A new website that builds upon open data allows users to rate Toronto neighbourhoods. Information provided on the Wellbeing Toronto website is exhaustive, ranging from the number of car crashes in an area, to income and education levels. While some view the ranking system as potentially damaging to communities, many others are happy to have such data readily available, including non-profits who will use the information to target their resources to communities most in need.
Filed in:
Open Data,
Citizen Engagement,
News Stories,
Demographics,
Tools and Best Practices,
Healthy Communities,
Infrastructure,
Websites,
Open Government,
Planning & Land Use | July 6, 2011
All public bodies in BC, including schools and hospitals are required to pay carbon offsets if they are not carbon neutral. These offsets are paid to the BC Crown Corporation the Pacific Carbon Trust (PCT). On the PCT website are a number of projects that benefit private companies. Encana is just one of them. Encana will likely receive a subsidy to the tune of $20 million.
In 2010 the BC Local Elections Task Force delivered its recommendations on improving local government elections. In their recommendations they highlighted the need for expense limits on local election campaign participants and the need for sponsorship information on all election advertising.
Vancouver's City Hall is now posting the budgets and expenditures of its Mayor and Council on its website. A motion to make this information public was made by Mayor Robertson and approved by Council in 2009. Vancouver is the first municipality in BC to make this information available to the public at large, signalling a dedication to greater transparency and accountability on council.
School trustee Stepan Vdovine plans to introduce a motion to improve transperency and access to information in the Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows school district. He proposes that an independent committee be created to provide recommendations on how to change information accessibility policies in ways that promote open, effective governance. Read the full story in The Vancouver Sun.
This past year, city councils in Toronto and Calgary initiated Participatory Budgeting processes, to allow citizens more of a voice about where their city's money goes. In Calgary 23,000 people took part in the process.
Other communities, such as Victoria, are watching closely and talking about possibilities for engaging their citizens.
In January 2010, Montreal city council passed a bylaw introducing citizen-initiated public consultations on any subject in the municipal realm. The right of initiative allows members of the public for the first time to pick a topic that makes it onto the political agenda.
The legislation has so far gone unused, but a coalition of community groups is currently collecting signatures to oblige the city to hold a public consultation on the state of urban agriculture in Montreal.
District Trustees in the Vancouver Island Union Bay Improvement District have settled a costly defamation suit, upholding a 2009 legal precedent that governments shall not silence dissent by force. Mary Reynolds, a 60-year-old retiree and blogger, had vocally disapproved of the close relationship between the district administration and the developer of a large real-estate deal. In an attempt to quiet her criticism, the Trustees hired a lawyer, racking up a legal bill of roughly $128,000.
