‘Allies on the inside’: Why social impact sector leaders across Canada decide to run for political office

Chi Nguyen got a good look at the immense power of the federal government to solve social problems back in the early 2000s, as she job-shadowed then-Minister of State for Public Health Carolyn Bennett in Parliament Hill’s government lobby. 

The minister was chatting with several other MPs about how to curb the number of Canadians who regularly smoked. Civil society organizations had been running cessation campaigns of their own for years, but the federal government could offer way more fiscal firepower. Bennett suggested the government could kick in $40 million for a public awareness campaign. “My jaw dropped,” Nguyen recalls. “That’s a really powerful tool to actually get the culture change we want.”

Elected officials across all three levels of government can trace their pre-political careers to the social impact sector: Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante, Alberta MLA Jeremy Nixon, and NDP Deputy House Leader Heather McPherson, to name a few. Their political affiliations vary, but all of them gave up their jobs in the sector for an opportunity to represent communities. As all three levels of Canadian government prepare for elections in the near future, plenty of other social impact sector leaders are making that same decision. 

They include a Scarborough-born high school teacher, the founding director of Social Innovation Canada, a Winnipeg-based social enterprise developer, a former civil servant in Nova Scotia, and a social entrepreneur and Royal Canadian Navy reservist living in Toronto. Most of them see the political sphere as an extension of the work they’re already doing, tackling issues from homelessness to anti-Black racism to government opacity in decision-making. But they’ve also discovered the sector’s limits. 

Every aspect of the social impact sector’s work has a political dimension, yet non-profits and charities are largely required by the CRA to stay out of the political realm in their quest to do good. Leaders can be agile and innovative in their approaches, but governments ultimately set the sector’s parameters. Elected officials dictate which vulnerable populations do or don’t receive government support, how charities can accept donations, and whether or not innovative social finance tools are deployed for the sector’s benefit. 

The power governments have over the sector is either a source of frustration or possibility to prospective candidates. Both groups feel, nonetheless, that the skills they’ve learned as social impact leaders will be invaluable in elected office — and that the sector needs more representation in the halls of power. “The truth is that I think our sector and an awful lot of other progressive causes need allies on the inside,” says Olivia Dorey, a candidate for the provincial NDP in Nova Scotia. “And so I’m going in.” 

Why they run

It took a walk beside yet another Winnipeg encampment for the unhoused for Shaun Loney to seriously consider running for mayor. The social enterprise founder, senior partner at Encompass, and author claims homelessness is the most researched policy topic in Canadian history, and “offering support up front is cheaper than responding to perpetual crisis,” he says. Yet he doesn’t believe elected representatives in his area are as innovative as they could be in responding to social issues like homelessness. “I’m just frustrated that we can’t get politicians to see the value to taxpayers of solving problems and just using some basic tools of social innovation to do that,” Loney says. 

One of them is treating the sector’s response to social problems as a business proposition. Instead of taking government grants to run programming, Loney says the social impact sector should see itself as selling a reduction in workload to governments on everything from the homelessness crisis to emergency services spending. If an organization can do so successfully, he says, governments would then compensate the sector appropriately (and save taxpayer money in the process), rather than keep handing organizations small grants. “I think that’s how we’re going to resolve these social problems and how governments are going to finally address these really expensive problems,” Loney says. 

Other potential candidates are motivated by what they see as an inefficient and unstrategic government. Kevin Vuong, a Toronto-based social entrepreneur, chief operating officer of Delphic Research, and a Royal Canadian Navy reservist, says he considered running for Toronto’s city council in 2018 after noticing all sorts of problems in his waterfront neighbourhood. Some of his neighbours had difficulty navigating potholes, especially if they were in wheelchairs. Vuong saw his local representative’s inability to get them filled in as a sign of lacklustre governance. “How can I expect the counsellor to be able to address any of the bigger issues like homelessness, climate change, and others if they can’t even fix my sidewalk?” Vuong says. 

Jeremy Nixon, an Alberta MLA with the United Conservative Party and the former parliamentary secretary for civil society, says one of the reasons he decided to run for office was because of what he described as a disconnect between front-line workers in the shelter system and policy makers. Nixon got his start in the sector in 2001 as an overnight shelter worker at The Mustard Seed, a Christian non-profit that cares for individuals experiencing homelessness in poverty started by his father, Pat Nixon, in 1984. “The main reason I got involved politically was to bring a voice from the front lines in our communities to government,” he says. 

In the case of D. Tyler Robinson, an educator with the Toronto District School Board, and project lead on “Deconstructing Anti-Black Racism in the Canadian & North American context”, a grade 12 course on anti-racism, the inspiration to run for the provincial NDP came after he tried to get Ontario’s Ministry of Education to implement mandatory anti-racism courses. The course he co-designed alongside three other Black teachers is currently offered at 31 schools across five different Ontario boards, but Robinson wanted the government to go further. 

After a meeting with Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce and other government officials, Robinson says there were a lot of “wonderful words” — but no action. Meanwhile, the Ontario government earmarked just $1.6 million over two years to fund anti-racism and anti-hate work. The greatest outcome from Robinson’s meeting, he says, was that Lecce began following him on Twitter. “If the Minister of Education is not going to take thoughtful action in order to address a longstanding problem in schools in this province, then I’ll find a Conservative MPP to replace,” Robinson says. “And I found one in Scarborough Centre.

More than qualified

Long before she ever considered running for office, Nguyen was building a resume that may serve her well in politics. As the founding director of Social Innovation Canada, she worked with a pan-Canada network to highlight the accomplishments of social innovators. She has a background in gender-based violence prevention as the former CEO of Parker P. Consulting, the for-profit consultation arm of the White Ribbon campaign, used to work for United Way Toronto as a neighbourhood manager, and was a founding director of MASS LBP, a consultation firm for public sector and non-profit clients. 

All of this experience in the feminist space, she says, gives her an important perspective on the debates right now around long-term care workers, childcare, and other feminized (and woefully underpaid) occupations. If we actually understood the value they contribute to society and reoriented our economic thinking, Nguyen says we might treat them better as a society.  “That’s part of what I want to bring into the conversation about how we’re dealing with these big questions right now,” Nguyen says. 

The sector also demands extensive collaboration among successful leaders, whether that be among different social impact organizations, corporations, governments, investors, or communities themselves. “I see myself as someone who can serve as a connector and build bridges — someone who values partnerships and collaboration,” says Daniella Johnson, the former senior manager of social impact for LIFT Philanthropy Partners and a prospective federal Liberal candidate running in Brampton Centre. She’s also worked at the Ontario Trillium Foundation, Colour of Poverty London, and as a social services caseworker in Kitchener, Ont: all roles that require extensive relationship-building. 

Many of the social impact leaders Future of Good spoke to also had a background in government-adjacent fields. Nguyen co-founded Women in House, an initiative that allowed young women to job-shadow female parliamentarians, while she was still a student at McGill University. Katie Gibbs, the cofounder of Evidence For Democracy, a non-profit focused on science and evidence-based government decision-making, and a prospective candidate for the federal Liberals in Ottawa, has spent close to a decade scrutinizing policy on Parliament Hill, as well as running public education and awareness campaigns. 

And Dorey — a self-declared policy dork — joined the Parliamentary Page Program, later transitioning into stints at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, and working for the Speaker of the House. “The best thing I think that I was able to do in Ottawa was to convene people together and help make meaningful conversations happen,” she says. 

Between her entrepreneurship skills and managing direct client services, Dorey believes she was prepared to make a successful jump to politics. But it took three local tragedies — Nova Scotia’s mass shooting in April 2020, a Canadian Forces helicopter crash in the Mediterranean that killed six servicemembers, including two Maritimers, and the death of a Halifax pilot for the Snowbirds — to spur her into action. The decision by the Nova Scotia legislature to shut down during the pandemic was also infuriating, she says. “What I’m trying to do in this election is stand up to my friends and let them know that lines have been crossed…this isn’t OK, and there do need to be consequences,” she says. 

What power will they lose?

Successfully winning a seat is only the very start of a political career. There will be endless constituency or ward gatherings, caucus meetings, late nights in council or city hall, committee deliberations, and barbeque meet-and-greets. (This is, of course, after prospective provincial or federal candidates successfully secure a nomination from their party’s membership for a particular riding, fill out all their eligibility forms, and submit to background checks). Much of this is not new to social impact leaders involved in community engagement or outreach work, but the political compromises that ensue may not be easy to handle. 

Gibbs, the co-founder of Evidence For Democracy, is all about making decisions based on scientific evidence. What happens if, as an elected official, the evidence for a particular course of action is unpopular? “I think that conflict and tension is exactly why not a lot of scientists run for office,” Gibbs says. “I fully expect that it will be uncomfortable.” She sees herself as a scientist first and a politician second and says she intends to lead with evidence-based policy, even if it does happen to be unpopular. But she also believes the public can handle hard truths. “That is my approach — a commitment to evidence and, with that, comes a commitment to transparency,” Gibbs says.

Nixon ran for office partly because he wanted to be a voice for civil society, but he’s found that in his current position as an elected official, change comes much more slowly. “When you’re focused on the policy side of things, you don’t have that same on-the-ground impact where you’re making day to day decisions to help people who are facing very significant challenges,” he says. That is frustrating sometimes. As a self-described ‘grassroots’ conservative, Nixon is wary of what he describes as ‘big government’ assuming it has all the answers for social issues. “We need a strong partnership between government and civil society, as well as the business community, to really work towards addressing our larger social issues,” Nixon says.

And not everyone who runs for office decides it is for them. Vuong lost his city council race and while he remains heavily involved in community engagement, he isn’t rushing to throw his hat into the electoral ring. “I think I’m always open to looking at where I can have the greatest impact,” Vuong says. “As of right now, I think that’s through business — how do we use business as a force for good?” After the pandemic began, he co-founded TakeCare Supply, a social enterprise that Vuong says has produced around a million reusable masks while helping factories retool their production lines and create nearly 200 jobs during the pandemic. “Those are things that I wouldn’t have been able to do if I was on City Council,” Vuong says. 

Why politics matter to social impact

Social impact work needs politics to blossom. On any given day, Robinson, the Scarborough-born teacher running for the NDP, can walk into his high school classroom and leave a mark on 25 to 30 students at a time. Perhaps, two decades after graduating, one of those kids might change the world. If Robinson ever became a principal, that number would grow exponentially — perhaps 1,200 students along with their families and a wider community. 

But politics offers Robinson and his work on anti-Black racism a platform orders of magnitude larger than any school administrator. An elected MPP can change an entire riding. They could work with their provincial party to implement the kind of mandatory anti-racism curriculum Robinson dreams of launching. “If the NDP wins, and the NDP and I can work with some folks to implement this across the province — then imagine 20 years from now,” Robinson says. “Everyone in the province for 20 years will have been receiving formal anti-racism, anti-oppression training. If that were the case, that means that our entire society will undergo a mental shift in their understanding of these things.” It would be a generational sea-change well beyond the efforts of any one social impact leader, organization, or institution. 

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