Engaging Leaders: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly |
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In this episode, Andrea is joined by Darrin Canniff, Mayor of Chatham-Kent, Ken McEwan from the University of Guelph Ridgetown Campus, and Karen Loney from Chatham-Kent Public Health. Darrin, Ken and Karen are all involved in the Chatham-Kent (CK) Community Leaders’ Cabinet, which brings together government, industry, health, education, and First Nations leaders to develop collective solutions to improve quality of life in Chatham-Kent.
The Cabinet began several years ago when, following a two year journey to engage communities in support of smoke-free outdoor spaces, the motion was defeated at Council. The health unit realized that in order to make policy change happen they needed to engage leaders and decision-makers more. The (former) mayor was approached to become a champion for health and bring leaders together. The mayor offered a physical location and the resources of the COA’s office and as Karen was working in the healthy communities portfolio, they allotted a portion of her time to be the coordinator of the cabinet. The Cabinet is a unique structure; it has no mandate to come together and no official funding source, outside of the health unit covering Karen’s time. The Cabinet comes together out of goodwill and ultimately because they believe that collectively they can do more than one organization can do alone.
One of the early successes of the Cabinet was the successful passing of the motion to ban smoking in outdoor space, following its initial ban- this time, with the support of the Mayor. The Cabinet led the community in pledging to make Chatham-Kent tobacco-free, community organizations provided smoking cessation workshops and strengthened their own smoke-free spaces policies, and when the vote went back to council it had 100% support. Other items highlighted included a Summit on Mental Health and the current focus on workforce attraction and retention that has three action teams.
Our guests have some advice for listeners who would like to begin engaging leaders. Karen’s advice is to give yourself time, stay committed, and focus on building relationships with trust. Ken suggests to narrow the scope of the work so that people have something tangible to bite their teeth into. Mayor Canniff advises the “rob and duplicate” approach, so that you can replicate good work that is happening elsewhere and share ideas of what’s working.
If you like to reach out to the Cabinet with your questions or to find out more, email CKCommunityLeadersCabinet@chatham-kent.ca. For more information around system leaders, Karen recommends an article entitled The Dawn of System Leadership by Peter Senge, Hal Hamilton, & John Kania. |
About Mayor Canniff:
Darrin Canniff was first elected to council in 2014 and served as Councilor for ward 6 from 2014-2018 before being elected mayor. He is committed to establishing a detailed and progressive agenda over the next four years in concert with CK's administrative team and with the input and approval of the new council.
Darrin is currently the Chair of the Mainstreet Credit Union and co-chair of the Chatham-Kent Community Leaders’ Cabinet. He is a past Director of the CKHA and the Children's Treatment Centre Foundation. He previously chaired the following boards and committees; IPM (co-chair), Positivity Day (co-chair), Entegrus Inc., United Way Campaign (co-chair) and the Prosperity Roundtable.
About Karen:
Karen Loney works at Chatham-Kent Public Health as a health educator on the Foundational Standards team. Her focus is health in all policies and works out of the Mayor/CAO offices in order to advance a health lens in the corporation. Karen is the Coordinator of the Chatham-Kent Community Leaders’ Cabinet and strives to create an environment where leaders can come together across sector to build relationships that allow conversations to occur to tackle difficult topics.
About Ken:
Ken McEwan is the Director, University of Guelph Ridgetown Campus, and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Food, Agricultural and Resource Economics (FARE). Ken is also a Fellow of Farm Business Management in the Institute for Advanced Study of Food and Agricultural Policy which is responsible for conducting economic research on relevant issues to Canada’s agriculture and food industry.
He has been teaching and conducting research at the Ridgetown Campus since 1990. Prior to joining the University he worked as a Farm Management Specialist with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs in various locations throughout the province.
Ken’s current research focuses on applied economics related to farm and agribusiness management. His specialty areas include: agricultural input pricing, farm benchmarking and evaluating the structural changes within the Ontario swine industry. He has been an expert witness at agricultural hearings and a member of numerous provincial and national pork missions to Europe, Japan and China.
Ken is a graduate of the University of Guelph (M.Sc. Agricultural Economics and B.Sc. Agriculture).
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