Executive Summary

Municipal governments across Canada have invested in digital engagement platforms to connect with residents and improve decision-making. While these platforms offer valuable tools, they are not a substitute for what truly drives inclusive, actionable engagement: people.

This white paper covers the advanced engagement model: Community Panels - diverse, demographically representative and/or reflective panels of residents that provide local governments with a consistent, defensible, and equitable source of community insight. It explains why municipalities should build community panels as a foundational engagement asset and how they complement, rather than compete with, digital platforms.

Introduction: The Engagement Challenge

In a time of increased scrutiny, misinformation, and demands for transparency, municipal leaders are being asked to do more with less, including listening better. But are we hearing from everyone?

Traditional consultation methods and digital platforms often attract the most vocal, most available, or most digitally savvy residents, leaving many voices out of critical conversations.
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Why Community Panels Matter

1. Equity & Representation

Panels are intentionally designed to reflect your population, ensuring that residents of all ages, backgrounds, income levels, and housing types are heard. Panels do protect against special interest groups skewing consultation results.

2. Trust & Transparency

Ongoing engagement through panels builds relationships over time. It shows residents you’re listening consistently, not just when required.

3. Data That Stands Up to Scrutiny

With statistically valid sample sizes and weighting methods, panel-based data can withstand council, staff, and media review. It’s defensible and evidence-based.

4. Strategic Readiness

Have a pre-recruited, engaged audience ready to consult on:

• Budget trade-offs
• Service satisfaction
• Strategic plans
• Local priorities
• Emerging issues
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5. Better Use of Platforms

A panel gives you the people. The platform gives you the place. Together, they deliver true two-way engagement.
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What a Representative and/or Reflective Community Panel Looks Like

• 500–5,000+ residents
• Stratified by census data (age, gender, income, language, etc.)
• Quarterly or monthly engagement
• Fully segmented (e.g., renters vs. owners, youth, newcomers)
• Fully accessible
• Opt-in, with consent and data protection measures
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Case Examples

City of Surrey, BC

Early in 2013, the City of Surrey launched its community panel, CitySpeaks. It was the first municipal-based community panel in North America. With the assistance of The W Group, it integrated the CitySpeaks community panel into all community-focused strategic planning to provide actionable data that both staff and council trusted to shape service improvements.

The W Group has provided ongoing survey research design, deployment and reporting support since CitySpeaks' creation, including the ongoing management of the now 7,500 resident member community panel.

Over the past nearly 13 years, CitySpeaks has enabled the City to conduct thousands of surveys consisting of hundreds of thousands of resident voices.

CitySpeaks Community Panel is referred to as a Reflective Community Panel, given that it recruits its panelist members across hundreds of various community channels. Unlike residents registered through an engagement platform, this broad cross-section engagement of the community ensures that the Community Panel better reflects all community members, not just those who have been recruited through a project page, a very narrow slice of the community at best.

City of Delta, BC

The W Group has partnered with the City of Delta to create and manage the Delta Insights Panel, a probability-based community panel designed for statistically valid public-opinion research. Using probability sampling methods for recruitment ensures that every household in Delta has a known, non-zero chance of being invited.

Once panel-based survey responses are collected, the data are weighted to match Delta’s population profile (age, gender, and other key demographics), so the survey findings are statistically representative of the City’s residents. This gives City staff and elected officials high confidence that engagement results accurately reflect the community as a whole.

The panel’s membership profile captures 20-plus demographic variables to monitor participation across all major community groups. When underrepresented voices or rightsholder groups are identified, the City can adjust recruitment or augment outreach to ensure that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) objectives are met.

By combining rigorous sampling, weighting, and demographic monitoring, this approach delivers the highest standard of municipal survey research, providing inclusive, reliable insights for evidence-based decision-making.

Conclusion: Reframing Engagement as a Trust-Building Strategy

The challenges are real, but the opportunity is greater. Municipal engagement can and should be more than a checkbox. It can be a core strategy to build public trust, make better decisions, and strengthen democracy.

The cost of inaction is clear: disengaged residents, frustrated staff, and vulnerable decisions. But municipalities willing to innovate and invest in better engagement have the chance to lead, and leave their communities stronger.

The W Group Community Panel Advantage

The W Group is Canada’s most trusted municipal survey research firm. Our Representative and/or Reflective Community Panels are:

• Made-in-Canada (with full FIPPA/PIPEDA compliance)
• Multilingual and culturally inclusive
• Built, managed, and maintained by professionals
• Designed for long-term use across departments

We work with your teams to align community panel input with real policy cycles and service decisions, transforming your engagement into a governance asset.
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Trust Built In.