New Public Consortia for Metropolitan Governance (Npc) Project

NEW PUBLIC CONSORTIA FOR METROPOLITAN GOVERNANCE (NPC) PROJECT

Workshop:

Metropolitan Governance Mechanisms for Institutional Collaboration

and Civil Society Participation

14-19 October 2007

Vancouver, Canada

Biographies - Canadians

Leonora Angeles

Associate Professor Leonora Angeles is a joint faculty member at the School of Community and Regional Planning and the Women's Studies Programme. She is also faculty research associate at the Centre for Human Settlements, the Centre for Research on Women's Studies and Gender Relations, and the Centre for Research on Southeast Asian Studies. Her continuing research interests are feminist perspectives on international development, gender and globalization, agrarian issues, human development and security linkages, states and elites in Southeast Asia. Her current research projects are globalization and feminization of export manufacturing (garments and semi-conductors industries) in SEA; gender, poverty reduction and bureaucracy in the Philippines and Vietnam; and gender analysis social capital and good governance in participatory development projects.

Jason Barton

Jason Barton is pursuing a PhD in Land and Food Systems, examining the economic, ecological, and social impacts of production and trade in ethanol in Brazil and the United States. This comes after four years living in São Paulo, Brazil, where he worked as a high school English teacher at an international school and participated in various environmental and community development capacities.

Ashley Booth

Ashley studied International Development and Hispanic Languages, at which time she learned Portuguese from an enthusiastic ‘Mineira’ who inspired her to spend time in Brazil.

Ashley and Jay O’Hara are old friends from McGill. Ashley was an NPC intern last year and she and Jay O’Hara helped the project by producing two videos. They will be working together with the NPC project in Belo Horizonte during 2007-2008 helping to organize youth mapping workshops and create more videos documenting Belo’s path towards new governance.

Peter Boothroyd

B.A. (Geography, U. of Toronto), M.A. (Sociology, U. of Alberta). Peter Boothroyd is a development planner whose work focuses on understanding and enhancing the potential of community-based planning to contribute to sustainability and equity. Prior to joining UBC, he was a consultant on urban policy, social planning, impact assessment, and community
development. In the last 15 years, he has led UBC projects funded by the Canadian International Development Agency to build planning capacity in Thailand, Vietnam and Brazil. Through these experiences, he has become increasingly interested in the development role of universities.

Isobel Donovan

Isobel Donovan has worked for over 30 years with the provincial government, and has an extensive background in social policy initiatives, including income support, housing, labour market analysis, immigration, and family justice issues. In 2002, Isobel was recruited as the Executive Coordinator for the new Vancouver Agreement, a formal Agreement between the governments of Canada, British Columbia and Vancouver to promote sustainable social, economic and community development in the City of Vancouver. During her tenure with the Vancouver Agreement, Isobel was called on to be a project manager for a similar initiative in Santiago, Chile, which was funded by CIDA through the Institute of Public Administration in Canada. Although currently retired, she is still active in this project. Isobel now splits her time between homes in Hawaii and Vancouver, where she continues to participate as a consultant for multi-sectoral initiatives in the community.

Nathan Edelson

Nathan Edelson is a Senior Planner with the City of Vancouver Planning Department. Since 1995 he has worked with others in the three levels of government and the area’s diverse communities on the complex issues facing the Downtown Eastside including Gastown, Victory Square, and Strathcona as well as Chinatown. During this period, he has managed many economic development, land use, housing, health care, public realm and public safety initiatives. Prior to working in the inner city, Nathan was the lead planner for the Joyce SkyTrain Station Area, the Downtown South high density residential community, and the Granville Street revitalization program.

Tania Kajner

Tania Kajner is Manager of the City-Region Studies Centre at the University of Alberta. She has more than 10 years experience working in the public sector in a variety of roles, from senior consultant to educator to funding officer. Tania has researched and developed policy options in a variety of settings, from high level policy and background documents shared at senior levels of government, to local operational policies focused on front line service delivery. Using the principles of community development, Tania has assisted many communities of interest in researching their needs, linking them to resources, and developing plans of action. Her work has spanned a wide variety of topic areas including youth and student employment, homelessness, employment for persons with disabilities, workplace violence, crime prevention through social development, and women's equality. Tania holds a Master's Degree in Philosophy from McMaster University and a Bachelor's Degree in Philosophy from the University of Alberta.

Hugh Kellas

Hugh Kellas is Manager of the Policy and Planning Department for Metro Vancouver, a federation of 21 municipalities providing metropolitan services to the region’s 2.2 million residents. The Department’s activities, overseen by Hugh and a co-manager, include planning for regional water, liquid waste and solid waste utilities; regional growth planning; air quality management; social housing policy; and other metropolitan management activities. Hugh has been involved in projects in Brazil on watershed planning and air quality. He participated in the Recife workshop for the New Public Consortia Project. Achieving consensus among municipalities and other organizations responsible for metropolitan development is a large part of Hugh’s work. He will speak about the mechanisms used to enable dialogue and support collaboration in Metro Vancouver.

Dr. Douglas Knight

Dr. Knight is Director of the City-Region Studies Centre & Government Studies at the Faculty of Extension, University of Alberta. He brings over 30 years of experience in administration, research, and teaching to the City-Region Studies Centre. His experience includes serving as Superintendent of several public school systems across Canada and teaching in many university programs. Dr. Knight has worked as an instructor with the Supervisory and Leadership Development Program, Executive Education, School of Business, U of A, providing courses to the City of Edmonton, Government of the Northwest Territories, provincial and federal government employees, and the private sector. He also taught graduate and undergraduate programs with the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta, the University of Moncton, Royal Roads University and Athabasca University.

Dr. Knight earned a BA in geography from McGill University, a BEd in secondary education and MEd in educational administration from the University of New Brunswick, and a Ph.D. in educational administration from the University of Alberta. He is the co-editor of a textbook, Understanding Change in Education, and has published many articles in educational journals.

Susan Kurbis

Susan Kurbis works locally and internationally in community and environmental education with a special emphasis on children and youth engagement.Susan's key area of interest is in building collaborative mechanisms for the engagement of children, youth and other vulnerable populations incivic/metropolitandecision making processes.Susan has a degree in political science and a masters degree in education, is the senior manager for the Vancouver based, Environmental Youth Alliance (EYA) and is a member of the City of Vancouver's Food Policy Council.Susan alsosits on the board of directors for several community development organizations.Susan has worked with the Centre for Human Settlements and Brazilian partners in securing the engagement of youth in the NPC project. Susan/EYA sponsored the Canadian Professional Abroad program which sponsored 3 Canadian interns to Brazil in Year One (Foreign Affairs Canada), and is currently managing the Youth International Internship Program for 3 new interns in year 2 (CIDA and IDRC).

Tom Laviolette

Director and member of the Management Team at the PHS Community Services Society. His current responsibility is as Project Manager of New Developments. Tom has worked in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside neighbourhood for seventeen years as a community development planner for various NGOs. In a low-income neighbourhood, Tom's work in the Downtown Eastside has focused on the development and advocacy of public policy initiatives (e.g. housing, public realm) that aim to improve the lives of its marginalized residents. Tom has an MA in Planning from UBC, 1996, and a BA in Planning from the University of Waterloo, 1990.

Andrew Lawrence

Andrew is Communications Manager for the New Public Consortia for Metropolitan Governance project based at the University of British Columbia. He has a master degree in publishing from Simon Fraser University and spent the last four years in Thailand working on children’s rights and protection of children from commercial sexual exploitation.

Ken Lyotier

Ken was born in North Vancouver in 1947. He has lived and worked in the Downtown Eastside since the late 1970's. During the past 12 years Ken has managed United We Can bottle depot, a successful self-sustaining social enterprise in Vancouver's inner-city. His group has also developed several similar initiatives, including a street cleaning project, a used bicycle sales and repair shop, a used computer sales shop, a recycled houseplant shop, an addiction recovery group and a commercial container collection service. His group was also instrumental in the early development and establishment of the Potluck Cafe, a local non-profit restaurant.

United We Can currently offers permanent employment to more than 20 Downtown Eastsiders and employs hundreds of others on a part-time casual basis. United We Can now recycles over 20 million containers each year and has an annual budget of $2,500,000. More than 90% of the organization's revenues are generated from its businesses.

David Marshall

David Marshall, a professional engineer, was appointed Executive Director of the Fraser Basin Council in May 1997, after serving in the same capacity since 1993 with the Council’s predecessor organization, the Fraser Basin Management Board. Reporting to the Council’s 36-member Board of Directors, Mr. Marshall assists the Council in carrying out its mandate of facilitating implementation of the Basin’s Charter for Sustainability.

Mr. Marshall has participated in coastal zone management, watershed management, environmental assessment and sustainable tourism development initiatives in the Caribbean, Indonesia, the Philippines, Russia, Thailand, China and South Korea. He is an adjunct professor at Simon Fraser University and in this capacity has taught a Masters course on Environmental and Social Impact Assessment. Mr. Marshall has authored many publications and made numerous presentations on the subjects of environmental assessment, sustainability and watershed management. He was President of the International Association for Impact Assessment from 1989 to 1990.

Jay O’Hara

Jay majored in Commerce, but decided marketing social justice more important than the corporate world. He minored in Music Technology, which opened up the digital world and inspired him to learn how to manipulate editing software and create films. Jay and Ashley Booth are old friends from McGill. Last year, Jay helped the NPC project by producing two videos in Brazil while Ashley was an NPC intern. They will be working together with the NPC project in Belo Horizonte during 2007-2008 helping to organize youth mapping workshops and create more videos documenting Belo’s path towards new governance.

Tony Pellett

Born, raised and educated in BC, including at UBC School of Community and Regional Planning. Worked in transportation planning for the City of Vancouver in the mid 1960s. Worked with a consultant planning firm in the late 1960s to mid 1970s, doing work for local governments and private clients. In 1973, he prepared the agricultural land reserve plan for a regional district on Vancouver Island and became closely involved with the farmland preservation program. From 1975 to 1984, Mr. Pellett was planning director for the Regional District of Columbia-Shuswap, successfully introducing an introductory level of community and regional planning to an area not very receptive to the concept of planning. The Agricultural Land Reserve was the instrument which helped the local politicians realize that it was time for planning.

From 1984 to 1990, Mr Pellett conducted his own planning consultant practice, including work for individuals making applications to the Provincial Agricultural Land Commission. From 1990 to the present (and into the future), has been a regional planner for the Provincial Agricultural Land Commission. My principal responsibility is for the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, where he deals with local and regional governments and with the impact on agriculture of major projects such as port expansion and major highway construction.

Pilar Riaño-Alcalá

Dr. Pilar Riaño-Alcalá’s research, teaching, community/pedagogical work and writing cross Latin and North America. Previous to coming to UBC, she was a postdoctoral fellow with the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CERLAC) and the Center for Refugee Studies (CRS) at York University in Toronto as well as a research associate with the Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History (ICANH). Dr. Riaño-Alcalá's research focuses on the cultural dimensions of violence and the politics of memory, witnessing and reconciliation in “unstable” societies. Her methodologies, grounded in feminist practice and critical ethnographic inquiry, emphasize social praxis and the use of interactive methods as means to recognize the research participants as research interlocutors.

Anne Roberts

A City of Vancouver councillor from 2002 to 2005, Anne Roberts chaired the city's Planning and Environment Committee and served as one of the city's representatives on the board of the Greater Vancouver Regional District.Anne also served as an electedVancouver School Board trustee in the 1990s. A long-time community activist,she chaired Kensington-Cedar Cottage (KCC) CityPlan committee that oversaw the development and implemention of a local plan tocreate viable shopping areas, resolve traffic and safety issues, and improve livability of the area.Previously, she had chaired a neighbourhood group that re-designed their local park and lobbied successfully for its transformation. A former journalist, Anne now teaches journalism at Langara College.

Heather Schoemaker

Heather Schoemaker is Manager of Corporate Relations for Metro Vancouver. She leads a staff group that plans, develops, executes and communicates strategies, programs and initiatives to support Metro Vancouver services and priorities. Her team is responsible for continuing to promote regional sustainability broadly through the Metro Vancouver’s Sustainable Region Initiative. Other responsibilities include corporate communications, media relations, web programs, and three major corporate initiatives: co-ordinating the Metro Vancouver role in the World Urban Forum in 2006, co-ordinating the Metro Vancouver role in dealing with West Nile Virus and co-ordinating Metro Vancouver actions on Aboriginal Affairs/First Nation issues. Prior to joining Metro Vancouver, she was director of the Sustainable Cities initiative for Industry Canada.