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Appendix A: Consultation Process

Western Economic Diversification Canada tried to ensure a widely accepted circle of influence when consulting on the Official Languages Action Plan for the Implementation of Section 41, 2004-2008. The respondents were from various sources, internal WD officers, partners, and external stakeholders. During phase I of determining a context and content relevance in the plan, the Official Languages Section 41 team were asked the following questions:

  1. What do you see regionally, interdepartmentally, and nationally for Section 41 over the next 4 years?
  2. How do you see the implementation of S. 41:
    1. For WD?
    2. For our partners?
    3. For the Francophone communities?
  3. What do you see as Goals, objectives, and targets?
  4. How do the horizontal priorities such as the Action Plan for Official Languages integrate into WD's goals and objectives?
  5. How do we envision client service (in the Section 41 project, partnership and consultation aspects)?
  6. How do we want to communicate this?
  7. How do we bring further awareness of OLA Section 41 to the Department and involve them in our implementation?
  8. How do senior management and HR fit into our plan?

With these questions in mind, the regional coordinators undertook consultations with regional OLMC, stakeholders, and other federal and provincial partners. The coordinators use similar context questions listed above to set the tone in each of the consultations. The participants outlined priorities and needs of their regions, along with obstacles and concerns that kept them from achieving their community goals. Many of the priorities outlined in the regional contexts (pages 7 to 17) are a direct result of the consultations held in each province.

Following these exercises, WD Section 41 coordinators met twice to lay the groundwork for the logic model, key activities, outputs, and performance measures. The first meeting was to solidify where we saw our partnerships and how we envisaged the implementation of Section 41 with the OLMC unfolding over the next four years. This initial meeting was also an opportunity to hear preliminary observations from the consultant in evaluating the Section 41 Action Plan 2000-2004. The information presented was instrumental in defining the four key activities and the foundation for the logic model for Action Plan

2004-2008. The second meeting established clear direction for objectives, outputs, performance measures and targets relating to the logic model developed previously.

A Draft of the Action Plan was circulated to WD's Executive cadre to ensure commitment of staff and resources and to ensure consistency with departmental strategies. The draft document was then shared with the entire WD staff across all regions, the FEDO partners and regional stakeholders external to the department. Comments and feedback have been considered and incorporated into the final Action Plan where possible.

Western Economic Diversification Canada would like to thank all those who took the time to read and respond to the Official Languages Action Plan for the Implementation of Section 41, 2004-2008 consultations.


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