February 24
What is Community Engagement in Ottawa?
We called it “citizen participation” in the late sixties in Norfolk, Virginia, where I worked for the City of Norfolk as a city planner. Urban renewal was in vogue and I had to liaise with community groups in the inner cities where urban renewal took place. The program replaced dilapidated homes with public housing.
To help to identify what the residents of the inner city wanted in their neighborhood – in their homes and open space surrounding them–we played interactive games. We had paper cutout benches, models for housing types and asked for their preferences. We tried to develop a plan from their input. That was called “citizen participation”. To get federal program funding, we had to show and describe how we worked collaboratively with the inner-city people (mostly African Americans) in Norfolk, Virginia.
I have often wondered if and how the City of Ottawa would invite the public to comment on upcoming developments in our neighborhood. My curiosity increased with my discovery that over 3000 apartments units in highrise buildings have been proposed in our neighborhood in the last few years. Construction has already started on some of them.
Where will all these people come from to fill these new units? And who will pay for the infrastructure required by the increased demand for roads and utilities? Who is the target market for all these units: families, singles, retirees? What effects would all these proposals bring to our traffic? To our water and wastewater systems, and electrical grid? Would our taxes go up to pay for the new infrastructure required or do developers pay for the increased demand for these services?
So it pleasantly surprised me when I saw an ad in my local community newsletter in Ottawa. The City of Ottawa, it said, was accepting applications for “community engagement” to review neighborhoods’ development proposals. What better way to understand plans for our neighborhood than to take part with the city in reviewing these proposals So, I jumped on the opportunity and applied.
The response to my application came a few days later, advising me: I have to belong to the local community association; sign a “non-disclosure” agreement, and that I’ll need some training provided by the City. Instead of providing training, I expected the City to find out what skills I would bring to these reviews. I sat back, awaiting info on my training.
When cleaning up my old emails yesterday, I came across my exchange with the City on the application I submitted ten weeks ago. Wow! I followed up and copied my local City Councillor on my response. That did the trick: I received an email from the city the day after explaining that their “priorities have changed” and that is why I have not heard from them. But someone will follow up this Spring. Does that mean that they have one training program in the Spring? Or that they do not need volunteers anymore?
More importantly, does the City want “community engagement” or just check boxes to reflect “political correctness”? I suspect the latter: the email I received from the City to my application ends with three expressions; “Thank you” “Mercy” and “Migwetch”! The first two words are standard in a bilingual city with English and French. But the last word got my interest. It is in a native language meaning “thank you”. OK. We are politically correct, the City occupies Algonquin lands and I suspect the native language word is an acknowledgment of that.
But only five percent of the Ottawa population is of native origin. The same percentage of the population is Chinese, Arabic, and Asian. Will we see “thank you” notes in City of Ottawa letters in Chinese and Arabic and Hindi as well to acknowledge other major ethnic groups? Just a question.
However, my more serious concern is the commitment of the City to “public engagement” – it has now been three months since I applied in response to a request by the City for “public engagement”. It looks like it will be another three months before there is a “training” session. The sluggishness and response to my inquiry lead me to believe that the City is more interested in checking boxes than receiving input from citizens on development proposals. Just my opinion.
andrasthehun.ca 