policies/consultation/HumanRightsDRAFT_08.pdf last accessed September 11, 2008 Emphasis added. 4 One of the ironies of the existing Draft is that it purports to recognize the Dagenais principle that rights under the Charter are not "rank-ordered" yet in the way the entire Draft is oriented, the physician's beliefs count as nothing against the demands of the patient. This cannot be correct and the existence of a blatant rank-ordering while purporting not to is a significant example of what would amount to institutional duplicity should this carry into practice. 5 Charles Williams "Conscientious Objection" Student BMJ 2008;16:235 /18, available at: http://student.bmj.com/issues/08/07/life/264.php (last accessed September 12, 2008).

The recent Work Research Foundation report, Toronto the Good, goes a long way toward redeeming that rusty and increasingly ironic old sobriquet. Once it was a description of the city's embrace of a grey and graceless religious morality, and then long a snickering diss—everything from the perennial haplessness of the Leafs, to the lack of a night life, to rigidly controlled liquor sales—in a phrase, our collective clumsiness as we tried to dance. The report's reclamation of the term 'good' is, I think, very helpful. This 'goodness' is not the application of a specific or doctrinaire moral code, but the kind of thing we mean when we say, on a hot summer day, "This ice cream is really good." Strange to think that the church could afford to take a lesson about such goodness from the City's official plan, which sets out values of diversity and opportunity, beauty and connectivity, and leadership and stewardship. I can't remember the last time I heard any of those first four terms used in a conventional church context, but they are surely core spiritual values. Back when the phrase 'Toronto the Good' was first coined, the church was a substantial power and power broker in city life and politics. That kind of power has long since dissipated, and is perhaps not to be lamented. And now we seem to be—finally!—emerging from a lengthy period in which spiritual communities have been relegated to the margins of civic life, distrusted by business and city leaders, and operating out of their own sense of inferiority and exclusivism. Ironically, the deplorable rise of poverty and homelessness may be the reason for the new, fruitful relationship between city and spiritual communities described in the report: it's largely in seeking to care for the poor and excluded that those communities have re-discovered their social raison d'etre, and in the process, have proven themselves not only worthy partners to secular and government initiatives, but also as creative initiators in their own right. And when spiritual communities reclaim this historical ground, it seems the arts (beauty and connectivity!) begin also to burgeon again among them. I've been using the term 'spiritual' rather than 'faith' communities because our city is so diverse that even the latter term, as generic as it may seem to Christians, does not apply to all people of deep spiritual conviction who live here. Many Buddhists, for example, feel that the term 'faith' does not exactly apply to their approach to life. People of Christian faith have not often, in the past, taken much time to try to understand such subtle differences. One of the great gifts of working together on common, neutral ground (often with the City as the facilitator) is that we do begin to recognize the nature of both our differences and similarities; as a Christian, every such contact convinces me more and more deeply that all truth is God's truth, and that His grace and mercy cannot be contained by the church or anything else. Not even the City. "Seek the peace [health, wholeness, prosperity] of the city," God instructed the Hebrew people long ago during their exile in pagan Babylon. "For in its peace you will find your own." We are beginning to do this together, I believe—the City, the church, and other spiritual communities. I can hardly wait to see what good thing will spring to life next.

Toronto the Good addresses the critical issue of partnership between the City and faith communities. This issue is going to grow in importance as the diversity of our population and of our faith communities intensifies. Fortunately, the faith communities have shown how a little can go a long way. The Out of the Cold programs and the many food and clothing banks operated by the Christian congregations add up to a tremendous contribution to the City's welfare. Add in the efforts of all sorts of Christian missions—mainly supported by relatively small annual contributions by many thousands of donors—and you have an irreplaceable contribution to the war on poverty. As I read through Toronto the Good, the image of a multi-faceted jewel came to mind. The jewel is the just and prosperous community we all desire. But it is a jewel with many facets. It's not just the religions that are different. Within religions, there are denominations. Within denominations, there are different congregations. And within congregations, different priorities compete constantly for attention. We face these tensions and trade-offs at The Scott Mission all the time. With a budget of $8 million per year, 100 full-time staff, 4,000 volunteers each year, and 14 major programs in three municipalities, we still long to do more. In our men's and family services alone, we welcome over 8,000 different individuals every year. Many of these come to us monthly, weekly or even daily. Where City government and faith communities intersect best is in the provision of social services within the different neighbourhoods. The propagation of religious belief for the benefit of others is the province of the faith communities alone. For us at The Scott Mission—and this will sound old-fashioned to some—the best and highest good that we can give to a struggling person is the inner resources of a public profession of God's love. This, for us, is the pathway to a new life that will spill over into generosity, kindness and compassion for others. Recently, we completed a governance review in which revisited all of the beliefs that the Mission has held since it was founded in 1941. We came up with three main objectives for our service of love to the City. First, we re-emphasized our commitment to providing basic necessities, social services and emergency relief services, including food, hot meals, clothing, first aid, shelter, child care, youth services, counseling and advocacy. Second, we strengthened our commitment to develop housing and residential facilities that will give at-risk people a chance to make a significant break with the vicious cycles of addiction, mental illness and low self-esteem that have held them back. Third, we recommitted ourselves to our long-standing evangelical Christian faith basis. Our Bible study groups, prayer groups and multi-lingual Christian fellowships have recently seen a surprising growth. This is not because we obligate the poor to believe what we do. On the contrary, we encourage them to be who they are in their own way. No, the groups grew because of the deep spiritual hunger that is as severe as any shortage of food or housing. I suppose my prayer for our multi-faceted jewel of a City would go something like this: Lord, help us faith communities to support our political leadership in the incredibly complex task with which they have been assigned; Lord, help our City leadership to continue to allow all faith communities to gently and peacefully preach and practice our various professions of faith without this being held against us as a form of discrimination; And, dare I say it . . . Lord, let Toronto home and property owners not begrudge the relatively minor increases in property taxes that would enable the City to reduce the public debt and build up the social services and housing that the poor need. I know I won't get elected any time soon on a platform of property tax increases. But if we aren't prepared to donate our unused clothing, if we can't find a way to provide a few cans of food a week to our local food bank, if we can't donate the price of a cup of coffee per day (tax deductible!), if we can't visit an elderly person, and if we won't pay the taxes necessary to support this jewel of a City, then we'll get the City we deserve: a City that is increasingly difficult to govern, a growing number of disgruntled and dispirited poor, and city services and faith communities that are overwhelmed with demands. Partnership between the City and faith communities? Toronto the Good is right, that's a key issue. But it has to begin in our hearts first.

What is education for? The development of character? Or, the acquisition of a marketable skill? These are not new questions. In 'Against the Sophists,' the ancient Greek philosopher Isocrates argued that character should be king in education. Isocrates believed that education is primarily about the development of the learner's character. Isocrates did not oppose the development of technical skill. But he argued that skills should always be in the service of character. For Isocrates, the learner should refine and develop her skills not primarily for material gain, but for the public good, to encourage and to foster the development of character in the public domain. Character, too, was the concern of Jewish and Christian education over technique or skills acquisition: 'Train up a child in the way he should go,' wrote the Sage. Education might well give its holder an enhanced ability to earn a living. But his education was in the service not of himself, but of God, family, church, and of the public community. 'Character' and 'service' were the watchwords of the professions. Guilds were formed to support and protect journeymen, but also to school apprentices in workmanship of the highest quality, in the service of their communities. Sometime in the 1800s, however, there was a shift in understanding of what education was for. Instead of education's being in the service of character, education was put in the service of 'the utility principle,' also known as 'the greatest happiness principle.' As the 19th-c. philosopher John Stuart Mill argued, 'actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure' (Utilitarianism, 1863). Instead of education's being about character, now education was to lead to pleasure, for both the person and the public. It didn't happen overnight. It took some time for the commitment to character to be overtaken by the utilitarian commitment to pleasure. But where once teachers collaborated with parents in the development of children's character, now many parents primary concern is that their children acquire a marketable diploma or degree that will get them a good job, one that pays well. Where once a failing grade may have indicated a child lacking in a work ethic, failing a learning disability or problems at home, now, a poor grade is taken as a teacher's being too tough in her grading of a child's work. And when a parent goes to bat with a teacher, without good reason, to insist that his child deserves a higher grade, how might that affect the character of the child concerned? How might the threat of recriminations from a principal or a parent over grades affect a teacher?s ability to hold students accountable, let alone grading practices? The shift has affected parents whose primary concern is their children's character. Instead of teachers and parents, collaborating, some teachers undermine parents hard work of cultivating the virtues in their children. Instead of its being celebrated as God's gift for marriage and the responsibility called for, all too often children are taught that 'sex' is merely a source of pleasure. Does education encourage a work ethic? Does education call for reflection on what is good, true, and beautiful? Does education instill the virtues? Does education direct toward a life of service? Does education call for teachers to collaborate with parents, or to undermine them? Does education elevate the calling and profession of teaching? Or, demean it? Does education suggest to students that they are commodities in a job market? Or, does it ennoble them toward the Image of their Creator? Education is surely more than the acquisition of skills. Learning to read can be a wondrous, almost magical, gift. By it, one can think the thoughts of the great essayists and novelists and playwrights and poets and philosophers and scientists and mathematicians, with them. Learning to write is to discover the delight of organizing one's thoughts, making them coherent to others. To be schooled in the fine arts as a competent artist or an intelligent appreciator is to be transported by a musical phrase, brush strokes on a canvas, or an 'impossible' dance move! To play organized sports is to challenge the mind and body, and learn the ethos of teamwork. The world needs more bankers, journeymen, professionals, and, yes, teachers for whom 'character is king.' Whose technical prowess serves character and the public good, and whose understandings of these are directed toward the Image of God.

When Alexander Baring of England's great investment banking house visited Upper Canada - today's Ontario - in 1797, he adjudged it as recorded by Philip Ziegler in, The Sixth Great Power: A history of One of the greatest of All Banking families, the House of Barings, 1762-1929: beyond the reach of any export market and must like Switzerland subsist from its own resources. Both it and Lower Canada (today's Quebec) were 'a perfect dead weight to Great Britain.' The settlers were without any kind of patriotism and as soon as self interest dictated a change of policy, 'the same scene will be played which we witnessed in these States (he wrote from Philadelphia) with the only difference that the Contest will be much shorter.' The only reason for occupying the Canadas had been to secure the northern frontier of what was now the United States, 'but since the loss of the latter they are of no service but to the empty vanity of large territorial possessions and to increase Ministerial patronage at the expense of the (British) Nation.' Alexander Baring, however, was far more bullish on Upper and Lower Canada's southern neighbour, the United States, as early as 1801. Barings was also far more bullish on Argentina with its superior climate, superior lands and proven natural resources, and its greater accessibility via the shipping lanes by sail. However, by the middle of the nineteenth century, Barings' attitudes toward Canada and Argentina had reversed. A Barings business partner observed that, "They appear to be thriving in Canada," he told Bates in 1841, "and to be a prudent, frugal and good sort of people", as Ziegler writes in his landmark history of the Barings banking dynasty. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988). By 1848, the development of Canada was far behind that of the United States, primarily for lack of access to capital and investors. It was to the investment bankers Barings and Glyns in London that the Canadians turned. When the CPR was to be built and the new Dominion of Canada agreed to loan $20 million of the $35 million that the CPR was authorized to raise, George Stephen turned in 1884- 85 to Barings to underwrite an issue of $3 million of stock. But Barings' confidence in Argentina was undermined in spite of its natural attributes as shown in Thomas Baring's judgment that "this so-called Republic is possibly under a more despotic rule than any other country on the face of the earth." Throughout much of the twentieth century and on into the present century, Canada has continued to be a desirable destination for foreign investment. What was decisive in Barings' preferring Canada over Argentina, despite Argentina's natural assets, was Canada's government and its other cultural attributes. Investment is not uni-directional. Canadians are investing abroad, around the world. But like the nineteenth- century investment bankers of Barings, Canadians tend to invest in countries whose government and other cultural attributes mirror the historical Canadian commitments to the rule of law, the sanctity of contracts, honesty, thrift, prudence and work ethic. When investors make investment decisions, they look for countries like Canada. Their decisions to invest are affirmations of their confidence in a country, including its business climate and commercial culture. Decisions against proceeding with investment may well be an expression of misgivings about a country's government and its commitments to the rule of law and other key principles. When investors clamour to invest in a country, they are often giving that country an 'A' grade. A recent report focuses on Canada's achieving an 'A' grade on trade, investment, productivity and economic growth. On June 26, the Government of Canada's Competition Policy Review Panel, composed of L. R. (Red) Wilson (chair), Murray Edwards, Thomas Jenkins, Isabelle Hudon and Brian Levitt, submitted their 140-page report, Compete to Win, to the federal Minister of Industry, Jim Prentice. The report makes 65 recommendations, including these: amendments to the Investment Canada Act, particularly in respect of raising review thresholds (except in respect of 'culture'), and shifting onus from requiring the investor to demonstrate 'net benefit' to calling upon the relevant minister to demonstrate an adverse effect to national interest; amendments to sectoral regimes in respect of ownership of banking, air transport, uranium mining, telecommunications and broadcasting, and financial services; amendments to the Competition Act, particularly in respect of M&A; amendments to taxation related to corporate tax rates, provincial capital gains and consumption taxes, reducing personal income taxes in favour of raising value-added consumption taxes, tax provisions that disadvantage Canadian companies relative to foreign companies engaged in Canadian acquisitions, and interest deductibility for Canadian companies pursuing foreign acquisitions; education policy reforms designed to increase the number of Canadian students pursuing training in engineering and technology, to attract international students to Canadian institutions; immigration and immigrant resettlement policy reforms designed to expedite foreign credential recognition and to address Canadian labour market shortages; reducing barriers to inter-provincial trade, particularly related to goods, services and people, to securities regulation, and to environmental assessments; proactively expanding Canada's multilateral trade especially by multiplying bilateral free trade agreements and foreign investment protection agreements, and by way of liberalizing Canadian trade and investment policies and intentionally branching out on trade and investment globally; creation of a Competitiveness Council independent of government and business, with a mandate to evaluate and report on Canada's competitiveness - a mandate distinct from the ongoing mandate of the Competition Bureau to enforce. In what follows, I intend to highlight certain strengths of the report and its recommendations as well as some of its weaknesses. And I want to test whether the report's stated philosophical framework stands up even in light of its arguments and recommendations. The panel's report, Compete to Win (downloadable at: http://www.ic.gc.ca/epic/site/cprp-gepmc.nsf/en/Home), recognizes a role for government - federal, provincial and municipal. But it points out government can't do it all. The recommendations focus on the role of Parliament to make amendments to various statutes described above and for closer ministerial oversight of delegated legislation / regulations. They call for the federal government to ramp up its development of multilateral trade, specifically with the negotiation of bilateral free trade and investment protection agreements. They urge federal and provincial governments to make certain policy shifts in respect of immigration, education, credential recognition, regulations, intellectual property, inter-provincial trade and the development of physical and security infrastructure at Canada-US border crossings. Government must take a lead role in many respects on Canadian trade, investment - in Canada and Canadian investment abroad, and on improving and administering a framework in which nongovernmental institutions, organizations and associations (businesses, unions, educational institutions, financial institutions et al.) can pursue their roles. On intellectual property (IP), for example, only government can create the legal framework and enforce it in such a way that individuals, businesses and universities can 'monetize' the IP they have created and developed, enjoying ROI of intellectual capital. Only the federal government is in a position to make bilateral agreements that open foreign markets for trade and protect Canadian investors. The Wilson panel also recognizes that government should limit its role. The report proposes to raise the dollar thresholds and revise the circumstances in certain sectors that would trigger ministerial review. Further, the panelists advocate shifting onus from investors to government on foreign takeovers - from investors' showing 'net benefit' to government's demonstrating adverse effects to Canada. The panel recognizes the importance of 'non-government': 'We call on our business leaders to be ambitious, raise their sights, seek out and capitalize on new opportunities, and relentlessly focus on improving how their businesses operate.' And while they want to limit ministerial review by raising the thresholds, they make an exception in respect of cultural institutions. They appear to be concerned with greater protection for cultural institutions from foreign take over than for others. The exceptionalism the panel advocates in respect of cultural institutions highlights a problem with the stated philosophical disposition and thesis of the report: What will it take to deliver to our grandchildren the same measure of progress we have enjoyed? We believe that it will take a more competitive mindset. We need to view competition as being a necessary means to an end. We must become more engaged with enhanced competition domestically and with increased efforts to penetrate global markets. Further, the report discloses a disposition that government should get out of the way: We believe that the role of government is to provide a framework that sets the right conditions for competitiveness. This includes removing legal, regulatory and policy impediments to competition and providing the conditions to better enable Canadian companies to compete in global markets. The challenge for all Canadians is to be ambitious, show initiative, take risks, make investments and pursue the opportunities in the global economy for creating jobs and wealth for Canada. And this, on competition's making citizens' lives better: The greater the level of competition in an economy (competitive intensity), the better off its citizens will be and the better its successful firms will be able to compete beyond the boundaries of the domestic economy. Opening an economy to the free entry of goods, services, competitors and capital increases competitive intensity in the economy and, as a result, its productivity. Admittedly, this is a report of the Competition Policy Review Panel, and the mandate assigned to the panel is focused on Canadian competitiveness. However, the philosophical framework suggested above does not line up well with the panel's recommendations. Take culture. If competitiveness truly were the core aim, if 'removing impediments' truly were the core role of government on trade and investment, then it becomes very difficult to explain the panel's recommendations in respect of foreign investment in Canadian cultural institutions. The panel's recommendations here suggest that government should not remove, but maintain impediments. Perhaps less controversially, the panel also advocates stronger protections against piracy of IP. A stated core thesis and philosophical framework that took account of the role of government as 'framework builder and defender' instead of merely as an 'impediment remover' would have lined up better with the panel's recommendations. Although the panel advocated the creation of a new, independent Competitiveness Council, it would have been more satisfying had the panel acknowledged from the outset the importance of many kinds of non-governmental institutions, organizations and associations. The report focuses on the role of business. It says a little about universities in respect of training for competitiveness and IP. There is almost nothing about the roles of labour unions in labour force adjustment, labour mobility and the rest. Surely among the lessons to be learned from what is happening to most of Canada's - and North America's - auto manufacturers is the influence of labour union contracts on competitiveness even at home. That said, the panelists do see labour unions' being represented on their proposed Competitiveness Council. The report says nothing about nonprofit institutions (hospitals, clubs and charities), religious institutions or voluntary associations. Yet these are the very institutions, organizations and associations that make Canadian cities fit for human habitation, regardless of income level, and that contribute to Canadian cities' becoming magnets for head offices. The panelists advocate Canada's diversifying its international trade and investment by focusing on the 'BRIC' growth economies - Brazil, Russia, India and China. But is it wise to do so indiscriminately? Russia may be moving increasingly toward what former President Putin describes as 'Russian democracy,' and what to the rest of the world appears as movements toward a restoration of autocracy or oligarchy. China's Communist Party vigorously defends its role in the People's Republic's one-party government and state. Questions have arisen from time to time as to China's enforcement of consumer product standards and property rights, especially in respect of IP. Brazil and India are less problematic. Canada shares with India the experience of the common law, parliamentary institutions, the sanctity of contracts and a large population that speaks English. Perhaps Canada's focus for international trade and investment abroad should be India over China. I was surprised that the panel does not address how the provisions of the Investment Canada Act for review of foreign takeovers of Canadian companies have been sidestepped by foreign direct investors making common cause with a Canadian investor. The Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan leads a consortium to take the $52-billion Canadian giant BCE private in partnership with three US private equity firms. The Competition Bureau, the CRTC (in March), Minister of Industry Jim Prentice (in April) and the Supreme Court of Canada (in its June 20 ruling) all approved the takeover. The Government of Australia announced earlier this year that it will review all proposed foreign investment from sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) in respect of national security. If Australia deems any investment by a SWF may adversely affect national security, the investment is not permitted to proceed. Australia is not alone in its concern. Perhaps in part as a response to concerns in Australia, Europe and elsewhere, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) called a meeting of 25 member states with SWFs on May 1 in Washington, DC. The states - including Canada - organized the International Working Group of Sovereign Wealth Funds (IWG) cochaired by the IMF and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. The IWG convened in Singapore on July 8, in camera, and it is scheduled to report by October 'a set of SWF principles that properly reflects their investment practices and objectives.' It might have been helpful for the panel to comment - if not on the IWG - on the influence of SWFs on investment, trade and competitiveness. Saying more about Australia's review standard for foreign investment focused on 'national security' instead of 'national interest' as in the report might have been instructive. Should Canadians 'compete to win'? Yes, but this is not decisive for Canada's continuing to be a magnet for trade, investment, talented people, wealth creation, and its continuing to be a centre for human flourishing in the world. As with the nineteenth-century investment bankers of Barings, what is decisive is Canadians' cultural adherence to the rule of law and the sanctity of contracts, its commercial culture of honesty, productivity, quality of workmanship and hard work, and making a country fit for human habitation. As the panel suggests, there is room for improvement on these matters. They are not merely means to the end of competitiveness. Competition is not 'core.' Canada's competitiveness will be a fruit of Canada's cultural commitments and character. Russ Kuykendall is senior researcher with the Work Research Foundation. rkuykendall@wrf.ca

Culture Making, Recovering Our Creative Calling Andy Crouch InterVarsity Press, 2008 281 pp., $20 Andy Crouch's very fine Culture Making will be joining the short list of books that I read again and again, and fervently recommend to others, for insights into how we are to live as Christians. On behalf of one of my employers I have placed an advance order at my favorite bookstore, Byron Borger's Hearts & Minds, for ninety copies to share with my colleagues, and students in one of the undergraduate courses I teach will be reading Culture Making early in 2009. Culture Making is rich in provocations—for example, in its re-telling over several chapters of the overarching story found in the Christian Bible and the implications drawn from this re-telling, or in its critique of H. Richard Niebuhr's Christ and Culture, or in its definition of cultural power as "the ability to successfully propose a new cultural good." I was particularly struck by the distinction that Crouch draws between cultural gestures and postures. "Our posture," Crouch writes, "is our learned by unconscious default position, our natural stance. It is the position our body assumes when we aren't paying attention, the basic attitude we carry through life." In response to the various circumstances we encounter, we make a variety of gestures through the course of a day—Crouch lists as examples stopping to pick up mail, curling up in a chair to read to a child, reaching for something high on a shelf, embracing a spouse, or warding off the attacks of an assailant. "Over time," he suggests, "certain gestures may become habit—that is, become part of our posture": I've met former Navy SEALS who walk through life in a half-articulated crouch, ready to pounce or defend. I've met models and actors who carry themselves, even in their own home, as if they are on stage. I've met soccer players who bounce on the balls of their feet wherever they go, agile and swift. And I've met teenage video-game addicts whose thumbs are always restless and whose shoulders betray a perpetual hunch toward an invisible screen. What began as an occasional gesture, appropriate for particular opportunities and challenges, has become a basic part of their approach to the world. Expanding his observation into metaphor, Crouch makes this connection: "Something similar, it seems to me, has happened at each stage of American Christians' engagement with culture." Crouch argues that American Christians adopted broadly four stances in relation to culture during the course of the 20th century, in each case taking an appropriate gesture toward certain elements of culture and inappropriately expanding it into a comprehensive posture toward the common culture in general. While some cultural products (like sex trafficking) demand outright condemnation from Christians, a posture of condemnation fails to account for the goodness of culture, warps Christian testimony to hope and mercy, facilitates hypocrisy, and—particularly in response to artistic works—comes across as "shrill and silly." Critique, by contrast, is an entirely appropriate response to works of art, the more so the better the art. But a posture of critique diminishes the delight to be taken in many good products of culture, and encourages a certain kind of cultural passivity that overemphasizes analysis and under-appreciates participation and production. A pot of tea, a loaf of bread—the best first response to these is savoring consumption. But a posture of consumption limits us to living "unthinkingly within a culture's preexisting horizons of possibility and impossibility." Consumerism is capitulation to the existing culture at a deep level, allowing our very identity to be defined by what we can purchase. Copying from a culture is, at best, a recognition of "the lesson of Pentecost that every human language, every human cultural form, is capable of bearing the good news." But copying as a posture produces inauthentic, dated, and tame results. Instead, Crouch says, the cultural postures Christians should adopt are those of cultivation and creation. Cultivators are "people who tend and nourish what is best in human culture, who do the hard and painstaking work to preserve the best of what people before us have done." And creators are "people who dare to think and do something that has never been thought or done before, something that makes the world more welcoming and thrilling and beautiful." Another particularly helpful provocation comes in the chapter titled "Why We Can't Change the World." I confess to having often used the phrase "changing the world" as shorthand for "Christian cultural engagement." But Crouch challenges my language. He argues that we are confronted with a paradox: Culture—making something of the world, moving the horizons of possibility and impossibility—is what human beings do and are meant to do. Transformed culture is at the heart of God's mission in the world, and it is the call of God's redeemed people. But changing the world is the one thing we cannot do. And then he intensifies his message: "As it turns out, fully embracing this paradoxical reality is at the very heart of what it means to be a Christian culture maker." At the center of Culture Making (around page 140 of about 280 pages, for those who count) is the acceptance by Jesus of the calling of the cross. Jesus' taking the folly and failure of humanity upon himself in his death and resurrection is the pivot of human history, the great act in terms of which all human culture-making is to be understood. And what the cross makes of human culture is surprising indeed: "The strangest and most wonderful paradox of the biblical story is that its most consequential moment is not an action but a passion—not a doing but a suffering." Among the consequences of the cross, Crouch suggests, are that—rightly understood—it prevents Christians from indulging in a cultural triumphalism (the conviction that Christian culture-making will somehow achieve the New Jerusalem within history) or progressivism (the conviction that history necessarily trends toward improvement). There are several reasons, Crouch continues, why it is hubris for humans to imagine or plan that we can "change the world." Drawing on the examples of stock markets and Hollywood movies, he demonstrates how very difficult it is to predict what the outcome of a particular human action will be, given the multitudes of factors interacting to produce historical effects, the prevalence of unintended consequences, and the statistical likelihood of error in forecasting historical events. "On a small enough scale," it's true, "everyone has the power to change the world." At the scale of a family, the family members can profoundly "change the world" for one another—can set bedtimes and vacation times, can decide on meal menus and nicknames, can develop common habits and patterns of living together. But on the scale of the world as a whole, "there are no sufficient conditions for cultural change." The larger the scale on which we dream of cultural change, the smaller the likelihood of our dreams being realized in a form close to what we imagine. Worse, because of our sinfulness, even on the smallest scale we often fail to change things for the better—we fail to change our own bad habits and to cultivate good habits in their place. "On a daily basis we break our promises, indulge our addictions and rehearse old fantasies and grudges that even we know we'd be better off without." Human sin and folly profoundly foil us at every scale. And yet, Crouch reminds us at the conclusion of this chapter, returning to the paradox with which he began, "we are made to change the world." We must undertake that charge with humility, combined with confidence in God's working out his purposes within human history. This chastened understanding of our calling must also inform our exercise of power. We are repeatedly tempted to use whatever cultural power we possess to move ourselves ever closer to further sources of power, to secure our own comfort and control over the world around us. The discipline of service takes us in the opposite direction, beyond comfort and control, and alongside relatively powerless people. Using the biblical examples of the Exodus and the Resurrection, Crouch argues that the discipline of service does not primarily entail using our power on behalf of the powerless but rather calls us to use our power alongside those who are less powerful, placing us in a relationship of partnership rather than in a relationship of asymmetrical charity. So too the discipline of stewardship involves investing our cultural power—acknowledging that what power we have is in the first place a divine gift—to enable others (in particular those who appear to be powerless) to cultivate and create. It guides us toward such cultural investment "in places where there will only be a return on investment if God is indeed at loose and at work in the world." But neither the discipline of service nor the discipline of stewardship requires Christians to withdraw from people who do exercise power, as if in fear of contamination, since, as Crouch writes, "if God's basic work is to build partnerships between the powerful and the powerless, to cut ourselves off from people with cultural power is to deprive both them and us of an opportunity to see God at work." Culture Making undermines the rationale both for Christian withdrawal from the common culture and for Christian hubris with regard to "changing the world." I am sure that over time, shortcomings and unintended negative consequences of the arguments in this compelling book will become apparent. Other reviewers may notice some of these more clearly and more quickly than I have. But for now I cannot wait to see how readers of Andy Crouch's manifesto will be inspired to "make something of the world."

The infrastructure of my life shifted five years ago when I drove my daughter to the Calgary airport to embark on her way to the University of King's College in Halifax. Her mother was going with her for a week to help her settle in. In the days preceding this event, I was excited for my daughter, our firstborn, and this next big step in her life. I was not apprehensive in the slightest, knowing only that she would be home again in 14 weeks or so and that she had no shortage of relatives out east to provide a safety net should something go wrong. I was proud of her. Still am. That same mood prevailed right through the (overweight) baggage check-in and up until the moment when the little girl who was no more hugged me goodbye. And then I began to weep. Not huge, sobbing tears, mind you; just a soft, seemingly restrained and yet relentless trickle of tears that was without sharp pain but rife with nostalgia. Waves of memories of little butterfly kisses and bedtime stories, of kittens and cuddles and giggles and tickles and sugar and spice and all things nice overwhelmed me. I cried as she turned her back and headed through the security gates. I cried as I watched her long, beautiful hair bounce out of sight, and I cried as I walked back to the car with my son. Then I cried all the way home. For an hour I couldn't stop, even as I tried manfully to mock my sniffles and chuckle along with the comforting words of my equally bemused son. I think about that day and the day three years later when we drove our son to Trinity Western University in Langley, B.C. I was more composed then, because I knew what was coming when he and I bade his boyhood farewell (even though I'm not sure he recognized The Moment as clearly as I did) with a hug. This time I was ready, and he and I being guys and all that, well, I didn't want to embarrass him. I stifled - okay, almost - the tears as they welled up. Nipped 'em in the bud, I thought. But about half an hour down the road, as the car began the climb up into the mountains and across to the Big Blue Sky that is my home, I was once again wiping away gentle tears and the same snakes and snails and puppy-dog tails and hockey games thing started bopping around in my head like Gene Kelly. Perhaps tears come to men - at last, some might say - in middle age. I struggle still to understand how thoughts and feelings, the depth of which I was obviously not fully conscious, could have caught me so unawares. And I still wonder for whom I was crying and why it was, as Shakespeare said, such a sweet sorrow. I certainly wasn't sad for my children, of whom I am sinfully proud. They, after all, were heading off to lives that I dream will be full and rich, even though we all know they will suffer disappointment and heartache at some point and I won't be there to care for them. Was I mourning for me? After all, I can still recall making a visit back to my university when I was about 40 and staring across its beauty at ancient Acadian dykes and the Bay of Fundy and sighing, "Man, I've missed this place," only to have my son immediately rip away my mask and send a dagger through my poetic pretense with a quick "Dad, I think you just miss being young." Was it my youth I mourned when my daughter turned her back that day? When my wife puts a 15-year-old picture up on the fridge of the kids holding hands as they head off to school together, or jostling with Pooh and Goofy at Disneyland, is it nostalgia for their youth or mine that makes me pause? A full answer will probably never be available, which is fine for people like me who enjoy asking questions that don't always have answers. All I know is that I neither heard nor foresaw the emotional train that hit me on those days, and that, on the day I left home for university myself, I regret having bid my own parents such a casual farewell. I should have said thank you. But I didn't know then what was coming any more than I knew what was coming five years ago. That, I guess, is the beauty of life. Even when it hurts, it can have a gentle sweetness.

Urban centres across North America are currently experiencing rapid growth accompanied by exciting revitalization projects. However, even as cities experience these positive developments, our cities also display expressions of need. The mushrooming growth of New Canadian communities within the mosaic of the city has only further accented and diversified the complexity of need. In spite of incredible development less and less positive or productive dialogue is taking place. Loneliness, hopelessness and despair are painted on the faces of a troubling proportion of the population. Are these really the indicators of where our urban society is moving? Gentrification, while key to revitalizing economically depressed areas of cities, often comes with the side-affect of displacing affordable residences which house poorer members of the community. One of the greatest challenges emerging in our cities is the growing gap between the rich and the poor. Strategic and sophisticated city planning which enables these diverse populations to coexist in an atmosphere of respect and mutual support are critical to a healthy urban future. Religious institutions—particularly the Salvation Army—have a role to play in helping city planners achieve this harmony. In order to appreciate the position being presented here, it will help to understand who and what the Salvation Army is. I can speak most knowledgeably from my own background as a member and an employee of the Salvation Army. While I am not writing as an apologist for The Salvation Army, this article is written through the eyes of a Salvationist who seeks to express and to address the needs of the urban community. The Salvation Army was founded in 1865 by William Booth, an ordained Methodist minister. Aided by his wife, Catherine, Booth formed a group dedicated to reaching the people living in the midst of appalling poverty in London's East End. Booth worked among the thieves, prostitutes and drunkards. To congregations that were desperately poor, he preached hope and salvation. From its start in London's East End, the Salvation Army movement expanded rapidly and is now active in virtually every corner of the world. The basic social services developed by William Booth have remained an outward visible expression of the Army's strong religious principles. New programs that address contemporary needs have been established. Among these are disaster relief services, day care centres, summer camps, holiday assistance programs for the aging, AIDS education and residential services, medical facilities, shelters for battered women and children, family and career counseling, vocational counseling, correctional services, and substance abuse rehabilitation to name but some of the ministries. In all of this social services work, however, the Salvation Army does primarily remain a church—"Christianity with its sleeves rolled up" to quote Vachel Lindsay. Given its beginnings and ongoing work, The Salvation Army is very much an urban creature. For more than 120 years, the Salvation Army has established its place in the fabric of the urban community. Having traced the history of the Salvation Army, I now turn to how it can help develop strategic policies for healthy urban societies. When we use the term, "urban society", what defines the community upon which we are focusing? In Canada, we can no longer assume that "urban society" is the conglomerate of street people and slum dwellers in which substance abusers, petty criminals, and the poverty-stricken. The mix has become far more complex. If it ever was possible to name a few programs and services that would enable the traditional urban dweller to survive, it certainly is no longer the case. Competing for space and an opportunity to establish their chosen life-style now are former suburbanites and new Canadians from all over the world. These new urbanites bring with them many attributes and attitudes that make them foreigners to the prevailing culture of the original residents—in most cases, they have a sense of direction; they dress and eat well; and they have jobs which allow them to enjoy the benefits of city life through going to theatres and the sports events. This latter attribute is generally taken for granted by the new urbanites. What's more, if they lose their job or, more often, leave a position, they have the expectation that they will find a new position very quickly due to their level of training and marketable skills. This is not the case for the former population. Their prospects for finding new, meaningful employment, unlike their new neighbours, are bleak indeed. Dion Oxford, director of The Salvation Army's Gateway hostel in downtown Toronto, describes the situation this way: I call it the modern-day famine. In the Bible, famine is usually related to agriculture when labour bears no fruit for so long that the work finally stops and all hope is lost. In the urban famine, it is working one low-paying job after another, without promotion, and then getting laid off because of someone's bottom line not being met. It's entering the cycle and having it happen again and again and again. It ends with all hope being lost. It ends with being afraid to even go to a job interview to avoid the terror of facing yet another rejection. That's the urban famine. It's okay to focus on providing housing for the homeless, but it will not work unless employment is brought into play. I look upon housing and employment as being the same as two tracks to a train. You need both or you derail. In order to pull together the factors I have laid out in terms of the Salvation Army's work and the need to rethink our cities policies, I will refer to the work of Abraham Maslow and his signature work on The Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow noticed early in his career as a psychologist that some human needs take precedence over others and, until those needs are met, people do not pay much heed to the others. Dr. George C. Boeree of Pennsylvania's Shippenburg University describes how Maslow laid out five broad layers of human needs which I have paraphrased in the next two paragraphs. The most basic layer consisted of physiological needs such as oxygen, water, protein, salt, sugar and calcium, the maintenance of a body temperature of 370C, sleep, avoidance of pain and other survival conditions. When the physiological needs are largely taken care of, the second layer, the safety and security needs, come into play. This raises the awareness of the need for safe circumstances, stability and protection and concern for fears and anxieties rather than the food and water needs that were prevalent initially. Once the physiological needs and safety needs are largely addressed, the love and belonging needs begin to emerge. The individual begins to feel the need for friends, a sweetheart, children, affectionate relationships in general and a sense of community. Dr. Boeree observes that the individual becomes "increasingly susceptible to loneliness and social anxieties". The fourth level encompasses the esteem needs. At the lower level, Maslow noted the need for the respect for others, the need for status, fame, glory, recognition, attention, reputation, appreciation, dignity and even dominance. The higher form involves the need for self-respect, including such feelings as confidence, competence, achievement, mastery, independence and freedom. Maslow calls all four levels deficit needs. If you don't have enough of something, you have a deficit and feel the need. He sees all these needs as essentially survival needs. The levels correspond to our developmental phases from the time we are born. Under stressful conditions, or when survival is threatened, we can "regress" to a lower need level. For example, if your family ups and leaves you, it seems that love is again all you ever wanted. The last level is a bit different. Maslow used a variety of terms to refer to this level. He called it growth motivation, being needs (or B-needs in contrast to D-needs) and self-actualization. These needs involve the continuous desire to fulfill potentials, to "be all that you can be". They are a matter of becoming the most complete, the fullest, "you"—hence the term, self actualization. It follows then that, to be truly self-actualizing, a person's lower needs must be taken care of, at least to a considerable extent. If you are hungry, your are focused entirely on getting food; if you are unsafe, you have to be continuously on guard; if you are isolated and unloved, you have to satisfy that need; if you have a low sense of self-esteem, you have to be defensive or compensate. When lower needs are unmet, you can't fully devote yourself to fulfilling your potentials. Pre-dating Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs by more than forty years, William Booth made it clear to his followers that "You can't preach to men about salvation when they have an empty stomach." Booth's approach to addressing the human condition was expressed in more tangible terms. Booth's "soup, soap and salvation" philosophy expressed his understanding that when lower needs are unmet, you can't fully devote yourself to fulfilling your potentials. Human needs exist amongst all echelons of the evolving diversity in the "renewal" of our urban centres. Tragedy befalls the rich and the poor; fatal accidents, serious and terminal illnesses, personal tragedies such as marriage break-ups and children making dangerous life-style choices are common to humanity as a whole. While D-needs such as nutrition and shelter may not be issues common to the new urbanites, sleep disorders and anxieties often are. Loneliness and a sense of betrayal beset all classes of humanity. As municipalities and church leaders wrestle with the challenges of creating viable plans for urban renewal, it is essential to find ways to meet not only the differences that divide the new and the old but to be mindful of the vital threads of common needs shared by all. When Canada was in its infancy, the genesis of large urban centres began mainly on a blank sheet. The first manifestations of European-style civil society began very humbly. As decades passed, larger and more urbanized populations gathered in what became Canada's major urban centres. The demand for services grew roughly along the same pattern as Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. The requirements for supplies of food and clothing and acceptable shelter were gradually met and a new focus on safety and security needs replaced them. The pattern extended further to meet the requirements for health and hospital care. In Canadian cities, churches were the initial agents to establish these institutions. This was also the case for educational facilities at all levels from primary children right through university level. Roman Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, Baptist and the Salvation Army churches were just some of the groups that were active in setting up hospitals and schools. While contemporary religious institutions do not often establish hospitals, they still have the capacity to assess what is happening in the communities surrounding them, Some, although not all, have the skills to identify the classes of need that are emerging in the new urbanism. Those that do not can easily train personnel or partner with sister communities which have the skill sets to determine first steps in meeting those needs. In spite of the tight budgets within which most religious communities operate, they still tend to represent a cross-section of professionals, activists and people who, in general terms, want to make a difference and to help their community in tangible ways. The power and impact the intervention of religious communties—particularly the Salvation Army with its history, location, and philosophy—in the process of renewing an urban society or community can be immeasurably enhanced if the work is conducted in partnership with other religious communities, agencies and the local government. One of the keys to making a real difference can be found while making the initial assessment of community needs. That key is the match between the undertaking and the capacity, mission and commitment of individual communities. Working together as partners, the city and religious communities can develop the tools and expectations for a new and better urban centre. In conclusion, then, I will be bold and suggest some possible paths religious communities and city governments might consider in their quest to understand and respond to all the aspects assossiated with the urban renewal process. One approach is to identify a specific group within the urban community with which to work. The strategies may then range from language training, cultural acclimatization, advocacy, and preparing to enter the employment market. Another possible approach is to focus on creating links between the various constituent groups in the urban centre for the purpose of fostering greater understanding amongst them. The strategies here might include controlled town-hall meetings amongst leaders of the groups in which the goal is mutual support and appreciation for the needs and desires of each other. Still further approaches might include establishing community programs to meet the social and recreational needs of the community. Often religious communities have the largest, most available facility to which community groups may gain access. Within downtown areas, these are most often churches. By adopting an approach which affirmed community capacity development as the strategy of choice, the steps forward could be maintained and assured as the community and the church work toward the goal of just urban renewal. The avenues of partnership are countless but, in closing, the point must be made again that the key rests in ensuring there is a match between the real needs of the urban community and all of the factors already mentioned. Just as this will involve listening intuitively to urban group members, it also demands religious institutions to discern the needs of their community and the avenues they take in their work within the urban context—just as William Booth did in his establishment of the Salvation Army.