Policy Development: How to Foster Public Engagement
"Engagement" is really an overarching term that means to have contact with stakeholders for the purposes of imparting and/or soliciting information, and may involve working partnerships and shared responsibility. Engagement should take place at all stages of the policy development cycle to ensure your policy or program effectively meets the needs of your target clientele. The nature and scale of an engagement will depend upon why you want to consult. Know your key players before consulting with them to understand their varying sensitivities, levels of interest, and expectations about involvement in the policy development process.
Indigenous considerations
There is a significant difference between consultations with Canadians and consultations with Indigenous communities. For Indigenous peoples, consultation is a term used when the issues to be discussed may have an impact on Indigenous rights or treaty rights, for example, or could infringe upon Indigenous government jurisdiction.
What's your engagement strategy?
Indigenous considerations
| Why do you want your stakeholders to be involved? |
How do you want your stakeholders to be involved? |
| Do you wish to inform them? |
If you want to inform them, you should use fact sheets, websites or open houses. |
| Do you wish to consult them? |
If you want to consult them, you could use public comment, focus groups, surveys or public meetings. |
| Do you want to use their feedback? |
If you want to use their feedback, you could use workshops or deliberative pooling. |
| Do you want to engage all stakeholders in developing the policy? |
If you want to engage them, you could use citizen advisory committees, consensus-building or participatory decision-making. |
| Do you want to use their feedback? |
If you want to engage the stakeholder community in developing the policy, you could use citizen juries, ballots or delegated decisions. |
