Canada
Public engagement across Canada must take into account a country of great diversity, with a relatively small number of people living across a very large area. Some of those citizens live in very remote locations, which presents unique challenges to engagement. However, it is far from the only challenge to citizen engagement in Canada; particularly for those wishing to engage across provincial borders.
Challenges of cross provincial engagement
Engaging citizens within any single province can be challenging, involving hours of planning and a great deal of local knowledge. However, this challenge pales in comparison to engaging citizens across multiple provinces. This is particularly true in Canada. As the second largest country in the world, public engagement in Canada must cover a vast terrain despite a relatively small population size. Across the country, there are many diverse communities with differing needs living in ten distinct provincial systems.
Policy decisions made by Canada’s central government officials often span provincial borders. Yet those affected by the same government decisions may be living in very different regional contexts.
Some of these differences are cultural. For example, public engagement in Canada must accommodate communities that speak English, French or First Nations languages. Proximity to urban centres is also highly relevant. Those living in northern, more remote areas may have different priorities to those living in urban areas. Their communities are often comparatively isolated, and their needs may be less visible to decision-makers without targeted outreach.
Other important differences are legislative. Each province has its own provincial government, with province specific laws, policies and service delivery models. The statutory requirement to engage citizens differs between provinces significantly. This can lead to an uneven approach to citizen engagement, and an approach that works smoothly in one jurisdiction may not meet expectations or legal obligations in another.
Other potential challenges to consider include:
- Lack of digital access or literacy in some areas.
- Difficulties comparing evidence like-for-like across provinces using different systems.
- Resources used when engaging smaller, northern communities in national consultations.
All of these challenges probably require a specific mitigation plan by facilitators. However, there is a common thread to all of them that should play a significant role in how each issue is approached: They all revolve around geography.
Why geography matters in effective public engagement
Geography matters everywhere. When creating a public engagement plan, it is important to take into account the idiosyncrasies geography creates. Differing climates, time zones, language barriers and population densities can all have a significant impact in how one might approach engaging citizens in a democratic process.
Canada is the perfect example of this. With six different time zones covering an area of nearly 10 million square kilometres, there is arguably nowhere that it is more important to consider the effect geography may have on engagement.
Visualising cross-province issues
Visualising a plan or policy that affects a neighbourhood is usually easy. Participants will be familiar with the area – will probably know where everything is – and it’s small enough to be easily comprehended. Visualising a plan for a whole city is harder, and may require the use of tools to ensure participants have fully understood.
Visualising a plan, project or policy that spans multiple provinces would be almost impossible without the use of geospatial technology. When conducting public engagement activities, it is essential to ensure the public not only have access to information, but also that they can comprehend it. Differences within and between provinces often become much easier to understand when displayed geographically, improving public participation.
By allowing participants to fully understand a given proposal, the quality of responses to any consultation or engagement activity will be vastly improved.
Policies tied to land and infrastructure
Certain policies and infrastructural projects are more likely to cross provincial borders than others. Just a few examples of common cross provincial projects include:
- Management of natural resources, particularly non-renewables like oil and gas.
- Broadband and internet provision.
- Emergency planning, particularly for large scale disasters.
- Environmental decisions. Although much of this devolved, there is significant environmental oversight from Parliament.
- Wildlife protection and conservation.
- Transport, particularly railways.
When a policy is tied to national or cross provincial planning, it is particularly important that facilitators take into account the effect of geography. For example, new transport links between provinces will be particularly important to remote areas where reaching the largest nearby city may involve crossing provincial borders. Wildlife rarely respects human borders, so managing wildlife requires a cross province strategy.
Making consultations tangible with interactive mapping
For decision-makers, ensuring the public have access to interactive mapping during consultations is an excellent way to ensure high quality, well-informed responses. These responses can then be used to inform policy and lead to better decision-making.
However, there is another important beneficiary when using geospatial tools in consultations; the public. They help citizens to better understand the plan, policies, and proposals they are being asked to consult on.
Traditional consultation methods have typically involved presenting participants with a great deal of paperwork. They would then have a few in-person meetings or drop-ins where they may be able to access help in understanding what was often complex, technical information.
As one may imagine, the amount of people who had the time and prior knowledge to do this were relatively low. Often, the resources used to conduct these consultations were not justified by the few participants that did take part. This is particularly true given that the participants were often not reflective of the population as a whole, with more privileged demographics being significantly over-represented.
Digital consultation tools have done a great deal to change this in recent years. However, the increasing prevalence of geospatial tools have gone one step further, allowing the general public to easily see how policies relate to spaces they can see and understand.
Mapping tools can also help to create a more inclusive and accessible consultation process to improve public involvement. Those who might struggle with long-form submissions can instead pinpoint locations, draw boundaries or select local features. The result is a consultation process that feels more grounded in real places and produces data that is easier to analyse and use to create public policy.
Digital infrastructure for cross province engagement
Engaging citizens from across Canada without digital infrastructure would be almost impossible. As discussed at length in this article, its citizens are too dispersed over too large an area to make in-person engagement feasible. Without adequate digital infrastructure, engagement would likely be exclusively an urban luxury or only available in the most populated provinces.
In less populated provinces, robust digital infrastructure can be the deciding factor in whether citizens have a say in the policies and plans that affect them most. For example, when the provincial government of Newfoundland and Labrador needed to consult on a Government Renewal Initiative, they used Dialogue. This engagement platform helped them to consult with citizens from a broad range of backgrounds on the complex issue of their fiscal situation.
“All Newfoundlanders and Labradorians are being asked to participate in the Government Renewal Initiative and help define the actions the Provincial Government will take. All of us can contribute ideas, suggestions and solutions to get the province back on track and working towards fiscal sustainability.” – Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada
For cross province engagement, digital infrastructure is even more crucial. By using the same digital platform to run consultations across provinces, facilitators can ensure parity in how citizens from different parts of the country are being engaged on a specific issue. GovTech platforms like Citizen Space and Citizen Space Geospatial provide a consistent framework that help facilitators to produce comparable data.
Ensuring inclusivity across provinces
It isn’t enough to simply ensure that citizens from the full range of affected provinces take part in a given engagement activity. Instead, facilitators must ensure that all relevant demographics are represented within each province too. That means considering whether participants are a representative sample of:
- Gender.
- Ethnicity. In Canada, there have been many significant cases of indigenous people not being consulted on issues that greatly affect them.
- Language groups. A consultation is not inclusive in a Canadian context if it is aimed only at anglophones.
- People of differing physical and mental abilities.
- Different age groups, particularly young people.
- Those from disadvantaged economic backgrounds.
For a consultation or engagement activity to be considered both inclusive and accessible, it must seek to ensure all these groups are properly represented.
To ensure an activity is inclusive, it may be necessary to create targeted engagement strategies aimed at particular communities.
To ensure accessibility, it is important to make sure that:
- Consultation documents are in simple language, with translations into all relevant languages available.
- That any software used meets current accessibility standards. Most purpose-built citizen engagement platforms will have this as standard.
- Where possible, have live sessions (these can be online) in order to explore any complex information with an expert.
- Ensure that those who do not have access to the internet or who are not tech literature are able to access the activity. For example, by providing a print version where requested or running sessions at a local library.
It would be impossible for any activity to engage everyone, but by putting a plan in place to ensure accessibility and inclusivity standards are met, you can ensure that everyone has an equal opportunity to have their say.
Citizen Space is the go-to govtech platform for engaging with citizens, managing large scale government consultations and simplifying statutory processes. If you’d like to learn more about how our software can be used for cross provincial engagement activities, book a free demo today.
Sign up for the Delib newsletter here to get relevant updates posted to your email inbox