Burnaby Community Assembly

In the fall and winter of 2023, the Centre for Dialogue planned the focus and process for the Burnaby Community Assembly. To help guide the development of the Assembly, the Centre engaged with the Burnaby community by:

• Conducting scoping interviews with 27 community organizations, eight City Councillors and 12 City staff;
• Submitting referral letters to the four Host Nations including the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), and kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem) Nations;
• Reviewing engagement and technical reports from the City and third parties;
• Engaging an Advisory Committee on civic lottery criteria, issue framing, ratification threshold and fair representation of community ideas and voices; and
• Releasing a public co-design survey.

In January 2024, the Centre worked with the Sortition Foundation to send invitations to 26,000+ randomly selected mailing addresses across Burnaby. To ensure participation and representation from underrepresented or underheard segments of the Burnaby community extra invitations were sent to postal codes that are more "situationally vulnerable" according to the Canadian Index of Multiple Deprivation. 579 eligible Burnaby residents responded to these invitations and registered for their chance to be one of 45 Assembly Members selected by civic lottery (40 Members completed the Assembly process after attrition).

The civic lottery process ensured that registrants had as equal a chance as possible of being chosen, while also ensuring that Assembly Members broadly represented the diversity of the Burnaby community. Demographic targets for age, gender identity, language spoken most often at home, education, owner/renter status, immigration status (time since immigrating to Canada) and location of residence in Burnaby were set to match Statistics Canada data. A minimum target of 3 Indigenous participants was also set as one of several efforts to ensure the perspectives of Indigenous community members were meaningfully incorporated into the process (in the end, 4 Assembly Members self-identified as Indigenous).

Over the first three Assembly Meetings, Assembly Members learned about the history of Burnaby, the scope and purpose of the Official Community Plan and issues for the future raised by the City and the Burnaby community. They also got to know their fellow Members, learn from each other’s experiences, and develop a shared vision with priorities for the future.

This phase included the “Big Ideas Workshop”, which invited the broader Burnaby Community to connect in person with Assembly Members and share their “big ideas” for the future of Burnaby. 16 Assembly Members and 50 broader Burnaby community members attended the workshop, generating 90 “big ideas” that were collected, then shared with all Assembly Members.

Over the fourth and fifth Assembly Meetings, Assembly Members learned more about the experiences and issues facing Burnaby’s diverse communities and neighbourhoods, and worked together to develop action ideas to realize the Assembly’s vision for the future of Burnaby.

A survey with Emerging Action Ideas developed by Assembly Members was shared with the general Burnaby community, and received feedback from 202 community members in 10 languages. Nine Multilingual Ambassadors led community-hosted conversations in nine diverse languages to gather feedback in ways that were culturally appropriate and reduced language barriers.

Over the final two Assembly Meetings, Members considered feedback on their Emerging Action Ideas from both the public survey, and from City of Burnaby staff, and worked together to finalize their recommendations.

On Monday, July 22nd, 2024, 65 members of the Burnaby community gathered outside of Burnaby City Hall to celebrate the launch of the Burnaby Community Assembly's Final Recommendations. Just after the celebration, inside Council Chambers, the Assembly's 24 recommendations were formally presented to Burnaby City Council by Members of the Assembly.

All Councillors expressed their gratitude to the Assembly Members for their work, and Council unanimously passed the recommendation, "THAT staff be directed to include the recommendations of the Burnaby Community Assembly as input in the Phase 3 engagement for Burnaby 2050."

As part of the Official Community Plan drafting process, Burnaby City Council will also be responding to the Assembly’s recommendations, ensuring the process is transparent and accountable. City Council remains responsible for final approval of the Official Community Plan.

Once the draft Official Community Plan is published (currently scheduled for early 2025), the Centre for Dialogue will reconvene a small subset of the Assembly in early 2025 to provide feedback on the City’s draft.