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EDITORIAL

Last-minute cancellations bad look for council

https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/editorials/2025/06/14/last-minute-...

YOU have to ask if Winnipeg city council actually wants to hear from its citizens, or whether they just want the appearance of listening.

That question of appearance versus reality was brought even more sharply into focus when roughly 30 people waiting to speak to the city’s public works committee about bike safety were abruptly told to go home Thursday and come back in July.

“I’d like to suspend the rules to not hear any delegations today on that item because we’re laying it over. We’re going to be hearing all the details on July 3,” the committee’s chairwoman, Coun. Janice Lukes, said at the beginning of the meeting.

The reason? A staff report on safety measures for Wellington Crescent bicycle users, due since April, still isn’t finished. Getting people to go through the registration process to present to a council committee and have them show up to be heard, only to hold a vote and temporarily cancel public input, is both insulting and counterproductive.

It may well be that members of the council’s public works committee are correct that a discussion of bike lane policy would be much more informed if everyone had a chance to review the at-the-moment incomplete report on the issue before registering their ideas and concerns.

Certainly, more information is always better than less.

But at the same time, the committee had to have known long before Thursday that the report wasn’t going to be ready — and since those who want to speak to committees of council have to register in advance and provide their personal information, those who were interested in talking about bicycle safety on Wellington Crescent could have been contacted and advised of the need for a delay. (Anyone registering to speak to a council committee has to say what agenda item they wish to speak to, and whether they are for or against the proposal.)

Instead, the presenters were left to wait until the day of the meeting to be told, in person, that their presentations had been delayed. (Council committees are already not particular respectful of the value of presenters’ time. The rules for speaking at a meeting state “All meetings of council and its committees take place in the council building at 510 Main St. Delegations should be present at the start of the meeting and remain in the gallery until their name is called.”) But this is just part of council’s apparent interest in having public input in name only — or at least in handy bite-sized pieces, easily digested (and perhaps rapidly excreted as well). Council has already cut the amount of time it lets citizens present their concerns from 10 minutes to five, saying that public input was making meetings run too long. (The same strictures do not apply to committee members, clear evidence of “do as I say, not as I do.”) The message is that councillors are more concerned about the value of their own time than they are about the time of the people those same councillors are selected to serve.

In a time of growing citizen and voter apathy, council members should be doing absolutely everything they can to welcome and foster citizen engagement. The aim should always be to bring more people into the civic tent, not to make it more difficult and less productive to be able to make your position known to your elected officials.

And yes, that is more difficult and takes more dedicated time and planning — right down to notifying people in advance when things change. Because things can change.

But letting your guests know in advance that their event is cancelled is really only common courtesy.