Webinar: Ontario budget 2019 town hall

Resources: Blog |  Publications  |  Government submissions   |   Webinars  |   E-news 

Budget 2019: What does it mean for nonprofits and charities?

On May 1, join our interactive town hall to help your nonprofit navigate the 2019 provincial budget.
The Ontario government recently released budget lays out how it will allocate resources and govern over the next fiscal year. It is important to know how this provincial budget will impact nonprofits and communities across Ontario.

Join us for a deep dive on the budget from policy experts and nonprofit leaders with various perspectives. Through this town hall you will learn:

• Overview of how the budget will impact the overall nonprofit sector
• Tips on what to look for in the provincial budget to better understand its impact on your organization, subsector or region
• Details of the budget from different perspectives, including the arts, Indigenous communities, the environment, and newcomers and refugees

Bring your questions and analysis for our Q&A. You can send your questions in advance by April 26 to admin@theonn.ca.

Wednesday May 1, 2019
12- 1:30pm
Cost: Free for ONN members; $30 for nonmembers
Register today for this webinar

Speakers

Moderator: Jon Telch, Senior Policy, Maple Leaf Strategies

Panelists:

Debbie Douglas, Executive Director, Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants
Juliette Nicolet, Policy Director, Ontario Federation of Indigenous Friendship Centres
Keith Brooks, Programs Director, Environmental Defence
charles c smith, Ontarians for the Arts
Cathy Taylor,  Executive Director, Ontario Nonprofit Network

Biographies:

Debbie Douglas

Executive Director, Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants

Debbie is an active feminist and anti-racism activist. She is the Executive Director of the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants where she leads a sector of more than 230 agencies concerned with immigrant and refugee integration and social and economic inclusion. In the late 1980’s and 1990’s she was active in the leadership of Ontario’s first shelter geared to abused immigrant women; was also an advocate for Employment Equity and worked to establish anti-discriminatory systems and practices in public institutions with a focus on the intersection of identities. Debbie serves on numerous boards including the Centre of Excellence for Research on Immigration and Settlement, Women’s College Hospital, and co-chairs the City of Toronto’s Newcomer Leadership Table. She is the former co-chair of the National Working Group on Immigration and Settlement at the Canadian Council for Refugees. In 2004 she received the YWCA Toronto Women of Distinction Award.

Juliette Nicolet

Juliette Nicolet is the Policy Director at the Ontario Federation of Indigenous Friendship Centres, a position she has held for thirteen years. Prior to that she articled then served as counsel at the Ministry of the Attorney General of Ontario.

Juliette’s expertise and interests are in Indigenous praxis as it relates to policy and intersects with the Canadian political landscape. She also explores international policy trends and their impacts on Indigenous populations. Always strategic in her approaches, she looks beyond postmodern socio-political concepts to understand intricate interactions between precolonial, colonial and colonist conditions that determined the development of policies impacting Indigenous peoples.

Juliette is an imaginative thinker with passion for history, philosophy and law, who brings curiosity, sharp analytical skills, and clearly articulated ideas to a variety of contexts. Known for her engaging presentations, she is a persuasive communicator, clearly articulating complex social policy to diverse audiences and distilling large volumes of information from the field into coherent and sustainable policy proposals.

Projects Juliette has worked on include the Boyd Review of Sharia in Family Law Arbitration (2004), the Urban Aboriginal Task Force Report (2007), the Ontario Indigenous Children and Youth Strategy (2015), the Urban Indigenous Action Plan (2018), as well as multiple submissions annually to the provincial and federal governments in the areas of governance, justice, education, housing, employment and training, children and youth, and health.

Juliette holds an MA in Political Science from the University of Toronto and obtained both her LLB and her BCL from McGill University.

charles smith

charles c. smith is a poet, playwright and essayist who has written and edited twelve books. He studied poetry and drama with William Packard at New York University and Herbert Berghof Studios, drama at the Frank Silvera’s Writers’ Workshop in Harlem. He won second prize for his play Last Days for the Desperate from Black Theatre Canada, edited three collections of poetry (including the works of Dionne Brand, Marlene Nourbese Phillips, Claire Harris, Cyril Dabydeen, Lillian Allen, George Elliot Clarke), published four books of poetry and his poetry has appeared in numerous journals and magazines, including Poetry Canada Review, the Quille and Quire, Descant, Dandelion, Fiddlehead and others. charles was the founder of the Black Perspectives Cultural Program in Regent Park and has received writing grants from the Ontario Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Council.

His most recent book of poems, destination out, was released in May 2018 by Tightrope Press.

Keith Brooks

Keith is the Programs Director at Environmental Defence where he oversees Environmental Defence’s efforts to support clean energy and fight climate change, spur action on plastics and waste, and protect freshwater and the Great Lakes.

A long-time environmentalist, Keith has a Bachelors of Environmental Sciences from the University of Guelph with a specialization on water resources and a Masters of Environmental Studies from York University. In his 20 years in the environmental sector, he has worked as a scientist in the field and the lab collecting and analysing environmental data, as a consultant to industry, as a programme manager with the Ontario Provincial Government, and in a variety of roles in the non-profit and charitable sector.
He is the founder of the Clean Economy Alliance in Ontario, a Director of Blue Green Canada, and a member of the Great Lakes Guardians’ Council.

Cathy Taylor

Executive Director, Ontario Nonprofit Network

Cathy has been a member of the ONN team since June 2012. Throughout her 20 years working in the nonprofit sector, including as the founding Executive Director of the Volunteer Centre of Guelph/Wellington, she has been passionate about collaboration and leadership in the sector. Cathy works with sector colleagues from across Ontario and Canada, as well as private sector and government officials, to create an enabling policy environment for nonprofit organizations. Cathy’s roots are in the environmental movement and she has been active in municipal politics. She holds a degree in political studies and history from Queen’s University, and attended the Maytree-York University Executive Directors Leadership program. Outside of work, she enjoys time with her family and her garden in Erin, Ontario.

Moderator: Jon Telch, Senior Policy, Maple Leaf Strategies

Jon is a senior consultant at Maple Leaf Strategies, helping a variety of nonprofits with their government relations. After earning a Bachelor of Arts from Carleton University, Jon worked as a Special Assistant to a Member of Parliament in Ottawa. He then completed his Master’s of Science in Politics & International Relations at the University of London. After graduating with honors, Jon returned to Toronto to begin consulting. Since then Jon has supported healthcare files at the provincial level, as well as First Nations communities and organizations at both the provincial and federal levels. Jon has also studied and contributed to local civil society capacity building in Rwanda.