The City of Brampton’ s blue ribbon panel is tasked with establishing a university in Brampton. Back row, left to right: S. Rana, G. Bajwa, N. Mohammed, D. Wright, R. Dhaliwal, N. Davis, J. Massey-Singh, G. Dhillon, M. Ball, R. Khatkar Front row, left to right: T. Miller, M. Medeiros, W. Davis, Mayor L. Jeffrey, G. Miles, M. Singh Saini
municipality to make sure that we are a destination of choice for these talented people,” says Chait.
“ There are no drawbacks; there are challenges,” he says.“ These are tailoring our municipal services so they are meaningful and helpful to our new population so that we can continue to provide a high quality of life and continued growth and prosperity for our whole population.”
Markham has a diversity action plan, Everyone Welcome, that highlights the connections between Markham’ s rural roots, its suburban history and its present as a multicultural metropolis in its own right. The plan focuses on four groups: youth, seniors, newcomers and visible minorities, and persons with disabilities.“ It provides a blueprint for how to engage with a diverse population,” says Chait.
Everyone Welcome identifies areas to be addressed. For newcomers, these are language barriers, cultural norms, communications, navigation of the system and affordable housing. For visible minorities who may be well integrated multi-generation residents, the priorities are policies and procedures to identify and combat racism and discrimination, and the employment cycle.
“ It addresses the importance of tailoring services at all levels,” says Chait. Sometimes, this requires doing things in new ways. For example, Markham holds its public meetings
26 Q1 2017 www. amcto. com in non-traditional spaces, and was a leader in electronic voting.
Sometimes, it means adapting or adding on to existing services. In partnership with other levels of government, Markham has several reception centres that act as onestop shops for language, employment and other settlement services. In Markham’ s community centres, Chait says,“ we respect the cultural or religious requirements of various groups; for instance, allowing for a level of screening or modesty for women who might not access sports programs if they had to do it in a mixed-gender setting.”
The municipality has nurtured festivals and other programming that engages the full spectrum of residents. Its public library system offers an increasingly multilingual collection, along with seminars and workshops on topics like housing opportunities and career training.
“ That may seem to some people like a cost; we see it as an investment,” says Chait.“ Addressing the new diversity is to our advantage as a municipality that needs to grow its economic base and continued tax base.”
Brampton“ We know that in order for us to prosper, we need to grow our population. We’ re not going to grow naturally without immigration,” says City of Brampton CAO Harry Schlange.“ Our objective is
to get to a point where serving the distinct needs of our community is part of our municipality’ s DNA. We have sent a strong signal to all of our leaders that municipal employees need to understand our community in order to provide the best services possible. We recognize in Brampton this requires unique approaches and solutions.”
The 2011 census gives Brampton’ s total population as 523,911, with a relatively young median age of 34.7 and 225,065 residents who report a mother tongue other than English or French.
“ Council has approved that we communicate in multiple languages,” says Erin O’ Hoski, Brampton’ s director of strategic communication. Thus, municipal publications are available in Punjabi, Urdu, Portuguese and Gujarati, along with English and French.
“ I have what most mayors would kill for: very young, very diverse, very well educated— and it’ s only going to grow,” says Brampton Mayor Linda Jeffrey.“ It’ s a huge advantage. The challenge is to change the way the City does its business.”
Brampton has reaped significant benefits from that“ huge advantage.” Brampton placed first among mid-sized cities for foreign direct investment in the 2015 / 2016 American Cities of the Future report. In the 2013 / 14 FDI Intelligence rankings, Brampton was second in the business-friendly city