I had the privilege on a Sunday evening in the spring of 2006 to be part of a conversation with a group of twentysomethings at First Christian Reformed Church in Hamilton, Ontario, my home city. The group calls itself Common Ground, and it quickly and easily catapulted high into my list of Favourite Groups. The walk to the church was one of my best half hours of the year: fresh air at just the right temperature, liquid gold late afternoon sunlight, the fine fabric of the city streets, the shabbychic architecture and landscaping of our neighbourhood, the laughter of children playing street games and of families and friends gathered for food and conversation, the singing of birds, and the anticipation of good work to do. Part of our conversation was in response to this question: What one thing can you change in your current habits that would make a tiny but significant and enduring positive difference to the people who live in the same apartment building or on the same street as you do? Common Ground members listed all kinds of ideas, some of which they subsequently listed on their website (http://commonground.firsthamilton.ca/wiki/index.php/Responsibility): start a book club (first book: The Birth House by Ami MacKay) with people in my community; pick up litter in and around our apartment building; offer to help babysit for the teenage mom that lives a few apartments down; send in hundreds of tree request forms to the city for free road allowance trees to be planted, even if owners are unaware of the opportunity; learn the names of my neighbours that I meet in the elevator; finally have that barbeque with our neighbours. First Christian Reformed Church in Hamilton is not my home church, but it is within walking distance of my home in the old city neighbourhood of Kirkendall. Walking to the Common Ground meeting reminded me of a conversation hosted a year and a half earlier by Jonathan Barlow, on his blog (see: http://www.barlowfarms.com/index.html?cm_id=1867108). At the time Mr. Barlow was a student in St. Louis, Missouri. Under the heading “St. Louis Architectural Tragedies,” he wrote a short paragraph that provoked an interesting conversation: There are some beautiful old churches in the city of St. Louis that are just waiting for some enterprising congregation to renovate and occupy. But they are decaying, folks. Why did their congregations ever leave them? Why are we spreading out? Why waste these beautiful buildings and the crumbling neighbourhoods surrounding them when we could all move in, renovate, and live together in community? How many of us are really moving out into the boondocks for good reasons? In many places throughout the world, churches have for centuries contributed to the built fabric of human society. While churches have many avenues for cultural activity in service of the common good, I am pleading for renewed attention to the architectural good that churches can do in the cities of North America. 1. WHERE THERE IS NO VISION, THE PEOPLE PERISH. The urban psychologist Frank Mills, reflecting on Proverbs 29:18 (“Where there is no vision, the people perish”) and Joel 2:28 (“Your old men will dream dreams, and your young men will see visions”) during the Christmas season of 2004 (see: http://urbanparadoxes.blogspot.com/2004_12_ 01_urbanparadoxes_archive.html), asked three provocative questions: 1. Do the people of our poorer urban neighborhoods lack shared neighborhood vision because their circumstances rob them of the capacity of vision, or have urban social agencies and urban planners bought into this myth, perhaps unconsciously, to justify their agenda? 2. What would happen if urban planners and urban social agencies came together to assist in the creation of shared neighborhood vision and then allowed it to form future direction, both for solving urban issues and creating sustainable urban neighborhoods? 3. Lastly, given that these passages are from the Bible, what is the role of faith communities in creating a vision for urban sustainability? How do we motivate faith communities to assist in the creation of such a vision in their neighborhoods? I would argue that the primary contribution churches can make to a renewed vision in and for city neighbourhoods is by being themselves. Let the church be the church – and let the reality of church life find expression in the buildings the church inhabits. A church is a community of faith professing in the public realm that Jesus is Lord. This ancient and controversial assertion of the Christian church (see, for example, Romans 10: 9 and 1 Corinthians 12:3) summarizes a belief that God created the cosmos and is sovereign over it; that God became incarnate in the man Jesus to address the problem of evil in his life, death, and resurrection; and that Jesus has the power for the renewal of all creation – for the time being in a limited sense, but in the long run in a comprehensive sense. Churches express this belief in public by prayer, by proclamation of the teachings of the Bible, by the sacramental celebration of the mysteries of God’s redemptive acts, and by the formation of the character of its members in and through the life of the community of faith. Churches have also from their earliest history provided care for the poor and needy. The life of the church has a distinctive rhythm. In some church communities that rhythm is daily, in the celebration of the eucharist and prayers at designated hours. In most church communities that rhythm is weekly, centered on the Sunday services of worship. In many church communities that rhythm is also yearly, following liturgical contours anchored in Christmas and Easter. Throughout the past twenty centuries, the Christian church has expressed its public mission in the buildings it has used and built. Its spaces for prayer, teaching, sacramental celebration and its times of worship and formation express the faith, hope and love that flows from its central profession of the Lordship of Christ. It communicates that faith, hope and love to its neighbours through the buildings themselves – be it the gothic spire signifying the transcendence of God, the monastic hospital offering shelter and respite to pilgrims, the Quaker meeting house signifying the presence of God, or any of the many other built expressions given to the life of the church. We build as we believe; our basic beliefs are built into the very fabric of our cities, towns, and homesteads. This is certainly true also of the buildings of the church. By being what it is and giving expression to that life in its buildings, the church contributes to the vision of a community. Medieval cathedrals and New England meetinghouses alike offered a built centre to the lives of their communities, by their very centrality celebrating the meaningfulness of human society in the creation and under the restorative care of God. Benedictine monasteries and inner city storefront churches signify the presence and care of God in troubled communities. To reiterate the claim I am trying to make here, while the church may contribute to shared neighborhood vision in the city in many ways, the first way in which it does so is as a built expression of its character as the church. 2. WONDERFUL PLACES DELIGHT THE IMAGINATION WHILE OFFERING SOCIAL COMFORT. Architecture is the most social of the arts, as it consciously combines the shaping of places so as to ease inter personal interaction with an attentiveness to the effect of those places on the imagination. It is as everyday an art as cooking food or making clothes, and has as constant an influence on the quality of our lives. The design of places – from a window seat in a family home to a public square in a cosmopolitan centre – is of great importance because of this influence, if nothing else. As churches inhabit existing buildings or build new ones, they should seek to delight the imagination and offer social comfort to the faith community worshipping in these buildings as well as the other people whose lives are affected by the building. No building affects only those who use it directly. A structure changes the visual landscape within which it nestles; it articulates the public spaces upon which it abuts; it replaces the alternative uses possible in the same space. With such affects come responsibility, and in the case of buildings that responsibility lies at the intersection of the social and the aesthetic. I recall an early afternoon meal shared with my daughters on a cool late summer’s day some years ago, in Bryant Park next to the building of the main branch of the New York Public Library. As we ate in this former needle park, we watched children ride the carousel, working folk sitting on the green park chairs with their brown paper bag lunches, a fashion shoot taking place in one of the park’s corners, and, suffusing the scene, the dapple of sunlight rippling through the tall, reedy, breeze-blown plane trees. One of my daughters turned to me and said, “This is how I imagine the New Jerusalem.” That image of the New Jerusalem has been evocative in the civilizations informed by the apocalyptic poetry of the Bible. William Blake’s poem “Jerusalem” has been sung by social activists since Charles Parry set it to music for the British movement of suffragettes. That a simple city park set between skyscrapers can call that image forth for a child speaks to the power of architecture. 3. CHURCHES HELP SHAPE ALL KINDS OF PLACES. “We need Christians and churches everywhere there are people,” writes Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City in a “A New Kind of Urban Christian” (Christianity Today, May 2006). While contemporary North American churches seem particularly strong in suburban communities, they are also present in urban centres and rural areas. Some churches – for example cathedrals and metropolitan mega-churches – have a significant regional influence; other churches have a particularly powerful local influence, such as that of a parish church on its neighbourhood. The influence of churches is diverse, and includes their influence on the built landscape. A church like the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, in Los Angeles, is designed intentionally to provide a public space in a city shaped by highways. The Episcopalian Falls Church in Virginia – no less influential a Christian congregation, from a global perspective – combines a response to the modes of transport of colonial America, when its first building was built, with a moderated expression of suburban mega-church architecture. While each of these churches responds to their setting, they also help shape that setting. Our Lady of the Angels provides a visual focus to the frenzy of the Los Angeles highway system. Falls Church architecturally communicates an invitation of calm reliability to harried pundits, bureaucrats and politicians. 4. CHURCHES ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR RE-INHABITING OLD CITIES. A more expanded version of what I quote Tim Keller as writing above reads as follows: Do I mean that Christians must live in cities? No. We need Christians and churches everywhere there are people! But I have taken up the call of the late James Montgomery Boice, an urban pastor... who knew that evangelical Christians have been particularly unwilling to live in cities. It is this unwillingness that causes the dismal situation lamented by Jonathan Barlow: There are some beautiful old churches in the city of St. Louis that are just waiting for some enterprising congregation to renovate and occupy. But they are decaying, folks. Why did their congregations ever leave them? Why are we spreading out? Why waste these beautiful buildings and the crumbling neighbourhoods surrounding them when we could all move in, renovate, and live together in community? How many of us are really moving out into the boondocks for good reasons? While churches can and should have an influence in every kind of place, in this article I want to plead for churches more consciously striving to be present in North America’s old cities. I live in such a city – Hamilton, Ontario, a former node in the global steel industry, now, like many of the industrial cities in the North American Northeast, struggling to adapt to the changing flows of trade, the further globalization of labour markets, and the resultant loss of its competitiveness as a host city to large steel production plants. I don’t know what Hamilton was like in its heyday – no-one who has read Dickens is surprised that William Blake cursed the “dark satanic mills” of 19th century urban industrial Britain – but a few parts of it today are no less of a wasteland than some of the South African slums in which I’ve walked. Rather than simply forsaking an old industrial city like Hamilton for the surface prosperity of the new suburbs, I want to plead with the church to invest itself into such a struggling community and be present as a revitalizing force within it. The church must do so primarily by being the church, to reiterate what I have written above, even as it temporarily picks up responsibilities that in livelier communities may have been taken care of by other institutions. The presence of the church in an old industrial city communicates hope and the promise of the future to its neighbours. And this sense of hopeful neighbourliness should be expressed also in its architectural effect on the neighbourhood. In an old city like Hamilton, hopeful neighbourliness is more likely than not to involve reinhabiting an abandoned or neglected church building, recovering it for use, refreshing its possibilities for imaginative delight and social comfort, making it useful for the life of the church and hospitable to its neighbours. 5. CHURCHES CAN HELP CULTIVATE URBAN VILLAGES. David Sucher in his book City Comforts: How to Build an Urban Village (City Comforts Inc., 2003) tells of a former mayor of Seattle, Norman B. Rice, making the phrase “urban village” a central part of his administration’s planning efforts. Sucher writes, At first glance the term might seem to be nonsensical and impossible: an oxymoron, the two words contradicting each other. How can you have a place that feels like a village and like a big city at the same time? The village is small, intimate, quiet; one knows the other villagers and may even be related to them. The city is big, busy, diverse, and filled with strangers. Life can be lonely in the big city. […] People want the best of both worlds: the diversity, choice, and independence of the urb and the homeyness and intimacy of the village. According to Sucher, the measure of a city is to be found in the human comfort it offers. He writes, Our society makes the problem of city building far too complicated. We confuse it with grandeur and we confuse it with complex public administration. It is neither. The main task is making people comfortable, the same task faced by the host at a party. According to Allan B. Jacobs in Great Streets (MIT Press, 1993, 2001), great city streets share a number of characteristics: 1. They offer safe, leisurely walking; 2. They offer physical comfort in response to the climate of the city – warmth or sunlight when it is cool, shade and coolness when it is hot, and protection from the wind; 3. They have definition: “They have boundaries, usually walls of some sort or another, that communicate clearly where the edges of the street are, that set the street apart, that keep the eyes on and in the street, that make it a place; 4. They offer a feast for the eyes – trees, architectural features, the movement of light, people moving about; 5. They have a quality of transparency at their edges, at the intersection of the private and public realms – in particular by means of windows and doorways; 6. Their buildings “get along with each other” – “They are not the same but they express respect for one another, most particularly in height and in the way they look”; 7. They are well-maintained – clean, in good repair – with regard to the street surface, furniture and plants, as well as the buildings on the street; and 8. They are imaginatively designed, and constructed with high-quality craft and materials. Kathleen Madden, writing for the Project for Public Spaces in How to Turn a Place Around: A Handbook for Creating Successful Public Spaces (2000) suggests the following as the characteristics of a successful public place: 1. A high proportion of people in groups; 2. A higher than average proportion of women (because women – according to Maddern – tend to be more discriminating about the places they use, perhaps because of choosiness about the seating available, perhaps because of their perceptions about the safety of places); 3. The presence of people of different ages over the course of a day; 4. A variety of possible activities rather than a single use for the place; and 5. Public shows of affection – Madden writes that “There is generally more smiling, kissing, embracing, holding and shaking of hands, and so forth in good public places than in those that are problematic.” At the core of the belief system of the Christian church is the affirmation that the awesome sovereign creator of the universe who asks Job with irony, “Have you commanded the morning since your days began, and caused the dawn to know its place, that it might take hold of the skirts of the earth, and the wicked be shaken out of it?” is at the same time the intimate friend of children, Jesus, who in the accounts of Matthew and Luke tells his followers that not a sparrow that falls to the ground is forgotten before God. Awe and intimacy in our relationship with God can translate into a concern for both the festive and the comforting aspects of city life. 6. URBAN VILLAGE CHURCHES CAN BE ARCHITECTURAL GOOD NEIGHBOURS. David Sucher writes that Architects often talk about whether a building ‘talks’ to its neighbors. What they mean is whether a building refers in its own shape and material to the shapes and materials of its neighbors. A lively conversation between buildings means that the buildings relate to each other. The color of one may be picked up and amplified by another or the roofline of another may be mimicked by yet a fourth. A group of musicians will do something similar in their playing. A horn may start with a cluster of notes, and the pattern will be repeated with variations by the other instruments. Buildings are much like their human users. Conversation between buildings, as among humans, is a poignant sign of neighborliness. It is the height of rudeness – though all too often the expected norm in cities – for neighbors to speak not a word to each other for years on end. Buildings that do not talk to their neighbors are also rude. In most old city neighbourhoods churches can be good neighbours by reinhabiting existing church buildings, or by building new buildings that respond in a civil way to the surrounding buildings – mimicking rooflines, picking up colours, as Sucher suggests, and finding further ways of not being architecturally rude. The urban village church should see as part of its architectural vocation the repair of the urban fabric by means of the repair or construction of its own buildings in such a way that the neighbourhood is aesthetically and socially knitted together rather than torn apart. The architecture of the church should serve its neighbourhood. And the ways in which it does so aesthetically are closely connected with the ways in which it does so socially. 7. CHILDREN ON SAFE STREETS ARE A SIGN OF NEIGHBOURHOOD HEALTH. The Old Testament prophet Zechariah offers a vision of the restoration of God’s purposes for the earth in which “Old men and old women shall again sit in the streets of Jerusalem, each with staff in hand because of great age. And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in its streets.” When people think of relocating to city neighbourhoods, one of the things that worry them is how safe they will be – and often, more intensely, how safe their children will be. Jeff Schmidt, responding to the blog entry by Jonathan Barlow quoted above, writes about relocating to a city neighbourhood: “One of the biggest obstacles for me is concern for the safety of my children.” Mr. Barlow himself asks of life in an old city neigbourhood: “Do you really want to be scared on a daily basis?” Jane Jacobs famously wrote that healthy neighbourhoods depend on “eyes on the street” – the presence of people who pay attention to what is going on, and who care enough to respond appropriately. David Sucher, following Jane Jacobs’ lead, writes that safety in the city requires “the creation of spaces where people are present and can observe each other in a form of mutual protection and where they have enough sense of ownership of the street that they will intervene in some way when trouble appears.” Sucher offers many practical suggestions: scattering several tiny police stations throughout the city; putting cops on bikes; making the street an interesting place that attracts people and invites them to linger, by opening up storefronts to the street; allowing – no, encouraging street vendors; placing the entrances of homes so that they are visible from the surrounding homes; opening stairways up so that people can see what is going on in them, thereby making them less creepy – think of the stairwell of a city parking garage. Sucher reflects the feelings of almost all the families I know when he writes Children are like the canaries in a coal mine: an indicator species of urban health. Children are small and vulnerable and need to be protected. If a city lacks children, it is because parents have assessed the environment and have decided, one family after another over the privacy of the dining room table, to remove to a safer place. But where parents won’t raise children, we might all hesitate to live, for such a place presents an environment uncomfortable, noisy, and dangerous. Sucher suggests that city design should take into account th0e physical comfort of children – for example, by providing many places where parents can change their children’s diapers, and should take into account the need to play, by providing and encouraging many small playgrounds: in restaurants and throughout shopping districts, and in places where children have to wait, like the connecting places in the transport infrastructure – such as at bus stops or ferry terminals. Church buildings very often host the children of their own congregation, for church school and other activities, and have the kinds of facilities that can easily be made available for birthday celebrations and other child-oriented events. This is one way in which a church building can easily contribute to its neighbourhood – by offering a public place for neighbourhood children to play, and by providing publicly accessible washrooms – often hard to come by on city streets, and when available often in poor repair. 8. START WITH THE PETUNIAS. David Sucher argues: “We should choose the simplest and most economical means of solving a problem rather than the most complex and expensive.” In tackling the design problems of the contemporary city, he suggests that we should “Do simple things now.” Kathleen Madden in How to Turn a Place Around offers a helpful beginning guideline: start with the petunias. She writes that In creating or changing a public space, small improvements help to garner support along the way to the end result. They indicate visible change and show that someone is in charge. Petunias, which are low cost and easy to plant, have an immediate visible impact. On the other hand, once planted, they must be watered and cared for. Therefore, these flowers give a clear message that someone must be looking after the space. I have been surprised by how unfriendly church buildings can be, even on some of the better city streets in North America. I recall walking past the windowless façade of a church on a lively street in The Beach neighbourhood of Toronto and thinking that it was the worst stretch of sidewalk on an otherwise fine street. Although it was an older building, the lack of doorways, windows, or articulation of any kind in the long wall, and the absence of flowerboxes or trellised plants, reminded me of the worst kind of brutalist architecture – the dead expanses around concrete block buildings, so common in institutional buildings built from the 1950s to the 1970s. Most city churches, however, already enliven the streetscape with flowers and trees – a simple start in the church contributing to the cultivation of urban village in old cities. From such a good start, relentless incremental improvements to church buildings and gardens can consistently raise the quality of life in their neighbourhoods. 9. URBAN REVITALIZATION IS SLOW, HARD, SUBTLE WORK. I once heard John Stackhouse of Regent College in Vancouver, BC, speak in a public lecture of cultural renewal as “slow, hard, subtle work.” This is certainly the case with urban revitalization. City churches in their own life as communities of faith and in their neighbourly efforts to help cultivate urban villages are faced with perplexing practical problems and exhausting emotional demands. One response to Jonathan Barlow’s “St. Louis Architectural Tragedies,” written under the pseudonym “Pentamom,” offers a solution to the difficulty city churches have in building sturdy congregations: “Parking lots. I think that’s half the answer. Large inner city churches can’t survive on walk-in business nowadays, and without parking lots, they can’t draw enough attendance.” Joel Garver responds: Parking lots are good, but the church doesn’t necessarily need one of its own. Tenth PCA (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is in a downtown and has no parking lot and survives just fine. It’s possible in most cities to get some kind of parking permission to park, for instance, on the ‘no parking’ side of a street if there is usually only parking on one side. There are also often other facilities nearby (public parking garages, hospital or public school parking areas) that can be negotiated for space (even for a small fee), especially on Sunday mornings when use is minimal. Pentamom replies: I’m trying to imagine herding my family of five kids through the snow and ice over several blocks (especially if I am unfamiliar with the parking provisions) to get to church. Special provisions for parking (e.g. being allowed to park on the wrong side of the street on Sunday mornings) don’t help folks unfamiliar with the area, when all they see is ‘no parking’ signs and nowhere to park. So while it might be comforting to talk about why parking need not be an issue, I think that if you’re actually going to take the step of establishing a church in the middle of the city, it’s wiser to deal with the fact that for a whole lot of people, it is an issue. Another pseudonymous correspondent, “Bobber,” writes about the neighbourhood lamented by Jonathan Barlow: My old church did a church plant in that very area. It was incredibly difficult work. Lot’s of very poor and dysfunctional people came to the church. It just overtaxed them tremendously. I think you really have to look at this as just like a mission to another country. It takes lots of training and planning. Jeff Schmidt responds: I agree with Bobber, it is hard for us to fully understand the dysfunction of the culture in these areas and its effect on those that live and labor there. Chris, you have a better understanding of this since you worked at the mission. How does one prepare for the daily onslaught of such an environment? The semi-pseudonymous Chris replies: Well, I only worked in that neighborhood three years, so I don’t pretend to be an expert, but at the same time, I did learn a few things. Again, you can’t prepare for the daily onslaught, you learn to deal with it, navigate it, minister to folks in the midst of being incarnated there. There are some helpful things to read, some wise advice that you can get from weathered veterans, but the bottom line is most of the learning is on the job training. While it helps to focus on doing simple things now – planting the petunias – it is important to recognize that simple does not mean easy. The dream of the urban village church, joining with its neighbours in the re-inhabitation and revitalization of an old city neighbourhood, requires more than good will and ingenuity. It requires faith, hope, and love. 10. MONEY IS NOT THE PROBLEM. In How to Turn a Place Around Kathleen Madden writes that in urban revitalization efforts, “all too often, lack of money is used as an excuse for doing nothing,” but that “when money is an issue, this is generally an indication that the wrong concept is at work, not because the plans are too expensive, but because the public doesn’t feel like the place belongs to them.” In my conversations with church folk about the possibility of new faith communities re-inhabiting abandoned or neglected city church buildings, the difficulties mentioned focus on the safety of children and the lack of money. Restoring and retrofitting a dilapidated old church building for contemporary use is without a doubt costly; heating and cooling it is far more costly than would be the case for a new building. The architectural flourishes and neighbourly amenities suggested in this article come with a cost. But I think the church can learn from people like Ms. Madden. Based on the experience of the Project for Public Spaces, Ms. Madden suggests that 1. Small-scale, inexpensive improvements can be more effective at drawing people into spaces than major big-bucks projects; 2. Developing the ability to effectively manage a space is more critical to success than a large financial investment; 3. If the community is a partner in the endeavor, people will come forward and naturally draw in others; and 4. When the community’s vision is driving the project, money follows. The vision of the urban village church, when embedded in the grand vision of the glory of God and the love of neighbour taught in the Christian faith, is worthy of the financial resources of the people of God. When urban village church advocates develop the necessary and demonstrable skills in management, and when churches in old city neighbourhoods recognize the importance of managing their buildings for the aesthetic delight and social comfort of their own faith communities and their neighbours, then the immensely affluent churches of North America should take up support of the vision of a network of churches

When Premier Ed Stelmach announced his intention to eliminate homelessness in 10 years, one could only react with delight. There can be no greater goal than to help the destitute and the derelict, particularly in a city in which economic performance virtually eliminated unemployment. Pretty much all of us felt the same way earlier this year when the Calgary Committee to End Homelessness was formed and vowed to present a list of its proposals, perhaps as early as January 2008. In 1996, the city estimated there to be about 650 people living on the streets. By 2004, the number stood closer to 2,500 and by 2006 (the count occurs only every second year) the number was estimated to stand at 3,400. Most people accept that here in the winter of 200712008 there are about 4,000 people living on Calgary's downtown and, more recently, even suburban streets. While we know homelessness will likely never be completely eradicated, the impossibility of the task gives it that much more value. Accepted profiles of the homeless population indicate it is comprised of three primary components – the temporarily homess in transition, the mentally ill and the drug- and alcohol-addicted. There is no reason why a prosperous city shouldn't be able to ensure that people who are temporarily without a home and want one can find shelter. The other two categories are more complex, although there are agencies already in place that have tremendous track records in this field and, if given proper funding, could do even more. Consider the dilemma faced by the Mustard Seed and Salvation Army, for instance. They and other respected institutions struggle for donations from the corporate sector in large part because in the late  20th century many public companies decided that rather than choose between faiths it was best to eliminate giving to all faith-based organizations. Another leading organization, Samaritan's Purse, is under assault by a group dedicated to eradicating it from the public square. So while businesses and schools can and do donate robustly to secular organizations, it is worth considering whether they should reconsider their position. True inclusiveness, after all, cannot and will not be achieved by excluding people on the basis that they believe there is more. Further, these people walk the talk. According to the Canadian Centre for Philanthropy, the 32 per cent of religiously active Canadians of all faiths contribute 65 per cent of the nation's charitable donations and the 14 per cent of Canadians over 15 who are religiously active provide 43 per cent of the nation's volunteers and clock 50 per cent of  Canada's volunteer hours. And to quote from CBC foreign correspondent Brian Stewart: "...There is no alliance more determined and dogged in action than church workers, ordained and lay members, when mobilized for a common good. It is these Christians who are right 'On the Front Lines' of committed humanity today and when I want to find that Front, I follow their trail. It is a vast Front stretching from the most impoverished reaches of the developing world to the hectic struggle to preserve caring values in our own towns and cities. I have never been able to reach these front lines without finding Christian volunteers already in the thick of it." Like it or not, these are the nation's Little Red Hens when it comes to battles against poverty and homelessness. And while they are motivated and sustained by their faith (we all are to one extent or another) they are also social workers, addictions counsellors, doctors, nurses and others. The Salvation Army has been managing the plight of the homeless since the 19th century and has learned a thing or two along the way about what works and what doesn't. Hopefully, somewhere among the recommendations to fight homelessness will be the idea of helping those who are already doing the helping and have been for a very long time. You don't have to agree with what they believe. Surely the only thing that matters is that you believe in what they do. And what they do works.

Brief to the Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences (Quebec) Introduction: Why Understanding the Language of "secular" and "secularism", "beliefs" and "faith" is Essential to the Work of this Commission. The Centre for Cultural Renewal is dedicated to exploring the important and challenging connections between beliefs (religious and non) culture and the state (law and politics at all levels) in Canada today. In the fifteen years that is has been a registered charity, it has operated on a strictly non-partisan, non-denominational basis seeking to inform public discussion in key areas of contemporary debate. We write, in particular, to this Commission, to suggest that the language employed in this area of accommodation and harmonization is essential in order to move in a fair direction for citizens in the future. The recitals to the Order in Council 95 – 2007, that established the Commission refer, amongst other things, to: "...certain accommodation practices related to cultural differences [which] might call into question the fair balance between the rights of the majority and the rights of minorities." We wish to address a key aspect of this issue—fair balance, and how the language we use to describe what the debate about religion and the state is all about, has a great deal to do with how we subsequently analyze the issues. Just as matters may be overlooked, they may also be assumed in certain words. Assumed in ways that may be shown to be confusing or wrong and that fundamentally affect fairness as we make the difficult determinations of what is fair in sharing the public sphere. In what follows we argue that it is advisable to start examining what fairness entails by looking at the basic language terms we use to describe our most basic concepts. Here that means the language we use to understand faith or beliefs in relation to the surrounding society (here the focus is the state with its central aspects of law and politics). Second, we argue that much of the standard language in this area is confused and confusing. In particular, terms such as "separation of church and state", "secularism", "believers/unbelievers" and "faith communities" tend to overlook key aspects of human being and life in communities which, if properly analyzed, could lead to better terms and better outcomes. We urge the Commission to examine these arguments and recognize the limitations that are present in some of the key terminology used before you in the Mandate and supporting Consultation paper (excellent though both are in many other respects) the Briefs submitted to date and at public hearings. Who is a "Believer" The starting off point for our comments is an observation; "all human beings are believers, the question is not one of belief or non-belief but of what is believed in." Yet how often we hear those who do not believe religion described as "unbelievers." This use of "unbelief" is a clue to other problems that soon follow and build upon it. What is "faith?" As with "belief" so it is with "faith." Everyone has "faith" of some sort and not all faiths are religious. The world is made up, in part, of believers who are parts of communities that have faith in this or that—some of this faith and belief is religious some of it is not. The separation of the world into two sharp divisions—one of "faith" and the other supposedly based upon "non-faith" is inaccurate and works against fairness when overlaid with the framework ("secular" or "secularism") that predisposes analysis against certain kinds of inclusion (religious). One of the implicit suggestions of the contemporary period is that those who are not in "communities of faith" are people of facts and/or that they do not operate out of "faith" but (and here is another false division) "reason" alone. This serves to bracket out religious adherents from other citizens; as the context usually shows, such a bifurcation is usually implicit and unintentional. In combination with other dualistic constructions, however, we shall see that this eventually leads to a general failure to understand relevant matters in a way that leads to accurate analysis of what is actually going on with respect to the state and public policy. When "faith" and "belief" (not necessarily religious) are understood to be aspects of human existence, and public policy based upon beliefs and faith (of some sort as well) we begin to see that the watertight compartments currently being used to insulate and confuse our analysis need to be replaced by better conceptions. Religious Faith and Religions matter to culture Whether our times wish to acknowledge it or not, religion and religious life have been recognized as of great importance in other places facing greater challenges to social cohesion than Canada or Quebec (and this commission's mandate includes looking at places outside Quebec for inspiration). The Constitutional Court of South Africa, for example, has said this about religion: For many believers, their relationship with God or creation is central to all their activities. It concerns their capacity to relate in an intensely meaningful fashion to their sense of themselves, their community and their universe. For millions in all walks of life, religion provides support and nurture and a framework for individual and social stability and growth. Religious belief has the capacity to awake concepts of self-worth and human dignity which form the cornerstone of human rights. It affects the believer's view of society and founds the distinction between right and wrong.1 Ignoring such insights and moving expressly or by default to minimize the public influence of religion shows extraordinary anti-religious hubris and cultural short-sightedness. Consider this as well. It is known that in Canada, 20% of Canadians do approximately 80% of charitable giving and volunteering. When these "top 20%" are compared with the "bottom 20%" who do nothing or very little in this area, three indicators stand out as statistically significant. It turns out that two of the three most important indicators of "socially embedded" conduct (those that "join", "donate" or "volunteer") are "spiritual" or religious. That is to say, regular attendance at a place of worship (church, synagogue, temple, mosque etc.) and a high rating as to "religiosity" question ("how important is spirituality to your life?"). The third indicator is University education.2 This alone shows that religious belief should be encouraged for the good of society not thwarted because of anti-religious animus, response to bad history or the difficulties of harmonization. Is the Canadian Constitutional Framework Individualistic/Communitarian or Both? Professor John D. Whyte has noted that the Canadian Constitution has not been promulgated upon any individualistic conception of liberalism but, rather, one that respects and nurtures each person's communities or what he calls "the organic society." Moreover, the two kinds of rights protected by the Charter, group rights and individual rights, derive from different conceptions of the proper role of the state, which are both reflected in the Constitution. Where rights conflict in a society any method of resolution will have to examine its principles of living together despite differing beliefs (whether the Quebec Charter, Canadian Constitution or Quebec Human Rights, in this respect makes little difference). Professor Whyte points out that since Confederation, in 1867, the Constitution has provided for group rights in addition to individual rights. S. 133 of the Constitution Act, 1867, confers language rights that may be asserted by individuals because of their membership in a protected group. Consequently, as Professor Whyte observes: . . . It is impossible to discern in the constitutional text either the clear direction to promote liberal values as wholeheartedly as possible or the direction to sustain communitarian values to the greatest extent possible. The Charter reflects the tension. Of course, it gives impetus to the nation's change to liberalism, but it does not reveal, in any precise way, where the limit should be drawn to protect other political values.3 The Canadian model (and there is no suggestion that, on this front, it should be different in Quebec) depicted above does not start with the proposition that either form of right is paramount or will necessarily converge or has a "trump" over other claims, but instead looks for the proper sphere of operation of each. This is a form of structural pluralism which must be respected. Claims that are, therefore, totalistic and which claim to represent in themselves all of "public policy" or "the view of the State" on a matter, where such recognition effectively delegitimizes other legal perspectives, must be rejected as overreaching or, at least, suspect until subjected to further analysis to ensure that they maximally respect legally contestable positions. Totalistic claims for "recognition" by any particular advocacy group do not respect diverse pluralism that holds together notions of group as well as individual rights and a plurality of moral perspectives. Taken together, therefore, we see that all Quebecers, like all Canadians, are necessarily believers that have faith. They are also members of a wide variety of faith communities gathered around whatever it is they believe—whether such beliefs are religious or nonreligious in origin. The beliefs of atheists and agnostics do not have a privileged claim in a society dedicated to equality and fairness. The Nature of the "Secular": The Canadian Supreme Court has Determined that Standard use of "Secular" as Religiously exclusive is not Appropriate in Canada. The same sort of confused use of language applies to the term "secular" but here the use by religious believers is almost exactly the same now days as it is by those who are non-religious believers. Consider how we speak of "religion AND the secular." The term "secular" has changed its meaning over the last century and a half. The term in general usage now means, essentially, free from religion as in "we ought to keep religion out of the schools because they are secular." This was not the original meaning, nor is it a meaning which recognizes the modus vivendi or diversity or pluralism. In short, the term "secular" must have a neutral meaning lest it be taken in an anti-religious direction. Yet if we assume, as many (most) do that the secular is stripped of religion, and that, secondly, the state is "secular" then we have assumed in our use that the state itself is, or must be, stripped of religion. But is this correct; is it fair? Now we must ask: is it legal? All citizens, as a matter of fact, as set out above, make their decisions in life based upon their beliefs. On one level, therefore, we are all "believers." The question is: "what do we believe in" and "for what reasons" and does the origin of our beliefs mean that some people (or some beliefs) have less importance in a society that says it will respect the ability of citizens to have the fundamental right and freedom to "belief" and "expression" in addition to "conscience and religion." Courts have, recently, come to acknowledge that any pre-emptive exclusion of "religion" from the category of "beliefs" or "secular" that may operate in the public sphere of society, is an unwarranted attack on the freedom of "conscience and religion" set out in Section 2(a) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This recognition is of great significance for public policy (in all provinces including Quebec) but it has yet to be widely understood as such. To allow only the beliefs of atheists and agnostics to have any public relevance is not to treat other beliefs fairly and those who hold them as equal citizens. To allow only those beliefs that emanate from the convictions of atheists and agnostics to have public relevance is discriminatory against religious beliefs just as much as to allow only religious beliefs to have public relevance would be discriminatory against non-religious believers. The principles of a free and democratic society require that all citizens are entitled to have their viewpoints respected within certain very broad parameters. It is not simply a matter of how beliefs are expressed but of what communities are nurtured and created by the analysis that must be examined. To the greatest extent possible public policy must try to encourage the diverse communities of belief that make up the tapestry of any "plural" society. The "secular" (a better term would be "public sphere") is, properly understood, a realm of competing faith/belief claims, not a realm of "non-faith" or "non-belief" claims because, strictly speaking, there can be no such realm. Human life and legislation are inescapably moral however implicit such morals are. In contemporary usage, "secular schools", "secular government", etc. are generally understood to mean non-religious or not influenced by religion or religious principles. We suggest that this is because we have adopted a secularist (which may be atheistic, agnostic or even religious) definition of "secular" rather than a richer and more properly inclusive conception. The separation of church and state is, after all, a jurisdictional distinction important to both the church and the state. A valid separation should not preclude a valid cooperation between church and state. Most religious groups in the west, for example, do not in fact want the state to run "the church" or vice versa. When we are tempted to use the term "secular" when we mean "the public sphere" or "the state" we would be better to say "public sphere" or "state" as these are free of the religiously exclusive baggage that currently encumbers use of the term "secular." When the Chamberlain v. Surrey School Board case came before the Supreme Court of Canada, all nine judges 1agreed with the reasoning of McKenzie J. of the British Columbia Court of Appeal as to the religiously inclusive meaning of "secular"—a usage in direct opposition to its general use. This means that for the purposes of Canadian law, "the secular" now means religiously inclusive not exclusive.4 As such it marks a strong divergence from "secularism" (recognized historically to be against the public involvement of religion) or contemporary forms of "laicism" such as evidenced in France or "strict separationalism" as seen in some quarters of the United States of America. Mr. Justice Gonthier for himself and Justice Bastarache, said this about the "secular": 137 In my view, Saunders J. below erred in her assumption that "secular" effectively meant "non-religious". This is incorrect since nothing in the Charter, political or democratic theory, or a proper understanding of pluralism demands that atheistically based moral positions trump religiously based moral positions on matters of public policy. I note that the preamble to the Charter itself establishes that "... Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law". According to the reasoning espoused by Saunders J., if one's moral view manifests from a religiously grounded faith, it is not to be heard in the public square, but if it does not, then it is publicly acceptable. The problem with this approach is that everyone has "belief" or "faith" in something, be it atheistic, agnostic or religious. To construe the "secular" as the realm of the "unbelief" is therefore erroneous. Given this, why, then, should the religiously informed conscience be placed at a public disadvantage or disqualification? To do so would be to distort liberal principles in an illiberal fashion and would provide only a feeble notion of pluralism. The key is that people will disagree about important issues, and such disagreement, where it does not imperil community living, must be capable of being accommodated at the core of a modern pluralism. [emphasis added]. Needless to say, it will take some time before the full implications of this judgment are understood in relation to how a religiously inclusive conception of the public sphere functions in relation to different belief systems. The language in the area needs to change and, at the very least the term "secular" and the "believer/unbeliever" dichotomy should be avoided in favour of terms that more accurately convey what is meant and what is fair in the circumstances. The same is true, a fortiori, with respect to "secularism" and it is to that term that we now turn. What Secularism does and does not mean. Like the term "secular", the term "secularism" is not often examined but when it is we argue that its historical meaning is such that we should challenge fundamentally any idea that "secularism" is a valid principle upon which to base an open and democratic society such as Canada or a province such as Quebec. Iain Benson has written about this historical background elsewhere5 and we will not repeat that analysis here except to draw to the attention of the Commission that "secularism" is not a term that, properly understood, furthers the kind of religious inclusivity or relation between the state and public policy that we need to seek in Quebec or the rest of Canada. Alternative terminology can and should be found in place of this term, laden as it is, with particular anti-religious intent and deep contemporary ambiguity. If an inclusive public sphere is sought that is what should be discussed. "Secularism" of any sort just confuses the issue. Conclusion: Avoid "one size fits all conceptions" and terms such as "secularism" as we move towards an open and inclusive public sphere. Only a richer conception of how citizens with differing belief systems can co-exist will solve the dilemma posed by erroneous uses of key terms in aid of universal consensus. What is clear is that claims for "neutrality" based upon the prior exclusion of religious beliefs but the inclusion of other beliefs under misuse of terms' such as "believer/unbeliever", "secular" or "faith" fail to support a proper approach to accommodation of differing beliefs. Approaches to "pluralism", "equality" or "secularism" that implicitly or expressly see us moving towards eventual agreement on all matters, need to be rejected as inconsistent with human freedom or a proper diversity and accommodation. The State through its primary public policy drivers of law and politics should keep ever before us the need to find ways in which people who do not believe the same things can, nonetheless, share the public sphere and even work together in their joint task and privilege of citizenship. To do this going forwards requires a re-thinking and re-formulation of some of the central terms in our understanding of religions and the state, terms that have, as this Brief has attempted to show in the pages above, been much influenced by ideological developments intended to limit and exclude the public relevance of religious beliefs and religious communities. When religious believers and their communities are accorded the involved respect they are due then and only then will we see a corresponding support for public institutions and a greater sense of citizenship and provincial or national confidence and pride. Neither separation on a "strict separation" model nor laicism/secularism can provide this firm future for Quebec. THE FOREGOING IS RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED. Notes 1 Christian Education South Africa v. Minister of Education 2000 (4) SA 757 (CC) para. 36. See, generally, for the Scope of Freedom of Religion in South Africa (much of which has been based upon Canadian decisions) Iain Currie and Johan de Waal, The Bill of Rights Handbook (Cape Town: Juta, 2005) 5th ed. 336 – 357. 2 Personal communication, 2006, with Dr. Paul Reed, Senior Social Scientist at Statistics Canada, Ottawa. 3 John D. Whyte, "Is the Private Sector Affected by the Charter?" in Righting the Balance: Canada's New Equality Rights, L. Smith, ed.(Saskatoon: The Canadian Human Rights Reporter Inc., 1986) 145 at 177-178 4 Chamberlain v. Surrey Sch. Dist. No. 36, [2002] 4 S.C.R. 710, 749 (Can.) at 749 (Can.).. Madam Justice McLachlin, who wrote the decision of the majority, accepted the reasoning of Mr. Justice Gonthier on this point thus making his the reasoning of all nine judges in relation to the interpretation of "secular." 5 Iain T. Benson, "Considering Secularism" in, Douglas Farrow, ed., Recognizing Religion in a Secular Society: Essays in Pluralism, Religion and Public Policy (Montreal: McGill/Queens, 2004) 83 – 93

Federal legislation designed to increase voter turnout could backfire by disengaging the people who currently display the nation's highest levels of civic participation. Bill C-16 would increase the number of advance polling days to five, including polls on two Sundays. The government argues that Sunday advance polls will increase voter turnout, but it seems more likely that by imposing itself on a day of some stature for people of the nation's dominant faith community, voter turnout will instead further decline. Bill C-16 amends the Canada Elections Act to establish a "Last Day of Advance Polling" on the Sunday immediately before election day. This "last day" would have the same number of polling places open from noon till 8 p.m. as on election day. In addition, there would be four consecutive advance polling days on the 10th, ninth, eighth and seventh days before election day -- Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday -- the week before the election. At committee, Government House Leader Peter Van Loan testified that Sunday advance polls are in response to research indicating that people who don't vote point to the lack of available opportunities to cast their ballots. Van Loan also pointed out that Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Quebec already have advance polls on Sundays. He didn't say, however, whether Sunday polling resulted in increased voter turnout in those provinces. In Saskatchewan, no particular day of the week is proscribed as election day. Advance poll days are set by counting back from whatever day is designated as Election Day, so advance poll days may or may not fall on Sunday. In this year's Manitoba general election, advance polls were held on Sunday for the first time. Voter turnout this year was 56.75 per cent, up but not decisively so from the 54.17 per cent turnout in 2003. In Quebec, Sunday polling was implemented in 1979. In 1976, before Sunday voting, voter turnout was 85.27 per cent. In 1981, with Sunday voting, turnout was lower at 82.49 per cent. In the most recent Quebec provincial election this year, voter turnout was 71.23 per cent. Representatives of various faith communities who appeared in committee hearings spoke with one voice: Parliament should reconsider holding advance polls on Sundays. Douglas Cryer, director of public policy for the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, noted that C-16 may depress voter turnout among those one-in-four Canadians who regularly attend religious services on Sunday. Based on their analysis of Statistics Canada's 2002 Ethnic Diversity Survey of 41,666 citizens, landed immigrants and temporary residents, political scientists L.S. Tosutti and Mark Wang found that those who attend Christian services weekly or monthly are noticeably more likely than other Canadians to vote. Is it good public policy to effectively discourage a quarter or more of the Canadian population, with a proven track record of civic engagement, from participating as voters in elections? What message does the government send these voters if it insists on pushing forward with advance polls on Sundays? According to the Report of the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada on the January 2006 election, there were 21,403 poll locations and 2,767 advance polling places during the 2006 general election. Of the polling places on election day, 12.3 per cent were located in church facilities. On advance poll days, 18.8 per cent of polling places were located in church facilities. This does not include church schools, hospitals or other facilities operated by churches. When Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand appeared before the House committee on C-16, he indicated that 11 per cent of all polling places for both election day and advance polls -- some 2,200 -- were located in "churches or other places of worship." As he suggested, many -- if not most -- church facilities would not be available for Sunday advance polls. If C-16 is passed and Sunday advance polls are implemented, it seems unlikely voter turnout would increase. The evidence suggests Sunday advance polls would make it more difficult for returning officers across Canada to find suitable space for polling places. More to the point, C-16 may well reduce voter turnout among churchgoers -- the quarter or more of Canadians who are proven to be the most likely to vote. Given those conditions, it makes sense for the government to head back to the drawing board on Bill C-16. Ray Pennings is vice-president of research for the Work Research Foundation.

INTRODUCTION What contributes to sustainable urban growth and development? This is a common question of concern facing all participants in this year’s World Urban Forum, from urban planners and urban business professionals to Non-Governmental Organizations and local community associations and groups. The focus of the forum this year is on “turning ideas into action.” From this diverse group of stakeholders has emerged a number of key areas for dialogue and action, attempting to address this shared concern. This list includes: urban planning and management, energy policies and practices, urban safety and security, affordable housing and infrastructure development, to name a few. These observations lead us to the question at the heart of this paper: What is the role of faith communities in the growth and development of sustainable cities? It is striking that this type of question rarely, if ever, enters the discussion around planning for urban development and sustainability. It is encouraging to see that one of the mobile workshops at the World Planners Conference, a gathering of urban planners from around the world that is being held in Vancouver prior to the World Urban Forum, highlights the role that faith communities have in shaping and influencing their neighbourhoods. However, it is fair to say that among urban planners and other urban civic and business professionals there remains a lack of understanding concerning the potential contribution of faith communities to urban centres. What exactly is the role of faith communities in our urban centres? How could these communities contribute to their sustainability? The contribution of this paper to that conversation will be quite specific. The focus will be to assess the potential contribution of one stream of faith communities in our urban centres: the emergence of “missional churches.” Among Christian faith-communities throughout North America, “missional churches” represent an emerging movement that is bringing renewal and transformation to many Christian churches of diverse backgrounds and traditions. At the heart of this movement is the effort among these Christian churches to be actively engaged in their local communities, and to contribute to the health and vitality of their cities. The issues facing our cities are diverse and complex. The need for collaboration among diverse stakeholders is widely recognized. While the contribution of “missional churches” is limited in scope, the role of these churches can be significant. In order to demonstrate this we will look at three key contributions of missional churches to their urban neighbourhoods: bridging social capital, partners in community development, and agents of vocational and cultural renewal. BRIDGING SOCIAL CAPITAL The importance of social capital for sustainable cities is widely recognized. On a global scale, the World Bank continues to look at the importance of social capital or “social cohesion” in order for societies and cities to prosper and for development to be sustainable. As they see it, “social capital refers to the institutions, relationships, and norms that shape the quality and quantity of a society’s social interactions.” In the Canadian context we are indebted to the work of Jane Jacobs and her ability to inspire us to see the interconnected webs and layers in our cities, particularly in our local neighbourhoods and streets, and to discover how people interact with the rich tapestry of life in urban neighbourhoods. The benefits of social capital for cities and urban neighbourhoods are manifold. Citing Robert Putnam’s work, Mark Smith mentions a few of the concrete benefits: child development is powerfully improved by strong social capital; public spaces are cleaner; people are friendlier; streets are safer; institutions and businesses flourish; and individual health and well-being improve. For urban growth and development to be sustainable, the strength of social capital should be of vital concern and a central element in the discussion. Let us consider a couple of the key components in the development of strong social capital in urban communities. Putnam’s work and others like Fukyama have demonstrated that two of the key components for building strong social capital are trust and interpersonal connectedness. One challenge facing our urban centres is the incredible array of diversity, and the potential threats and challenges this diversity brings to sustaining trust and interpersonal connections. Nick Pearce cites recent evidence “marshaled by theorists of social capital, particularly in the USA, that increased ethnic diversity is associated with lower levels of trust and civic-ness between citizens.”10 Ethnic diversity is only one variable of diversity. Our urban centres are noted for their rich diversity along many lines: social, economic, worldview, religious, education, employment, and housing. Pearce argues that trust is not necessarily at odds with increased diversity, and that trust is not achievable through political action or urban planning policy: “Interpersonal trust and civic belonging are themselves often forged through social struggles, and the creation and maintenance of institutions and practices that generate and sustain other-regarding virtues.”11 What types of institutions exist in our cities that “generate and sustain other-regarding virtues?” In other words, what institutions do we find in our cities that have the potential to develop and sustain what social capital theorists refer to as “bridging” social capital: the kind of social capital that accommodates diversity and is able to encompass people of many different social groups we find in our urban centres? In a recent study focused on Canadian cities, Aizlewood and Pendakur demonstrate that ethno-cultural diversity is not a major factor for the accumulation of social capital in Canada as it is in the United States.12 Rather, the dominating factor that affects social capital in Canada is community size: In three of the five models – participation, interpersonal trust and seeing friends – the larger the city of residence, the less likely people are to participate, trust, and socialize. Generalized trust in cities is reduced because familiarity is a more selective, network-based phenomenon.13 So the problem seems to be in the very process of urbanization – the larger the city, the greater the negative effect on social capital. What is striking is the remedy suggested by this study – higher levels of education and income. Simply stated, the higher the levels of education and income among urban dwellers, the greater the social capital. “Based on our research, controlling diversity is neither justifiable nor realistic, but more importantly, does not appear to be the answer. Education and income appear to be far more effective levers for affecting social capital.” Are these the only “levers for affecting social capital” in our Canadian cities? What about the institution of the church – particularly, emerging missional churches? Missional churches are churches that recognize the power of their associational life to generate and sustain the “otherregarding” virtues so vital to the strength of bridging social capital. Missional churches will often refer to themselves as “alternative communities” and by this they have in mind the power of communal life together that is marked by its diversity and embrace of the “other.” This is striking. Historically, churches have likely been noted, instead, for their “bonding social capital”: the strong social cohesion that often functioned to exclude those who were “other” or different. Increasingly, missional churches are reflecting the diversity of their urban neighbourhoods and demonstrating a capacity for fostering connection and trust among a diversity of people.14 This capacity has been noted by urban pastor and missiologist Mark Gornik in his celebrated To Live in Peace: Biblical Faith and the Changing Inner City. Gornik argues that we need a structural change in our whole way of thinking about sustainable cities and the role of the church. Often advocates of a civil society look to the role of churches as “mediating institutions” which, along with other local community groups of this category, provide a buffer between the market economy and the government. Churches are much more than this, argues Gornik. Missional churches are “living communities of truth, grace, and reconciliation” where Christian identity cuts across every other dividing line found in our urban neighbourhoods. 15 These communities have the resources and capacity not only to engender “other-regarding virtues,” but to be places where bridging social capital is nurtured and experienced in the urban neighbourhoods of our cities.16 At the heart of this dynamic is the ability of these missional church communities to locate identity and the personal contribution of diverse community members in categories that supercede economic, educational, or ethnic stratification and diversity. Simply put, they live together in “reconciled diversity” that helps them form “alternative communities” where the “other” is embraced and encouraged to contribute. For these churches, their ability to embrace the “other” and live in community amidst a rich ethnic, social, economic, educational, and employment diversity is central to their mission and a powerful witness to their message.17 COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT Missional churches are building on a tradition of faith-communities who actively engage in local community development. While recent studies, particularly in the U.S., indicate that the contribution of faith-communities to urban community development is not always as grandiose as some recent advocates of “Faith- Based Initiatives,” have suggested, there is a long history in both the U.S. and Canada of strong faith-community involvement in community development and social services.18 Of particular interest are the contributions made by missional churches who are involved in “asset-based community development.” Anyone familiar with community development theory and practice will know the work of John McKnight of Northwestern University and his leadership of the “asset-based community development” institute.19 McKnight’s work extends to Canada and is beginning to take hold in various cities and local communities. A notable example is the profound influence of the “asset-based community development” movement in the community-based research network of Ottawa.20 This approach to community developments focuses effort on five categories of community resources that are leveraged for development: the skills and talents of people; network of voluntary associations; strengths of local institutions; physical property and land; and the local economy. Rans and Altman argue that faith-communities have two particularly significant contributions to make in asset-based community development: community organization and partnerships in development.21 The tradition of faith-based community organizing has a track-record of benefiting local community development efforts along various lines: contribution of leaders to community efforts; contribution of physical meeting space and presence in local community; added “moral authority” to community agenda items; and contribution of funds and other human resources to build stronger communities.22 Building on this legacy, missional churches are finding their places as real partners in urban community development work. Their contribution to this is based on their assets as genuine community partners. Rans and Altman indicate the particularly unique position of missional churches in helping identify and mobilize community assets; in aligning the resources within their own faith-community with the community assets; investing in community relationship building to create connections between community partners; and their contribution as powerful institutions in local communities.23 These potential contributions of missional churches to our urban landscape are fitting for the Canadian context. A study conducted by the Council of Europe on cultural policy and cultural diversity in Canada bears this out.24 According to this study, one of the pressing needs at the Canadian urban micro-level is the need for building better linkages between urban planning and community development. In particular, this study notes that the need for urban planning to adequately deal with issues of cultural diversity will require not only changing perspective in planning theory but engaging in planning practices that carefully examine and listen to the local institutions that shape urban development and cultural life.25 The need is for “building multi-sector partnerships linking grassroots groups, government, business, academia, media, and non-governmental organizations in each city” (48 ). Missional churches are one set of partners at the local level that have the potential to contribute to this linkage between urban planning and grassroots urban community development partners. For missional churches, this partnership and collaboration with other urban community development partners is another central aspect to their mission and vision as an institution. They see their public service and partnership in community development as their public witness in local neighbourhoods – a notion much broader than older notions of “proselytizing” or other efforts focused on institutional growth and success. At the heart of their self-identity is their desire to seek the broader well-being and vitality of their neighbourhood – an identity that is rooted for them in the belief in a complete transformation of the entirety of human life.26 This vision of missional churches is not specific to the North American context as recent work on an international scale has demonstrated the possibilities and power of missional churches in a variety of urban community development work.27 VOCATIONAL AND CULTURAL RENEWAL One of the challenges in effective urban planning is developing policies and strategies for planning that publicly engage the diversity of urban dwellers. Indeed, the challenges around this whole theme are the focus of one of the major dialogue sub-themes at the World Urban Forum this year. No doubt part of what contributes to the growing complexity of this challenge is not only the diverse immigrant and ethnic populations in our major cities, but the growing differentiation of urban networks no longer defined solely by neighbourhood location. This is the challenge of connecting various urban networks, so aptly described as the “engines of urban sustainability” by one of the networking event planners for the World Urban Forum.28 By “urban networks,” we do not have in mind the innovative design concept of Peter Calthorpe, founder of the Congress for New Urbanism.29 Rather, we have in mind the specialized networks found in every major urban centre. The networks that are often found in the different vocational sectors of the city: legal, health care, finance, education, and marketing, to name a few. Increasingly, these formal and informal networks are some of the main conduits through which urban dwellers connect and find community. Missional churches are sensitive to these urban dynamics and, have the potential to contribute to the creation of these urban networks and, through them, become agents of vocational and cultural renewal. Let’s consider this briefly. First, missional churches are intentional in the creation of urban vocational networks. Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City is one example of a missional church that is intentional in the creation of urban networks. Currently they have six networks formed whose goals are to equip, connect and mobilize leaders in their professional and industry sectors toward excellence for the common good of the city.30 What is the value of urban networks for sustainability of our cities? On the one hand urban networks offer peer support for urban dwellers who strive for excellence in their vocational work in these various sectors. The added value of peer support networks and informal community gatherings is hard to quantify, but no doubt the liveability of urban neighbourhoods is dependent on the webs of connection among urban people, their spaces, and their places of work. New Urbanism planning is sensitive to these realities and intentional in the design and creation of space that fosters connections among different spheres of urban life. Urban vocational networks are also agents of vocational renewal. Missional churches emphasize the creation of networks that contribute to cultural production, and they strive to share best practices that motivate toward excellence in the workplace. The goal is not “value-assimilation” but, rather, engagement in vocational life in a way that contributes to vocational excellence and renewal. At Redeemer Presbyterian, New York City, this has led to the cultivation of an “Entrepreneurship Forum” whose aim is to establish an infrastructure to advise, serve, and fund Christian entrepreneurs who seek to create citychanging, culture-renewing ventures.31 What other institution in our cities is seeking to intentionally create urban networks and leverage them to foster vocational and culture renewing ventures? For missional churches, the passion for networks and vocational renewal is rooted in their desire to nurture communities in which Christians are equipped to work with distinctiveness while being engaged in cultural production. Missional churches are devoted to supporting people in their vocational fields out of concern for the well-being of their cities and the belief in the inherent goodness of their vocational lives and cultural production. These are not churches seeking to exist in ghettoized isolation where value assimiliation is the goal destination for their educational activities. Instead, these churches have shifted to a paradigm where the focus of their educational activities is the nurturing of urban vocational networks.32 With this focus, these churches aim to make a vital contribution to the common good of our cities and to the various professional and industry sectors that compose our urban landscapes. CONCLUSION Sustainable cities are a common concern for both the urban planner and the missional church. This is a concern rooted in different motivations and shaped by divergent traditions. Yet the emergence of missional churches can be seen as another bright spot on the urban landscape, a new stakeholder committed to the vitality and sustainability of our urban centres or a major player in sustainable urban growth and development. This paper has argued that regardless of your answer, the missional church is a contributor that should not be ignored, particularly when we move from the macro to the micro level and do the hard work of “turning ideas into action”—the theme of this year’s World Urban Forum. Missional churches are institutions and faith-communities committed to our increasingly urban world and its realities. They possess the resources and potential to make a contribution in bridging social capital, partnering in community development, and functioning as agents of vocational and cultural renewal. They are impelled by a vision that looks to an urban future for all humanity – an urban future noted for its rich diversity, wild beauty, and life-giving vitality.   Notes 1. See brochure and program outline for the 2006 World Urban Forum. Available at: http://www.unhabitat.org/wuf/2006/documents/WUF3Bro_small.pdf. 2. See list of “Dialogues” for the 2006 World Urban Forum at: http://www.wuf3-fum3.ca/en/agenda_dialogues.shtml. 3. See the program brochure available at: http://www.mppi.mb.ca/conferences/2006/WPC2006_PrelimProg.pdf. 4. See Michael Van Pelt and Richard Greydanus, Living on the Streets: The Role of the Church in Urban Renewal for a description and one explanation of this reality. 5. This movement has spread beyond North America, to include local expressions in Western Europe, southern Africa, and Australia/New Zealand. Our focus will be on the North American context and specifically focus on the Canadian context. See, for example the following: http://www.gocn.org/; http://www.deepsight.org/deepsight/ds.htm; and http://www.gospel-culture.org.uk/. 6. See www1.worldbank.org/prem/poverty/scapital/whatsc.htm for details on their extensive international work on measuring and strengthening social capital. 7. See especially The Death and Life of Great American Cities, 1996, New York: Random House. 8. M.K. Smith, “Social Capital,” The Encyclopedia of Informal Education, 2001 www.infed.org/biblio/social_capital.htm 9. R.D. Putnam, Bowling Alone. The collapse and revival of American community, 2000, New York: Simon and Schuster and Fukuyama, F. Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity, 1996, New York: Free Press. 10. N. Pearce, “Diversity versus Solidarity: A New Progressive Dilemma?,” 2004, Available at: http://www.whitlam.org/its_time/19/pearce.html. Pearce cites the work. 11. Ibid. 12. Amanda Aizlewood and Ravi Pendakur, 2004, “Ethnicity and Social Capital in Canada”, Strategic Research and Analysis, Department of Canadian Heritage, Government of Canada, p. 18. 13. Aizlewood and Pendakur, 19. 14. See Living on the Streets: The Role of the Church in Urban Renewal, Work Research Foundation, 2005, Michael Van Pelt and Richard Greydanus. This study documents the way missional churches in Hamilton, ON are transcending the diverse social boundaries that have existed in urban neighbourhoods (p. 19-20). 15. Mark Gornik, To Live in Peace: Biblical Faith and the Changing Inner City, 2002, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, p. 18-19. 16. Gornik cites the important study done in the US by Mark Warren, Dry Bones Rattling, Princeton University Press, 2001. As noted on the back of this book, Warren “offers the first in-depth treatment of how to rebuild the social capital of America’s communities while promoting racially inclusive, democratic participation.” Warren looks particularly at the vital role of religious congregations in this process. 17. See L. Barret, Treasure in Clay Jars: Patterns in Missional Faithfulness, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans (2004): 74-83 . 18. See A. Farnsely, “Assessing the Roles of Faith-Based Organizations in Community Development,” Recent Research Results, November 2001, pp. 1-2 and Ron Cnaan, “Our Hidden Safety Net,” Brookings Review 17, no. 2, Spring 1999, pp. 50-53 . For a more balanced perspective on the US situation, see A Revolution of Compassion: Faith-Based Groups as Full Partners in Fighting America’s Social Problem by Dave Donaldson and Stanley Carlson-Thies. 19. See their site: http://www.northwestern.edu/ipr/abcd.html. 20. See, for example: http://www.spcottawa.on.ca/CBRNO_website/Participatory_Social_Research.htm. Edmonton, Victoria, Vancouver, and Kitchener-Waterloo are other Canadian cities who are effectively engaging the asset-based tools for community planning and development. See http://www.neighbourtoneighbour.ca/links.html for links. 21. “Asset-Based Strategies for Faith Communities,” Chicago: ACTS Publications, 2002. 22. “Asset-Based Strategies for Faith Communities,” p. 5. 23. Ibid., pp. 6-8. 24. Greg Baeker, “National Report: Canada,” Council of Europe Transversal Study Project on Cultural Policy and Cultural Diversity, 2001. Found at: http://www.coe.int/T/E/Cultural_Co operation/culture/Completed_projects/Transversal/CCCULT_2001_5_EN.pdf?L=E. 25. Baeker, p 47ff. 26. See M. Minatrea, Shaped By God’s Heart: The Passion and Practice of Missional Churches, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004: p. 126-140. 27. See “Towards the Transformation of Our Cities/Regions,” Lausanne Occasional Paper No. 37, produced for the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization in Pattaya, Thailand, September 9 to October 5, 2004. Accessed at: http://community.gospelcom.net/lcwe/assets/LOP37_IG8.pdf 28. This particular networking and training event is being planned by “Federacion Latinoamericana de Ciudades, Municipios y Asociaciones (FLACMA), see brochure, p.6. 29. See, http://www.calthorpe.com/ for a sampling of Peters’ influential work and theory. 30. See http://www.faithandwork.org/ for a description of these groups and the type of activities. There are currently networks in the following sectors: arts, education, financial services, health care, legal, and marketing/advertising. 31. See http://www.faithandwork.org/forum.php for details. 32. See Tim Keller, The Missional Church, June 2001, found at: http://www.redeemer2.com/resources/papers/missional.pdf  

  The public funding of private religious schools was the flash point, and for John Tory   the tipping point, of the Ontario election. But none of the three leading parties   evidently thought to ask the faith-based education movement whether they were   inclined to accept funding. According to the authors, about half these private schools   weren’t. In effect, much ado about nothing, at least as to how the debate was framed. As Ontario students enjoyed a break from regular classes this summer the heads of Conservative political enthusiasts were spinning with not-so-novel visions for the provision of equitable religious schooling in Ontario. What followed was a flawed and shallowly debated education policy proposal which sank the provincial Conservative campaign in the 2007 election. Rather than bringing Ontarians of different educational perspectives together in debate and conversation on how to improve education through recognizing diversity, whether faith-based or otherwise, this election appears to have driven them further apart. One of the factors inhibiting effective dialogue was the way the debate was framed. By focusing on the question of funding minority religious schooling, the broader and more important issue of educational diversity, equity and inclusion became lost. The debate quickly became about whether government should be involved in religion, and in what respect it would be appropriate to fund particular beliefs. By framing the debate around religion, the focus on educational diversity and inclusivity lost its coherence. Secondary questions became primary ones and that which ought to have been discussed rarely surfaced. How John Tory and his team ever came to agree that the “Davis education plan of the 80’s” could work today is difficult to understand. Historian Michael Bliss was not the only one to raise this caution. Strategists mistakenly imagined the resurrection of this decades-old initiative as a perfect political bone to engage the more socially conservative within the party. Yet Tory’s plan failed at this. The strategists did not catch the message that not all faith-based independent schools were interested in becoming part of the public system. During the election the Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI) which represents 52 schools publicly indicated their unwillingness to get aboard this policy. What rarely surfaced in the debate or in the strategists’ design of the plan was the likelihood that less than half of the Ontario faith-based schools would even consider this proposal. Simply put, Tory failed to capture the imagination or the interest of this community, this on top of his failure to bring social conservatives into the “big tent” of the Conservative campaign coalition in the first place. In reality many of Tory’s problems in reaching this demographic were because his policy was not entirely dissimilar to McGuinty’s. A closer look at both John Tory’s and Dalton McGuinty’s view of education in Ontario shows a very similar plan in a government-designed, government-funded, and government- operated education system. Tory’s plan was to invite these schools and their 53 000 kids into the public education system. McGuinty argued that we must make improvements so we would attract people back into the public system. Consider a statement from Premier McGuinty in 2004. “It’s time to stop the slide in public education that has been marked by [the] disturbing trend [that] the number of children attending private schools has increased by 40 percent over the last eight years.” Cut away the “wedge politics turned upside down” and we have two men driving down two different roads to the same public system. For Tory it was a road of “fairness and principle” to those outside the system. For McGuinty, it became the dance of suggestions of social unrest, segregation and divisiveness. Given the relative similarity of these two proposals, it shouldn’t prove surprising to Ontarians that substantial debate on the topic of educational diversity never really took place. There remain significant items that do need discussion; items which, by and large, were the victims of misinformation and misunderstanding during the provincial election. A first topic which lacked probing was the real cost and impact on public education of funding some independent schools. It was estimated that it would cost $400 million for the independent faithbased schools and their 53,000 students to join the public schools. But if it is the case that only half of Ontario’s independent faith-based schools would ultimately opt for this proposal, the figure would be more properly $200 million. Further, the number of students that this would add could then be estimated to be around 25 000. Yet, imagine if all 53 000 students attending faith-based schools (or even all 136,000 privately schooled students in the province) had attempted to enroll in their local public school in September. These are Ontarians who have as genuine a right to attend their local public school as anyone, but the real cost to the public system of these additions is not only largely unknown, but largely ignored. Second, an opportunity for robust conversation on the nature and importance of diversity for a society was missed. Could it be that an innovative and knowledge based economy requires innovation and diversity in the design and delivery of education? One could argue with some success that an educational model of diversity could provide social stimulation, innovation, and cultivation of profound intersections between different spheres and beliefs in society. Yet through their education policy proposals, both the Liberals and the Conservatives seemed to suggest that independent and non-conformist thinking is harmful for a society — a suggestion that a great deal of economic thinking would be quick to contest. Similarly, and thirdly, we have not discussed how the presence of independent schools cultivates accountability and competition which can improve Ontario public education. Different perspectives, methodologies and priorities in education keep a lively accountable conversation happening between public, Catholic and independent partners. McGuinty demonstrated as much when he vowed in 2004 to improve public education because increasing numbers of parents were leaving. Furthermore, Preston Manning has pointed out that despite having very similar per capita spending on education, Alberta consistently ranked higher than Ontario in primary and secondary education. He attributes this excellence to the greater diversity of education choices, more “freedom to choose” the best educational options for their children, and more resources to support these choices. A fourth point of discussion would be on the question of rights. Ontarians have long been aware that the United Nations has frowned upon the structure of Ontario’s educational system, as privileging specific faiths over and against others. But there is another rights question at work as well. Who has the right to select and determine how children will be educated? While the province of Ontario does not make public education mandatory, its distribution of finances carefully disciplines the kinds of educational choices that can be made by the majority of families in Ontario. So 94 percent of Ontario students and their families comply. Only six percent choose independent schools or homebased education, only half of which are faith-based choices. Yet does the province have no moral mandate to recognize these parents’ views and needs? Finally, the election became a platform for the growth of intolerance and suspicion when it could have become a debate on how to incorporate diverse but legitimate partners in the culture and society of the province of Ontario. A sad by-product of this campaign is that it became an exercise in religious intolerance. Unfortunately, a small but identifiable minority — comprised of mainly Christians, Jews and Muslims — has become the target of this. McGuinty’s devastating inference that faith-based schools encourage segregation, social unrest and division directly challenges the legitimacy of such minorities and their perspectives. The value of this opinion voiced in a careless campaign by a political leader holding the Office of Premier will quietly embed its troubled implications into our cultural ethos. Will graduates of such faith-based institutions be viewed as culturally suspect? Will families who choose such schools be increasingly regarded with apprehension? Will the Premier’s views hold sway despite research showing otherwise? The independent school community is civically engaged, publicly active, entrepreneurial, and family oriented. In April 2007, the present authors reported higher than average civic involvement in federal, provincial, and municipal elections by private school parents and also found that 40 percent of parents who choose private schools for their children are entrepreneurs compared to 7 percent of parents in the public schools. Additionally, Statistics Canada has recently found that religious families donate more money and volunteer more time than the general population to social service organizations. If independent school communities are healthy communities, and their supporting families are making significant contributions to the social and economic health of our society, suggestions of their being the source of social upheaval can hardly be accurate. Not only did Ontarians miss the opportunity to discuss the impact and potential of educational diversity in this last election, it failed to robustly discuss the proposal that was offered. Careful research can be difficult to achieve on a campaign trail, but surely with election politics comfortably behind us Ontario can begin to imagine more creative solutions to the problems with education in this province, to the benefit of all students, and to the health and prosperity of this province.   Michael Van Pelt is president and Ray Pennings is vice president of the Work Research Foundation, Hamilton, Ontario. Deani Van Pelt is an assistant professor in the Department of Education at Redeemer University College, Ancaster, Ontario.

What's needed for our time is a Christian witness rooted in sound doctrine, that has a worldview robust enough to answer the questions society is asking, lived out of an ethic of integrity and characterized by a pilgrim spirit that recognizes we're not trying to build a city here below but that we seek one to come. Why be involved in the public square? Involvement in the public square is a doxological imperative. We are to live lives to the honour and glory of God. We must be involved as providence gives us opportunity and as our gifts allow us. BEGINNING WITH CREATION Building biblical foundations must begin with creation. God did not just create the physical creation; in Genesis 1 we have an account of the creation of all the potential of creation. Technology is there in Genesis 1, just as much as the mountains. It doesn't matter how many times you go to Kananaskas, you are overwhelmed by the grandeur and glory of the Creator as you look at creation. But it is equally the glory of the Creator that allows us to fly in an airplane or to go into space or for a computer to work. That technology, all that we have, the works of art, the great things that mankind has been able to do, are the result of God's good creation. According to Genesis 1:26, the image of God in mankind created in His image-is an essential aspect of the creation. To quote Herman Bavinck, Just as God did not reveal Himself all at once at the creation but continues and expands that revelation from day to day and from age to age so also the image of God is not a static entity but extends and unfolds itself in the forms of both space and time. It is both a gift and a mandate. It is an undeserved gift of grace that was given to the first human being immediately at the creation but at the same time it is the grounding principle and germ of an altogether rich and glorious development. Only humanity in its entirety -as one complete organism, summed up under a single head, spread out over the whole earth as prophet proclaiming the truth of God, as priest dedicating itself to God and as ruler controlling the earth and the whole of creation-only it is the fully finished image, the most telling and striking likeness of God. We must be involved in the public square because it is part of our humanity as an image-bearer of God to be a creator-to develop the earth. There is an imperative but it's also of our essence. It is who we are. To not do it is to not be truly and fully human. Another important aspect of the creation that we need to pay attention to is the diversity that is built within the creation. God created the animals "after their kind" (Genesis 1:25). He didn't just create one animal. He created various types of birds, various types of mammals and various types of insects; but He also created those different categories. There is a diversity within the creation. There are different aspects or functions built within the creation. Within that diversity there are also different spheres: art, business, philosophy, technologies, etc. There are three things that come from the image of God. First of all, that man has a special place and calling as an image-bearer of God; secondly, man has a special capacity to create, develop and reason as no other crearure does; and thirdly, there is, before the Fall, the doxological imperative. Man was created to tend the garden so that God would be glorified. And that's given to us in the very clear cultural mandate of Genesis 1:28. We have a very clear task to carry out. Of course, to describe the glory of the creation and the task given to man in the creation takes us only through the first page or so of Scripture. RECOGNIZING THE FALL After Genesis 1 comes Genesis 2 and in Genesis 3 we have the Fall. What is important to note about the Fall is the non-human impacts of the Fall. Often, we only recognize the fact that as a result of the Fall we are depraved, sinful people that only by the grace of God can we be reconciled through the finished work of ]esus Christ. But as a result of the Fall, the creation itself became broken. Thorns and thistles began to grow. Carnivores began to kill other animals for their food. There was also an impact on man as an image-bearer of God. All of a sudden, our work, which in the Garden of Eden was a delight because it was done to the honour and glory of God, became toil. Our work, very quickly, had the wrong focus. We began to work for our paycheque. When the first cities were built, they were named after Cain and his descendants. We no longer worked to the honour and glory of God. The Fall resulted in an idolatry in which man put himself in the place of God. Ultimately, idolatry is selfishness. There are two aspects of that idolatry which came into the human condition as a result of the Fall. First of all, we had a self-determined view of authority. Ultimately, wasn't that at the heart of the sin? Eve chose to listen to Satan and trust his word over God's word. And that has continued on since the Fall in the Garden and now we all, to a greater or lesser degree, bow to idols made with human hands. We also have a selfish motive toward our fellow man. There's a very utilitarian way that we look at our neighbours. And so the Fall has resulted in a great contrast between our natural condition of selfishness and the call of the law of God, which is a reflection of His own character, to love God above all and our neighbour as ourselves. You can lay those two beside each other and you can see the devastation of the Fall. DECLARING REDEMPTION If the redemption of]esus Christ only accomplishes the saving of our souls, if it does not undo the curse, not just in terms of the guilt of my sin, but also in terms of the thorns and thistles and the toil, then it is not a perfect redemption. But we need to think of the redemption of Jesus Christ as being a perfect and complete redemption. Grace restores nature. If it isn't that way, then the redemption won't be perfect. According to Romans 8:22, "We know that the whole creation groans and travails together even until now." As we look at the glory of the future which awaits the children of God, we see a picture painted for us: the new heavens and the new earth in which sin is totally undone and mankind will be able to live out his full task and calling. We're called to witness and to bring every thought captive (that's part of the process of sanctification). We are called to a God-glorifying humanness. So, if we establish the fact that all of creation was created by God for His glory, and if we follow the biblical teaching that the Fall was complete in the sense that all aspects of the creation are impacted by it, then certainly we must also have a grand view of the extent of the redemption. The redemption of Jesus Christ does not just apply to our souls; it applies to our bodies. It applies to the creation, which leads us to our eschatological vision. ANTICIPATING GLORIFICATION Obviously, redemption includes both now and the future but I think it is important, in our time especially, to emphasize glorification and eschatology as a separate point. One cannot help but look at the history of Christian involvement in the public square and see that even among believers, the temptation is very real to build our kingdoms here on the earth and to consider our activism and our causes as somehow critical to the corning of the kingdom of God. As we think of the end times, we are reminded that the project of the kingdom of God is one that He, in His sovereignty, is carrying out over millennia. And whatever role I'm called to play, even if it's a very significant role in history, I have but seventy or eighty years and chances are that my public involvement is only going to be about half of that. So, even if I were the most influential person among the 6 billion people of this earth, I'm here for thirty-five years out of several thousand years of God's working. I play a very small role. We ought to have a humility about our causes that, I fear, is not characteristic, either in our own day, or in the history of Christian involvement in the public square. Another aspect of redemption is the fact that there is coming a day of judgement. One can enter into conversations in which you are challenged by those who say "You're spending far too much activity worrying about the day-to-day stuff of life. When Christ comes again it's all going to burn." We've all heard that. 2 Peter 3:6-7 says, "Whereby the world that then was being overflowed with water perished but the heavens and the earth which are now by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgement and perdition of ungodly men. What is important to observe about this text is that the fire that's talked about here is not the fire of destruction. In fact, when one goes to the various passages it's the refiner's fire. There is a continuity. God does not come to make new things; He comes and will make all things new. He will renew His creation and that's a very important concept. The calling of the Christian is to work towards being conformed to the image of God - to be who he was originally created to be: an image-bearer of God to live for His glory. What did that perfect image-bearer do before the Fall? He worked in God's good creation. There is a God-glorifying eschatological focus that needs to undergird our activity in the public square. WHY SHOULD WE BE INVOLVED IN THE PUBLIC SQUARE? We should be involved because it's here; because it's what we were put on earth to do - to give glory to God in the world in which we've been placed. The entire cosmos is His. And He will redeem it. When we put the questions of our day in that broad framework, we will find ourselves capable of providing answers which no one else can, also in the public square. You will notice that I very consciously have tried to avoid a very narrowly political approach, because to me, Christian involvement in the public square is not just about politics even though that has been the watchword and the sphere in which we focus. It is as much about the arts; it is as much about education and philosophy and all the other spheres. God created them all and the full cultivation of that all is part of His honour and glory. Think with me about the calling of the Christian as the calling to live Soli Deo Gloria - to the honour of God - and that provides us every reason to be involved in the public square. Ray Pennings is the vice president of research for the Work Retearch Foundation (www.wrf.ca), on emerging public policy think tank whose mission is to influence others to a Christian view of work and public life. This paper was given in Toronto at "Christian Influence in the Public Square," a special Toronto Baptist Seminary 80th anniversary event on October 19, 2007. Recording of this semimar day can be obtained by contacting the Seminary office.

Over the last number of years, one of my frustrations as a Christian in the Reformed tradition is the lack of involvement in the public square on the part of those who call themselves Calvinistic or Reformed. As a way of correcting this, let me start with three basic presuppositions we need to operate on as we go out into the public square. I am going to assume the cosmological principle-the sovereignty of the triune God over the whole cosmos in all its spheres and kingdoms, visible and invisible. Thus, all of life, including culture, must come under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and absolutely nothing is to be extracted from the rule of God. Second, I think we need to emphasize that we are utterly dependent creatures and that all of life is moving forward based on the purposes of God and His sovereign will. Thus, if we are to maximize our influence for Christ in the public square then our purposes should reflect God's purposes and our values should reflect God's values. Third, bowing to the Lordship of Christ means living under the authority of God's Word completely. When Francis Schaeffer talked about the uniqueness of Christianity, he stated that "Christianity is not a series of truths in the plural but rather truth spelled with a capital T - Truth about total reality, not just about religious things." Biblical Christianity is truth concerning all of reality and the intellectual holding of that truth and then living in light of that truth. On the basis of these assumptions, I want to focus this article in the following sections: (1) The Christian as arbitrager; (2) The Christian in the personal sphere; and (3) Two critical areas in the public sphere that we need to emphasize, namely, leadership and entrepreneurship to make a difference for Christ. The Christian as arbitrager In the financial world, arbitrage is when someone takes advantage of a price differential between two or more markets. A person will use a combination of matching deals to capitalize upon pricing imbalances and then try to lock in a profit. One of the conditions necessary for arbitrage to take place is that an asset with a known price in the future does not today trade at its future price. An arbitrage is not the act of buying something in one market and then selling it in another market at a different point of time. It's the buying and selling simultaneously at the same time to squeeze out a profit. Let me give you a quick example. If you had a business run by competent management within Alberta that was trading at S5.00 per barrel of oil in the ground, and you had another business within the same province that was trading at S10.00 per barrel you would buy shares in the one at S5.00 because the market is mispricing this. In reflecting about this concept recently, it occurred to me that the ultimate arbitrage is the Christian life. One's lasting impact on the public square will ultimately correlate with how well one understands that we really should dispense with the short term and go long with the long term, which is completely mispriced in our culture. This is what Paul is getting at in Philippians 3:7-9, 14 when he says, but whatever was my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Jesus Christ my Lord. For whose sake I have all things, I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law but that which is true faith in Christ the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. If we are going to be Christian lights in the public square, we must begin by making that our ultimate arbitrage in life. To me this is the ultimate trade that we all engage in as Christians. Since the Christian long-term position is of infinite and eternal value and since arbitrage is a zero sum game, it means the party on the other end of that transaction is in big trouble. In finance, that"s what you call bankruptcy. In the Christian life, a person on the opposite end of that trade faces an eternity in hell. The contemporary phenomenon of shortermism is not contained just to the financial or capital markets; it is pervasive in our culture. This should not surprise Christians. After all, why should we expect people to think long-term and to make self-sacrificing decisions that are only inter-generational when there is no consensus in our society or culture on any of the foundational issues like moral behaviour, moral authority, epistemology, metaphysics and even why one exists? The public square will ultimately be influenccd by those who can rise above the moment and take a long-term view. We must consistently develop a long-term view by aligning ourselves with the Lord of history and by infusing every day we have, every circumstance that comes our way, with lasting meaning and value by bringing all into captivity to the obedience of Jesus Christ. The Christian in the personal sphere In the personal sphere, 1 think it is critical that we start with the person. How can someone really step out into the public sphere in any kind of meaningful way if the personal house is not in order? We have too many people running around the public square that are utterly dysfunctional in their personal lives. One's personal walk with Jesus Christ, one's family life and one's involvement in the local church are at least three non-negotiable areas of one's personal life that must be solid if you are going to stand out consistently and be used by God. To speak of the importance of one's personal walk with Jesus Christ isn't revolutionary but I think it needs to be emphasized. We need to be true Christians, regenerated by the Holy Spirit, bowing to the Lordship of Christ and His Word. We will not have ultimate cultural change if it's not championed by Christians who are regenerate, who bring the reforming, regenerating message of the gospel into the workplace. We are utterly dependent creatures; we need God's strength constantly if we are to stand in a difficult environment and in the public square consistently without falling. This is why one's personal walk with Jesus Christ (of which the spiritual disciplines such as Bible reading and prayer are an integral part) has to be the starting point before going into the public sphere. In Ephesians 6: 19, Paul goes through the full armour of God and its importance and shows his dependancy upon God when he says "pray also for me that whenever I open my mouth words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel." It is also important to have one's household in order and as strong as possible. The family remains the integral part of our society in the maintaining of law and order in a civil society. How can one step out in the public square and consistently offer the Christian message and influence the culrure when your own home is in disarray? This is a recurring theme in the Bible. Stay home and make sure your home life is strong before you run around telling other people what to do. A second point under this area of family life is that of loving your spouse. For single people, this means looking forward to marriage, respecting marriage and seeking a partner as God leads. One issue that should grieve us is the level of divorce in the Christian community. Have we not, as a community, undercut the institution of marriage by our own inability to live out before a watching world what marriage should be? Has this not hurt our legitimacy to speak out on gender issues, homosexual issues, abortion and so forth? If we want to step out in the public square, this emphasis on the strength of our marriages and the strength and integrity of the family unit is absolutely essential. The third area under family life is children. Children are a blessing from God, the most important treasure that God has given us apart from Himself and our spouses, and we need to be those who are serious about creating the next generation. One of the biggest issues facing our world today is the unprecedented drops in birth rates around the world and the dramatic aging of the world's population. For example, China, which involved itself in the practice of wholesale abortion and infanticide as part of their one child per family policy, is going to see the implications of that gross sin. The dependency rates are going from 6.4 working people to 1 retired to about 1.2 to 1 in the next 30 -35 years. China will be the oldest civilized society within about 30 years. I call that the judgement of God for immorality and the implications of that, economically, are huge. In Power to the People, Lori Ingrim points out that the 11% of the population in the U.S. that will have 4 or more children will control 25% of the future generations. You want to impact the public square? Well then, let's raise the next generation of young people in the church, in the fear and admonition of our Lord and turn them out. The third aspect under the personal sphere is the whole issue of the local church. Christ loves the church and died for her. Invest time and energy in your local church. How can we possibly influence the public square without strong and vibrant church communities which are set as anchors for families and the propagation of the gospel of Christ to the next generation? The church is the critical element for consistent instruction in the Word, spiritual growth, accountability and outreach in the community. In a multicultural setting like Canada, it's the ultimate melting pot that unifies all races in Christ as they bow the knee to Him. Critical areas in the public sphere 1. LEADERSHIP When one steps out into the broader culrure there are two issues we must look at: leadership, or lack thereof, from a Christian perspective, and entrepreneurship. An honest look at our own culture and its various spheres underscores the dearth of true leadership. And tied in with the loss of leaders is the lack of character in our culture. Most people will agree that we need a renewal of character and leadership in our day but they do not really know what they are asking for. To have a renewal of character in this new generation, you need true leaders who are bound to Christian truth, who believe in constraints and limits and believe in things that bind and obligate. They must believe that people are compelled to act morally and ethically in conformity to a standard. And that standard has to be God's Word and His revealed will. But this is too high a price for our culture that talks about character but can never really ultimately produce it. Paul's words in 2 Timothy 3:10-4:8 have really helped me in thinking about these matters. In this brief section, you have Paul handing the baton to Timothy and providing pithy instruction about eight elements of leaders

Canada’s international trade policy prioritizes the Gateways model with a view to increasing trade with Asia, especially China. Meanwhile, Industry Canada pursues research on global value chains, looking at how trade occurs inside binational and multinational companies. Russ Kuykendall raises questions about the net benefit to Canada from the China-focused gateways trade. He affirms the strengths of the global value chains model, but asks whether it provides an adequate explanation of trade. Instead, Kuykendall proposes that the Trade corridors model best explains Canada-US trade — Canada’s most important trading relationship — and that the model suggests where Canada should pursue development of trade.   October 3, 2007, marks the 20th anniversary of the completion of the negotiation of the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement that was signed on January 2, 1988, and came into effect January 1, 1989. Twenty years ago, the focus of Canada’s international trade policy was the United States economy, the largest market on the globe. Today, three metaphors inform policy models of Canada’s international trade and the integration of its economy with the world: gateways, global value chains and trade corridors. The metaphors emanate from at least three separate departments of the federal government. The Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade — specifically, the Ministry of International Trade — are pursuing a Gateways model, particularly focused on Canada’s trade with the Asia-Pacific rim. Recently, the federal Department of Industry has sought to drill down on how especially Canada-US trade occurs within corporate entities with the concept of “global value (supply) chains.” Particularly in the mid- to late 1990s, the federal Department of Transport focused its policy development efforts on using “trade corridors” as a means of understanding Canada’s infrastructure needs in respect of trade. This article is an overview of each trade metaphor, including strengths and weaknesses of each and how they serve the Canadian economy. The focus shifts to the ability of trade corridors to account for the strengths of the other metaphors, and how Canada’s largest export sectors or trade corridors are focused on the US market. Challenges arising from the three most valuable trade corridors are summarized and, then, how recent public policy has affected them. Finally, “the Canadian advantage” that arises from Canada’s trade corridors is described — factors that position Canada favourably in respect of international trade with the United States, in particular. Throughout the Chrétien and Martin governments, the gateways metaphor featured prominently, especially as Prime Minister Chrétien organized a series of Team Canada delegations. The most prominent of these was a series of trade delegations to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), beginning in 1994 with provincial premiers and CEOs in tow, that served to highlight agreements already formalized and business already underway among Canadian companies operating in China. Gateways is focused on the Asia-Pacific rim, and especially on the PRC. This is not without good reason. The PRC market represents one of the great consumer growth markets in the world with well over a billion potential consumers. India similarly represents a huge consumer growth market, also in the Asia-Pacific rim. Roll in the mature markets of Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Canada, the Asian tigers of Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia as well as Latin America’s Pacific coast, and the combined Pacific rim consumer market totals more than 3 billion people, or approximately half the globe’s population. More than 80 percent of this market constitutes a consumer growth market, versus the mature markets of Canada, the US, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. It’s worth pointing out: the Asia- Pacific market is worth understanding. But does the Gateways metaphor add to our understanding of trade in this market, and is it adequate to encompass it? Beyond this, what is the value added to the Canadian economy from Canada’s trading in the Asia-Pacific rim, especially with the PRC? In “Six Trade Corridors to the US: the Lifeblood of Canada’s Economy” (Policy Options, July-August 2006), I argued that the advantage on trade and the growth in that advantage on trade with China goes to China. This is true of both US and Canadian trade with China. Year over year the rate of increase in China’s trade surplus with Canada and the US is not in the single but double digits. In 2005, Canada’s merchandise trade deficit with China was $22.4 billion. In 2006, the deficit was $26.8 billion — a rise of nearly 20 percent. Most of China’s surplus is represented in consumer manufactured goods targeting the US and Canadian markets. Canada’s trade deficit with China tends to be offset by commodities: food (grains and oilseeds), petroleum, coa, and iron. Canadian and US retailers have effectively shifted large segments of their consumer goods supply chain offshore to China. Wal-Mart may be only the most notable example. While trade deficits with China continue to mount up, Canada’s merchandise trade surplus with the US was $141.7 billion in 2006. Japan has long enjoyed a trade surplus with the US and Canada. Again, with Canada, the deficit is offset by Canada’s supplying commodities. Japan’s domination of the US and Canada automobile products market is represented in Toyota Motor Company’s surpassing General Motors as the highest- selling automobile manufacturing company in the world. Whereas companies like Honda had to work very hard to find US and Canadian dealers in the early stages of its North American market entry, now the shoe is on the other foot with dealers taking less and giving more. Toyota and Nissan’s penetration of the US and Canadian markets is so wide and deep that the companies’ attentions are shifting to the PRC and Indian, markets with deals to manufacture and supply cars to these “cheap car” markets. Even so, there’s enough room in the North American market for such interlopers as Hyundai to move from the entry stage to a brand with growing equity among US and Canadian consumers. Waiting in the wings for North American entry is a relative newcomer (within the last five years) to car manufacturing, Tata Motors, which has long manufactured trucks for the Indian market. Tata has effectively recreated the “cheap car” market focusing, first, on its domestic consumer market in India, but it is well along entry into the Australian, New Zealand, Russian, eastern and central as well as western European, and the potentially huge Latin American markets. India’s engineering acumen and capacity rivals that of Japan, western Europe and North America. India’s cars are coming soon to a dealer near you! The Gateways metaphor is one that emphasizes opening up Canada in return for opening up opportunities off-shore in the Asia-Pacific rim, especially the PRC. But, again, this openness has translated into growing trade deficits as Canadian and US consumer demand for cheap manufactured goods from (for example) China and higher quality manufactured goods from Japan outpace reciprocal demand for goods of Canadian or US manufacture. The recent expansions of capacity at the ports of Prince Rupert and Vancouver, and the expansions of highway and rail transportation capacity, have focused on container traffic of manufactured goods mainly coming into and commodities traffic heading out from Canada’s Pacific shores. Further, most public policy in relation to the Gateways metaphor, including the series of policy forums on Gateways spearheaded by Simon Fraser University, focuses on making Canada’s transportation infrastructure accessible to the Asia- Pacific trade. The abstract from one of a series of conferences on the “Gateway Corridor Initiative” organized by Simon Fraser University is revealing on this count. Out of some 23 presentations, virtually all concerned themselves with transportation infrastructure. Measured by the ratio of exports to GDP, Canada’s economy is the second most open to trade among the G8. Measured by the ratio of total trade (exports and imports) to GDP, Canada is, again, second among the G8. The value of Canada’s exports represents 36.4 percent of Canada’s GDP, compared to 44.9 percent for Germany’s. They value of Canada’s total trade is equivalent to 70.2 percent of GDP, compared to 84.5 percent for Germany, according to Canada’s State of Trade. The OECD struggles to measure China’s GDP, so the ratio of exports to GDP is difficult to calculate. But in the Asia Times Online, Lynette Ong estimates that the ratio of China’s exports to GDP is double that of India’s. Ong suggests that India’s growth is traceable to domestic entrepreneurship while China’s is due to higher levels of foreign direct investment. According to a 2007 report in Xinhua, since the country opened to it in 1978, China’s foreign direct investment (FDI) cumulatively exceeded US$750 billion by the end of June, including US$36.93 billion in FDI in the first seven months of 2007, according to Vice Minister of Commerce Wei Jianguo. He said China had cumulatively approved creation of 610,000 foreign-funded enterprises. Exports by foreign-funded enterprises accounted for 57 percent of China’s exports. Further, while much of China’s growth is traceable to suppliers focused on serving the North American markets who locate in China, India’s growth is primarily focused on supplying domestic demand. The following questions could be posed in respect of the Government of Canada’s current Gateways, transportation infrastructure focus: ● As long as Gateways is the metaphor informing Canada’s Asia-Pacific trade policy, will Canada focus on leveraging access to its market for Asian-manufactured goods in return for access to especially Asian and Latin American markets for Canada’s higher-valueadded goods and services? ● Are Asian and Latin American markets the best target markets for Canada’s high-value-added, hightechnology goods and services? ● While the Canadian market for Asian-manufactured goods is driven by Canadian consumer demand, is the expenditure of Canadian public monies the best investment in Canada’s consumer, business, macro-economic and national interests? ● Is there an untapped opportunity for Canadian investors and exporters in India’s market? The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) was adopted by the United States, Canada and Mexico in 1997 in the aftermath of the ratification of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) by all three countries. The system makes it possible to track exports and imports of all three, sector by sector, and compare “apples to apples” and “oranges to oranges.” The NAICS is organized, sector by sector, from broadest to narrower and narrower categories. Global value chains — formerly known as global supply chains — research narrows further within sectors and attempts to get at how trade occurs inside or within bi-national or multi/national companies, especially those operating in the US and Canada. Because these transactions are internal to companies operating on both sides of the Canada-US border, the research requires a high level of cooperation from companies that are Industry Canada’s research targets. A global supply chains conference was held in February 2006 in Ottawa for public servants in the Department of Industry, and a global value chains conference was slated for senior economic policy authorities from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries, policy analysts from the Federal Government, as well as representatives from businesses, think tanks, and academia, in September 2007. Industry Canada and others are attempting to understand how this variety of trade — trade internal to companies — occurs: the management relationships and best practices, as well as transportation infrastructure and arrangements. Whether intentional or not, global value chains research takes a page from Adam Smith’s understanding of trade in The Wealth of Nations as, in part, division of labour and his discussion of the advantages of importation of certain products over domestic production — in this case, within companies, in order to maximize profits. The clearest advantage to this approach is that it widens its view beyond transportation infrastructure, and starts to get at how trade occurs, especially in terms of management and best practices. It recognizes that trade is more than transportation infrastructure. Further, global value chains research begins to paint a picture of how the Canadian and US economies are integrated by trade — at least, how a business enterprise operating on both sides of the USCanada border integrates its operations by way of trade internal to the enterprise. Global value chains research offers a microcosm, company by company, of how the Canadian and US economies are integrated, sector by sector — especially in respect of the Ontario-Michigan automobile manufacturing industry. The information collected should be extraordinarily useful in adding to our understanding of Canada-US trade. But it is necessarily limited by focusing its research scope on bi-national and multinational enterprises. Further, while it is not as limited in scope as the Gateways project, focused as it is on transportation infrastructure, global value chains research does not (yet, anyway) address the influence of contractual, regulatory, statutory and treaty arrangements, let alone matters of culture and human relationships. As I wrote last summer in Policy Options: Global supply (value) chain research points to how Canada’s trade is organized mainly in terms of businesses, offering a description of Canada’s trade flows. It is helpful. But this presents an inadequate explanation by itself of Canada’s trade capable of informing and providing direction to Canada’s international trade policy. The concept of Trade Corridors was first developed in Canada as a public policy project of the federal Department of Transport in the late 1990s. For some time earlier, Trade Corridors had been adopted by a number of regional Canada-US trade marketing initiatives describing themselves as Trade Corridors. But Trade Corridors were consistently described and defined in terms of transportation infrastructure and transportation routes. The Work Research Foundation departed from this limited understanding of Trade Corridors with its book Greenlighting Trade: A Trade Corridors Atlas. Using the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) and the Harmonized System (HS) data at Trade Data Online, and certain other data from Industry Canada and Statistics Canada, Greenlighting Trade identified Canada’s six highest value export markets, how these are focused on the United States as a destination, and how they tended to integrate the Canadian and US economies. “Six Trade Corridors to the US: The Lifeblood of Canada’s Economy” (Policy Options, July-August 2006) provides a summary of the arguments while Greenlighting Trade presents the detailed sector-by-sector research, and organizes it into a number of useful graphs and charts giving a “snapshotat- a-glance” of Canada-US trade. Greenlighting Trade examines Canada’s six largest export markets organized by sector under the broadest categories of the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) and the Harmonized System (HS). These markets are described as six Trade Corridors, beginning with the highest value export sectors: automobile manufacturing, oil and gas products, machinery and equipment manufacturing, forest products, commercial services, and food (agriculture and fishing products). A definition of Trade Corridors was developed that endeavours to include and encompass not only the matters addressed under Gateways or Global Supply Chains, but also matters not included: Trade corridors are more than transportation infrastructure. Therefore, trade corridors are defined as streams of products, services, and information moving within and through communities in geographic patterns according to a matrix or “culture” of trade agreements and treaties, statutes, delegated legislation, and customs that govern and guide trading relationships, institutions, and structures. With this definition, Greenlighting Trade attempts to understand Canada-US trade — and global trade, for that matter — in all its facets and fullness. This is an attempt to move the discussion from merely one of infrastructure and products — important as they are — to the role of contracts and the rule of law as well as the human elements of culture and relationships that frame and provide the contexts for trade. This understanding of trade can help to prioritize trade on a basis other than solely the value of exports and trade surpluses and deficits. It helps to understand why a trading relationship as Canada-US trade exists, and why it is so large. It also explains how trade tends to integrate the Canadian and US economies. Trade Corridors offers clues to other potentially fruitful trade relationships, bringing these into the prioritization of trading relationships. Taking a cue from the example of the most valuable trading relationship in the world and, perhaps, in recorded history — Canada-US trade conclusions can be drawn based on what makes this relationship, first, possible and then so fruitful. The most fruitful trading relationships will tend to entail geographic proximity; the similarity of legal systems and statutory/regulatory structure; the quality of international relations and treaties between governments; openness to exports and imports and to direct foreign investment; the similarity of business and trading cultures and contractual relationships; and the web and network of personal relationships on a human level. Therefore, Canada may want to prefer trade with India with its quarter billion English-speakers and common law legal system over trade with the PRC. The Trade Corridors framework provides an explanation of how Canada’s trading emphasis shifted away from Britain to the US in the 19th and 20th centuries. It takes into account the impacts of Canada’s geographic proximity to the US over the United Kingdom as well as the US and Canada’s shared history of adherence to common law and the sanctity of contracts, and the millions of human relationships among US and Canadian and US-Canadian dual citizens. There is more to say about the advantages that Canada enjoys in respect of its trade with the United States. In Greenlighting Trade and since its publication, a number of opportunities and challenges were identified for Canada’s six most valuable export Trade Corridors markets. Following are the challenges and opportunities of the three most valuable of these, namely automobile manufacturing, oil and gas products and machinery and equipment The Canada and US auto industries are, in fact, the North American auto industry centred in Ontario and Michigan. This industry represents approximately one-fifth of the total value of Canada’s exports. More than onequarter of Canada-US trade crosses at the Ambassador Bridge, Windsor-Detroit. The industry was formerly governed mainly by the Auto Pact, 1965, but is now governed by the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement and the North American Free Trade Agreement and the attached regulations and tribunals. The highway transportation infrastructure serving the industry is further stressed because the Niagara peninsula (Canada) has become the transportation route of choice between New England and the US Midwest for US truckers and for US tourists and students. The St. Lawrence Seaway and its infrastructure are subject to a Canada-US treaty and a binational commission, the International Joint Commission, established in 1909. As vessels have increased in size, significant expansion of the seaway has not been forthcoming. The 2007 federal budget privileged hybrid auto manufactures over non-hybrids and higher gasoline consumption vehicles. Tax credits were made available to the former, and tax levies were announced on the latter. This effectively privileged Toyota — with its emphasis on hybrids over Daimler-Chrysler — with its recent revival of “the hemi” engine. A North American auto industry already under pressure is feeling that pressure all the more. US demand for oil and gas continues to ramp up, matched in production by Canada’s oil and gas industry, centred in Alberta (see the accompanying illustrations). The oil sands reserves of northeastern Alberta of bitumen that can be processed into crude, and the Elmworth gas fields of northwestern Alberta that straddle the Alberta-BC border, may represent the largest proven reserves of oil and gas in the world. Near Peace River, Alberta, is another site with huge potential for bitumen extraction already in the early stages of development. Recent concerns about greenhouse gases and oil and gas consumption will tend — at least in the short to medium term — to put pressure on the industry. Extraction of bitumen generally requires the consumption of natural gas, with the attendant production of greenhouse gases. For years, policy analysts have suggested the construction of a CANDU reactor near Fort McMurray and the oil sands extraction sites in northeastern Alberta, and near the projected oil sands sites in northwestern Alberta. A recent proposal would have seen the construction of a reactor near Whitecourt in northwestern Alberta, but the residents recently voted against it. As a result, Energy Alberta announced at the end of August 2007 that it is applying for “a Licence to Prepare Site with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission” situated near Peace River. From beginning the approvals process through construction to a CANDU being up and running will take up to ten years. Alberta is effectively becoming a “super-province” on the order of Ontario because of its economic prowess from oil and gas, spin-offs, and from other infrastructure expenditures in health care. But Alberta doesn’t enjoy the same kind of clout as Ontario in Parliament and the federal government. This requires addressing, and the aspirational culture of Alberta that tends to legitimize Alberta’s political expectations. In certain quarters of the broad machinery and equipment sector, there seems to be some lack of appreciation for the magnitude of the valueadded and the multiplier effect of Canada’s high-technology engineering sector in space, satellite, aerospace, communications and robotics technology. Other countries capable of such technology — and it’s a relatively short list — actively support and privilege their players in this sector over foreign competitors. Even with a commitment to free trade, should the Government of Canada do any differently as long as other governments privilege domestic participants? Increased US concerns with security add an extra hurdle in respect of technology sharing and the involvement of Canadian engineers and scientists born off-shore from Canada in countries considered suspect by the US government. This could also serve as an advantage to Canada in making it a more attractive destination for hightech engineers and scientists who would be barred from certain kinds of pure and applied research in the US under its ITAR regime. For several years, the Alberta government has promoted “the Alberta Advantage” — in business, its regulatory regime, its access to energy, for professionals, and in terms of overall quality of life. Here is “the Canadian advantage” — Canada’s trade assets identified by employing a Trade Corridors analysis: ● Canada shares a continent with the US: this gives Canada immediate geographic access to the largest economy in the world; ● Canada shares time zones with the US: the business day, banking and securities markets operate on the same time zones in both countries. Canadians and Americans work, go to school, and carry on their daily lives concurrently; ● Canada and the US share the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway: Canada and the US share access and management of the St. Lawrence Seaway and the great inland transportation waterways of the Great Lakes; ● Canada and the US share a common language, English, and both are bilingual. Over the years, several prominent news anchors in the US have been Canadians, most notably the late Peter Jennings. That is because spoken English in one is generally understood in the other. Canada possesses a linguistic bridge to la francophonie — French-speaking countries throughout the world. The US possesses a linguistic bridge to iberophones — Spanish-speakers, by way of its large Hispanic and Mexican population; ● Shared legal framework — the common law — and both have jurisdictions that employ the civil code or Napoleonic Code (Quebec and Louisiana). Although differences between the legal regimes are present, the general adherence to the sanctity of contract informed by a majority common law regime tends to facilitate trade and business transactions between the two countries; ● Shared popular and mass culture. Canadians are knowledgeable of American pop culture. Several Canadians are American cultural icons. Both share similar spectator and participatory sports interests in baseball, football and golf. When their entrepreneurs meet, they have common ground and subjects to discuss in breaking the ice while they play the links; ● Shared electrical power grid. Hydro-Quebec sells power through the US northeast grid. Both use electricity in the same way; ● Shared and highly integrated transportation network of air, sea, rail and roads. Major Canadian airports have pre clearance facilities, and there is discussion of creating pre-clearance facilities for highway and rail border crossings; ● Shared communications grid of telephone, cellular service, Black- Berry and Internet; ● Highly mobile work forces. Canadians and Americans are among the most highly educated peoples in the world, and their credentials, skills and ways of doing business are highly transferable, country to country. This is further enhanced by the NAFTA worker visa; ● Security, police and armed forces integration and exchanges; and ● Similar systems of advanced education. Canada and the US take similar approaches to public education, and their universities are similarly structured. No trading relationship is perfect. As the two-way trade in goods and services between Canada and the United States approaches $2 billion each and every day, trade irritants are likely to arise. If Canada and the US are treated as a trading bloc, the value of its trade is exceeded only by the EU-25, or by all of Asia considered as one trading bloc. The two economies possess highly integrated transportation, communications, financial, business, cultural, military and family networks, and highly similar statutory, regulatory, civil, judicial, political and governmental frameworks. Sector by sector, corridor by corridor, bilateral trade serves to integrate the Canadian and US economies. This integration is mutually beneficial, with the advantage at present going to Canada, with its trade surplus. Canada must guard and enhance its chief trading relationship while seeking to initiate and grow other trading relationships. Taking as a model its trading relationship with the US, Canada should target economies where it holds in common characteristics that will pave the way for mutually beneficial trade and economic integration. Trade Corridors is the best model for understanding how Canada-US occurs at present, for understanding how trade integrates the two economies, and for identifying Canada’s best markets for future trade expansion.   Russ Kuykendall is senior researcher with the Work Research Foundation (www.wrf.ca), which organized the Trade Corridors Roundtable in Ottawa on September 11 with industry, business, and public policy leaders. rkuykendall@wrf.ca