St. Albert Naming Policy approved by Council

In June 2022, ProACTIVE Planning teamed up with Eleven Eleven Consulting to rewrite the City of St. Albert’s Municipal Naming Policy – adopted by Council this week, almost exactly a year later.

The request from the City was for ProACTIVE to produce a Naming Policy unlike any other in Canada – a policy that is not just informed by best practices across the country, but also shaped by feedback from residents, stakeholders, community interest groups, and Indigenous communities. This required a city-wide engagement strategy, replete with a wide range of responsive tactics to effectively share information about the naming policy, and to collect targeted and useable data that could be transformed into new criteria and processes for the policy itself.
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“This project was unlike any other in our professional careers – we had to be flexible and nimble at every turn to accommodate the evolving demands of the project and of the public. We were up against many residents in the City who did not want to see any change in the way the City named municipal assets, we contended with a sub-group of residents who verbally attacked our project team members and members of their own community, and we dealt with continuous safety and security concerns for all engagement events. It was immensely challenging – but we had a job to do. Our job was to uplift and amplify the voices of residents who wanted to see this project go forward, we needed to ensure that space was held for Indigenous and equity-deserving residents to share their voices and speak their truths, and we needed to follow through on our commitment to Council. At the end of the day, we gave Council exactly what they asked for – a modern and progressive Naming Policy that was reflective of the voices of the City’s diverse residents. Looking at this Policy today, ProACTIVE Planning and Eleven Eleven Consulting are so proud of this Policy and everything it will accomplish for St. Albert, for decades to come. Every major municipality in Canada can look at their own Naming Policies now and have a strong precedent for how to transform them to be equitable, inclusive, and consistent with the political and social landscape of Canada today.”

St. Albert Gazette June Article