Demystifying Budgets for City-Builders

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Demystifying Budgets for City-Builders

By Loran Scholars Foundation & CivicAction's Emerging Leaders Network

Date and time

Thu, May 14, 2015 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM EDT

Location

Samara

33 Prince Arthur Ave Toronto, ON M5R 1B2 Canada

Description

Public budgets reflect our civic priorities and help our governments meet their policy goals...but have you ever wondered how they’re developed? Or how you can influence them?

Join CivicAction’s Emerging Leaders Network and the Loran Scholars Foundation as we pull the curtain back on municipal and provincial budgets and discuss how they’re developed, why they matter, and what you can do to influence them. This informative evening event will include a presentation by two experts in the field - Alex Mazer, a past Loran Scholar and co-founder of the Better Budget TO initiative, and André Côté, Policy Advisor to the Deputy Premier of Ontario and President of the Treasury Board, followed by questions and a facilitated discussion.



SPEAKER BIOS

André Côté is a Policy Advisor to the Honourable Deb Matthews, Deputy Premier of Ontario and President of the Treasury Board. Prior to returning to government, he was the Manager of Programs and Research for the Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance (IMFG), a city finance research institute at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs. André has also worked for the Ontario Ministry of Finance and the Public Policy Forum, and has done consulting work for a range of organizations including the UK Government, Maytree Foundation and the Public Service Commission of Canada. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto and Queen’s University.


Alex Mazer is a management consultant with public policy and political experience at all three levels of Canadian government. A graduate of Harvard Law School, Alex served as Director of Policy to the Ontario Minister of Finance during the great recession, where he helped lead the province's economic recovery plan and its biggest tax and pension reforms in two decades. Alex is co-founder of Better Budget TO and was a candidate for Toronto City Council in the 2014 election, finishing a close second to an incumbent and capturing a higher vote share than another other first-time challenger in the city. After a period with the global consulting firm McKinsey & Co, he founded a specialized consultancy focused on pensions and retirement security. Alex graduated from McMaster University as a Loran Scholar and is the incoming coordinator of the Loran Alumni Association.


About Better Budget TO

Better Budget TO is a civic initiative that aims to improve Toronto’s budget-making process by harnessing citizen creativity, expertise, and engagement.On Saturday, May 30, Better Budget TO, in partnership with Evergreen CityWorks, will host Better Budget Day 2015, a free, day-long civic engagement workshop focused on improving Toronto's budget. Located at the beautiful Evergreen Brick Works, the event will convene city builders from a wide variety of sectors to identify ways to improve the budget and improve civic capacity around budget-related issues. Space is limited. Register today!

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