Edmonton city council is pulling the plug on a number of long-standing public committees, but Mayor Andrew Knack insists the city is not turning its back on its commitments to marginalized groups.
Knack characterized the move Thursday as part of council’s overhaul of city operations to fit its four strategic priorities. The committees wrapping up their work on April 30 are the anti-racism advisory committee, the Edmonton Historical Board, Edmonton Salutes Committee, the Edmonton Transit Service Advisory Board, Energy Transition Climate Resilience Committee and the Women’s Advisory Voice of Edmonton committee. The City of Edmonton Youth Council will be ceasing to meet after Aug. 31.
“Council set our strategic priorities earlier this year,” said Knack. “With that we’re going through the entire organization and setting up different ways of doing things.
“We are going to continue to hear from those voices, it’s just about doing it in a different way.”
Knack added the change is not a budget decision and the city isn’t saving much money by dissolving the seven committees.
Councillors who previously sat on the retiring committees will be reaching out to the membership about the next steps, which Knack said would be approached on a case-by-case basis.
He said there was no set timeline for how a new framework for each group would be established.
“It has to look different for each group,” said Knack. “It’s going to be continued work, it’s just going to look different than what we’ve had before— but ideally in a way that allows for more voices to speak up more regularly about the good and the bad and the things we need to work on.
“I worry we’ve been a bit complacent of just saying, ‘We’ve engaged’ because we have this one group. Meanwhile there’s 10 other organizations representing those voices as well. How do you make sure they’re included?”
Council will make the decision official at its April 28 meeting.
Knack said the decades-old committee structure was limiting who could give feedback to the city.
“As someone who sat on the youth council for eight years, that structure has been in place for almost as long as I’ve been alive,” he said. “Is setting up a council committee the right way to bring in youth voices? Or do we work with groups like the Edmonton Student Alliance or the student senate of the public school board to make sure you’re hearing from as many youth voices as possible?
“A lot of these systems have been in place for decades and it is time that we look at modernizing all of our systems and reimagining how we do this work.”
There will still be five active committees — the Accessibility Advisory Committee, the Community Services Advisory Board, the Edmonton Combative Sports Commission, the Edmonton Design Committee and the Naming Committee. Knack said the work of those five committees would continue, as it “made sense” for those boards to continue using the current system.
Acknowledging many of the decommissioned committees represented marginalized groups, Knack insisted the city is not walking away from its diversity commitments, but needed to modernize how the city communicates with stakeholders.
“Edmonton firmly supports diversity, equity and inclusion,” he said. “It’s too critical to what we do. My plan is to continue to hear from these voices. I’d much rather set up a system that we can get many more voices involved in our discussions.
“I want to stop the city forcing everyone to come to us. How do we make sure we’re connecting with different community groups more regularly?”
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