For more than four decades, my life has taken me through worlds that many people experience separately: immigration and refugees, law, business, investment, journalism, government, lobbying, community service, publishing, and now music.

My songs did not begin with artificial intelligence.

They began with people.

They grew from approximately 46 years of observing, working, travelling, advocating, helping families, building businesses, dealing with governments and listening to thousands of human stories.

Technology simply gave those experiences a new voice.

For approximately 35 years, I worked in immigration, citizenship and refugee matters.

My work was never simply about completing an application and saying goodbye.

I helped newcomers understand how to begin their lives in Canada. I assisted people with government applications, income-tax returns and access to benefits. I helped families look for housing and understand the systems surrounding them.

I worked with refugees seeking safety and immigrants searching for opportunity.

Over the years, I estimate that my work assisted approximately 17,000 refugees in coming to Canada, while I also worked extensively with immigrants and newcomers after their arrival.

I watched children grow up.

Some became highly accomplished professionals.

And some of those people—who once came into my life as complete strangers—eventually called me “Auntie.”

That has always meant more to me than a professional title.

They were never files.

They were never numbers.

They were human beings trying to build a future.

My commitment also extended to seniors, people with disabilities and low-income members of the community.

I provided extensive pro bono assistance, including preparing income-tax returns so people could obtain benefits and financial assistance to which they were entitled.

My existing VoiceCanada biography records that this community work was formally recognized with a federal ministerial certificate of appreciation. 

The principle behind that work was simple:

Sometimes people do not need another institution. They need another human being willing to help them navigate one.

Immigration was also about economic opportunity.

I travelled internationally seeking investors interested in Canada.

I worked with businesspeople and entrepreneurs who wanted to establish companies, invest capital and create employment.

I believed that successful immigration should benefit everyone: newcomers should find opportunity, businesses should grow, employees should find jobs, and communities should become stronger.

For me, immigration was never merely about crossing a border.

It was about what happened after the border was crossed.

Could a family find a home?

Could parents work?

Could children obtain an education?

Could an entrepreneur build a business?

Could an investor create employment?

Could a newcomer eventually say:

Canada is home?

My professional life also brought me into the legal and corporate worlds.

I worked with two law firms in different professional capacities and gained direct exposure to the realities of legal practice and the way law affects ordinary people and businesses.

My business career extended much further.

I served in executive capacities involving numerous federally incorporated corporations and, over the course of my entrepreneurial career, owned more than ten corporations before retirement.

I therefore saw institutions from both directions.

I saw the person standing outside asking for help.

And I saw what happened inside businesses and organizations making decisions.

That perspective matters.

Because policies that appear abstract in a boardroom, government office or legal document can become very real when they reach someone's kitchen table.

I also worked as a freelance journalist.

My existing VoiceCanada biography records my journalism background and my membership in the Canadian Association of Journalists between 2006 and 2012. 

Journalism taught me to observe.

It taught me that the world is complicated.

Governments make decisions.

Corporations make decisions.

Wars begin.

Economies change.

Borders close.

Prices rise.

Institutions succeed and institutions fail.

And very often the ordinary person has little control over any of it.

Yet that person lives with the consequences.

That observation stayed with me.

It eventually found its way into my books.

Now it is finding its way into my songs.

In 2006, another chapter began: federal lobbying and public advocacy.

Canada's federal Registry of Lobbyists records my initial registration beginning on February 2, 2006, through what is now VoiceCanada Post-Settlement Services Inc. The registration remains listed as active. 

My lobbying involved numerous public-policy subjects, but immigration regulation and consumer protection became particularly important.

Historical federal lobbying records document submissions concerning the regulation of immigration practitioners, including a proposed CSIP Professional Act, communications concerning Bill C-50, and six submissions to members of the House of Commons between March 31 and April 16, 2008 concerning the then-regulatory structure for immigration consultants. 

Those records matter because they demonstrate something about my work that predates today's music by many years:

I believed that people providing immigration services should be accountable and that consumers needed protection.

The regulatory landscape subsequently changed significantly, ultimately resulting in the federal College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants Act.

My own advocacy history concerning that regulatory framework—and disputes surrounding intellectual property, terminology and its development—later became the subject of litigation.

That history is complicated and continues to have legal consequences, so it belongs in its own detailed account rather than being reduced to a sentence here.

But the underlying objective was always straightforward:

Protect the public. Establish accountability. Improve the system.

After decades of working inside these systems, I increasingly turned to writing.

Books allowed me to examine subjects differently.

A government submission has rules.

A legal pleading has rules.

A lobbying communication has rules.

Journalism has rules.

But a book allows an author to ask a much larger question:

Why?

Why do institutions behave as they do?

Why are ordinary people sometimes forgotten?

Why does justice become unaffordable?

Why do societies repeat mistakes?

Why does enormous wealth coexist with poverty?

Why do governments spend billions preparing for war while families struggle to afford food and housing?

My books became another way of examining those questions.

Today, my published works are available through booksellers and retail channels internationally.

In 2026, something unexpected happened.

The words began becoming songs.

For decades, many of the subjects had existed inside me as experiences, observations, arguments, memories and unanswered questions.

New technology suddenly provided another medium through which they could be expressed.

Artificial intelligence assists with developing concepts and lyrics.

Suno provides the technology through which music, arrangements and generated vocal performances are created.

DistroKid distributes the finished recordings internationally to streaming and music services.

But technology is not the origin of these songs.

Human experience is.

Part of this musical journey has another origin altogether.

Some songs preserve and adapt the writings and poetry of Leanita Gonninon, whose words came from another generation.

Those works must always be distinguished from my newly developed songs.

Where Leanita's original poetry provides the source, she deserves recognition for those words.

Technology has allowed writings that might otherwise have remained silent on paper to become music capable of travelling internationally.

In that sense, the project connects generations:

words from the past, experiences from the present, and technology from the future.

I have begun describing this body of work as:

It does not belong comfortably inside one conventional category.

The songs speak about war.

Migration.

Borders.

Greed.

Affordability.

Political accountability.

Children.

Refugees.

Human dignity.

Love.

Loss.

Loneliness.

Hope.

The future.

And the simple question of how human beings should treat one another.

Songs such as I AM YOUR VOICE, WHO DREW THESE LINES?, HOW CAN THIS BE RIGHT?, WHAT DID YOU LEAVE FOR US?, and DON'T FORGET YOU ARE HUMAN ask questions that do not belong to one political party, one country, one religion or one generation.

They belong to people.

The songs are not intended to tell every listener what to believe.

They are intended to make the listener stop and think.

There is plenty of music that allows us to escape reality.

There should be.

Human beings need joy, dancing, romance, celebration and imagination.

But that is not the only purpose music can serve.

My songs often move in the opposite direction.

They come from realities I have encountered or observed over 46 years.

They come from watching refugees search for safety.

Immigrants search for opportunity.

Families try to establish themselves.

Businesses struggle and succeed.

Investors take risks.

Governments make decisions.

Politicians promise change.

Wars destroy lives.

Children inherit consequences they never created.

And ordinary people continue trying to live.

For years, I communicated through applications, submissions, journalism, books, lobbying and advocacy.

But not everyone reads a parliamentary submission.

Not everyone reads a legal decision.

Not everyone reads a book.

Not everyone follows politics.

Almost everyone understands music.

Someone driving home from work may never read one of my submissions to government.

But that person might hear a song on the radio.

A politician may never read one of my books.

But perhaps one day that politician will hear:

“How can this be right?”

A person who has never thought seriously about refugees may hear:

“Who drew these lines?”

Someone who feels invisible may suddenly hear:

“I am your voice.”

And a generation worried about its future may hear:

“What did you leave for us?”

That is why I have turned to music.

When I look back over 46 years, the occupations appear different.

Immigration.

Refugee work.

Law.

Business.

Investment.

Corporate leadership.

Community service.

Journalism.

Lobbying.

Writing.

Publishing.

Music.

But perhaps they were never as separate as they seemed.

There has always been one thread running through them:

People.

People looking for safety.

People looking for opportunity.

People trying to be heard.

People trying to build something.

People confronting institutions larger than themselves.

People trying to give their children a better future.

That is also what the songs are about.

As a journalist, I observed.

As an author, I wrote.

As a lobbyist, I advocated.

As an immigration and refugee professional, I listened and helped.

As an entrepreneur, I built.

And now, through music, I speak to the world in another language—the universal language of song.

If my letters cannot reach every decision-maker, perhaps a song can.

If my books cannot reach every household, perhaps music can.

If someone who feels forgotten hears one of these songs and realizes that another person understands what they are experiencing, then the song has already accomplished something worthwhile.

After 46 years, I have learned one thing above all:

Policies change. Governments change. Businesses change. Technology changes. Borders change.

But the fundamental needs of human beings remain remarkably constant.

We want safety.

We want dignity.

We want opportunity.

We want our children to have a future.

We want to love and be loved.

And we want our voices to matter.

That is what Humanity Music is about.

Nancy Salloum
Author • Journalist • Registered Federal Lobbyist • Advocate • Entrepreneur • Independent Music Creator
VOICECANADA