New Westminster is hoping to become a better and more equitable community once the threat of COVID-19 has passed.
Coun. Nadine Nakagawa said she hears a lot of people talking about what the world will be like when things go “back to normal” or “back to the status quo” but she thinks the crisis is an opportunity to make societal improvements. She said now is the time to advocate for the types of programs and services the city would like to see post COVID-19.
“I think there are serious, serious lessons to be learned here,” she recently told council.
When receiving the April 27 report about the city’s COVID-19 task forces, Nakagawa said she hopes members of those working groups will think about changes that could be made that lead to a stronger, better and more equitable community.
On May 11, council approved a motion by Nakagawa related to a public engagement strategy for COVID recovery. The motion directed staff to prepare a public engagement strategy for involving the community in the COVID-19 recovery planning, with a particular focus on addressing systemic inequities and building a stronger, more vibrant and connected, climate-change resilient community.
“I don’t think striving to return to the old normal is the path that we want to go,” Nakagawa said. “The inequities that existed before have just been made more visible to everyone right now. It’s not that they weren’t here. COVID-19 has created new problems, no doubt, but many of these problems are just exacerbated and everyone can see it now.”
The motion approved by council states the public engagement strategy should propose ways to address barriers to participation that have resulted in a lack of representation by communities of colour, tenants and the under-housed, lower-income community members, disabled people and other under-represented groups that have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic.
“Obviously, this has been a painful and horrible experience for many people, but I also feel there’s an opportunity for us to come together and envision a better future,” Nakagawa said. “To do that, we have to hear from the folks who have some lived experience, who have the knowledge. It’s an opportunity to improve our public engagement process at the city and really bring those people in.”
The preamble to Nakagawa’s motion states that a return to “normal” means returning to a system that wasn’t serving a huge proportion of the community. It goes on to say that COVID-19 recovery presents an opportunity to re-envision a community, an economy and systems that better serve the community as a whole.
Coun. Chinu Das said it will be difficult to engage the public in these times, but the city has to try to do just that.
“What we have learned is that the old normal was obviously showing some cracks. There were some inequities that we are now addressing through our task forces. And we can do better than that,” she said. “The new normal has to look different. The first step in making it look different is to gather information.”
Mayor Jonathan Cote said the motion builds upon some of the work the city has been thinking about and working on.
“We are going to be at an interesting crossroads in the community as to, how do we emerge out of this crisis,” he said. “I think there is going to be a few forks in the road where we will be making some decision about what does the new normal look like, how does the community rebuild, what are the opportunities, what are the challenges? But at the same time, those decisions are best made when we can really genuinely engage with the public and have them be part of that vision-making, part of that decision-making process.”
