{"id":890802,"date":"2026-09-10T18:40:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T18:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/890802\/"},"modified":"2026-09-10T18:40:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T18:40:10","slug":"women-transforming-cities-is-holding-vancouver-politicians-accountable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/890802\/","title":{"rendered":"Women Transforming Cities is holding Vancouver politicians accountable"},"content":{"rendered":"

Get the best of Vancouver in your inbox, every Tuesday and Thursday.\u00a0Sign up for our free newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The policy asks made by Women Transforming Cities<\/a> didn\u2019t come out of thin air. And the organization will be looking for action on them.<\/p>\n

The Vancouver charity, which was founded in 2011 and puts its mission as aiming to shift social, economic, and political power to equity-deserving groups, has delivered a list of questions to city council and mayoral candidates for the last few municipal elections.<\/p>\n

In previous years, WTC put out what it called the Hot Pink Paper Campaign, which asked candidates to commit to a number of initiatives and then tracked how council members performed on those commitments.<\/p>\n

This year, it\u2019s carrying out the same general objective under a new name\u2014the Our City Hall Campaign<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been at this for the past 12 months,\u201d says Clara Prager, WTC\u2019s manager of civic engagement and advocacy, in an interview with the Straight.<\/p>\n

There are three phases to the work of compiling the commitments, she explains. The first is community engagement\u2014listening to residents and organizations about what they need to see from the next city council. Those conversations are then synthesized into clear policy asks, which are taken to candidates.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we go out to do a workshop in a neighbourhood house or at a senior centre, it\u2019s not just, \u2018Hey, tell us what\u2019s wrong with your city,\u2019 or \u2018What do you want to change?\u2019\u200a\u201d Prager says. \u201cIt\u2019s also, \u2018Here\u2019s some information on how you can get involved and how you can have your voice heard and make a difference in your city,\u2019 so that the communities we engage with are better equipped to actually move the needle.\u201d<\/p>\n

The work doesn\u2019t stop after the election, either. WTC tracks how those in government have delivered (or not delivered) on their promises.<\/p>\n

In 2022, all seven ABC council candidates and Mayor Ken Sim committed to WTC\u2019s asks across seven categories. The organization issued a halfway point check-in on how those commitments were going in 2024. It gave some lukewarm reviews, finding that ABC had made progress on three issues, maintained status quo on another three and had moved backward on one (climate).<\/p>\n

The 2026 Our City Hall Campaign has a new set of asks, announced earlier this week, that holds the current government\u2019s feet to the fire in some ways.<\/p>\n

The campaign was built through 2,420 conversations at community events, 643 survey responses, 30 workshops with 532 participants, and 86 engagements with community organizations, according to WTC. It has questions for council and mayoral candidates that cover six categories: housing access, public transportation, community spaces, food security, public washrooms, and gender safety.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did hear that a lot of people didn\u2019t feel like council\u2019s positions represented them,\u201d Prager says. \u201cBut I think on the flip side we also heard a lot of solutions. That was very exciting. There was a lot of hope at these engagement sessions in hearing people talk about specific challenges in their neighbourhoods and what\u2019s needed to fix them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of the questions in the campaign\u2014like, say, the one about gender safety, which asks, among other things, for a commitment to restoring the second sex worker safety planning role at the city that ABC members voted against in May\u2014likely won\u2019t get a response from incumbent councillors.<\/p>\n

WTC is also hosting a City Hall Forum on September 16, which will feature candidates from all the major parties. Well, except for ABC.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe invitation is still open for them to attend,\u201d Prager says. \u201cThe people who attend and listen to our forum are residents who are really impacted by council\u2019s decisions, and I think they deserve to have some face time and hear from their leaders about what their priorities are for the next four years if they\u2019re elected.\u201d<\/p>\n

Women Transforming Cities\u2019 City Hall Forum <\/a>runs September 16 at the Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Get the best of Vancouver in your inbox, every Tuesday and Thursday.\u00a0Sign up for our free newsletter. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":890803,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194298],"tags":[76,49,48,8497,569,16291,75,1048,1187,1554,2998,890,341,13117,3560,404,348,55],"class_list":["post-890802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vancouver","tag-arts","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-city","tag-culture","tag-dining","tag-entertainment","tag-events","tag-fashion","tag-film","tag-food","tag-lifestyle","tag-music","tag-nightlife","tag-restaurants","tag-shopping","tag-tv","tag-vancouver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=890802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/890803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=890802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=890802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=890802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}