The City of Estevan has taken a look at how they handle inclusion in a new report which had its results released at the latest city council meeting.
For the report the city used the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association's measuring inclusion tool, asking members of the city council and members of the management team to measure where the community stands on inclusion.
Councilor Kirsten Walliser, who spoke for the tool when it was first introduced, says it's important for measuring how the city is doing its job.
"There are many themes that include leadership and accountability, commitment of resources, planning implementation and measurement, and under each of those categories is a list of questions where people identify, 'Is this something that's invisible in the current organization? Is this something where there's an action of intention already? Or is this somewhere that we're already seeing a culture of inclusion?'"
"Having these measurement tools allows the next Council to then look at the remainder of the tool, which identifies areas for improvement and what those steps would look like at the individual level, the business level, community organizations, as well as the administration team here at City Hall."
Walliser says that the full completed report shows that there are areas the city excels in and others that could use work.
"I was optimistic in some areas, happy to see an acknowledgment of the value of inclusion. Other areas where I anticipated awareness or perhaps even just an invisible response were prevalent as well. Not that that's necessarily a good or bad thing, but it indicates where additional interest could be focused in the future."
In the future, Walliser says it's likely the completed report would be used as a reference of what the city could focus on rather than a specific call to action.
"When the city budgets, when the city meets with third party groups, there needs to be a discussion about who benefits and who doesn't benefit. Having a tool like this can show where the gaps exist, even ways that maybe our lived experience as a council wouldn't show."
Walliser hopes to see the report cited in the future to compare how the city is doing in terms of inclusion over the years.
"For this report, I would love to see it annually. At a minimum, I would love to see it at the end of each Council term to be able to turn back and say, often change isn't quick and so it could take four years to see a discernible difference in some of these areas."