The essence of the advocacy work that the CCNC - Toronto Chapter takes on is easily summed up in a few words: grassroots, community building, and fierce. Our involvement in projects, cover a variety of fields and continue to touch many people. In fulfilling our mandate, the Toronto Chapter has remained very active on many equity seeking fronts and this report will focus on a few key projects that we have been involved with and others which we have spearheaded.

SARS and its Toronto Impact
In 2003, we saw the racialization of SARS and its impact on the Chinese Canadian community in the political, social and economic arenas. In Toronto, parents of non-Chinese students asked their schools to remove Chinese students from the classrooms, government officials were wearing masks in the Refugee Hearing Board when Chinese claimants were in the room, Chinese owned businesses remained empty while misinformation whirled around media outlets furthering the racist stereotypes about our community. CCNCTO participated in a press conference and lobbied varies levels of media and government demanding a more levelheaded approach to this new disease.

Research and Planning
In addition, to the APG, CCNCTO is also actively engaged with several community based projects. Namely, Mapping Chinese Youth Engagement; another project dealing with Chinese skilled immigrants; and finally a web-based survey project that provides ethical guideline for community research and accountability.

We continue to work in partnership with the African Canadian Social Development Council (ACSDC), the Council of Agencies Serving South Asians (CASSA) and the Hispanic Development Council (HDC) in the ongoing Alternative Planning Group (APG). As in previous years, the APG has been active in building a distinct vision where all diverse views are involved in policy planning at the City of Toronto. APG strives to advance recognition for development and empowerment for diverse groups wanting to play an active role in shaping our communities, by ensuring that a planning perspective from all ethno-racial diversities are truly put into practice, until it becomes fully entrenched in advanced planning and development models.

Most recently, the City hired consultants and staff have recommended the creation of a “Social Development Network”, which will include CCNCTO as a founding member. If adopted by City Council, this will signal a tremendous breakthrough for the advocacy work that CCNCTO has been conducting in the area of social planning in Toronto since 1999.

CCNCTO and the Homeworkers’ Association
Last year, CCNCTO become the main sponsor of the Homeworkers’ Association after we took over the position from the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE). The HWA is a natural partner for CCNCTO because we have always been committed to the advancement of workers’ rights. With the support of CCNCTO, the HWA offers ESL, computer training and sewing classes to its members, in addition to ongoing support around issues of workplace rights. In the upcoming year, CCNCTO will help the HWA strive for greater self-efficiency and to increase effectiveness in their advocacy for equality in the workplace. Moreover, advisors from with labour expertise are being recruited to help built strategic direction for this new project.

Civic Engagement
For over ten years, CCNCTO has been an Executive Board member at the Chinese Interagency Network (CIN) and its Labour Sub-Committee. During the recent municipal elections, we helped organize the Mayoral Election BBQ, which brought many of the mayoral candidates into our community. Questions in Cantonese and Mandarin, all affecting the Chinese Canadian community were asked to the candidates. We hope that such events will further encourage civic participation and empowerment within our community.

Contingent Immigrant Women’s Project
CCNCTO was active in the Contingent Immigrant Women’s Project and did so in partnership with CASSA and the group Toronto Organizing for Fair Employment. The mandate of this project is to develop a network to seek policy improvements for contingent immigrant women. Several community based forums were organized bring together community dialogue and to distribute literature. Our social inclusion report has been completed and a launch date as yet to be determined.

Equity and Education
The municipal elections also saw the election of more progressive school trustees. This proves to be promising for CCNCTO’s equity and education work. We will remain active on this front through our involvement with various community partners, such as the Community Equity Reference Group. Time will tell if the change of political guards will truly bring in political change.

CCNCTO and Same-Sex Rights
In the beginning of 2004, CCNCTO and its members were invited to participate as opponents in a televised debate on the issue of same-sex marriage. It was apparent that the visible contingent of Chinese protestors in last summer’s orchestrated show of support for Church sponsored family values at Parliament Hill had created a damaging stereotype of the ‘homophobic Chinese’ for the general public.

CCNCTO invited many Asian community groups to come together to build a progressive voice in a show of support for same-sex marriage. All in all over 25 organizations sponsored the mission statement of the newly formed, Asian Canadians For Equal Marriage (ACFEM). ACFEM was publicly launched to the media on June 8, 2004 and the public impact with the Chinese press was generally positive. When there was no voice of support before ACFEM, there is one today. Most recently, our National office has continued to conduct further activities as per their mandate on the lobbying of federal legislation, such as marriage.

Youth Engagement through the Monkey King Collective
With the Youth Engagement Initiative, we are mandated to build and sustain infrastructure within CCNCTO to engage youth priorities in a fully integrated manner. The main focus is to foster youth involvement at CCNCTO to ensure effective mentorship and to encourage youth to become better engaged in civil society. With our original Asian youth cabaret, "Take This Job and Funk It" now 2 years past, we are in the preliminary discussions for a similar event scheduled for Mayworks/Asian Heritage Month 2005 hoping to exceed our previous attendance of 350 people.

This summer, we enrolled 150 participants in our locally organized youth forum, called IdentificASIAN. This was another successful CCNCTO initiative that pulled together community partner such as Hong Fook Mental Health and the Silayan Community Centre. This all day event had workshops designed by the MKC to allow youth to address issues that were identified as current and relevant.

Counter Impressions 2003 was the second annual art auction fundraiser hosted by the Monkey King Collective (MKC). No art auction was held in 2004 due to the organizational re-structuring of the MKC. The third annual Counter Impressions is already scheduled for February 27, 2005 and it will be another fundraiser for the HWA.

Overall, the MKC remains a highly spirited youth focused project that will be lead in 2004/2005 by our Youth Co-ordinator, Barnett Chow. Barnett Chow can be reached at barnett@ccnctoronto.ca.

Seniors Income Security
This project focuses on poverty and income security issues among immigrant seniors. This joint initiative is a collaborative effort of the Alternative Planning Group (APG) partners, namely the Chinese Canadian National Council Toronto Chapter (CCNCTO), African Canadian Development Social Council (ACDSC), Council of Agencies Serving South Asians (CASSA), and the Hispanic Development Council (HDC). The target population is the adult and senior population (aged 55 and over) in four ethno-racial communities. One of the project objectives is that we want to ensure income security and an adequate standard of living for seniors from ethnic minority population.
http://www.ccnctoronto.ca/seniors