MCIS AGM 2013

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2012-13 has been another successful year for MCIS as a social enterprise providing a full continuum of language services.  Despite frequently challenging market conditions, MCIS has continued to strengthen organizationally, financially and in the breadth and quality of its service offerings.  These successes, in turn, support MCIS’s ability to continue to invest in growing capacity and access to services for newcomers; and this is why they are really worth celebrating – because of what they mean for building better lives and a better community.

 

Nearly 50 years have passed since Pierre Trudeau proclaimed that Canada “must be a just society.”  Today, this notion is now so embedded in our culture that it is almost taken for granted, as a truism; our focus as citizens of our country, our province and our cities, is to make this aspiration real.

 

We believe in the peaceful enjoyment of our freedoms and in equality of opportunity.  We cherish the institutions, like the courts, that support both these values by protecting and defending our rights through procedural and administrative justice.  We also cherish those public institutions, like our hospitals, schools, and service agencies whose programs provide for a secure quality of life, and make equality of opportunity more real in pursuit of social justice.   We understand our interdependence in a community.  We know that while it has challenges, interdependence also lets us do so much, so much better, together – as a just society.

 

In addition, we also take increasingly great pride in the way we can be strengthened by going beyond simply tolerating differences.  We understand that we are stronger for celebrating and encouraging the diversity that this just society is welcoming and building.

 

Still it is also true, that for too many among us, there is a gap between the values we hold and the reality we live.  This is especially the case for those who have been inspired to cross geographical, cultural and language barriers to share in our just society. 

 

So, where is it that the values of a just society become real for a newcomer with a language barrier? Where is it that she finds a voice when she needs help in the face of domestic violence?  Where is it that a homeless newcomer, living on the street, finds a way to the supports that offer a hand up toward opportunity?  Where is it that a newcomer who is ill can find a voice to describe his pain and seek the safety, support and treatment of our extraordinary health care system?

 

The answer, every time, is in the eyes and the hearts and the minds and the work of the employees of MCIS and the interpreters who serve our clients.  It is your compassion, your skill and your commitment that, literally, give voice to the voiceless. 

 

In breaking down so many different language barriers, in so many important circumstances, you make manifest and real all of those aspects of justice, which citizens owe to one another.  But more than that, in giving a voice to one person that can be heard and understood by another, you make manifest the inherent dignity that is present in a dialogue between equals.  In this, you honour and make real, the highest obligations that we owe to one another as human beings.

 

On behalf of your Board of Directors, and on behalf of your community, I want to thank you.  Our values are more real, our community is more sustainable and so many lives are so much richer because of you!  You are an inspiration, and it is a great honour for those of us on the board to serve you.

 

Thank you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rupert Gordon, MCIS Chair

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Rupert joined the MCIS Board in November, 2009 and has served on the Marketing and Nominations Committees.  He is currently Director, Early Learning and Child Care Policy at the Ministry of Education. 

He has been employed by the Ontario Government for over 10 years and has worked in the Cabinet Office and the Ministries of Municipal Affairs and Housing, Public Infrastructure Renewal, Finance and Intergovernmental Affairs.  Prior to joining the Ontario Government, he worked in the university sector as a lecturer and published researcher in Political Philosophy and Political Theory. 

Rupert holds an Honours B.A. in Mass Communication and Political Science from Carleton University in Ottawa.  He also holds three graduate degrees in Political Science -- an M.A., an M.Phil. and a Ph.D. – from Yale University in New Haven, CT where he was a Canada-US Fulbright Scholar.  He has studied several languages including French, German, Italian and Greek. Rupert is married to an elementary teacher, and they live in Leslieville with their two daughters Eliza (10) and Charlotte (7).