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The Community Advisory Assembly was first piloted in 2024 as part of the City’s efforts to transform its advisory committee structure, aiming to engage a larger and more diverse group of residents to advise City Council and staff on a broader range municipal projects, plans and policies. Over the course of 11 meetings, facilitated by the Centre for Dialogue’s Aftab Erfan (Executive Director), Nicole Armos (Associate Director) and Melvin Singh (Dialogue and Engagement Coordinator), 34 Assembly members discussed and developed consensus recommendations on a variety of topics, including community belonging and connecting, road reallocation, climate action and intersectionality and cultural observances and the Assembly’s Terms of Reference. 

New Westminster’s Assembly follows a growing “deliberative wave” of citizens’ assemblies in Canada and around the world that enhance inclusion, informed participation and accountability in public engagement for decision-making. Assembly members are selected through a civic lottery to broadly reflect the demographics of the larger population, and participants spend extended time learning about, deliberating on and providing recommendations on a topic. Decision-makers typically offer a more formal response to the Assembly’s recommendations.   

Several municipalities in Canada have experimented with deliberative assemblies for key decisions, such as Official Community Plans ( and ) or amalgamation (). Some large cities outside Canada, like Paris and Milan, have also begun to institutionalize this practice, establishing a permanent assembly with rotating membership to address emerging priorities. New Westminster was the first Canadian city to pilot a similar institutionalized assembly, a significant milestone in Canada’s history of deliberative democracy.  

Evaluation Highlights

To inform the future of the pilot project, Assembly members, City Council, staff who interacted with the Assembly and the Assembly’s Steering Committee were invited to participate in pre-and post-evaluation surveys administered by the City’s public engagement team, as well as research interviews with 91��ܽ PhD candidate Elodie Jacquet. Jacquet delivered a  reflecting on the Assembly in relation to the .

While it is still early to assess the full impact of Assembly recommendations on relevant City policies or programs, evaluation findings did indicate positive reception. 84% of Assembly members felt that the City was very (32%) or somewhat (52%) responsive to their recommendations, and 75% of Council, City staff and Steering Committee respondents noted an impact on municipal decisions.

Evaluation surveys also demonstrated impacts on key drivers of democratic resilience. For instance, there was a significant increase in participants’ sense that they have a say in local decision-making (from 50% pre-Assembly, to 74% post-Assembly), a factor that recent OECD surveys have found to be a leading driver of trust in public institutions, outpacing partisanship, financial concerns, education, gender or age. Members also overwhelmingly shared a stronger sense of belonging and social cohesion, with a staff member crediting that to the opportunity of engaging in “rich, meaningful conversations.” 

Across all evaluation activities, there was significant support for continuing with the Assembly model. This includes a unanimous recommendation from the Assembly at its December 2024 meeting that the City should continue the Assembly. As well, in the post-term survey for Council, Steering Committee and staff, all participants said the City should either “continue with this model” (44%) or “continue with this model but with some minor adjustments” (56%).

What’s Next?

The second term of the Assembly has been approved to recommence in September 2025, with adjustments that respond to evaluation findings and Assembly member’s recommendations, including:

• The option of a two-year term for up to half Assembly members (to enhance continuity);
• Increased resources for the process of selecting topics, balancing City and community-driven priorities;
• Developing a more defined process for Council and staff to demonstrate accountability to the Assembly’s efforts; and
• Allocating more resources towards sharing information about the Assembly in the community.

For learn more about the process and outcomes, see:

• New Westminster’s , with evaluation results and recommendations attached
• The , where information on how to apply to the 2025-26 Assembly will be posted in mid-June.
• The , written by Elodie Jacquet, PhD Candidate at SFU
• Further resources on deliberation in decision-making on the Centre for Dialogue’s learning page