Article written by Paul Seale

Last October, I witnessed an amazing presentation by a subcommittee of the City’s Cycling Advisory Committee, rich in data, compelling in evidence-based recommendations, and persuasive in its urgency. But only a week later, there was pushback from some city councillors. Not about the information in the report -- it’s unassailable -- but a fear that the advisory committee might have overstepped its mandate, might have done ‘too much,’ and I was amazed again. (It inspired a bit of a Tweet-storm, and this post is an updated version of that rant.) I wondered if maybe I didn't understand what Advisory Committees are supposed to be doing at all, so I checked on the City website.

“[T]he role of an Advisory Committee is to provide recommendations, advice and information to the Municipal Council on those specialized matters which relate to the purpose of the Advisory Committee, to facilitate public input to City Council on programs and ideas and to assist in enhancing the quality of life of the community, in keeping with the Municipal Council’s Strategic Plan principles.”

Check, check, and check! So I’m amazed a third time, and deeply concerned, to learn that Council might try to amalgamate or eliminate some of its Advisory Committees, apparently still unclear about their function and worried about their cost.

Advisory Committees are made up of volunteer experts, either by training or lived experience or both. They speak for the community's wisdom. They’re people who run businesses devoted to relevant issues, professors who teach these subjects, and citizens who live these realities. They generously share their expertise so that generalists and specialists, bureaucrats and politicians, doers and dreamers all have access to the best information and wisdom the community can offer to make the best decisions they can. When we say we need to examine a civic problem through this or that ‘lens’ -- diversity, disability, climate, active transportation, and others -- that's your Advisory Committee. Who better than expert Londoners to inform City Hall of the issues that Londoners care about? Did you know, for example, that London’s declaration of climate emergency began as an Advisory Committee recommendation?

You might ask how we ensure that our advisory committees are made up of the best community volunteers who make themselves available? Simple: we trust our elected Councillors to elect the most qualified from a competitive application process, using ranked ballots. In the case of the subcommittee report I referred to at the start, the authors included a professional engineer, a philosopher, and a climate scientist, all of them PhDs in their fields. The report didn’t cost the thousands a consultant might have charged for the same work, or drag City staff from other important tasks. The City -- and all of us -- got it for free, written in the volunteers’ own time.

But on this particular occasion, an Advisory Committee dropped a truth-bomb about the City’s performance on cycling and the environment, suggesting that Council might need to make hard decisions and get City staff to follow up. If a committee speaks truth to power and brings evidence along, they’re doing the job they were asked to do, even if as generous volunteers. So I fear that some Councillors may not like to hear hard truths from community experts. But making hard choices is their job and they campaigned hard to convince us they could do it. The thing is, Councillors could cut themselves some slack here. Nobody thinks that running a city is easy.

We call something a ‘no brainer’ when it's easy to choose a course of action because dearly-held values and practices are not put into conflict. Building a better city puts many values and practices into conflict, and so it's a ‘many brainer.’ Our City staff are talented and know a lot. Councillors may have areas of expertise, too, and they learn a lot on the job. But a city that’s committed to finding the very best solutions to its problems should be looking to bring in more community voices, not fewer. Indeed, now more than ever, London needs to be open to the very best ideas that Londoners can offer as we try to rally our City’s recovery.

In this respect, I’m not against polling Londoners on community issues as has been suggested, but this should be seen as another stream of input; popularity contests, unfiltered by expert input, are better suited to tell councillors how to get re-elected than how to build a better city. I’m also not proposing that we leave everything as it is. Both the Urban League of London and Pillar Nonprofit Network have made excellent suggestions that elevate and improve Advisory Groups rather than eliminate them.

Listening to Advisory Committees is how we'll find home-grown London solutions for our own wicked problems. It’s how we’ll house our citizens, invite greater diversity, manage waste better, build safer streets, achieve reconciliation, ensure accessibility, and make our city age-friendly, among other things. Listening to citizen experts, sitting as Advisory Committees, is how we consult community wisdom to create the best opportunities for a resilient, sustainable, democratic London. Presumably every Councillor entered public life to raise a fresh voice for a better London. Now is the time to welcome more new voices.

Oh, and the cost argument? Apparently we pay as much to City staff to support the work of our 13 advisory committees as we do to support our 5 council standing committees. If it really costs the same to support the work of 161 community experts as it does to support 15 councillors, I know where I’d put my money.

We mustn’t let the City of London quietly eliminate this excellent program. Please write to your councillor and tell them how much you value their work, and how much more valuable that work will be if they keep listening to free advice from community experts.

Paul Seale describes himself as a belonging and engagement geek and champions participatory democracy. He is the Membership Engagement Manager with Pillar Nonprofit Network.

Editors note:

Recently we released a statement about our concerns with the current review of the City of London Advisory Committees (ACs.). Advisory Committees are an important component of citizen engagement that provide valuable ways for residents to engage with the City of London and bolster transparency and accountability to City and Council decisions.

We hope you enjoy this series, but more importantly, we hope it inspires action from you in a couple of ways:

Email all your City Councillors and the Mayor in support of Advisory Committees and the valuable work they do. Copy us at info@urbanleague.ca
Share the weekly blog posts and your support on Facebook and Twitter, tagging @CityofLdnOnt your City Councillor if possible and @ULLdn

How London marshalls our community wisdom, for free