City Blows Another Chance to Meaningfully Engage its Citizens

By Pepper Parr

January 12^th, 2025

BURLINGTON, ON

We did a piece a week or so ago about the trip Mayor Meed Ward, along with several staff members, took to Helsinki in Finland.

The trip was paid for by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR) and involved another municipality

When we researched the event, we came across the best statement on what community engagement is.  It doesn’t get much better than this.

The CIHR stresses citizen engagement with this comment:

Citizen engagement is the meaningful involvement of individual citizens in policy or program development. To put it simply, citizens are “engaged” when they play an active role in defining issues, considering solutions, and identifying resources or priorities for action. This “meaningful involvement” can take place at a variety of stages in the research, planning, or implementation phases of a project.

We didn’t recall anything that the City did to follow up on the promise to “follow-up with two workshops  to inspire new ideas and foster collaboration to implement healthy urban policy in Burlington by adapting Helsinki’s strategies for improving/managing infrastructure, promoting health, and improving Burlington residents’ quality of life.”

We asked the city communications department if there was something we might have missed.

The response: “They were incorporated into public engagement efforts related to Horizon 2050.

“We had a workshop at the DeGroote School of Business specific to the outcomes of the Helsinki trip on July 10, 2025.”  This would have been a staff event – which is good.

Involving the public?  That was incorporated into “public engagement efforts”.

And the city wonders why the public doesn’t show up for events.

Link to the original article