City must publish Indigenous consultation plans for Rossdale redevelopment, council decides

Edmonton city council has voted to require administration to publish annual reports detailing how it communicates its Indigenous consultation work, addressing public concerns about the city's efforts to engage First Nations stakeholders in plans to redevelop residential lots in Rossdale Flats and other River Valley neighbourhoods.

Ward O-Day'min Coun. Anne Stevenson motioned Wednesday for the transparency measure after some residents questioned whether extensive consultation was actually taking place. "There's potential for human remains, that has to be treated with the utmost focus and delicacy," Stevenson said. "The city has procedures in place that I think are rigorous, but they're not available publicly right now and there's no reason why they can't be from what I understand."

The city administers consultation with 32 First Nation and Indigenous stakeholders. Though municipalities have no legal duty to consult under Section 35 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms — which binds only federal and provincial governments — Edmonton has committed to consultation as official policy aligned with Truth and Reconciliation principles.

The North Saskatchewan River has held hundreds of historically significant sites for Indigenous peoples over thousands of years, ranging from religious and cultural sites to burial grounds. Stevenson noted, however, that the Rossdale areas targeted for development were already zoned residential, with previous houses on land now appearing as open streets. "It wasn't about taking river valley land and turning it into a residential neighbourhood, it was taking an existing residential neighbourhood and enhancing it to scale to its Downtown location," she said.