Enough with the community consultation, already

Community consultations are a basic part of city management — a way for local government to get public input on projects and plans. 

But Richard White thinks public consultation has gone too far. He worked on Calgary's downtown revitalization, and he has served as a citizen-at-large for the Calgary Planning Commission.

While he sees the value in consultation, he says there needs to be a way to do it that doesn't throw the door wide open for everyone to consult on everything. 

The full interview is available in the audio player above. The following portions have been edited for clarity and length. 

How far is too far when it comes to consultation?

I think it becomes too far when the average person can't participate. When it goes for years, and the documents are 80 and 90 pages, when the council meetings have 200 plus people, they actually attend and then they find out that they have to go on to the next day, people just don't have that much time to invest. I think that most of the issues are probably identified within the first 30 days of any kind of public consultation. At that point, people just want to hear themselves. They want to feel that their opinion has been heard, and documented, and ideally it needs to be incorporated into the plan, the development, the design, whatever. 

We heard a clip of the City of Calgary calling for community engagement, calling for ideas from Calgarians as they map out the future of this city. Is that a good idea? 

I think what it's done, to some extent, is made people feel they should express their opinion on everything, and that we want to hear from everybody on everything. I mean one of the saddest stories I heard was a young family, moved into an established community, had a young son, didn't realize that he was allergic to some of the trees that were on the property, wanted to cut them down, replace them, and one of the neighbours rallied all the other neighbours to say "you can't cut down these mature trees," and the family backed down, they didn't cut down the trees. So the boy's health was subservient to the needs of the community to have these big mature trees. That's kind of sad when people feel like they have to comment on the pitch of a roof. There was another case where neighbours wouldn't let an infill go forward without a professional landscape plan. You know, what is the next step, are you going to want to approve who your new neighbours are? So I think they've increased the expectations about what you can be engaged on and how much information you can say and have an influence on.

So how would you fix the system? 

I would probably put shorter terms on it. Two years is too long. I don't know how you would do it at a council meeting because they want it to be open but..some of the communities are being really good, a group of them are saying "we represent 50 people, but one person's going to speak on behalf of us." But in a democracy, everybody has an equal say.