[spaustin]

Excluding Ben McCrae is easy, he has a financial stake in the project. Excluding people because of their political associations/views on the other hand is really problematic. Who do you exclude? Anyone in the heritage trust? What about members of the chamber of commerce? Are they eligible to serve? Who else shouldn't serve because of their politics? Ex-councilors? People with ties to political parties? People who worked on political campaigns? What about people involved in other non-profits like the Ecology Action Centre? Should all developers, architects and engineers be out? Should we have some kind of vetting committee to weed out the people whose minds are set to try and get the mythical person who is a "blank slate"? The point of our process is to try and involve the views of the entire community. We already get the "reasoned and objective" opinion from city staff. The point of bodies like the PAC is to involve other voices and provide a larger cross-section of views that reflect the community as a whole. You may not like their opinions, but excluding people based on politics is a really messy place to go and isn't what citizens advisory committee are about.