Dear Hosting Committee members,
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The Honorable David Onley, Former Lieutenant Governor of Ontario
The Honourable David C. Onley was appointed Ontario’s 28th Lieutenant Governor following a distinguished career as a broadcaster. Having championed disability issues for many years, Mr. Onley served as chair of the Accessibility Standards Advisory Council of the Government of Ontario and as an accessibility council member for the Rogers Centre and the Air Canada Centre.
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Hazel McCallion, Former Mayor of Mississauga
In 1991, Mayor McCallion became the first mayor of a major municipality to submit the annual operating budget to residents for their input and scrutiny. She is also among the first mayors of major municipalities to be openly committed to a pay-as-you-go philosophy. The city has not had to borrow money since 1978, and is currently debt-free.
Mayor McCallion also established the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) Mayors’ Committee in 1992. She brought together the 30 GTA mayors, later adding the Chair of Metro Toronto and the four Regional Chairs to work co-operatively for the economic recovery of the GTA.
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Joseph Pennachetti, Manager, City of Toronto
Joseph P. Pennachetti has served as City Manager for the City of Toronto since 2008, when he assumed overall responsibility for 37,000 staff of the Toronto Public Service and an operating budget of $11 billion and a 10-year, $30-billion capital plan, delivering services to 2.8 million residents. Toronto is Canada’s largest city and the fourth largest city in North America. Its municipal government is the nation’s sixth largest government.
Over the past few years, Pennachetti has led initiatives to improve customer service and to reduce the cost of government. He also led the development of 26 Strategic Actions for 2014-2018 to support Council’s Strategic Plan and related initiatives/programs over the next five years.
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Margaret Atwood, poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist
Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa, and grew up in northern Ontario and Quebec, and in Toronto. She received her undergraduate degree from Victoria College at the University of Toronto and her master’s degree from Radcliffe College.
Margaret Atwood is the author of more than forty volumes of poetry, children’s literature, fiction, and non-fiction, but is best known for her novels, which include The Edible Woman (1969), The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), The Robber Bride (1994), Alias Grace (1996), and The Blind Assassin, which won the prestigious Booker Prize in 2000. Her latest work is a book of short stories called Stone Mattress: Nine Tales (2014).
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The Pathways to Education program was born out of the vision of Regent Park’s Community Health Centre: that the children of the community would become the doctors, nurses, social workers, community health workers, and administrators of the Health Centre and within the community.
In 2001, Pathways to Education was developed by Carolyn Acker, then Executive Director of the Regent Park Community Health Centre, together with Norman Rowen, the first Program Director for the Pathways program. Ten years later the high school dropout rate in that community has decreased by over 70 per cent, and post-secondary attendance has grown from 20 per cent to 80 per cent for graduates of the program. Today, the Pathways program has been replicated in ten more low income communities and close and thousands of students are getting results that mirror these.
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The Wellesley Institute is a Toronto-based non-profit and non-partisan research and policy institute. We focus on developing research, policy and community mobilization to advance population health.
Vision: A healthier and more equitable Greater Toronto Area for all.
Mission: Advance population health and reduce health inequities by driving change on the social determinants of health through applied research, effective policy solutions, knowledge mobilization, and innovation, and assisting communities to mobilize around health choices.
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The YMCA of Greater Toronto is a charity focused on community support and development. Our aim is to provide every individual in our community with opportunities for personal growth, community involvement, and leadership. By making connections, collaborating, and mirroring our region’s diversity, we believe we can become the network that binds our many neighbourhoods into one city, one country, and one world.
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The Centre for Social Innovation is a social enterprise with a mission to catalyze social innovation in Toronto and around the world. We believe that society is facing unprecedented economic, environmental, social and cultural challenges. We also believe that new innovations are the key to turning these challenges into opportunities to improve our communities and our planet.
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