Creating Municipal Partnerships for Vibrant Communities

As in many places across the country, British Columbia’s municipalities are facing challenges, including managing the decline of the natural resource sector, developing sustainable solutions to homelessness, addressing the impacts of climate change, and recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, many municipalities are overextended, and the tools needed to implement innovative solutions require capital and resources they might not have at their immediate disposal. That’s where Mitacs comes in.

CONNECTING MUNICIPALITIES WITH INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS

Mitacs, a national non-profit with a commitment to Canadian innovation, connects municipalities with the talent, funding and expertise they need to address urgent and important issues. Through Mitacs’s innovation internship programs, municipalities of all sizes are matched with post-secondary researchers with specialized skills to help them drive innovation and build sustainable futures. Mitacs interns – ranging from college students to postdoctoral fellows – can help develop solutions on a broad range of issues that affect municipalities such as infrastructure renewal, including roads and waterways, sector specific development planning, supply chains, pandemic recovery, and much more.

Since expanding eligibility to include municipal governments in the 2020-21 fiscal year, Mitacs has supported projects from over 50 municipalities across Canada, including the cities of Kamloops, West Kelowna and Vancouver. Having partnered with post-secondary institutions nationwide and with a clear understanding of the challenges municipalities face, Mitacs provides the right expertise to meet the unique needs and priorities of each municipality as they look for innovative solutions to pressing problems.

INNOVATION PARTNERSHIPS IN ACTION Investigating Innovative Solutions for Sustainable Transit

The City of West Kelowna, like with many smaller municipalities, has experienced challenges in offering affordable, accessible and sustainable public transportation to its residents. Quickly becoming one of the fastest growing municipalities in Canada, West Kelowna was lacking key resources that would allow the municipality to gain a better understanding of the travel behaviours of its residents as well as make informed decisions on issues related to transit. With an increasing population of over 32,000 residents, West Kelowna was unprepared for the rate of growth and the effect it would have on the local transportation system.

By partnering with Mitacs, West Kelowna was able to benefit from the support of a personalized research team and develop research-based transportation strategies according to the goals and desires of its residents. Mitacs matched the City of West Kelowna with key researchers from the University of British Columbia to create a complete travel analysis of the municipality, including exploring the demand for alternative modes of transit, analyzing environmental impacts of current models, and developing a transportation plan that would ensure equitable access and reduced vehicular emissions.

A “Right to Food”

With an estimated 45 percent of all produced fruits and vegetables going to waste annually in Canada, about 25 percent of the residential garbage in the City of Vancouver was coming from uneaten or spoiled food. Not only was this creating an enormous financial impact on the municipality, it was also presenting important environmental concerns. With the amount of methane generated by decomposing food in landfills, Vancouver

was quickly becoming one of Canada’s major contributors to climate change.

Mitacs and Simon Fraser University partnered with the municipality to undertake the “Right to Food” project, which aimed to engage with diverse stakeholders, identify strategies, outcomes, and actors within the Vancouver city limits, and propose a plan that would contribute to the vision of a just, circular food system. The final report provided the City of Vancouver with research-based recommendations that they could use to implement a circular food economy, critically analyze best practices to address concerns of justice, equity and reconciliation in food system design, and develop policies and regulations that would allow for a gradual shift to zero waste and more circular patterns of production and consumption.

Cultural Mapping for a Healthy Community

Of the cities hit by the opioid crisis in Canada, smaller cities like Kamloops have been disproportionately affected, with hospitalization rates for opioid-related issues being 2.5 times higher than in the country’s largest cities. For these municipalities, the crisis can seem insurmountable. In conjunction with the COVID19 pandemic, the concern for vulnerable populations in Kamloops has risen, and their social inclusion and public participation in municipal planning is becoming increasingly important.

Through cultural mapping, this Mitacs-supported project between the City of Kamloops and Thompson Rivers University is looking to study the efficacy of participatory mapping protocols. By documenting and making visible the voices of those suffering from the opioid crisis, the research team is working with the municipality to generate enhanced community participation in municipal planning, integrate community-engaged research practices, and co-develop solutions and evidence-based decisions. The project also aims to examine how the process of cultural mapping and community-engaged research can be employed to benefit the city’s new Cultural Strategic Plan.

LET MITACS HELP YOU GROW AND THRIVE

The benefits of Mitacs’s innovation programs are clear: Mitacs connects municipalities with the skills and specialized knowledge they need to gather data, advance policies, execute projects, and boost productivity and growth while acknowledging the unique situation of each community. By collaborating with Mitacs, municipalities can access much needed funding and talent to develop cost-saving and innovative solutions to the challenges they face with applications that can extend to other jurisdictions.

With its commitment to fostering Canadian innovation, Mitacs provides 55% financial support for municipal research projects. Projects can be multi-disciplinary, involve numerous researchers, be scaled to support the needs of each municipality, and can receive anywhere from $6,000 to multi-million dollars in funding. By providing personalized support, Mitacs can help execute new ideas and strategies to create vibrant and healthy municipalities across British Columbia. No matter the size of your municipality, let Mitacs help you develop the best public policies to allow your community to grow and thrive.

Mitacs is supported in British Columbia by both the Government of Canada and the Government of British Columbia. If you would like more information on how your community can access Mitacs support, please “Send us your Innovation Challenge” by visiting discover.mitacs.ca/municipality-support/.

KATHARINE O’BRIEN, Communications Specialist, Mitacs