Farewell

It’s never easy saying goodbye. Today is my last day at CPJ before I move on to a new opportunity. I deeply value the mission and work of CPJ, so it’s hard to pass the baton to others and say goodbye to the friends and partners I’ve enjoyed working with at CPJ.

But saying goodbye can also be a celebration of a journey and all the learning and accomplishments that have accompanied it, so there’s a good feeling too. There have been many highlights in my four years at CPJ: meeting with committed Christians across the country who are deeply passionate about justice, working side-by-side with people within CPJ and other organizations who are seriously committed to a vision of a more just, more equitable society, and dialoguing with Members of Parliament and Senators about policy and about the faith and the values that motivate them.

Two highlights that stand out are the Envisioning Canada without Poverty workshops we did in five cities in May 2008 and the major report on poverty and the recession we produced last year. How many people get to dialogue with Canadians in very different parts of the country about a shared vision of dignity and inclusiveness and experience the heart-felt passion for a Christian way of engaging with decision-makers that motivates many CPJ supporters? That’s exactly what I got to do when I did workshops on poverty reduction and advocacy in Ottawa, Halifax, London, Winnipeg and Edmonton all in the course of a few short weeks in May 2008. It was empowering, inspiring and humbling to be able to participate in such vibrant dialogues with CPJ members and supporters.

In a different way, Bearing the Brunt: How the 2008-2009 Recession Increased Poverty for Canadian Families was another inspiring and monumental achievement for me and for CPJ. As Sheila Regehr of the National Council of Welfare wrote about the report, “This work helps fill an outrageous void in the information that is available to Canadians to understand and prevent the costly human and economic effects of the volatility of our domestic and international financial systems. We can track stock market price changes by the minute but it takes us years to know what the impact of recessions is on the Canadians who are often the least able to withstand these kinds of shocks.”

It was an opportunity to do some groundbreaking research never done before, and to see how good research can be used and promoted by many different organizations and institutions working in the field of social policy. Data from Bearing the Brunt made it into policy briefing notes of multiple municipalities, including the city of Toronto; debates in Parliament on a wide variety of issues and about several different pieces of legislation; reports and advocacy strategies of a number of national and provincial anti-poverty groups and campaigns; newspapers across the country; and academic classrooms, including a master’s thesis and a new social work textbook. And all of this was in addition to shaping CPJ’s own work in profound ways!

In addition to the particular accomplishments or opportunities that I’ve enjoyed, however, what I have especially appreciated about my time at CPJ over the past four years has been the capacity to reflect on deeper questions about core values and how they relate to social structures. What makes CPJ unique among policy or social change organizations is that our real mission is about public justice, and not just discrete policy changes. I’ve learned to ask profound questions about the core values that motivate us and how they shape our understanding of what is possible and what is necessary. When we speak about poverty, for instance, we are addressing much deeper questions of how social and economic structures are created and who’s interests they promote, why they are structured that way and what that reveals about our basic understanding of human nature, human value and human purpose.

This is how CPJ avoids facile or partisan analysis or bandaid solutions. Asking public justice questions requires you to get at the root of problems and reveals the ways in which humans have distorted God’s purpose for creation and human relationships. The policy alternatives we develop then reframe our core values to focus on Biblical values for human relationships and social institutions, placing justice and the dignity of every human life at the centre of our policy options.

I’ve been reminded of the importance of the CPJ approach as I’ve been spending time with new staff, orienting them to CPJ’s history, traditions and areas of current work. It’s been powerful and encouraging to see new staff excited about these ideas and approaches that have meant so much to me. The work of CPJ is much bigger than anyone person, and it will carry on in the work of new staff, finding continuities with the past even as they may expand the scope into new areas or new ways of engaging with members. So I will miss you, dear supporters of CPJ, but I know you will be in good hands.

And I am moving on to work for public justice in a new area, joining many former CPJ staff who find ways of carrying the torch forward in different fields of work. Together, we form an impressive array of Christians committed to seeking the common good and pursuing public justice in Canada. As the prayer for the Archbishop Oscar Romero says:

We are prophets of a future not our own.
This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted,
knowing that they hold future promise.

We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation
in realizing that.
This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well.