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Progress through Process – Section 3

Responding to the Challenge

- Next Governments and stakeholders have responded to this collaborative engagement challenge in a number of ways, sometimes successfully, sometimes less so. We explored some of the central lessons from these experiences. We discussed both the principles and the practice of collaborative governance, drawing on examples ranging from municipalities that engage their citizens in setting out a shared vision for the future of the community, to partnerships involving government, industry, and civil society groups in collaborative management. We also invited four participants to share case studies of how collaboration and engagement have been used to advance public policy in Canada. This section sets out key considerations for success: choosing when to collaborate, learning to share authority, ensuring clarity in the process, finding the right participants, building legitimacy, involving citizens, and finally, acknowledging the inherent challenges.

Choosing when to collaborate

The experiences of collaborative governance for sustainable development in Canada suggest that such processes can lead to better policy outcomes than more traditional government-led approaches. However, collaboration and engagement are not always the most effective approach. Collaboration and engagement should be seen as one part—albeit an important part—of a broader governance framework for sustainable development. So when is collaboration a good idea for sustainable development issues? Three lessons, described below, emerged from our discussions. 1. When there is a practical question on which collaboration can produce actionable results Collaboration and engagement processes work best when there is a clear, practical focus for decisions and action. When collaboration focuses on clear outcomes, participants have a real stake in the issue and a sense of ownership of the solution. This helps ensure that they will identify and commit to real actions to implement the decisions made by the group. A practical and outcome-oriented focus helps participants understand why they are there and what they can hope to achieve collectively. It helps provide a clear logic for their participation. Furthermore, the participants in a collaborative venture must all be in a position to act on the resulting action plan—and must be seen to be in a position to do so. Unless the participants believe that each is engaging in good faith in the dialogue, and can implement the decisions made, it will be impossible to make real progress. This is challenging for all stakeholders: “What differentiates collaboration is that it involves taking a risk. All parties have to agree to buy into the group decision and then sell it back to their individual constituencies. This level of commitment to a good outcome separates collaborative engagement from other processes.” In other words, all participants must have real flexibility in determining options. Their hands must not be too closely tied by prior commitments or positions that are non-negotiable. “All parties to a meaningful process have to be flexible and sincere. There has to be political will and interest in actually making a decision.” 2. When participants can agree to work together to find a solution Second, collaboration requires that all participants come together with a constructive and committed attitude. Collaboration only works when participants can agree to engage in good faith and do so. Often, this kind of commitment to a collaborative process happens because there is an existing level of trust among the governments and stakeholders involved. But sometimes, collaboration can be effective when things seem to be at their worst. Perhaps this seems counter-intuitive, but when all sides feel a sense of urgency that something must be done, they often find the will to engage with those they have previously seen as adversaries. The key here is that everyone must feel the process is fair and respectful of their interests. In agreeing to work together to find a common solution, participants must commit to pursue their goals first and foremost through the collaborative process. Stakeholders in a collaborative dialogue should not agree to participate if at the same time they continue to lobby governments behind closed doors. Experience shows that if participants view the collaborative initiative as only one among many routes to achieving their goals, there is a risk they will be less committed, and the collaborative process is less likely to succeed. 3. When an issue requires long-term and ongoing collaboration Third, collaborative approaches can be particularly well suited to long-term issues, such as many sustainable development issues. This is partly because focusing on immediate, short-term decisions is likely to highlight the differences between different interests. Focusing on long-term issues highlights the principles and values on which participants are more likely to find common ground. Long-term issues are also most appropriate for practical reasons. Collaboration works best when it is ongoing and iterative, not a one-off process. Collaborative governance requires some level of trust between the government bodies, businesses, and civil society groups involved. Trust can take time to build, and long-term and ongoing collaboration enables the development of trust by increasing mutual understanding and building on a record of achievement. Furthermore, collaborative initiatives that address long-term issues enable evaluation, learning, and readjustment as time goes on. This is important: most sustainable development policy areas require continuous recalibration, not one-off decisions. As one participant put it, “we are now into a vibrant, dynamic, and living policy-making environment. Policies have to be nimble and responsive.” Long-term and ongoing collaborative processes enable learning from past mistakes and the incorporation of new information. Most sustainable development policies are based at least in part on research from the scientists who study the environment. Policy processes, like the science on which they draw, must continually learn, evolve, and adapt to new information.

Case Study 1. The Municipal Experience: Community engagement in Guelph

Karen Farbridge, Mayor of Guelph, presented the City’s experience with engaging the community in planning and urban development decisions. Urban growth, densification and sprawl can be contentious issues in many communities, and people understandably have strong feelings about how their local communities should grow and change. Air quality, local parks and biodiversity, congestion, waste and recycling, energy and clean water are all important local sustainable development issues with national and even global implications. Since 2002, the City of Guelph has engaged its citizens directly in decisions around planning and urban development. Some engagement processes have been run by the city, others have been designed, managed and led directly by citizens. Most recently, the city ran a public engagement process to inform Guelph’s Local Growth Management Strategy, which aimed to bring the city’s existing planning strategy into conformity with the Province of Ontario’s regional growth plans. The process ran through six stages, each engaging citizens in different ways: asking for their concerns, their design recommendations, and an exploration of the values and principles that should guide the city’s development decisions. The city ran surveys, interactive online modelling tools, in-person workshops and design charrettes, focus groups and other mechanisms. Lessons learned: The process successfully arrived at a clearly preferred and realistic growth plan that promised to incorporate projected growth while recognizing the values and concerns of citizens, demonstrating that a community can help governments reach a clear view on how a plan should develop. It helped that the engagement strategies were rewarding and even fun for those involved, enabling citizens to feel a sense of shared responsibility and vision for their community. But the process has not been without difficulties. In particular, while the plan was broadly endorsed and accepted by the 1500 or more direct citizen participants, implementation has generated some resistance, with some citizens rejecting urban intensification plans and asserting that they have not been consulted. The experience demonstrates that even well-managed and extensive community engagement efforts do not guarantee easy implementation.

Learning to share authority

Learning to share authority in decision making is central to effective collaborative engagement processes, because collaboration—unlike consultation—requires all participants to take responsibility and accountability for their decisions. In a traditional consultation, the decision regarding which solutions will be adopted and the responsibility for implementing them rests solely with the government. By contrast, a collaborative governance approach recognizes that many problems cannot be solved by government alone. Governments need a process that allows them to work together with others as partners in developing and implementing public policy solutions for sustainable development. In such a process the participants engage in a dialogue that moves through three stages: views, deliberation, and action. When they get to the action stage, rather than turning the task of implementing solutions back over to government, participants work together to allocate roles and responsibilities according to who is best positioned to take on which tasks. Once this is done, they are expected to assume responsibility for carrying out the tasks they have been assigned. The result is an action plan that distributes roles and responsibilities among all the participants and establishes a shared accountability for results. Government is not simply left “on the hook.” Asking government to enter into a collaborative partnership poses important questions about accountability, and about government’s role in promoting the public interest. Does collaboration blur government’s accountability or weaken its authority? “Ministers cannot delegate the authority and responsibility they have to interpret the public interest. They can delegate the authority to provide recommendations, to create strategy and so on—but no multi-stakeholder entity will be a complete proxy for public interest,” stated one of our participants. But there is a good case to be made that collaboration is not about asking governments to cede authority to stakeholders. It is about asking governments to exercise that authority differently. If governments and stakeholders are to align their activities around common goals, they must learn to make decisions together, rather than control—or cajole—one another. Collaborative processes are about building the machinery, skills, and culture that will make this possible. From this perspective, they should neither offend nor worry anyone who believes government can and should provide real leadership on key public issues and goals. It makes sense to establish a process that allows government to exercise that leadership and bring people together to help them fulfill it. Ultimately then, this is a question of ensuring that the accountabilities are clear within any collaborative initiative. Ministers must remain accountable for commitments made in a collaborative process, just as they are accountable for decisions and actions they take themselves and on behalf of their departments. By the same token, the business, environmental, and community groups and others around the table must also be held to account for the commitments they make in any collaborative process. This is not about weakening the accountabilities within governance, but about ensuring that accountabilities are clearly and appropriately shared among collaborating partners.

Case Study 2. The Business Experience: Alberta’s Clean Air Strategic Alliance

Gord Lambert, Vice President, Sustainable Development at Suncor, presented the experiences from a successful collaborative governance process to manage air quality in Alberta. Alberta’s Clean Air Strategic Alliance (CASA) was founded in 1994 as a multi-stakeholder partnership to manage air quality issues. At the time of its inception, it was recognized that circumstances would change: scientific understanding of air quality issues would evolve, economic activities would develop, and society would change too. In response, it was decided that an effective governance process was more important than an air quality plan or management strategy. CASA’s governance framework, which was informed by the NRTEE’s work on consensus decision making, adopts a process in which 23 stakeholder organizations collaboratively make recommendations to the Minister of Environment on air management issues. Formal accountability remains with the Minister, but since 1994, the Minister has always accepted CASA’s recommendations, illustrating that the alliance has successfully depoliticized the issue and established a trusted, legitimate, and accountable collaborative governance mechanism. The Alliance has been a successful model that has enabled learning from the environmental community about the needs of business and learning on the part of industry about the environmental consequences of their activities. The collaborative process has enabled a shift from a focus on setting and reaching static standards to a focus on continual improvement in the management of air quality. Lessons learned: Collaborative governance can be very successful for sustainable development issues. Good process design and clarity about the rules and processes under which CASA operates have been key to this success. “You can’t just throw 23 stakeholder groups into a room and tell them to solve a problem”. The Minister of Environment backed the Alliance, providing it with the credibility and legitimacy necessary to make progress. For more information, go to www.casahome.org.

Getting clarity in the collaborative process

Whenever governments engage in collaboration, process design is critical to success. This message emerged repeatedly during our discussions. Yet we also heard that the lessons are not being learned. Too often, governments and others are reinventing the wheel and failing to build on experiences. The overarching message on process design was simple: Clarity is essential. Often, clarity on what the process entails is as important as details of the process itself. Without clarity, a process is likely to founder amid frustrated expectations and disappointed hopes. Our discussions highlighted four areas that must be clear to all participants for collaboration to work well.

• Clarity on goals, scope and context. Participants must begin a collaborative process with reasonable expectations about what the process can achieve, and what it is aiming to do. All participants should also understand the broader context of sustainable development, as a guiding principle for identifying solutions that integrate economic, environmental and social concerns.
• Clarity on roles and responsibilities. Participants must understand each other’s capacities to act and their responsibilities. Mistaken expectations about what each participant can bring to the table is likely to cause mistrust.
• Clarity on timelines. Indeterminate discussions are frustrating. If there is uncertainty about how long the process will take, participants will seek venues outside the collaborative process to meet their goals, undermining the collaborative venture.
• Clarity on rules. Participants must be clear about the rules governing the process. Are deliberations confidential? Must participants commit to sharing knowledge and information that is of common interest to the group? Is it acceptable to speak on behalf of the collaborative group? Without clarity on questions like these, there will be misunderstandings and disagreements, which undermine trust and prevent progress.

In summary, clear terms of reference are necessary—indeed critical—for any collaborative venture. The process must be designed in a way that ensures everyone will have a meaningful voice in designing the strategy, plan, or policies. That way each stakeholder will feel confident his or her interests will be considered and addressed in the plan in a fair and reasonable way.

Finding the right people

Collaborative initiatives involve many participants working together. Environmental groups, businesses, scientists, citizens, and governments can all make important contributions to the policy process. Disparate and diverse participants need to be brought together if we are to move forward effectively on sustainable development, and that takes leadership—in other words, someone to convene and support the dialogue. The role of the convenor in a collaborative process is to “set the table” for a constructive dialogue. This means finding a way to frame the problem that is acceptable to all participants, establishing a neutral space where all participants feel comfortable, developing initial ground rules for the process, and convincing the right players to come to the table. Traditionally, that role of convenor has been taken by governments as the main agents of environmental and sustainable development policy. But this need not be the case, and a perhaps surprising finding from our discussions is the idea that while leadership is crucial to successful collaborative initiatives, that leadership need not always come from governments. It may be that in some instances governments are less well placed to lead collaborative governance initiatives than business or civil society groups. To outside stakeholders and citizens at large, government is often seen as an “interest” unto itself. Whether governments should take the role of convenor may also depend on the nature of the issue and the stage of maturity of the debate on the issue. On many sustainable development issues, governments are under considerable pressure and may feel they have little room to manoeuvre. Often the efforts of governments to establish collaborative processes are criticized as diversionary or delaying tactics and, as a result, even attempting to establish a collaborative process can be risky. Other groups—environmental, civil society, or policy groups—may have greater flexibility to create space for a collaborative process. Yet while government is not necessarily best placed to act as convenor, it is also clear that governments are essential participants in developing and implementing collaborative governance solutions for sustainable development. Exactly what role governments play—and at what stage they should be engaged in collaborative initiatives—will depend on the particular issue at hand. The first and perhaps most challenging task for the convenor is to bring the right people together to identify and implement solutions to shared problems. But who are those “right people”? Legitimacy demands that the process be somewhat representative, and include at a minimum representation from environmental, economic, and social groups. If significant interests are sidelined, this will both erode the perception of legitimacy and reduce the chance that truly common solutions will be found. Ultimately, stable policy solutions for sustainable development will not be found if a collaborative process excludes legitimate interests as those interests will seek other forums to advance their concerns. At the same time, it is impossible to achieve perfect representation, and attempting to include all relevant perspectives and interests can be unwieldy and stall progress. In some cases, it may be better to focus on convening the innovators and thought-leaders, those who will contribute their visions for how to integrate environmental, economic, and social concerns in a constructive and pragmatic way.

Building legitimacy

For a collaborative initiative to be successful, it must be seen as a credible, real, and legitimate part of the resolution of an issue. There are two mutually reinforcing forms of legitimacy that a process must build. First, a process must build legitimacy from the inside. This means that the accountabilities must be clear, the process must be transparent, the rules fair. Good process builds its own, internal legitimacy. Second, a collaborative policy process must either start with, or gain, an external legitimacy from established democratic institutions. In short, Parliament or Cabinet must in some way endorse, accept, or support the process if it is to be a democratically legitimate form of governance. Sustainable development cannot simply be “outsourced” by society to a multi-stakeholder process, and collaborative arrangements cannot replace the ultimate accountabilities of Parliament, legislatures, and governments in upholding the public interest.

Case study 3. The Provincial Experience: Collaboration and consultation in Alberta’s Land Use Framework

Roxanna Benoit, Former Managing Director of the Public Affairs Bureau in the Alberta Executive Council Office, presented the experience of Alberta in adopting a collaborative approach to land use planning. Throughout Alberta, land use is a complex sustainable development issue. Tourism, agriculture, oil sands development and concern for the environment are all important issues. Rapid population and economic growth in the province had put increasing pressure on the land use system, sometimes creating conflicts between different users of the land. In 2008, the Government of Alberta published a Land Use Framework, which set out a new, collaborative approach to land use planning, arguing that rapid population and economic growth in Alberta meant that ‘sticking to the old rules will not produce the quality of life we have come to expect’. This framework recognised that long-term land use planning decisions needed to represent the interests of all the relevant stakeholders. The guiding principles of the land use framework demand that land use planning should be sustainable as well as collaborative and transparent. Under the Land Use Framework, Regional Advisory Councils (RAC) for each of seven regions of the province are to be established by Cabinet, each including members from government, the forestry and oil and gas sectors, First Nations, agriculture, all the municipalities, and environmental groups. Each member of the RAC is asked to attend as an Albertan, rather than as a representative of their organization. Guided by clear terms of reference that Cabinet has endorsed, the RAC’s job is to draft the regional plan, go through additional consultation, and bring it back to Cabinet. This is a collaborative exercise, with members of the RAC working together to identify land use strategies that are acceptable to all. The RAC is supported in its work by a Land Use Secretariat, which can provide analysis, information and facilitation. Finally, the RAC provides a recommended land use plan to Cabinet.  Cabinet retains the ability to reject the advice of the RACs, and maintains its overall authority over land use planning. Lessons learned: The process is still in the early stages, with RACs established for the Lower Athabasca and South Saskatchewan regions. These are the regions with the most acute issues: rapid resource development in the Lower Athabasca, and water issues and urbanization in the South Saskatchewan. Perhaps  counter-intuitively, it is the presence of these tensions that has facilitated getting people around the table, because everyone can agree that the land use issues are urgent and need to be resolved.  During the process, they have learnt that trust is difficult to build where there have been long-standing source of resentment and distrust between stakeholder groups. Bringing all the relevant stakeholders together has been challenging, but is essential if the land use plan is to reflect a common vision for all.

Bringing citizens into the process

Collaborative processes on local community issues can and do successfully engage citizens in action-oriented initiatives, but typically collaborative ventures involve people as stakeholders rather than as citizens—as representatives of particular interests, industries, or communities who are empowered to act on their behalf. However, understanding the needs, wants, and perspectives of Canadians is critical to making progress on sustainable development. Progress on transformational issues like climate change is not a matter of sweet-talking voters into accepting higher gas prices or switching off lights—it means establishing a broad social consensus and sense of shared purpose that will carry governments, political parties, and economic and environmental interests over time. While lots of collaborative processes will not directly include citizens as partners alongside stakeholder groups, there is an important role for citizen engagement mechanisms as part of a collaborative governance agenda. At the same time, citizens are increasingly able to mobilize quickly around issues in ways that take governments by surprise. This includes action that side-steps governments, and directly tackles businesses and corporations to get results. “There is a movement underway to direct public democracy… people will use the technological tools available to them to avoid government and force action upon who they perceive the players to be.” Concepts like “wiki-government,” in which dispersed networks of active citizens contribute to policy making and implementation, are gaining currency. In this new context, in which social media tools enable new forms of community engagement to emerge, it is increasingly important for governments to engage citizens directly. Once again, our discussions highlighted the importance of effective process. “The process creates the public,” noted a participant. In other words, polls can appear to create a public that is capricious, demanding, and distrustful; deeper engagement processes like citizen panels create a view of the public that is considered, thoughtful, and willing to take on responsibility. Inviting people to participate in real processes that they feel will have an influence, and doing so in a way that enables them to learn, consider, and debate different perspectives enables much more substantive and useful input from citizens. If we get it right, direct deliberative forums for citizen engagement can be an important complement to our existing democratic institutions. Parliament is formally charged with representing the voices of citizens in the way in which Canada is governed—but MPs and ministers are limited in their capacity to understand, explore, and represent the public interest. As both leaders and representatives, they occupy a difficult double role, and processes that directly and richly engage citizens on key sustainable development issues can be an important pillar of democratic governance.

Case Study 4. The Citizen Experience: Engaging citizens on health priorities in the Mississauga Halton health region

Peter MacLeod, Principal and Founder of MASS LBP, presented a case study of citizen engagement on setting health priorities.Local Health Integration Networks were established in Ontario in 2005, and part of their mandate is to engage the residents and health service providers in their communities. To get the best advice possible, the Mississauga Halton Local Health Integration Network decided to go beyond tra­ditional ways of engaging with the community. After consultations with community leaders and health service providers, the network established a Citizen’s Reference Panel on Local Health Priorities. The Citizens’ Reference Panel was created from a representative group of 36 citizens, chosen at random. They met for two full days, learned about health care issues in the region, talked to one another in a series of focused dis­cussions, and reached consensus about some important health care priori­ties. In the end, it gave the Local Health Integration Network its ideas and recommendations to help shape the new Integrated Health Service Plan. This provided the Network with real, useful advice that was representative of the community that the Network serves. Lessons learned: When they are engaged in the right way, citizens are willing, able, and ready to serve in helping make public policy decisions. Given the right opportunity, the public is not the capricious and demanding entity that opinion polls often seem to reflect. The public we see at work on citizen reference panels is thoughtful, considered, and responsible—exactly the virtues that are needed when making difficult public policy decisions.

Acknowledging the challenges of collaboration

Progress on sustainable development in Canada requires establishing and building a culture of collaboration and engagement not just across government, but also more broadly across the public policy community. To do this, we need to adapt our governance mechanisms—the culture, the structures, the institutions—to enable and empower stakeholders, citizens, and communities to deepen their roles in governance, and to implicate them in a shared responsibility alongside government. This is not easy. Collaborative processes can be costly and time-consuming. Alongside those that are successful, there will always be collaborations that fall apart and initiatives that disappoint. In our discussions, we identified some examples of processes that did not work as well as planned, often because of differing expectations or poor designs. We need to learn from these past experiences and improve the way we design, run, and manage collaborative processes. Collaboration can also be risky for governments. In particular, emotive issues like climate change and water—which affect all levels of government and cross jurisdictions—can become caught up in highly politicized public discourse, with every move of government under intense scrutiny from stakeholders on all sides. Politicians are increasingly expected to come up with instant fixes when a problem surges to the top of the public and media agenda. Initiating collaborative or consultative processes is sometimes attacked as an abdication of responsibility on an issue, even when quite the opposite is true. Part of the answer is to ensure that stakeholders engaged in the collaborative process are willing and able to stand up in defence of the process as a real, legitimate contribution to sustainable development policy. At the same time, there is always a risk that stakeholders are not willing to take on responsibility. “Many people want to be in charge, but few want to be accountable,” was how one participant put it. The key is ensuring that stakeholders see the collaborative process as the vehicle through which they can achieve at least some of their own objectives. Finally, we must also acknowledge and understand the limits to collaborative governance. Lengthy consultation and engagement processes can be convenient methods of sidestepping debate on an issue or postponing action. Collaboration and engagement can be entirely cosmetic, designed only to meet the desire of citizens and stakeholders to have their voices heard, with no intention of changing or implementing policies that result. These political tactics should be acknowledged, particularly as they can be seen as a response to the deeply politicized and highly charged nature of many sustainable development issues in Canada today. Truly collaborative initiatives reduce the encouragement of such behaviour, because they can help to lift an issue above the fray of day-to-day debate.