The Health Canada Policy Toolkit for Public Involvement in Decision Making

Information Toolkit
Guidelines

Who Should Be Involved?

Traditionally, the department determined who participated in a public involvement process. This approach continues to be appropriate in a range of circumstances. Increasingly, however, the department will need to use techniques that ensure greater representativeness and inclusion of the public. This may involve employing the random selection of individuals or groups (usually by an arms-length third party) to achieve a greater measure of representation of Canadian society. When the process is communitydriven, representation is usually determined externally to government and sometimes in partnership with government. The department continues to be accountable for determining how inclusive or how representative a particular public involvement initiative will be. In the future, these departmental decisions will more frequently be made in collaboration with other groups.

Health Canada's stakeholders and various other publics who want to interact with the department are increasingly demanding improved coordination of departmental public involvement activities in order to maximize internal and external resources, and minimize" consultation fatigue" felt by those being consulted. With numerous departments and all levels of government now assigning a priority to citizen engagement in their policy and program planning processes, coordination at all levels is increasingly important.

Whether the department manages the process directly or commissions a third party to do so, key questions to ask to ensure appropriate representativeness and coordination are:

• Who will be affected by the issue?
• Who may be potentially affected in the future?
• Who can contribute to a solution that will meet the needs of the widest range of stakeholders and public audiences?
• Who will insist on being involved and cannot be left out?
• Should other federal agencies or other jurisdictions be involved?
• Should politicians be involved?
• Which segments of the public should be involved?
• Individuals?
• Consumers?
• Environmental, health, criminal justice or consumer organizations?
• Specific demographic groups, such as youth or older adults?
• Marginalized, hard-to-reach populations?
• Industry associations and individual industries?
• Scientific, professional, educational, voluntary associations?
• Official-language minority communities?
• Aboriginal communities?
• Local communities?

As part of the overall commitment in the Social Union Framework Agreement to working in partnership, there are a number of provincial/territorial (P/T) considerations that Health Canada should bear in mind when planning future public involvement activities, including:

• whether the planned activity relates to federal policies/programs alone, or whether it relates also to P/T policies/programs, or is of interest to P/T governments
• whether it would make sense to advise P/T governments in advance of planned "public involvement" activities, possibly with a view to exploring "partnering" opportunities with another government
• whether there are regional or P/T sensitivities to take into account in the design, timing and implementation of the planned activity.

At the preparations phase for either consultation or engagement, it is important to identify the needs, issues and concerns of particular individuals or groups. Special care should be given to identifying and meeting the needs of populations that may be difficult to reach (marginalized) but can be critical to informing both the process and outcome. This knowledge forms a basis for determining who should be involved, communication processes and messages, and which mechanisms are likely to facilitate the effective participation of groups and individuals.

It is important to think very specifically about the different publics involved in an issue and how and when to best involve them. This means focussing on the nature of different audiences and what different audiences can and want to contribute. Experience shows that both sceptics and vested interests should be included. It is prudent to:

• Be mindful of the potentially disruptive role of sceptics or cynics. Avoid giving vested interests undue advantage.
• Consider "community leaders" as representatives of the public, provided there is a high degree of confidence that they are actually representative of their particular communities and are connecting back to them, while playing their role in the public involvement activity.