At yesterday’s NCC Board of Director’s meeting the CEO Marie Lemay said that public advisory committees were going to be broadened. As the handout put it:
As one of our various initiatives to enhance openness and transparency, you may recall that we have been working on the idea of creating an ongoing forum for the public and NCC management to meet on a regular basis, offering the opportunity to discuss topics of shared interest. We will be establishing ongoing public advisory committees in accordance with our planning framework. These committees, many of which currently exist as part of the review of our master plans, would continue to meet during the implementation phase of our plans. In simple terms, this implies that each of our major plans would be developed and implemented with the ongoing involvement of a public advisory committee.
We are currently working on the parameters related to the establishment of these committees.
I think what this means is that groups of people from the public are already being invited to give their opinion as plans are put together, and that this will be extended to the periods after the plans are released so as to advise and give visibility into how the plans actually get rolled out on the ground. The word committee makes me think that this has to be a different process than the public meetings, presentations and online questionnaires that are being deployed in the cases of the Recreation Management Plan and Green Transportation Plan. I do know that there is a group involved in this advisory capacity as the Cultural Heritage Conservation Plan.
Though this approach may enable third party input into the process, it isn’t clear to me how this enhances openness and transparency unless these public committees have a reporting-out role.
