Ask Us First.
Before City Hall changes the city, City Hall must ask the people who live with the consequences.
My father was a historian. He taught me a question that never left me:
“Whose voices are missing from the record?”
That question is not abstract to me. In 2012, my family was devastated during the Burnaby Hospital C. difficile crisis. Public reporting and lived experience raised painful questions about infection control, cleaning standards, institutional accountability, and the human cost of decisions made far away from ordinary families.
When institutions fail, they do not fail only on paper. They fail on people. They fail in grief. They fail in the widening distance between what the system says and what the human being suffers.
That is why Ask Us First is not a slogan. It is a democratic discipline.
The Problem: Decisions Before Consultation
Too often, residents are invited into the process only after the real decision has already been shaped. The public hearing becomes theatre. The technical report becomes a wall. The language becomes so dense that ordinary people are filtered out before they even begin.
That is the Black Box model of civic government: the public pays the input, receives the output, but cannot see how the machinery works inside. Ask Us First means replacing that model with basic democratic respect.
Before major zoning changes, major budget shifts, major service cuts, or major neighbourhood impacts, the public should be able to understand:
- What is being proposed.
- Who benefits.
- Who pays.
- What assumptions are being used.
- What alternatives were considered.
- Which voices are missing from the record.
The Missing Voices Test
Every major civic decision should pass one simple test:
If the people most affected cannot understand the decision before it is made, the process is not transparent enough.
This is especially important for renters, seniors, working families, small businesses, young people, immigrants, and residents who do not live their civic lives in technical English. A city cannot claim consent when the process itself filters people out.
Transparency Before the Decision
TheOpenGov approach demands transparency before irreversible action. The public should see the core civic ledger before major zoning and housing decisions are locked in.
1. Land-Value Lift and Public Benefit
When land value increases because of rezoning or public policy, residents deserve to know where that value goes.
- • Who benefits from the uplift?
- • What public benefit is returned?
- • What affordability is actually delivered?
- • What infrastructure is required?
- • What promises are enforceable?
2. Wages vs. Shelter Costs
Housing policy must be tested against local incomes, not only speculative market values. If teachers, nurses, service workers, artists, small business employees, young families, and seniors cannot remain in the city, then the city is not solving a housing crisis. It is managing displacement.
3. Infrastructure Before Impact
Density is not the enemy. Opaque density is the problem. Growth must be tied to infrastructure, schools, transit, parks, childcare, sewers, community services, and local livability. A city cannot simply add population and pretend the supporting systems will magically appear.
TheOpenGov Workflow
TheOpenGov uses ethical AI as a civic translation engine, not as a replacement for human judgment.
Ingest
AI helps read dense municipal documents, budgets, rezoning reports, staff presentations, and council records.
Translate
The material is converted into plain English, Mandarin, and Cantonese so more residents can participate meaningfully.
Distribute
Short, useful summaries are delivered to neighbourhoods before decisions are made, not after the fact.
Audit
Voting records, budget decisions, public promises, timelines, and outcomes are tracked in a clear civic ledger.
The Trilingual Glass Box
City Hall often uses technical language as an artificial filter. If you are busy, elderly, new to Canada, running a small business, raising children, working two jobs, or living outside the professional planning class, the process can feel impossible to enter.
TheOpenGov changes that. AI should not become another Black Box. It should become the translator that helps people see inside the machinery. Used ethically, it can make civic information clearer, faster, more accessible, and more accountable.
Deeds Not Words
Public trust cannot be rebuilt through photo-ops. It must be rebuilt through records. If a politician says one thing in ethnic media, another thing in council, and votes a third way on the public record, residents should not need a research team to see the gap.
TheOpenGov will track: What was promised. What was voted on. What was delivered. What was delayed. What was quietly abandoned. Who was consulted before the decision.
I am not running to decorate the machinery. I am running to alter it, explain it, and make it answerable to the people who live here, work here, pay for it, and endure its consequences.
This city does not belong to an opaque process. It belongs to the people.
Ask Us First. Open the record. Restore the voice.
Peter Tu [杜宗驥] • TEAM 2026
Authorized by the Financial Agent for Peter Tu and TEAM [溫哥華選民行動運動]
