The Star’s view

It’s time Toronto closed the diversity leadership gap or pay the price for failing to do so,

Toronto has reached a milestone of sorts with confirmation that a majority of the city’s people identify as visible minorities. The “minority” is now officially the majority.

It comes as part of the 2016 census, showing that most people in the city — fully 51.5 per cent — say they are a member of a visible minority.

And even that figure doesn’t do complete justice to how diverse the Greater Toronto Area has become. In some parts of the 905 belt around Toronto, the numbers are even higher. In Mississauga, visible minorities form 57.2 per cent of the population, and in Brampton 73.3 per cent. The figure rises to 90 per cent in places like Markham and Scarborough’s Agincourt neighbourhood.

Of course, this isn’t entirely new. Back in 2011, when the last census data was released, 49 per cent of Toronto’s population identified as a visible minority.

But although this trend has been a long time coming, the city has not changed in some very important ways.

In particular, there’s still a yawning gap between Toronto’s demographic reality and the makeup of its leadership in almost all sectors — political, economic and social.

That not only holds individuals back, it prevents the city, its agencies, corporations and non-profits from being their competitive best.

In politics, consider the fact that in 2017, a scant five of the 45 members of Toronto city council (including the mayor) are from visible minorities.

Not that it’s better in the business world. A 2015 study showed the proportion of visible minorities on corporate boards actually fell to 2 per cent in 2013, from 5.3 per cent in 2010.

Important parts of the non-profit sector don’t appear to be doing much better. A recent survey of the boards of the biggest arts organizations found that visible minorities are still often conspicuous by their absence. The Toronto Symphony board, for example, has only one minority member out of 13, while all but two of the Canadian Opera Company’s 35 board members are white.

Not a lot has changed, it seems, since 2011, when a comprehensive study by Ryerson University found that visible minorities comprised only 11 per cent of the region’s elected officials at city hall, Queen’s Park and in Ottawa.

Corporate Canada didn’t fare much better. Only 4.2 per cent of corporate leadership roles in the city at that time were held by visible minorities.

There have been some steps forward since then. Toronto has its first Black police chief in Mark Saunders. Jagmeet Singh of Brampton is the newly minted leader of the federal NDP.

But those examples are few and far between. The city’s leadership, and to a large extent that of the whole GTA, isn’t keeping up with the changing reality of who actually lives here.

We must do better. We can’t afford to exclude almost half our population from leadership positions and hope to compete on the world stage.

Failing to fully take advantage of our diversity will cost us. Not only does it make our elected bodies, city departments and agencies less creative and nimble, as study after study proves, but it risks making Toronto itself less competitive even as it emerges as a truly global city.

Others appreciate perhaps better than we do that “strength in diversity” is more than a slogan. Consider that Sidewalk Labs, a sister company of Google, wants to design a new “smart” community on the eastern waterfront specifically, it says, because of Toronto’s “unequalled diversity and spirit of openness.”

In fact, the city could take a page on leadership from Google itself, which recently declared its belief “that diversity and inclusion are critical to our success as a company.”

The same could be applied to Toronto as a city competing in the global economy. We can’t afford to squander one of our biggest competitive advantages.

Instead, all sectors in the city must seek out the best talent for leadership positions, regardless of background. At the moment, we’re falling short.

According to the 2016 census, a majority of people in Toronto identify as visible minorities. But our civic leadership does not reflect that fact