Equity
“Equality is giving everyone the same pair of shoes.
“Equity is giving everyone a pair of shoes that fits.”
Naheed Dosan
Equity is the fair distribution of opportunities, power, and resources to meet the needs of all people, regardless of age, ability, gender, income, education level, culture, or background. This means providing support based on an individual’s level of need, instead of providing the same amount of support to everyone.
Equity considers the historical, current, and future barriers that negatively impact an individual’s opportunity to participate and prosper as a member of their community. It may be easier to understand equity when it is contrasted with equality: while equality suggests that we treat everyone the same, equity suggests that we identify populations most affected by social, economic, and political discrimination and provide them with a higher level of support so that they can fully participate in their community.
The Bringing an Equity Lens to Public Policy Project in the Comox Valley begun in November of 2019 when the Social Planning Society and the Community Health Network hosted a workshop to bring together all local governments in the Comox Valley with community-based organizations to create a whole of community response to social issues. The workshop included people from the City of Courtenay, Town of Comox, Village of Cumberland, Comox Valley Regional District and School District #71 as well as local organizations including members of the Comox Valley Food Policy Council and the Comox Valley Coalition to End Homelessness among others. This gathering generated a collective interest in building understanding and applicability of “equity in all policies” emerged.
In 2022 when we could gather again, the project was regenerated to deepen existing community collaborations towards creating social change and a shared knowledge base in respect to applying an equity lens to new social policy across all Comox Valley municipalities and organizations. In addition, in this next phase, the Social Planning Society and partners committed to the active participation of people with living and lived experience of inequity in the creation of the next phase of this project.
In February 2023 another facilitated workshop was held to build the knowledge base within local government and community organizations as to how to apply an equity lens to public policy development and implementation. As a part of this session, priority areas for focus for over the next few years were identified.
The next step is to identify some examples of where an equity lens is being used to develop policy in our community and develop a guide for local governments and community organizations. Our goal is to continue to support our community to “give everyone a pair of shoes that fits”
We are grateful to BC Healthy Communities (BCHC) and the CIty of Courtenay for supporting this work.
Bringing an Equity Lens to Public Policy Report (2023) available soon.
This webinar is one of the PlanH Creating Healthy Public Policy speaker series. One of the main goals of the series is to reduce barriers to local and Indigenous governments implementing healthy public policies.