Consultation in the Absence of Strategy and Coordination

By John de la Mothe

It looks like Canada’s on the verge of a season of government consultations around innovation. Industry Canada has unofficially let it be known that a cross-country tour will accompany its Innovation Agenda, whenever it finally appears. Human Resources Development Canada (HRDC) has said that it will be peddling its Skills Agenda. And the Minister of Finance is lurking behind an eight-city ‘high technology Town Hall Meeting’ tour to be carried out over the next eight months.

Consultation is an important tool in any vibrant democracy, and research and innovation have long been important targets of consultation in Canada. But typically, healthy consultation is used in one of two ways. It can be used to inform stakeholders about a new strategy or plans for imminent activities. Or consultation can be used to enquire — that is, genuinely ask stakeholders what they think about an issue. The tough part of this avenue is that whatever is revealed through consultation is expected to be used by decision-makers to inform policy shifts or program redesigns. Unfortunately in today’s context there are two other reasons for consultation emerging on the streets of Ottawa: learning curves and leadership.

The ‘learning curve’ view, which is cynical (and wrong), is a throw back to the Prosperity Initiative of 1992-3 and the Science & Technology Review of 1994-6. In the S&T Review, for example, there were 39 local and regional consultations, costing an estimated $2.5 million. The written responses from industry were ‘lost’ and never analyzed. The questions posed at each meeting varied so much that no comparative insights into what Canadians thought could be gleaned. Thus in this case consultation seriously delayed the Review, generated stakeholder cynicism, was expensive, and only served as an introductory course in science policy for the then secretary of state for Science, Research and Development. But this is not what is unfolding now.

The ‘leadership’ view is a reaction to the idea that that the Liberal leadership race is unofficially ‘on’: hence a cynical sense that ‘consultation’ equals ‘jockeying for position’. But this view has little to do with innovation policy. The more important features are as follows.

The Program Review exercise stated clearly that the Government management style must move away from departmental territoriality and towards horizontal coordination. This has not been driven home by the Privy Council Office (PCO) and seems to have been abandoned.

HRDC has a history of being uncomfortable with sharing, which continues today.

Industry Canada has learned, albeit slowly, to ‘get along’ with other departments, and to be increasingly interactive. Despite pockets and personalities of resistance, they are making good progress. And the Department of Finance — under the influence of DM Kevin Lynch and minster Paul Martin — has now ‘discovered’ innovation.

But five years after the S&T Review, momentum around research and innovation needs to be reinvigorated. This is not just a question of money. We’re making the investments and say we’re going to double our commitment to S&T. But to get there we need a vision and a strategy that places Canada on the world stage in the context of the Hemisphere. At one level this needs ministers John Manley, Brian Tobin, Paul Martin and Jane Stewart to get their departments to understand innovation and to seamlessly work together. Otherwise, disparate nationwide consultative efforts will fail and will fuel cynical interpretations of Government motives around leadership and learning curves.

More importantly, we should remember that the rationales of cynicism around consultation can often be misplaced. Several departments and agencies are really trying to innovate around innovation. But the much-awaited Innovation White Paper (which has now been unofficially split into an industry agenda and a skills agenda) is the result of a lack of commitment from the PCO. With the abandonment by central agencies of Program Review principles, the implication will only ensure that Canada’s entry into the new economy will be remembered because of its antiquated analysis and policies on skills, its tardiness in stoking and focusing the innovation machine, and its failure to integrate agendas across departments in a national purpose.

John de la Mothe is a professor with the Faculty of Administration, University of Ottawa