Ratna Omidvar. Illustration by Antony Hare.

“This journey of learning how to become a Canadian has been one of the most exciting and one of the most frustrating journeys in my life,” says Ratna Omidvar.

Born in India, Omidvar earned her bachelor of arts before going on scholarship to Germany, where she met her Iranian husband. The two moved to Tehran before fleeing the Islamic Revolution. They landed in Germany with few prospects, ultimately seeking asylum in Canada.

Both arrived with a wealth of education, skills, and experience, but it took them six years to find stable employment. She remembers befriending other credentialed immigrants who worked in unskilled labour or drove taxis, all seeking the elusive but vital Canadian work experience that would lead to better jobs.

Profiled by The Globe and Mail as this decade’s nation-builder for citizenship, Omidvar now works to ease immigrants’ path to prosperity as president of the Maytree Foundation, a private Canadian charity dedicated to reducing poverty.

Maytree sees systematic poverty as the main threat to Canadian society, and uses more than just money to fight it. Among the foundation’s tools at hand are grants, training programs, research, networking, policy proposals, and scholarships.

Instead of just studying the problem of poverty, “we have the capacity to put some of these really good ideas into action, and see if they work or not,” says Omidvar. In that way, Maytree has become a kind of angel investor for poverty-reduction schemes, experimenting with pilot projects, scaling up the ones that work and learning what they can from the ones that fail.

Since Omidvar joined Maytree in 1998, the foundation has oriented its focus to immigration, integration, and diversity. Two recent Maytree projects aim to empower new Canadians and help those in power to reap the fruits of diversity. One Maytree project, for instance, the Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council, helps skilled immigrants get Canadian credentials, teaches businesses how to hire, train, and integrate immigrant employees, and lobbies government to adopt policies that encourage immigrant employment. DiverseCity, a program launched in 2008, aims to increase racial diversity on boards of directors and in the media by building a directory of experts from minority communities.

With an appointment to the Order of Ontario, an honorary diploma, and a book set to launch in September, Omidvar has thrived in Canada. But she laments the lost time and productivity she and many immigrants endure.

“I lost 10 years—the best 10 years of my working life—and I’ve kind of dedicated myself to making sure others don’t lose 10 years, 20 years of their working life; that they can ease into life, far better and quicker than we were able to.” But Omidvar says the real reason she advocates for immigrants is because when they thrive, everyone does.

“It’s because I know, intuitively and substantively, that the well-being of immigrants leads to the well-being of Canada,” she says. “And what’s good for Canada is good for immigrants.”

Consider this: the population growth of racialized or non-white groups continues to outpace that of white Canadians. This has created a shift in the demographic balance of the Canadian mosaic, with our population on its way to becoming a “minority majority.”

According to Statistics Canada, by 2031, over 70 percent of Canadians living in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver will be from a visible minority or racialized group. Already, almost half the population in the Greater Toronto Area is a visible minority. Yet we are not seeing an equivalent shift in the halls of power: in business and in government, visible minorities—particularly African-Canadians—still represent a small fraction of the decision-makers relative to their overall population.

In April, a report by the Law Society of Upper Canada looked at the legal profession relative to others and made the following observations: “In Ontario in 2006, members of a visible minority accounted for 30.7 percent of all physicians, 31.7 percent of engineers, 17.6 percent of academics and 11.8 percent of high-level managers, compared to 11.5 percent of lawyers.”

A recently released study, entitled “DiverseCity Counts: A Snapshot of Diverse Leadership in the Greater Toronto Area,” showed that while some sectors are doing better at reflecting the general makeup of the population, visible minorities are underrepresented in leadership positions. Today, visible minorities comprise 49.5 percent of the population, but only 14 percent of senior-level leaders.

The implications of this imbalance will only become more significant as the population continues to shift. Canada must demonstrate the potential of harnessing the best of all of our peoples. Diversity in the leadership of our institutions matters. Far from being a form of tokenism, a significant increase in the number and diversity of visible minorities at all levels of leadership is essential to Canada’s competitiveness.

In May, Governor General Michaëlle Jean addressed business, academic, and socialsector leaders in a speech to the Canadian Club. She told the audience that “saying yes to diversity is saying yes to modernity, to opportunity, and to the very future of our country.” There is an economic case for embracing diversity: to create a “brain gain” by recruiting, hiring, mentoring, developing, and retaining a qualified and diverse workforce. Imagine the dividends for Canada’s global competitiveness when all its citizens have an equal opportunity to lead, to innovate, and to contribute to our social, economic, cultural, and political landscape.

The DiverseCity study also found that visible minorities are underrepresented in the media, accounting for only 19 percent of appearances by broadcasters, reporters, print columnists, subject experts, and commentators. Diversity in media leadership and representation of visible minorities is improving incrementally, but larger gains are needed. Why do we not see or hear from more visible minorities in daily coverage? How long must we wait for media outlets to do the research and start assigning these stories?

One initiative to improve the coverage of racialized minorities is DiverseCity Voices, a new electronic database of experts who are also visible minorities. Journalists can turn to the website to find underrepresented leaders who are able to provide commentary and opinion on current affairs.

Since joining the website, I have appeared in a variety of local and national print and radio, television, broadcast, and social media outlets, providing my opinions on subjects ranging from the Olympic Games, the G20 summit, and Africentric Schools. I’ve received more calls from journalists looking for comment, and that’s important to me. Young people become what they see, and role models of all backgrounds need to be seen and heard.

Sociologist John Porter’s Vertical Mosaic, published in 1965, remains the touchstone for a deeper understanding of the structure of Canadian society. Porter’s findings portrayed Canada as a hierarchical racial pecking order, with attendant consequences for social mobility, access to power, and economic success. In the Canadian mosaic, whites were (and still are) the dominant culture at the top of the heap. Fifty years on, Porter’s study still rings depressingly true. But there is reason to be optimistic.

With a conscious effort to create and sustain diversity in all our institutions, it is possible that Canada’s vertical mosaic will be replaced by one that is inclusive, linear, and beneficial to us all—no matter where we come from or the colour of our skin.