Mary Rowe [00:00:05] We’re going to start with Dale McFee, who I’m very appreciative is taking time to come on because he’s the chief of police in Edmonton, so he’s a busy guy. And again, like the session that we just finished, the issues of community safety have been raised repeatedly. The downtowns, because of the people leaving the downtowns, are not in their offices. It’s been harder and harder, I think, to navigate some of the community safety issues that we’re seeing in downtowns in Canada and the mental health issues that are associated with that. So as I said, we your domain has been touched on many, many times and I know you’re talking to your colleagues across the country about, you know, not only the the impact of COVID, but also the impact of the racial reckoning that we’re experiencing and have been experiencing since the George Floyd murder and all the other events that preceded it. And as we every day have a new new kind of exposure on reconciliation and, you know, more discoveries of burial grounds and things. It’s a it’s a very volatile time, I would say, for people and particularly for people that are on who are experiencing frustration with the systems right, and aren’t being well-served by whichever system they’re, they are part of or in fact, aren’t part of. So can you give us a sense from your perspective, what you see the challenges to be for, for police forces and for going forward partnerships? Because I think that’s another piece of it that we’re going to talk about when after we’re done with you, here is one of the themes that’s come out again and again and again. Partnerships collaboration. 

 

Chief  Dale McFee [00:01:42] You know, it’s a great question, and I realize just what you said. I’m standing between this and libations. 

 

Mary Rowe [00:01:50] Well, no, no, it’s you and me, kid. It’s not just it’s not just you. We’ve got others, but you know, we we appreciate the people who stayed on as long as they have, and we want to make sure that we touch on the key things that people have raised in your topic is a critically important one. 

 

Chief  Dale McFee [00:02:02] Yeah. And I think you’ve just hit on it boils down to two ingredients. If we’re going to make some success in this environment, it’s leadership and partnership and it’s the right partnerships. And as you said, Covid what’s happened south of the border that spilled into Canada, and you know, the addictions issue that’s seem to be on the front burner and you’ve got a combination of people struggling and you’ve got a combination of people that are exploiting people struggling. It’s playing out in all our downtowns as I just last part of that panel. And the reality is it’s going to take a different model. It’s going to take a new approach to this. And that approach is innovation. It’s data, it’s information sharing for us as a police service, you know, we’re investing into social workers and putting them in police car, not even a police car. They’re marked differently to take people out of the justice system. But at the same time, there’s a whole bunch of individuals who have got I was on a call yesterday with all of our shelter operators and the gangs are exploiting that because if you think about that is that’s a mobile population that’s vulnerable and it’s easy to exploit. So it’s the perfect storm, but it’s the perfect opportunity for change. And one of the biggest missing pieces in Canada, in my opinion, is we need some serious investment in the addiction space. We need to absolutely tackle the addiction space. But when you actually look at infrastructure, as talked about downtown, this is about putting the right people in a room. Forget about your titles, use your appropriate authorities and there needs to be some accountability in this space. But accountability isn’t always punitive. Accountability, sometimes for those struggling, is getting them in connections with services that can actually help get them back on the on the right track. So I think that’s something that, you know, certainly, as you’re aware, I’ve been all over the world on, and I think it’s a real opportunity for us. And that’s what we’re doubling down on right now. But what we have to guard against is you’re also aware is people thinking this is an easy policy decision and we can just run off and say this is going to change by a stroke of the pen. That’s never worked. Moving money around is never work. This is about getting the right people in the right room and say, What are we going to do differently now? What are we going to do more of the same? What are we going to do differently? 

 

Mary Rowe [00:04:15] Yeah. What is it? That definition, you know, the definition of insanity is doing what you’ve always done and you get what you’ve always got the I mean, I hear you saying it’s not just about money, but it probably is about money. But but it’s got to start with people being in some kind of a collaborative space to try to troubleshoot and problem solve together. Right? Yeah. I mean, we did have money in the system project in Edmonton and looked at the amount of money in the social safety net. In Edmonton, it was 7.5 billion a year. So maybe it’s really how do we allocate that in a team approach to get better outcomes? And how are we going to measure those outcomes? I think that’s a space that Canada’s, the hills there to take and we got to take it. And in really, when you think of downtowns in particular and you think of what struggling is, it can’t be, to help a person at the expense of your business community or at the expense of another community, it’s all of these things need to be added to the sentence because we’ve got businesses that are walking out, because it’s not the perception and some of the things we’re coming off at Edmonton, three of our best prime stat years for success compared to other police services in the country than we’ve ever had. But what we really have is a hotspot that’s showing up in our downtown and our LRT. And, you know, transit’s actually being reduced over its impact. And so those things are going to need some investment, but they’re also going to need to deal with the safety component or people aren’t going to show up in those environments. Now that’s a problem. 

 

Mary Rowe [00:05:45] Well, and you just mentioned crime stats. I mean, this notion that we have to have data that pinpoints for us, where is the exact problem and then how do you address that? That’s true. Whether you’re looking at homelessness, whether you’re looking at at other aspects of systems that are dysfunctional, you’ve got to have the data to be able because sometimes it’s not the whole thing. It’s a particular situation. So I appreciate what you’re suggesting there. As we go forward, Dale and we and you say we’ve got an opportunity here to rethink it in a dramatic way. And the we had at the beginning of today, we had the chair of the Big City Mayors Caucus, Mike Savage, the mayor of Halifax, with Carole Saab from the FCM. And they were indicating that they are having a meeting with Minister Bennett, to talk about mental health and to talk about a different kind of investment strategy. And so I’m going to invite my colleagues to join me here. And Dale, you feel free to stay as long as you can, but I know that you need to go and slay a few dragons. So if you have a drop off, we understand. But I want my colleagues to come on because I think there have been themes that we’ve been identifying over the last two days that you might want to comment on as well Dale, but that I’m just going to offer a few of them and then get their feedback on it. One is this, we were hearing consistently from different sectors that we need collaborative investment strategies and policy leadership, not just one intervention or one kind of investment. But we actually need mental health to talk, to transit, to talk, to housing, to talk to economic development. And we’re not set up well to do that. I’m interested at the granular level. Chief, have you? I mean, you’re the chief of police, so I bet you get a return phone call no matter who you call. And it’s interesting to imagine, is this a role that the police could play? I don’t know to be the broker. 

 

Chief  Dale McFee [00:07:25] That’s what we’re doing is trying to be the broker on that, as you’re aware. And I want to be very careful is because we’re not elected, you know, we’re appointed and certainly we act local. We can’t own it, but we need to broker it and we need to get underneath the community as an extension of the community rather than on top of the community. So that’s a role that we think we have to play a pivotal role to bring this together, but we absolutely need to bring the attention and deal with the addictions crisis we have going on. And it’s not simply just giving more drugs because that is going to work either. It’s going to be a continuum of services where people can get the services they need at the time of crisis to actually do an appropriate intervention, which is going to keep monitoring the justice system, which is also going to keep more of the emergency rooms in the hospitals. We have the ability to do this, but we got to think differently. 

 

Mary Rowe [00:08:13] It’s interesting because in the previous couple sessions ago, we had a judge with us who’s running what I would call a community court system in Victoria, and it’s exactly that. It’s an integrated service model so that the person that is having, who’s causing the, who’s posing the risk, risk of themselves and risk to the community that there handy supports very much available. It’s not lost in the labyrinthian. You know, go to this department, go to that department. It’s very place based. And Alex, I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to think about these things in between all the responsibilities that you carry because I know you’ve been teaching for the last two days, but one of the things that I’m struck by is how challenged we are by trying to do things horizontally in Canada. And yet you’re just hearing a chief of police say I’m finding a way to do it locally. We heard a lot of examples from Calgary. Calgary, I think wins the prize. I don’t know whether the chat will agree with me. There was a lot of go Calgary go. They seem to be finding a way to combine a kind of city based collective strategy, and I’m think a lot of it’s been driven by the fact that their downtown has been desperate for nine years, eight years. Alex, do we have the infrastructure? Do we have the governance infrastructure or should we just make it up? 

 

Alex Flynn [00:09:24] I mean, it’s getting at so many of the comments that have been made so far about how much we re-imagine, how much do we stick with the old ways that we’ve been doing things? 

 

Mary Rowe [00:09:33] What do you think? 

 

Alex Flynn [00:09:33] I think we can re-imagine. I don’t see why we can’t. We’ve done it for long. We’ve done it forever, right? 

 

Mary Rowe [00:09:40] Yeah. Yeah, yeah. 

 

Alex Flynn [00:09:41] Something doesn’t work at particular junctures and we decided to change things. And, you know, I work in law. You know, there’s countless examples of where the constraints that municipalities have have reached this pivotal point where leaders were able to step up and say, we need something new. We need a new piece of provincial legislation. We need a new way of collaborating because if we don’t, we’re not going to harness the community needs that we have. We need strong cities. We need strong downtowns. 

 

Mary Rowe [00:10:13] Mhm. I mean, that’s certainly what we’ve been about for 48 hours is trying to hammer that home. You know that the country won’t, won’t work if we don’t have the strong, if we don’t invest in, you know, my little phrase, not mine, but Mayor Daley’s phrase that an apple rots from the core. Lanrick, you’re in a, an advocacy position. I mean, you advocate for all sorts of things, but your particular day job is something that has municipal jurisdiction. But I feel like the benefits of your advocacy actually talk to the things that the chief is speaking about, that it has a health benefit and it has an environmental benefit and it has an economic benefit. Do you have a thought about this as we’ve been listening to the last couple of days? I know you were on last yesterday quite a bit. Do you have a sense of whether we can glean from that, some commitment to this sort of holistic integrated approach? 

 

Lanrick Bennett Jr [00:10:58] And for sure, that holistic piece needs to, needs to gain steam. It needs that political will. There is so much energy in so many different facets of how our cities work. There is a lack of communication between all of those different silos and trying to get those different entities together to sit down to explain what their issues are, what their problems are, and finding solutions together. That’s where the power, that’s where the magic of the city is going to come from. 

 

Mary Rowe [00:11:34] How do we do it? How do we do it? I mean, you’ve done it. You’ve done it. I mean, how about when you’ve done it? How you’ve done it.

 

Lanrick Bennett Jr [00:11:40] So the way that we do it is you start to you start to take down all of those barriers. You start to take down all of the all of the angst of being able to just be human. And so right now, we’re all about the Zoom and we’re all about the Teams. But this type of communication is exactly what we need to be doing. But doing it in a silo, not doing it in the corner, not coming- hey, this is exactly what we need to do. It is wanting, really wanting to talk with your community, with your community leaders, with your politicians, regardless what level of government they are, you’re coming together to want to move forward. It’s not quite enough. You can take a look at what happened in the past, but we’re living right now and we’ve got we hopefully a game plan to go forward, but that’s got to be put together as, as a team as opposed to trying to do this again as those as so siloed pieces. It’s not going to work that way. I. 

 

Mary Rowe [00:12:45] It’s interesting. I just see whether or not I mean, we’ve been in this crisis. We’ve been in a crisis for two years, and I know lots of us are anxious that when the crisis is over, we’ll just sort of slump back into doing it the way we’ve always done it. 

 

Lanrick Bennett Jr [00:12:56] And let me just say one last thing there. It’s when when we talk about the build back better, when you’re using that hashtag, we don’t want to go back to normal. We want to be moving ourselves forward. It has to be these two years if nothing else has taught us so many of those gaps that are within our cities, within the country in general. This is our time to shine and we cannot, can’t miss this opportunity. 

 

Mary Rowe [00:13:26] Well, the one good thing about the last couple of days is that we’ve had different sectors on these calls, I’ve got to say, and one of them was, you know, universities and we had just had a couple of university presidents and Anneke, I saw you in the chat. I know you were listening when President Johnson and President Lachemi were speaking. A thought from the both you and Alex might have about. And this is something that I feel quite personally at CUI. I feel like we’ve got a lot of people doing smart research and universities that nobody actually knows about, that we have to try to find a way to surface all the things that you and your colleagues are doing and then connect them up into the policy leadership world. And that’s part of what your center is about, and I know it’s part of what Alex is doing and all the things that she sits on. Do you want to comment a bit about that, about where are you? And also, I guess, the university in its role as a place maker and as a city builder because you’re all somewhere, right? 

 

Anneke Smit [00:14:17] Yeah, absolutely. Thanks. That was a great session, and I really liked that, it was the culmination of a lot of other conversations that. Brought in higher Ed, as you mentioned. 

 

Mary Rowe [00:14:25] They all mentioned it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it wasn’t just the president saying, what about us? It was a whole bunch of people saying, What about the universities, you know? 

 

Anneke Smit [00:14:31] Yeah, absolutely. As an anchor institution, we have heard that all the way through. And I think, you know, on the research piece. Absolutely. I don’t know if there’s anyone here from the funding agencies, but I know that said, the conversation is coming up. In the chat over the last couple of days too, is thinking about how we fund research and how we fund city focused research. I think there have been some, some good examples of that in the last couple of years, including CIHR as healthy cities, initiatives that have had a few different pieces there. So I think that’s there. I think there is definitely room for much better collaboration amongst universities, amongst researchers. And there have been in talk at CUI in terms of potentially still a dearth of those of us doing work on city level research across the country. So I think building that up. You know, I think we have a role as well in the community with that community facing piece and how we sort of how we leverage the expertize of the community is really key place for us as well and how visible we are in our own communities as well in terms of the research that we do right is is a key piece is being seen as not ivory tower, but really having an important role to play in terms of moving the whole community along. And that can be a politicized space as well. Right. It’s tricky as researchers to navigate some of that, but I think it’s incredibly important. And maybe the last thing I would just add is which I don’t think has been talked about so much over the last few days is we are also producers of a new layer of expertize on city building, right? If you want lawyers to know what city governance is, then you need us doing doing municipal governance in law schools. If you want urban planners who sort of understand the broad landscape, you need that, you needed across every department, in every faculty, meeting the engineers and we need to all be working together. So I think there’s an incredible potential there still. 

 

Mary Rowe [00:16:18] Mm hmm. Mm hmm. My colleague Jamie is here from springboard policy and they’ve been tracking over the last couple of days to start to help. And they’re going to now help us at CUI kind of figure out what this sort of roadmap looks like going forward. Jamie, I think you got a few slides that you might want to throw on. Do you want to share those up? 

 

Jamie [00:16:34] Yesterday, my colleague Noah was on and we shared some themes sort of from the first day that we really picked up. And so our team is listening to all the sessions over today, and we wanted to share our thinking on some of the themes that really popped out to us today. Can you see that? All right. So we sort of framed our summary for the idea of three challenges that we heard loud and clear throughout the day. Three solutions and of one call to action. And what we really heard is, I think, a backbone issue that’s really come across, maybe not foregrounded in the in the way that we’ve talked about every single issue, but affordability is a challenge that is going to have to be tackled before, that is going to have to be tackled as we deal with any of the issues. Businesses aren’t going to be able to, if businesses can’t afford to start up, they’re not going to be a local Business owners, aren’t going to come back to the spaces they once occupied. People can’t afford to live in a downtown area. They’re going to go elsewhere. Artists live where they can afford to pay rent. Integrated services can be offered. Non-profits need to be able to afford space to be able to operate, offer the types of services that are needed in order to deal with mental health and addictions downtowns as safe and inclusive places. That was something Nolan Marshall said in the previous panel. But Chief Dale McFee is covered in depth even in his conversation, and something that really came out in the first panel in some of the early panels is like, what does three days a week look like for downtown’s? Sort of challenging, you know, if if people don’t, you know, this is a human question and it’s out there and it’s a challenge that’s going to need to be addressed just by human nature. But what is that? What are the knock on effects of that? Is spending going to be less? What decisions will people make about where and when to reopen businesses in an environment where the traffic flows are not as predictable as they were? Three solutions, the one that came across very strongly across all days was that we’ve heard so many ways that spaces could potentially be adapted. Imagine. 

 

Mary Rowe [00:18:44] This idea of adaptive reuse how do we repurpose structures, repurpose buildings, repurpose streets, repurposed vacant space, that you’re right, it was repeated again and again and again. 

 

Jamie [00:18:54] And the other thing, we saw some really great and inspiring examples of city led strategies partnering in really creative and nimble ways to tackle sort of economic shocks. And how do we continue to enable those strategies so that not only that, they’re funded not just emergency funding, but continuing over the long term. 

 

Mary Rowe [00:19:14] Well, and also they coined the phrase just for the benefit of people didn’t hear it. They were saying that the city is the enabler. City government is the enabler. They were positioning city government as the enabler of and then led other people, and didn’t Tom Muller from Calgary say, and then we just have to get out of the way. What an encouraging thing for a municipal bureaucrat to say. Get out of the way. Keep going. Keep going there, Jamie. 

 

Jamie [00:19:37] And so and so how can we carry the spirit of finding ways to collaborate and finding ways to deliver integrated services in ways that continue on in the future? And so I think our final call to action for this is how do we build an action plan for downtown recovery that’s going to be enabled and vibrant across cities across the country? 

 

Mary Rowe [00:19:56] Mm hmm. Well, that’s the deal. That’s what we have to do now. And I mean, we had thirteen hundred registrants for this and people coming on and off several hundred each time at any one session. And I always say that for the numbers of people that register, there’s, you know, three times those who didn’t register. But write me to tell me they know it’s happening. So if there’s something about gaining momentum, I would say around this, this unit of focus. That we need to look at the local unit of focus and that maybe that’s one of the horrible silver linings or the silver linings of a horrible tragedy is that it’s refocused all of us on our community and on what’s immediately adjacent to us. It’s going to be interesting. Dale, do you think about this as we re-enter? 

 

Chief  Dale McFee [00:20:38] I mean. 

 

Jamie [00:20:39] There are chiefs of police sort of bracing themselves for what is this? Are we going to do you think we’re going to figure out again how to live with each other when we’re actually back out in circulation? Well, we have to, but it’s not going to be without some growing pains. And I think what we can actually take note of right now is some of the turmoil that’s going on in some of our friends in the South, in the American cities and how they’re trying to change their path. And I think what we wanna to do, though, is blue sky this and have the plan before we hit the crisis. We’re in a crisis now. But let’s not wait another several months before it becomes more of a crisis, because every as long as we wait, the longer the harder it is to do. And as both Jamie and Alex and Anneke have said is as well as Lanrick, we have the ability to reverse engineer this like this is not something that has to be more even complicated than that. And if we focus on 20 percent success and get some momentum and get some of the the belief and the confidence back in that business sector and other things that there’s changes afoot, it will multiply and bring people in there. If we think we’re going to build the perfect system and then implement it, it’ll be too late. So this is like building the airplane in the air and if we don’t get the right people in the room. And as Leonard said, this is a consortium of the willing, you know, the end of the day and put our titles behind. And let’s get at it because the time is of the essence. 

 

Jamie [00:22:02] You know, I’m trying to think of a time in my working life anyway, where I would have heard the business community and government and the and the civil society, all of us talking about very similar things. I don’t know what anybody else thinking. None of you is as old as me, but I’m just thinking that, you know, to hear a business people talking about mental health and to hear them talking about transit and that you hear a culture of people talking about real estate, like the fact that we’ve got this moment of all of Uber focus on specific elements of the way in which we construct our collective life together. It’s we don’t want to waste an opportunity that was said several times and we will need to have some momentum. I also think we’re going to need to have some kindness and some encouragement to one another because I think people have gone through a lot and and they’re still going to feel the effects of that. And we’re fortunate that we have really great places that can restore us and remind us of the value of living and community as we do so. I just want to thank everybody. Jamie, thank you for stepping in from springboard. Alex, always great to see you. I know that we’re going to have a constitutional revolution. I know you’re not giving up on that, but I also appreciate that you’re suggesting we can start somewhere, right? It doesn’t have to be perfect at the beginning. I. 

 

Alex Flynn [00:23:12] In fact, I think trying to, you know, just as just as Chief Dale McFee said, if we focus on perfection, we’re not going to get anywhere. In fact, one of the beautiful things about the pandemic was the emphasis on pilot projects. Bike lanes, public space, etc,. All the things that have been spoken about. They weren’t suggested to be there forever, many of state, which is great. But let’s think about pilot governance. What does that look like? We don’t have to. You know, law is a small L, right? We don’t have to have it. 

 

Mary Rowe [00:23:42] Oh my god. Did you hear that everybody a lawyer just said that, just saying. 

 

Alex Flynn [00:23:46] Yeah, it’s about people and convention. 

 

Mary Rowe [00:23:46] Pilot and pilot governance. I love that. Anneke, what do you think you’re at a law school? 

 

Anneke Smit [00:23:54] Completely agree, pilot governance, building relationships absolutely start with what we’ve got, try it and it’ll stay. 

 

Mary Rowe [00:24:01] Last word to you Lanrick. 

 

Lanrick Bennett Jr [00:24:03] Oh man.

 

Mary Rowe [00:24:04] Oh man, just come on. 

 

Lanrick Bennett Jr [00:24:05] I’m going to throw this at you. I used to be an actor producer with the second city. It’s all about improv. You have this saying about yes and and all I see is the ability for us to guess and each other and want to go forward. The story doesn’t end. Story continues. We have to say yes, and you’ve got to keep going forward. 

 

Mary Rowe [00:24:31] No, no. Better way to finish than with yes and. And so thanks, everybody. Dale, nice to see you again.Thanks, Alex and Anneke and Jamie and Lanrick always, my neighbor for joining us, and I just want to thank all my colleagues at CUI, including Jamie and Dhaneva who are the producers of this, who’ve been in the background. And we all know, anybody on the program knows they’re the ones chasing links and making sure that people’s cameras work. And I think we had 60 speakers or 60 participants, and then, as I said, we had 1400 people signing up in and out. And then we had 55 sponsors, I think some of whom provided cold, hard cash and some we provided content and many, many, many partners. And as you’ve all been saying, it needs to be all of us together in this and we’re going to all be together in it for a while yet. So thanks everybody for joining us. The summit on the city, the recovering downtown. Let’s get busy. The work begins now. Thanks, everybody. 

 

Chief  Dale McFee [00:25:22] Thanks, Mary. 

 

06:26:42 Canadian Urban Institute: Policy and Investment Leadership Implications (6:00pm – 6:30pm ET) with Alexandra Flynn, Assistant Professor at Peter A. Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia; Anneke Smit, Director and Associate Professor, Centre for Cities, Faculty of Law, University of Windsor; Dale McFee, Chief Of Police, Edmonton Police Service; Lanrick Bennet Jr., Managing Director, 880 Cities ; and Jamie Van Ymeren, Director of Research and Policy, Springboard Policy

06:28:19 Voncelle Volté: ⚡ What did we do to deserve Mary Rowe? For the 2nd year, she has been like a Formula 1 driver moderating the (virtual) CUI Summit. 🤩🌻🌻🌻

06:29:09 Laura Wall: @voncelle Right On!

06:29:59 Judith Cox: She’s excellent!!

06:29:59 Canadian Urban Institute: We agree Voncelle!

06:30:14 Mark van Elsberg: Paul, your previous comment about the feds finally open to funding BIA initiatives.  We raised this yesterday.  The need for shovel ready projects to implement is the issue..  No funding ..no means to prepare and approve a design… so no eligibility.   the other issue, the FED DEV program required that the constructor apply.  In Toronto, BIA’s co fund City projects with enhancements beyond repair and replace.   We need fed funding to prepare shovel ready designs after local experts develop gain approvals for the vision.    We need to talk

06:30:45 Christopher Clacio: I just wish the city of Winnipeg was apart these discussions a lot more

06:33:39 Kay Matthews: In the 1980’s there was a program called CAIP – Community Area Improvement Program, where province granted BIAs $250,000, the municipality then matched with approximately $125,000.  The remaining $125,000 created a total of $500,000 in public realm investment.  The BIA took on a loan for the remaining $125,000 with an amortized loan of 10 years.  It was brilliant.

06:35:24 Canadian Urban Institute: Before joining Springboard, Jamie was the Research Lead at the Deloitte Future of Canada Centre, the firm’s public policy and thought leadership hub. At the Mowat Centre, she led projects that advocated for modern government and evidence-based policy frameworks, as well as research focused on modernizing the relationship between the not-for-profit sector and government. Jamie held early career policy positions at Ipsos Reid, and at the provincial and municipal levels of government.

06:35:59 paul mackinnon: Kay, that sounds amazing. There were former programs that need to be dusted off (I’d include Urban Development Agreements, and a Fed Ministry focused on urban issues).

06:36:56 Kay Matthews: Paul, I have talked to our Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing about the program, which he remembers as he was a Mayor at the time.  I am pushing, but getting no traction on this one.

06:36:58 paul mackinnon: Calgary was also an innovator when it came to Strat Plan to end homelessness, 10+ years ago, Of course it didn’t end homelessness (obviously) but seemed to be a constructive collaboration between gov’t/business/service providers.

06:37:13 Canadian Urban Institute: Alexandra Flynn is an Assistant Professor at the Peter A. Allard School of Law at The University of British Columbia, where she specializes in municipal law and governance and teaches interactive, practice-based courses in legal research, municipal and planning law, and administrative law. Prior to joining UBC, Alex was an Assistant Professor in the City Studies program at the University of Toronto (Scarborough), where she taught and researched in the areas of urban governance, property, and local government law. Her previous project, “Reimagining Local Governance: The Landscape of ‘Local’ in Toronto” (2017), examined Toronto’s complex local governance model along with its motley of institutions – some granted delegated authority and some not, culminating in several papers on community councils and local decision-making. Her current project focuses on Indigenous-municipal relationships in the land use planning process.

06:37:42 Canadian Urban Institute: Chief Dale McFee was sworn in as Edmonton’s 23rd Chief of Police for the Edmonton Police Service in 2019. He has an extensive background in policing , including 26 years as a police officer in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan (nine years as Chief of Police) and six years as the Deputy Minister of Corrections and Policing in the Ministry of Justice for the Saskatchewan government. From 2011 to 2014 he served as President and Past President of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. He has previously held the positions of President of the Saskatchewan Association of Chiefs of Police, President of the Saskatchewan Federation of Police Officers, and Director of the Canadian Police Association. Chief McFee has received several commendations in his areas of expertise, including the appointment and subsequent promotion by the Governor General of Canada to the Officer of the Order of Merit of the Police Forces.

06:38:01 Canadian Urban Institute: Lanrick Bennett Jr. is the Managing Director of 880 Cities.  He held previous positions as the Hub Manager at Artscape Wychwood Barns, Regional Advisor in the Ontario Provincial Government and Education Officer at the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame. As an advocate for social programs, Lanrick was one half of #JacksLibraryTour, where he and his 5-year-old son visited all 100 Toronto Public Libraries using public transit. He is a year-round urban cyclist who champions protected cycling infrastructure in multiple forms. Taking a page out of his improv training with the Second City, he celebrates the concept of “Yes, And,” which will enable him to keep moving the concepts of 8 80 Cities forward.

06:39:25 Alice Casselman: As a 35 yr old educational charity we found a new approach was to layer GIS maps and dicovered that areas of low tree canopy idenitified areas of high police activity.studetn poverty , high pop density  and high covid incidence Alice

06:40:30 Canadian Urban Institute: Anneke Smit is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law and the inaugural Director of the Windsor Law Centre for Cities. She is the co-lead of the Government of Canada-funded Cities and Climate Action Forum.  Prior to joining Windsor Law she held a Lectureship at the School of Law, University of Reading (UK).  Dr. Smit’s research, teaching and community engagement focus on urban planning and municipal law, and global refugee law and policy. Dr. Smit has worked on domestic and global refugee law and policy with government, intergovernmental and non-governmental organisations in Canada, the Balkans and the South Caucasus. She has been the recipient of the Windsor Law Students Law Society (SLS) Faculty Award, the Windsor-Essex Local Immigration Partnership Welcoming Communities Award, the University of Windsor Alumni Association Excellence in Mentoring Award, and the UWindsor Humanities Research Group Fellowship.

06:41:07 Christopher Clacio: Power of the anchor institutions

06:41:20 Canadian Urban Institute: Hi everyone, just a reminder to change you chat setting to “everyone,” so all attendees can see your questions and comments.

06:47:09 Kay Matthews: Interesting and thought provoking sessions.  Thank you CUI for your work in bringing this together.

06:47:30 Ken Kelly: hear, hear, Kay!

06:47:58 Alice Casselman: Thank you all so very much for these two days!

06:48:09 paul mackinnon: Like the 3:3:1 and interested in seeing how we put an action plan together, and how we get buy-in from Fed gov’t in particular.

06:48:30 Alice Casselman: Especially Mary for vision and leadership!

06:49:13 Christopher Clacio: What about the labour movement?

06:49:28 Christopher Clacio: They have a role to play

06:49:52 Canadian Urban Institute: Absolutely Christopher!

06:49:59 Linda T: Thank you, CUI and all the panelists for making this event so easily accessible and free for all to join. If I had not received the last minute email reminder, I would have missed out!

06:50:05 Cherie Klassen: This has been incredible. Thank you. Now for virtual wine and cheese networking? LOL!

06:50:16 Laura Wall: what a 2 days!

06:50:20 Alysson Storey: “The consortium of the willing” – love this Chief McFee! Absolutely. Let’s get to work.

06:50:33 Canadian Urban Institute: Thank you everyone!! All of the sessions and presentations will be posted on canurb.org next week.

06:50:36 Cherie Klassen: Pilot governance! YES!

06:50:43 Christopher Clacio: 😆

06:51:15 Alexandra Flynn: Yes, and! Perfect way to sum it up

06:51:18 Canadian Urban Institute: This summit would have not been possible without the incredible support of our partners and sponsors. Please visit www.canurb.org/citysummit for the full list of sponsors.

06:51:19 Franc D’Ambrosio: Thank you Mary, and the CUI, and all the speakers for an interesting, enlightening and valuable conference. Fearless conversation, inspiration and leadership about the marvellous mix that are cities. Thank you.

06:51:38 Alysson Storey: Mary and CUI team – what a wonderful two days. Feeling inspired and revitalized!! Thank you so much!

06:51:51 Jan Mowbray: Thank you for a fabulous two days

06:51:55 Anneke Smit: Thank you so much to Mary and team for an inspiring 2 days!

06:52:02 Voncelle Volté: ⚡ Cheers to the CUI Team, for another amazing summit. 🍸🌻🌻🌻

06:52:02 Patti-Anne Tarlton: Yes, AND.  Mary you are a FORCE!  Thank-you for MC’ing this very valuable dialogue.

06:52:11 Patrick Murphy: Good afternoon, what great production

06:52:13 Maryam Mahvash: Thanks Mary, thanks CUI team, thanks everyone!

06:52:44 paul mackinnon: Thanks Mary and everyone. Lots of excitement and inspiration. Much needed!

06:53:02 Franc D’Ambrosio: Petula Clark………..nice touch.