The article Meet the new generation of politicians, authored by The Natural Step Canada's Executive Director Chad Park and Social Innovation Generation's Executive Director Tim Draimin, was originally published in the Ottawa Citizen.

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Canadians should take note of the results of the municipal election in Alberta’s capital last week. The new mayor of Edmonton, Don Iveson, inspired Edmontonians with a campaign clearly driven by a compelling vision of what his city is and could be. Iveson is a highly intelligent city councillor, deeply knowledgeable about municipal issues and policy, and an uncommonly effective communicator. He is also 34 years old.

The election of Iveson in Edmonton and re-election of Naheed Nenshi in Calgary, along with the continuing tenure of Gregor Robertson in Vancouver, leaves Canada’s three largest western cities with a trifecta of young, dynamic, urban city-builders as mayors.

These three mayors are not political leaders as Canadians have known them. While each is skilled, credible and qualified in their own right, their appeal as candidates lies more in the values they represent and embody. A successful businessman who cares deeply about protecting the environment; a passionate advocate for the arts and the underprivileged who is also a champion of innovation and entrepreneurship and can win arguments on the basis of the business case; an urbane Muslim former professor who is wildly popular in the heart of a conservative Stampede town. Not easily pigeonholed or typecast, they appear to transcend the political affiliations that characterize much of our mainstream public discourse.

Their success is not a strange anomaly, though. Yes, these men seem to transcend today’s politics. But they are men of their generation. Their success hints at an evolution of the framing of public issues that is coming as a new generation of leaders takes over.

Young Canadians, we know, do not see themselves in the categories that their parents might use to identify people. They have no interest in and little patience for the ideologies of left and right; they are far more concerned about the transition to a sustainable future. They want to live in vibrant, walkable neighbourhoods; many have no interest in owning a car. They do not describe themselves as environmentalists or socialists; yet, they care deeply about climate change, food security and their local communities. In their careers, they reject the notion that one should have to check their values at the door; they seek opportunities to apply themselves in settings where they feel a sense of purpose in their work.

They are business school graduates who choose to work in sustainable development and environmental professionals who choose to work in business. They are engineers involved in international development, artists involved in technology.

They are social entrepreneurs who commit themselves passionately to ideas that help solve social and environmental problems, with far more regard for the impact they create than their place in an organizational hierarchy.

Canadian businesses know this generation. They are striving to create the kind of work environments that will attract its best and brightest. Many large companies cite the need to be relevant to their current and future employees as one of the primary motivations for their forays into sustainability and corporate social innovation. These companies recognize that their social license to operate will be increasingly measured by the way they integrate the social, environmental and financial dimensions of their business.

Our federal and provincial politics, though, struggle to reflect these changed values and the widespread desire for a new kind of public narrative. So does the media.

Many people see them as stuck in the polarized debates of left versus right, west versus east, jobs versus the environment, market advocacy versus social cause.

But the new generation is coming of age. Idealistic, future-focused, savvy, and connected, the most accomplished of them will transform our country. A new wave of leadership is approaching the shore. Get ready for it, Canada.

Chad Park is executive director of the Natural Step (naturalstep.ca) and
Tim Draimin is executive director of Social Innovation Generation (sigeneration.ca).

Source: Ottawa Citizen