If I were to list all the things I’d rather do than endure the ordeal of public meetings I’d run out of paper
A commentary by the vice-president of the non-profit Homes for Living.
The Quadra-McKenzie plan meeting at Saanich council on July 7 is a prime example of how our system of public input is fundamentally broken. It doesn’t adequately capture public opinion, leads to anger about feeling unheard, and frequently makes our cities worse.
But we can do better.
I’ve lived on the South Island since I was two, and I’m the vice-president of Homes for Living. We’re a non-profit housing advocacy group working to make housing more affordable for renters and primary homeowners.
We are entirely volunteer-driven and have (despite accusations from some attendees at meetings like these) never taken a dime of developer funding. We do what we do because we’re passionate about solving the housing crisis, not to serve someone else’s agenda.
On July 7, Saanich council held a meeting to determine next steps for the Quadra-McKenzie plan, which calls for greater density, more frequent transit and improved pedestrian safety. It went poorly.
Opponents of the plan have grown increasingly irate at its contents, and this anger has boiled over many times across countless meetings, resulting in raucous crowds and threats from the mayor to clear the council chamber.
This meeting was notably bad, as all of the people I went with who spoke in favour of the plan were harassed after they spoke. The harassment included homophobic insults, swearing, and general nastiness and aggression — all for daring to voice their opinions.
This harassment is a prime example of why the way local governments do public engagement doesn’t work, and needs a serious overhaul. It relies on citizens having the time, resources, and wherewithal to spend hours learning about, and then providing input on, a multitude of different complex issues.
These barriers limit who can easily participate, biasing feedback received. Single parents, those working multiple jobs, people with long commutes, and those with significant time or resource constraints get filtered out of the process.
These limitations lead to misunderstandings of public opinion.
When I tell people about engagement opportunities, the most common refrain I hear is “Why? I already voted for people who said they were going to do X, Y, and Z. Why do I have to keep telling them over and over again to do that?”
I confess that I feel the same way.
Public meetings make these problems even worse. On top of all the previously mentioned challenges, public meetings add public speaking, and, as we saw on July 7, the threat of harassment.
That’s a lot of barriers, and it significantly warps perception of public opinion. If I were to list all the things I’d rather do than endure the ordeal of public meetings — writing a speech, travelling to city hall, waiting for my three minutes, speaking, getting harassed, then going home — I’d run out of paper.
That leads to scenes like July 7. While insulting and making homophobic comments towards other community members is, of course, deplorable, feeling anger at the process is entirely justified, regardless of whether you support or oppose the plan.
Having to spend considerable time repeating the same opinion over and over again is frustrating. For those in opposition to the plan, who were roughly a three to one majority in the council chambers that night, it can be even more frustrating.
From their perspective, they are in the overwhelming majority, and council is responding by making only moderate tweaks to a plan they think fundamentally misses the mark.
Of course, as discussed, the degree to which their opinion truly reflects the will of the residents of Saanich is impossible to discern from attendance at these engagement sessions, but you can’t blame some for feeling like they’re in the majority given how the sessions usually go.
Clearly, our approach doesn’t work. What should we do instead?
Opportunities to do this are through municipal elections and annual surveys. Elections have far higher participation rates than engagement sessions and meetings, and represent the widest sample of voters’ desires.
Statistically valid surveys commissioned annually by the City of Victoria also obtain representative samples of public opinion.
While elections and surveys are both good options, they don’t satisfy the same purpose as traditional public engagement. Though flawed, there is no clear replacement.
What I propose is that if we choose to continue with these traditional types of engagement, we must be more aware of their significant limitations. This type of engagement should only be used as a tool to collect ideas about potential changes, instead of pretending that they are effective in determining majority opinion.