Media Clipping — Sunday January 20, 2002, The Halifax Herald

The fun sector

Dividing our economy into two sectors ignores an important third component

By Silver Donald Cameron

HERE'S THE PUZZLE. You want to create jobs, and you're willing to spend money. Lots of money. But an organization which actually creates the jobs can't even get a small amount of money to keep going.

Last month I reported on the impending demise of Development Isle Madame, or DIMA, despite its astonishing performance - creating 460 jobs, chopping the local unemployment rate from 65 per cent to 12.5 per cent, and saving governments at least $9.2 million.

Last week DIMA was reprieved, I'm happy to say, by an emergency grant from the Richmond County council which was matched by the provincial Department of Economic Development. These welcome contributions will keep the doors open till March 31, while DIMA seeks further funding.

But the puzzle remains. This is a high-performance organization, doing exactly what government wants done. Why must it struggle for bare survival?

The main obstacles to progress usually lie between our ears. Job creation and "development" provide a prime example. We are told that job-creation is driven by the "private sector" - privately-owned enterprises, motivated by profit. The role of the government - the "public sector" - is to assist the private sector. If the private sector succeeds, it will create a light rain of jobs, falling on the parched population.

This seems an oblique policy at best. The private sector fundamentally has no interest in job creation. Its objective is profit, and jobs are merely a byproduct. The fewer workers it can hire, the happier it is. Worse, this simplistic public/private model completely overlooks a powerful third sector which is neither private nor public, a sector which seems invisible to theory and is constantly ignored by policy-makers.

In Quebec the invisible sector is known as "l'economie sociale," the social economy, and the Quebec government enthusiastically supports it. Social-economy ventures, it says approvingly, "develop from collective entrepreneurship, produce goods and services, are financially viable and create long-lasting jobs. They incorporate a democratic decision-making process into their statutes, they are managed with the goal of providing their members or the community with services, and their practices promote individual and collective participation and empowerment."

Nationally, the social sector consists of about 180,000 enterprises, including co-operatives, universities, hospitals, churches, unions and a variety of organizations working in health, culture, and other social services. The co-ops alone number 10,000 - credit unions, farmers, co-ops, retail stores, insurance companies, law firms, day-care centres, taxi fleets. They employ 150,000 people and possess $160 billion in assets. Sixteen co-ops rank among the top 500 companies in Canada.

Though their purposes are not primarily economic, social-sector enterprises are substantial players in the economy. The sector is a bigger employer than government, and handles nearly one-third of Canada's national income. The Canadian Red Cross may be a charity with 70,000 volunteers, but it also employs 7,500 people. If we could persuade the Red Cross to relocate just five per cent of its employees to Isle Madame, we wouldn't have an employment problem. We'd have a housing problem.

But would we get a nickel of government funding to lure them here? Not likely. The Red Cross is not a "real" industry, and these are not "real" jobs, though the people who hold them also build houses, drive cars, buy food and generally spin the economy just as much as anyone else.

This is actually the fun sector, the only one in which people give their time away - and their volunteer efforts greatly magnify the organizations' impact. According to GPI Atlantic, Nova Scotians contribute 140 million hours a year of voluntary work time. This is equivalent to 83,000 jobs, producing $2 billion worth of services, which is comparable to 10 per cent of the provincial GDP. As the noted management theorist Henry Mintzberg remarks, "the greatest potential for development of all" may be "the collective energies of fired up communities."

The social sector is uniquely important in Cape Breton, where the private sector fouled its own reputation during a century of ruthless, violent conduct in coal, steel and fishing. In reaction, Cape Bretoners have learned to express their entrepreneurial energies mainly in the social sector.

Cape Bretoners rarely aspire to business success, but, inspired by leaders like Coady, Tompkins and McLachlan, they are experts in creating and supporting co-ops, unions, hospitals, rinks, credit unions, community halls and universities, and they have a lot of fun while they're at it. Successful development efforts like DIMA recognize those realities, and build on them.

"Dawg is a wunnerful thing for huntin'," said a shrewd old Southerner. "Cain't do nothin' without him. But you doan give the gun to the dawg."

By giving supremacy to the private sector, we've given the gun to the dog. The purpose of the economy is to improve our lives, not vice versa. DIMA succeeds because it understands that. Mainstream "development" efforts often fail because they don't.

The action is in the fun sector. The obstacles to progress lie between our ears.

Award-winning author Silver Donald Cameron lives in D'Escousse, Nova Scotia.

Copyright © 2004, Silver Donald Cameron