What is Engagement?

Engagement means having meaningful conversations between The City and Calgary residents, as well as other groups or communities. Engagement may include activities like community meetings, surveys and online feedback forms open to everyone. The City’s Engage Policy defines engagement as “Purposeful dialogue between The City, impacted or interested Calgarians and other communities or groups to gather information to influence decision-making.”

What is the Engagement Review initiative?

An independent firm, KPMG, is conducting a review of The City of Calgary’s engagement process as directed by Calgary City Council. As part of KPMGs review, we want to understand how The City is doing when they ask to hear from Calgarians before making decisions on a project or issue. Your feedback will help us understand what’s working and what could be better.

How will my feedback be used? To what extent will my feedback inform The City’s decisions?

The goal of these discussions is to hear about your experience with engagement. Your feedback is very important. The experiences you share will help KPMG prepare recommendations to The City on how to improve engagement with Calgarians.

How can I participate, and what should I share?

You can share your feedback through one of the opportunities below. Take our public survey, attend a community engagement discussion in your local area, or express your interest in participating in the Engagement Review Working Group.

Experiences you may reflect on or choose to share could include:

• A City project where you participated in engagement: what went well or could have gone better
• Your perspective on how the engagement process works
• Ways the City engages with you or your community, such as in a public place, through a public meeting, through a survey, etc.
• Ways that different groups have the opportunity to participate in engagement
• How information is shared back with you about a decision, or changes to a decision
• Any other experiences you have with the engagement process are welcome

Please see below for further details and access to the Public Survey, Community Engagement Session registration, and expression of interest details for the Engagement Review Working Group.

If you have any questions, please contact YYCengagement@kpmg.ca.

Working Group discussions have come to a close. This group brought together different perspectives to share advice and feedback with KPMG on the review and how The City can do a great job of hearing from Calgarians.

Working group members:

• Were interested in good engagement in Calgary;
• Participated in 4-5 one-hour working group discussions from July to September 2025.
• Shared ideas constructively and engaged actively.

No special credentials were required; KPMG welcomed varied experiences from all Calgarians.

If you have any questions about the Working Group, please contact YYCengagement@kpmg.ca.

The survey has now closed. The survey was open for input for approximately three months from June 2025 until the end of the day on September 22, 2025.

Thank you to everyone who responded. Your input will help The City improve the way it engages with you and other residents of Calgary.

If you have any questions about the survey, please contact YYCengagement@kpmg.ca.

After hearing from Calgarians and other interested parties, KPMG will review and analyze all the feedback together along with other information – such as policies and other documents. This will help to clearly identify the practices of engagement at The City – what’s working well and what could be improved. At that stage, there may be further engagement by the KPMG team to ask clarifying questions to interested parties.

KPMG will then develop and present a final report to Council in January, 2026. Once the report is presented to Council, The City will determine how to respond and take any further actions.