Morgan from Public Engagement
Download MP3We know where services and programs impact you, so let's talk about them. Together, we'll learn from the people behind the scenes and get to know our city a little better. From the city of Winnipeg, this is Our City, Our Podcast.
Natalie:This podcast is recorded in Treaty 1 territory, the home and traditional lands of the Anishinaabe, Ininew, and Dakota peoples, and the national homeland of the Red River Metis. We acknowledge that our drinking water comes from Shoal Lake 40 First Nation in Treaty 3 territory.
Tamara:Hi, I'm Natalie. And I'm Tamara. Thanks for joining us today. I'm excited because Parks and Rec is one of my favorite TV shows. I mean, it's fitting.
Tamara:I mean, we work for the city. But today, we get to kind of chat with, I don't know, let's say our own little bit of a Leslie Knope, we'll see.
Natalie:And maybe hear more about what happens when people care loudly.
Tamara:In all seriousness, though, we are joined today by Morgan. She's the manager of the Office of Public Engagement, known around these halls as OPE. And full disclosure, she's also Natalie's boss and here to talk about, well, talking with and listening to you, our residents. Every day, the city of Winnipeg makes decisions that affect how we live. But when's the right time to include residents in a decision?
Tamara:What happens when thousands of residents have different opinions?
Natalie:Now this month, November 2026, marks a decade of the Office of Public Engagement. Woo hoo. For listeners who might not be familiar with it, what do you do, And where might people have encountered engagement work?
Morgan:I can't believe it's been ten years. But at its core, our job is pretty simple. We help people have a voice in the decisions that affect their lives. And then we help the city listen. And we get to spend our days learning from people who know their neighborhoods, communities and lived experience better than anyone.
Morgan:So if you filled out a survey or come to an open house or come to a workshop you've probably encountered someone from our team. And I should say it's really a team effort. So we have the Office of Public Engagement team, there's four of us and we can do amazing events. We could put on spectacular engagement but without community members who want to be involved, give their time, energy and knowledge and these amazing project teams we work with and city council who wants to consider the feedback, none of that would have any point to it. So we just had a municipal election.
Morgan:Winnipeg has voted, they selected who's going to represent them. And public engagement, you can think of it as what happens in between elections to make sure representatives hear from residents. We don't make the decisions, but we help make sure people have the opportunity to inform those decisions.
Tamara:How did the city reach out to people before the office was created?
Morgan:Well, to go way back, there was this approach that we now call design and defend. So it's basically like we have all these experts, we're gonna come up with something and then we'll tell you why it's right. And over time that has evolved, we've gone away from that. For the most part everyone agrees now, communities work together with experts to make make better results, make better decisions. So we've come a long way.
Morgan:Effective stakeholder engagement is a really important part of good project management. So kind of different project managers, different different experts at the city had knowledge about public engagement and there was kind of just a varied approach happening before our office came. And then as part of the 2016 budget, council approved four positions for the Office of Public Engagement and they later approved our Engage Winnipeg policy. And that set standards for how we engage. It set standards for being timely, transparency, reporting back, kind of gave us that foundation for how we should do engagement across the whole city.
Natalie:I wonder, Morgan, what was it about seeing the manager of Office of Public Engagement job that kind of caught your eye and thought you'd maybe take a chance and apply?
Morgan:Okay. Well, really did feel like taking a chance because there was no blueprint for building a brand new office like this. But at the risk of going too far back, I think the answer starts when I was a kid. So I've always had this really strong sense of right and wrong. Can you imagine parenting a child who's constantly putting, you know, pointing out when things are unfair?
Morgan:And in elementary school, we had this house league system with different colors. And I remember that the Blue Bulldogs lost for a number of years in a row and I was complaining about it. And a teacher explained to me, it just rotates every year. Like, we're not counting up the points and figuring out who won. And I remember this deep feeling, this deep unfairness.
Morgan:And of course they did it that way, right? Which children don't know. And as I got older that it really evolved into this curiosity about how decisions get made and who gets a say in them. So I studied environmental assessment and I became interested in public participation and how people help shape those decisions. And I saw the opportunity come up for the Office of Public Engagement, the chance to create opportunities for people to be heard and support better decision making and it felt like a really big important challenge, important responsibility.
Morgan:Like I said, was no blueprint for how to do this, but I had this support of the community, the support of council, incredible public servants, and we've all kind of grown together. I feel really lucky about that.
Tamara:So if you have no blueprint, blank slate, what was that first year like? How did you start?
Morgan:Yeah, it was really learning. Get to know what was happening in terms of engagement already. Like I said, it was happening at the city. We didn't start, it didn't begin with the office. So we had to know what was happening, what projects were happening, how could we figure out where the challenges were, and how are we going to mitigate some of the challenges.
Morgan:So we met with community, we met with residence groups, we engaged on engagement, tried to figure out what the community wanted to see and how we could be more transparent.
Natalie:What about, okay, first year and then first project, do you remember?
Morgan:Early on, I got to be involved in the Grant Park Recreation Campus and that included these early plans for where a new library would go, where some sports fields would go, and what ended up being the Bill and Helen Norrie Library, which I now get to visit with my kids. So I got to see all this early feedback come to life and become this amazing new community space that we have nearby.
Tamara:Okay. Let's get into the process of public engagement with both of you. How do you decide what projects the team's involved with?
Morgan:Well, it all depends on whether the public can have an influence on the project or decision. Not every decision should have engagement, right? The public are experts on their lives, on their communities, and many people have lived experience that can really help us get to a better decision. Stakeholders have expertise in many areas, of course. And sometimes council directs us to engage and we work with project teams to sort through what is on and off the table, so to speak.
Morgan:So we work really hard on figuring out where can there be meaningful input into the final decision. What you think, Anne?
Natalie:Yeah, maybe to share, a colleague of ours, Brett, often says, maybe that just helps to understand what engagement is not, that the day we're told to engage on filling this singular pothole, he's out. Because you do need to let the experts be the expertise sometimes. But it is when, yeah, when the community has that expertise to share about things that we might not know. And then maybe to share a little more about the process. So, you know, it's best when we get in early and talk to project teams as they're developing, maybe they need consultant help, we develop a contract with them.
Natalie:And, know, you're laying out often a phased process, Often you might start with values, go to options, and then confirmation. That's not, you know, the guarantee. It's all bespoke and particular to the exact project.
Morgan:So context specific because sometimes we're trying to figure out values, common ground, how can we bring people together to understand one another? Other times it's really public opinion. What do you as an individual think? And then sometimes it's about, okay, we have this design or an idea about a design, like how do we mitigate the impacts? Those are all completely different processes.
Tamara:Okay, so you have all the feedback that you get from the residents. Somebody fills out a survey, they hit submit. And then what happens?
Morgan:We have to take all of that and figure out what it means for us. What do we actually hear? And that means reading every comment.
Tamara:Every comment. Every comment.
Natalie:Every single comment.
Morgan:In 2019, we heard from almost 12,000 survey participants for the recreation and park strategies. Winnipegers care about their rec and parks. And we've heard from nearly 10,000 people on the Portage and Main revitalization study in 2023. So we're reading all of this feedback. We're trying to better understand what it actually means.
Morgan:And we're doing something called coding. So that's categorizing and flagging comments. We want to figure out what themes are coming through and which comments, even if it's made by just one person, are worth bringing up with the project team. So that could be something like an accessibility concern. Maybe only one or two people raised it, but it's still something we want to address because we want to make sure everyone can use that space.
Morgan:That's the qualitative data. And then we have all the quantitative data. The numbers. How many people said this? And then we want to talk about who we're hearing from.
Morgan:There's lots of moving parts to this. Which demographic groups did we reach? Which one didn't we reach? And all that can help us learn if we need to adjust our approach in the next phase. So we have a sense of all the qualitative and quantitative feedback and what it's telling us and we write a report and it shows what we heard and how it was considered.
Morgan:Now that's its own special step. We go through the feedback with the project teams and we try to figure out here's what we heard, okay what are we going to do with it? Can we make a change to the plan or the design or the strategy? Or if we can't, why not? And that's part of that transparency and making sure folks know, okay, didn't just hear you, but we actually did something about it.
Tamara:Morgan, you, Natalie, the rest of your team are some of the most approachable people I know here at the city, which is especially impressive given that you aren't always meeting people on their best day, we'll say. Public engagement can bring out some very strong opinions, and some of those include memorable language. What are some of the more colorful comments, we'll call them OP, has received through the years?
Morgan:Well, I pulled a couple. Stop wasting taxpayer money on dumb projects. I agree with none of these, you idiots. Stop giving money and build communities and help people. I'm usually fairly civil, but you mother are some of the dumbest people on the planet.
Natalie:We broke the civil person. Oh,
Tamara:no. How do
Morgan:you not
Tamara:take those comments personally?
Morgan:Well, I should say that's only a very small portion of the feedback then comments that we get. And it's actually usually not that hard to not take it personally because it's not directed at me personally. And our team has this privilege of being the listeners. And often we didn't make the decision and we weren't the cause of the frustration. And I honestly, I'd rather have people come out and express something passionately than be completely disengaged and not participate at all.
Morgan:We take that responsibility very seriously and sometimes the frustration is directed at the engagement process. And in those cases, our team takes a good hard look at what might have gone wrong and how we could do better next time.
Tamara:Natalie, what about you?
Natalie:Yeah, maybe, you know, to pick up on the when it when it is about engagement. I I think you... There's a piece you do need to take personally to to do a good job. You've gotta care. You're meeting someone who's caring, and and you gotta meet the the energy there.
Natalie:And a lot of the time, you can connect them with the piece of information they need, or direct them into something they didn't know or understand, and then that is really helpful. It's not all rage.
Tamara:So... But beneath that rage and frustration, is there something useful that your team can take away from comments like those?
Morgan:Yeah. There's always something behind the conflict or the anger, and it's our job to pull out what exactly is going on there. There's something strong happening that we have to then convey to the project team or to counsel. Like that's our job is to translate that into something useful for everyone to take away.
Tamara:So you have to combat a lot of misconceptions from residents throughout a project's engagement process. What are some of those common misconceptions that you come across about your work?
Natalie:That's really interesting, because I think misconceptions just naturally do exist in engagement projects. And so often a lot of our work is just making sure everyone has the same basis of knowledge and truth. But if we're talking, you know, real engagement specific, I think, you know, friends and family often just think I write surveys, that's it.
Morgan:Yeah, and they're really just one tool, right? We're having a lot of stakeholder meetings, we're connecting interviews, we're hosting events, attending community gatherings. There's so many things that are going on that aren't just surveys. Surveys are a really convenient way for folks to give their feedback online often, and it makes a lot of sense for most people, but there's a lot of other ways to get involved too.
Natalie:Oh, this is another good one. When people show up and then they ask, but when is the vote? Yes.
Morgan:Yes. There's no voting happening. Every four years. Yes. Right.
Morgan:Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. It's not that every piece of feedback is taken equally like you would in an election. We have to like I talked about we take all the feedback we have to figure out who we heard from and and who was most impacted things like that.
Morgan:There's there's so much more to it than just one person one vote. Council makes the decision ultimately.
Natalie:Right. And then maybe to throw back to, you know, you don't take it personally, but I take it a little personally. When I... When someone says, what what are you even doing? You've already made your decision.
Morgan:Mhmm.
Natalie:Like, that this process is is for naught. Oh, that's defeating. Right.
Morgan:Yeah. Because we work so hard at the front end working with project teams, trying to figure out where can people actually have influence over this project. And if there was no room for people to influence it, we wouldn't engage.
Natalie:We turn down projects.
Tamara:Mhmm. That's right. The public doesn't speak with one voice. People want different things. How do you decide just who to listen to in that room?
Morgan:Well, goes back to planning. One of the things we've worked really hard on over these last ten years and more in the past few years in particular is centering equity. So as part of the project planning, we're trying to figure out who are folks who experience barriers to participating. So we can figure out how to reduce those barriers and go directly to them because those voices aren't heard as often. And then once we get all the feedback it's kind of about that segmenting I talked about before.
Morgan:Who are the groups who are most impacted? We want to figure out who those are and what they said and then kind of present that as part of the report. Maybe it's a smaller group that's most impacted, the folks who live on the street adjacent to the project. That's not it. That's not making up the most the biggest portion of the results, but it's worth mentioning that this is how they felt in particular.
Tamara:You talked a little bit about it there, but meeting people where they are, it's a key part of just work in the public service. Where are some of the most, let's call them maybe unusual places that public engagement has taken both of you? I mean, Natalie, let's start with you. I know you have a fun one.
Natalie:Yeah, we've been in all sorts of nooks and crannies of this city. But like, maybe to start, I've been to a lot of kitchen meetings, apartment lobby meetings. If someone wants us to come talk to them, we would or sometimes I'm just delivering physical copies of a survey because someone can't access the digital copy. To stranger places... We've done Engagement on Ice.
Tamara:It is Winnipeg after.
Natalie:Of course, of course. And so there was the Osborn to Downtown Walkbike Project sitting between two parks, Fort Rouge and McFadden, is the Assiniboine River. And so we worked with the University of Manitoba's architecture students to develop a warming hut that... And they did this brilliant job at kind of representing connection between the two banks with reflection. And then there was the plaque, go online and learn more.
Morgan:And then for other projects, we've had folks from our team walk with Mama Bear Clan and the Bear Clan. We've held pop ups under bridges and on buses, participated in community cleanups. And then part of our work is also getting the word out. So we've developed videos with fine folks who who produce videos on our... In our department.
Morgan:And someone from our team actually wore a wig and a fake mustache.
Tamara:To talk about
Morgan:budget engagement. Oh, of
Tamara:That makes sense.
Natalie:Maybe another throwback to an episode that you can listen to, one of our wonderful engineers, road engineers, Rebecca Peturniak, and I went out to Our City to talk with the kids one summer about road safety. That was just also another good memorable one.
Tamara:Your faces are all lit up. So this is nice to hear because what about how do you feel when you go into a room and maybe people aren't that all warm and fuzzy, and they're going be a little angry about a project and the impacts that they're going to experience?
Morgan:Yeah, that's part of the job for sure. The nature of city work is they're gonna be projects that impact people and we have to plan ahead. There's a lot of thought that goes into these events to make sure people feel welcome and informed before they even walk in the door that they have an a sense of what's going to happen in the room, what's going to happen after, and they have some knowledge to come in with some questions before they get there. That's that's something that we've implemented that we're proud of is getting information out ahead of time so that nobody is surprised when they come in the room. It can be really hard trying to balance different needs that could be in the room at the same time, But I think we don't shy away from that discomfort.
Morgan:And sometimes that shared experience can really bring a project forward, can help people understand one another a little bit better. And we get this privilege of being that to facilitate that.
Natalie:You know, maybe this is a good spot to also share. Have a friend who does this work. She's told me in the past that she would go into some sessions and imagine putting armor on. Like, you know, she was visualizing that she was putting armor to keep herself safe. Which nearly terrified me.
Tamara:Like going into battle?
Natalie:Oh. Don't feel that way. I do have a sticky note I put up near my home computer pretty early on in this job that just says stay curious. Morgan, I wonder, do you have any kind of mottos or mantras that you think of?
Morgan:Yeah, I try to think about being in service to the room. So always trying to think of what does this group need right now? Maybe I have my own idea of how that event was supposed to go and it might end up being completely different based on what that group needs. And it's all about figuring out how to do that in the moment, being flexible. Yeah.
Morgan:Being in service to the room means not holding on to your plans too tightly, which can be difficult for me sometimes.
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Natalie:Morgan, you know, we've we've seen a lot of change in in the last decade and and wondering if you can share some of the things that you are really proud of in the way that maybe residents would interact with our work today that they really wouldn't have ten years back.
Morgan:Yeah, we've set this standard of transparency that I'm really proud of. As a standard, we put out these summary reports after each phase of engagement at the end of a project and it includes all of the feedback we've received. So you can see kind of what we took from it, you can also see the full verbatim comments. Of course, we redact all the colorful language. But that's something that that I am really proud of, that we've set that as a standard.
Morgan:And that not only are we receiving all this feedback, but we're committed to doing something with it. Project teams come to us early, we've developed these internal relationships that are really strong, we work through these challenges together, we figure out how the community can can be more involved and how the project can be more responsive to their needs. So we're getting better at that. And those are some of the standards and then we're still working towards being better in other ways too, like I mentioned centering equity, bringing in groups earlier to design processes, figuring out how to reduce barriers. And of course, because we're engagement, we always want to hear how we could do better.
Natalie:I also feel like our team is constantly finding inspiration in our community. Know, it's simple. Like, I've gone to art projects where they've got thematic postcards that I snagged and brought in and wanted to show everyone, or know, like we're constantly, if we see something great, we're talking about it and getting excited, so we learn a lot from what's out there.
Morgan:Yeah, the community is doing amazing work. They're doing their own outreach. They're sometimes helping us do outreach and getting the word out, which we so appreciate.
Tamara:So are there situations that you can point to where the public and the feedback provided did change the outcome of a project?
Morgan:Certainly. And and the one that there's a number of them, but Lord Roberts community traffic study is the one that I kind of hold close to my heart. I got to work with that community over several years and that was probably what made it so special. I got to talk with folks on a regular basis. We had this advisory committee that came together regularly and they had different...
Morgan:There was opposing views in that group, but they managed to have really thoughtful dialogue and we had a great team, Works team and Rebecca who was already mentioned did an amazing job of being really transparent with the community about this is what the data is showing us, this is what the community is saying are the traffic concerns in the area. And then working together on the solutions and testing the solutions, getting feedback on them. It was really comprehensive.
Tamara:For people not in that community, can you maybe elaborate on what was the issue that was trying to be looked into and what was or what were some of the outcomes that came from there?
Morgan:Mhmm. The community was really concerned about with cut through traffic. If you know, there's two major roads that that enclose Lord Roberts. And so folks, yeah, are con... Concerned with cut through traffic, concerned with speeding, as are many communities.
Morgan:And they were also concerned with some parking issues, concerned with travel to school. So what happened was we put in some greenway, neighborhood greenways, so that cyclists, pedestrians could travel on traffic calmed streets. And then we also had some parking studies, introduced some time limited parking and some new loading and drop off for the school in the area.
Tamara:Natalie, what about you? Is there a project that sticks out in your mind where, you know, the engagement did change the direction?
Natalie:Yeah, the direction changes is such an important thing to discuss. Maybe for some added understanding and context. There was an era when we first started that project teams would look at their busy schedules and timelines and kind of question engagement. It requires resources. It requires pauses at important milestones.
Natalie:But the gain from that is that you have this opportunity to unearth no gos in projects before you start building them. Actually, pretty good example would be Omen Bridge, with a design process that was felt by the community to be moving too fast, too big, too disconnected, and people before our time showed up and said, this just really doesn't work for us. Fast forward to to recent years, this project is is still being worked through, but, we slowed down. We started with values. We started with community understanding of what they love and care about in the park, and came forward with a design and engagement process that folks were saying, I think this is a lot closer, which is really an exciting thing to see.
Tamara:And that's the bridge needed replacement in the park?
Natalie:Yeah, that is deteriorating. It is old and ready for replacement.
Tamara:Okay, a decade of listening to residents across the city. You must have a lot of insight into Winnipeggers, what makes us tick, what motivates us, what are some of those hot button topics? What have you learned about Winnipeggers?
Morgan:The things we hear most often are, know, people don't Winnipeggers don't like change. They care a lot about parking and potholes, of course, and and that can be true. But I think when I dig deeper into that and think back through all this time of listening, what I've really learned is winnemakers care deeply about the everyday things that affect their lives and their neighborhoods. And it really gives me a lot of hope. I've seen people with completely opposing views sit down together, listen to one another, and sometimes they leave with different perspective or they just have a better understanding of a different perspective.
Morgan:I've seen neighbors who strongly disagree still show up and still listen and keep talking. And I've seen people publicly acknowledge they were wrong about a project once they saw the results. Yeah. And that willingness to engage honestly rather than simply defend a position, I think it's special and it's one of the things I admire about Winnipeggers.
Tamara:Earlier we, you know, covered some of the worst of the worst comments you've received. Let's end with some of those great ones that have stuck with you all of these years.
Morgan:Okay. This is my favorite thing to pull. I'll go back to Lord Roberts and close to my heart. So I'll read I'll read two of the comments that we got that were kind of near the end of the project we were asking for reflection. Thank you for taking the time for community input.
Morgan:My concerns have been long standing and I wasn't really sure that I could have... That I could affect change on my own. I appreciate the opportunity to have a say. And another, it was interesting to hear the different issues that affect different pockets of our neighborhood. As a proud Winnipegger, it was very humbling to be part of improving our city as citizens rarely get the opportunity to have such a direct impact.
Morgan:It was also interesting to get a sense of how these issues and decisions are handled by the city. I am grateful to be part of this process. Like, really?
Natalie:I know when I'm coding sometimes I assign the code quote. So I went back into our survey system, and okay, which ones do I want to pull up? And this one came up. It says, This is the first time in a long time I feel like the community who will be most affected by this change was actually heard, and attention to what is important about the space was heated. I feel very hopeful, which is very nice.
Natalie:So Morgan, we have been doing long term engagement on this last question, and ask everyone, thought you'd appreciate it. And we want to know, you've already hit so many things, but one last thing, something that you want everyone to know about Winnipeg. It it can be work related, but
Morgan:it doesn't have to be. Okay. Well, didn't grow up in Winnipeg. So I had a lot of of my own ideas coming in. People talk about Winnipeg a lot.
Morgan:And there's a lot of self deprecation here. But since I've been here, I've been so amazed at how deeply people care about Winnipeg. They don't just live here, invested in the city and the communities they live in. It's like we're here, we're gonna make it as, you know, as good as it can be. And that's probably why people describe it as like a big city with a small town feel.
Morgan:There's all these amazing arts, opportunities, connections, but it's also a place where an individual put loads of energy into getting something changed on their street. People really care. Thank you.
Tamara:And thank you for the work both of you are doing at connecting residents with the city. All right, Natalie, it was so much fun to also, I guess, interview you a little bit there.
Natalie:Yeah, that felt weird. But, no, it's great. And coming up next month, we have a sister episode. I just laugh that we're doing a two parter in democracy and decision making.
Tamara:It makes sense though because we are, you know, fairly recently out of an election and there were a lot of election campaign promises that were made. We're gonna talk to the guy who is tracking them all and then also helps council decide what the priorities are for the next four years.
Natalie:And if you have any questions about the actual document, it's the Strategic Priorities Action Plan, how it's made, send us an email. We'd love to hear from you. You can email city podcastwinnepeg. Ca. Thanks for listening.
Natalie:Have a good month.
