Wellbeing Economy Alliance Canada: Building a Hub for Change

The roots of our economic system run deep, perpetuating environmental, climate, and social crises. However, we have more power to rewrite our economic story than most people realize. With creativity, open-mindedness, and collaboration, we can build an economic system that helps people and planet thrive.

We spoke with Tara Campbell, Wellbeing Economies Manager at the David Suzuki Foundation, about how the Wellbeing Economy Alliance Canada is building a hub to champion the global Wellbeing Economy movement in Canada.

What inspired you and your leadership to start advocating for the Wellbeing Economy?

My work advocating for wellbeing economies is housed at an environmental non-profit, the David Suzuki Foundation. Some people are surprised when I tell them what I do and for whom: why is an environmental non-profit weighing in on economic issues? It makes sense when we understand that our current profit- and growth-seeking economic system is a massive force structuring our relationship to the environment. This search for growth leads to endless extraction, planned obsolescence and throwaway culture, and alienation from land and place. 

As an organization, our mission is to equitably protect nature’s diversity and the wellbeing of all life, now and for the future. We know that to transform society’s relationship to the environment we have to work on the roots of that relationship. We see our economic system as one of the roots perpetuating the intersecting environmental and climate crises we find ourselves in today.

This interest in the economy led to an affiliation with the Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll) — a global collaboration of people working for transitions to economies that prioritize people and planet. WEAll has been doing some amazing work over the past few years developing new public narratives around the economy. WEAll understands that this global movement will be mediated through place-based organizing. As part of that effort, we are currently working on launching a WEAll Canada hub.

We are motivated by the idea of wellbeing economies not only because we see them as necessary for the environment, but also because we know they will make life so much better! The dominant economic system simply doesn’t meet people’s needs. Even in a wealthy country like Canada, many people struggle to find affordable housing, food, and energy. Many others struggle to find decent and meaningful work. We know it doesn’t have to be this way, and we want to tell a different story of what our economic system could look like.

What do you consider to be your biggest success as an advocate and professional in this space? Can you share any stories of the impact your work has had that have surprised you?

We are working on a complex challenge that is massive in scope and it’s nearly impossible to attribute changes happening in the world to our actions. Because of this, we try to work on actions to create pathways for change, enabling conditions rather than outcomes. Our largest impact in this space has been cultivating meaningful relationships between individuals and organizations working for economic transformation and creating containers for imagination.

One of my most memorable recent projects, Toronto Imaginal Transitions, involved working with a small group of diverse community organizers and innovators to gather, build trust, and push the boundaries of their imaginations around what a Wellbeing Economy could look like in Toronto. One of these gatherings manifested as a magical dinner party where artists, organizers, entrepreneurs, and a city councillor spent an evening dreaming together. While this didn’t immediately lead to any big shifts in the local economic system, we worked on the conditions for change by planting seeds of these ideas and creating the foundation for collaboration.

How do you feel that shifting to a Wellbeing Economy will help make the world better?

Our economic system prioritizes profit and growth over community needs, including our need for a healthy environment. Transitioning to a Wellbeing Economy inverts this. The priority becomes meeting not only the needs of people but also that of the land and non-human creatures with whom we share the planet. It is important to stress here that prioritizing needs means not simply the needs of those of us in the Global North or those of us who are settlers.

While pathways for economic transition are always a source of debate, my view is that it will require everyone to get involved and deliberate over what we want and how to get there. This means that in addition to creating a viable future for our shared planet and ensuring everyone has enough to live in dignity and comfort, the transition to a Wellbeing Economy might see an expansion of the realm of democracy too.

I don’t see the transition to a Wellbeing Economy as an austere vision. I suspect that if we prioritize wellbeing over economic growth we will develop deeper networks of care, work less, and have more freedom over our time. I like to see this from the perspective of philosopher Kate Soper, who advocates for an “alternative hedonism” — a different vision for the good life that doesn’t depend on consumption.

What are some of the challenges you typically face in advocating for the Wellbeing Economy?

For many audiences, I find even suggesting the economic system could be different is often quickly rejected as unachievable. There seems to be a common sentiment that we have tried other economic models, they haven’t worked, and this is the best we have or that the system is too big to change. I think one primary purpose of our hub will be to support people, organizations, and institutions to see the current economic system as something that humans have designed. We can design it differently. 

There are a lot of myths and challenges to overcome, but we don’t need to start with a blank slate. There are so many functioning systems to point to as places of learning: the Cleveland Model, Indigenous economies, mutual aid networks, worker co-operatives, etc. Creativity, open-mindedness, and collaboration are how we will overcome the challenges we face as we push for change.

Are there any upcoming initiatives or projects related to your work/the Wellbeing Economy you’d like to share?

Many like-minded people are working for economic transition in Canada, which is really encouraging! We have been mapping the Canadian landscape of people, organizations, and networks working for wellbeing economies in some way or another, and we will be releasing an interactive map later this year. You will be able to find that on our website once it is released. We hope the map can be a tool for anyone looking to get inspired by all the work already happening.

We’ve also started a collaboration with Dark Matter Labs, a global non-profit building infrastructure for a new civic economy. Dark Matter Labs has been piloting an initiative called Cornerstone Indicators,  which involves bringing a community together to reimagine the metrics and indicators used to strive toward community wellbeing. They have experimented with this approach in Sweden and Scotland, and we are interested in piloting this with a community in Canada this year. We are also developing open-source tools that anyone could use if they are interested in these kinds of approaches.

What can people do to help spread word about or take action toward transitioning to the Wellbeing Economy? How can they support your mission?

We have been in an incubation period with the WEAll Canada hub for a while now and are getting ready to open it up for engagement soon. If the notion of a Wellbeing Economy is of interest, please come join and participate! This could be by subscribing to our newsletter or X (formerly Twitter) account to stay informed about wellbeing economies–related news, or coming to events and building relationships with other people advancing wellbeing economies throughout the country.

This story was featured in the Make The World Better Magazine: