By Staff
May 19th, 2025
BURLINGTON, ON
The City of Burlington, the Region of Halton Public Health Department and the University of Waterloo – Faculty of Recreation and Leisure Studies have been selected as one of four Canadian municipalities to join the conversation about healthy cities in Helsinki, Finland.
This opportunity is part of the Healthy Cities Research Initiative and has been made possible thanks to support from 8-80 Cities and funding from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR).
Helsinki Workshop
The grant to the participants includes all costs for a small group to travel to and stay in Helsinki, Finland from May 16-24, 2025. The group will participate in a workshop to learn about Helsinki’s smart growth strategies, including mixed-use developments and efficient public transportation, healthy urban policy, protecting green spaces, and sustainable growth.
The group includes Mayor Meed Ward, two staff members from the City of Burlington, one staff from Region of Halton Public Health and one faculty member from the University of Waterloo.
Helsinki is considered a global leader in complete communities. The workshop provides an opportunity for staff to see new perspectives and potentially broaden their approach to better serve our community through new ideas, strategies and proven concepts.
Burlington Workshops
The city will benefit from the Helsinki learning through two future 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.
One workshop will be held with community partners and elected officials and the other will be held with residents. Dates and times of the workshops will be shared once details are finalized.
The end goal is to move towards the creation of more complete communities that meet people’s needs for daily living throughout an entire lifetime by providing convenient access to an appropriate mix of jobs, local services, a full range of housing, transportation options, inclusive spaces and public service facilities including affordable housing, schools, recreation and open space for their residents.
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.
The sustainable culture that has worked so well for the Scandinavian countries has yet to work itself into the way we do things in North America.
Mayor Marianne Meed Ward is on the road again. This time it is to Finland for a series of workshops that Burlington doesn’t have to pay for.
Mayor Meed Ward did say: “Helsinki is a leading example of a healthy, walkable, green city that provides inclusive housing and social services to all community members. With similar challenges and goals in Burlington, we can learn from their example. Along with other city participants in this conference, generously paid for by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research through the Healthy Cities Research Initiative, I look forward to learning and bringing home invaluable insights and ideas to support our community’s growth and well-being.”
The intentions are there.
The stress test per CIHR for complete communities seems to turn on “ meaningful involvement”. Are we there yet? If not, then we should get that right first. Just asking.
“A sustainable culture that has worked so well for Scandinavian countries”. Hmm, lets compare, as of 2025 Canada has 8 million immigrants or 21.3%, Finland has 386,000 immigrants or 7% of the population. Perhaps one learning might be to rein in immigration to more sustainable levels? Finland brings in about 40,000 immigrants per year, we bring in a million.
Generously paid for by taxpayers, that should be. It all comes out of the various pockets of the same people — us.
We sure do spend a lot of money so our mayor and those she chooses to bring along can tour the world.
And alas, Burlington Ontario is never going to be Finland.
If we are really serious about change for the better we
would bring in a team of consultants from Amsterdam, Zurich,
Paris and London.
They would all guide us in the proper direction of cleaning up
the mess we’ve created since the 60’s. Information we all know but refuse to act.
Wonder where MMW next trip is?