Saskatchewan NDP Policy Review: Public Consultation

Having pointed out a couple of the highlights of the Saskatchewan NDP's policy review document, let's turn to part of it which looks like it'll need to be fleshed out in advance of this fall's election campaign:

Saskatchewan people believe that the provincial government has a responsibility to engage in meaningful consultations before implementing significant legislative and policy changes. This ensures that the voices of those who will be affected by the legislative and policy changes will be heard, which will lead to stronger, more effective legislation and policy.

Saskatchewan people want a New Democratic government to:

o Commit to engage in meaningful consultations with all those affected by proposed legislative and policy changes, with a particular emphasis on reaching out to those who will be most affected by the decision.

Now, I doubt there will be much disagreement in principle with the idea of ensuring that affected parties are consulted before changes are made. And there's certainly ample room for contrast with the Sask Party on that front.

However, the question of exactly how to engage the public remains an open one. And I'm not sure the Sask Party hasn't inadvertently highlighted its own narrow view while providing the NDP with an ideal structure to be adapted toward general consultation.

Part of the Sask Party's effort to turn Saskatchewan into Ireland included the development of Enterprise Saskatchewan's sector teams, which are touted as being industry-led bodies responsible largely for identifying business priorities.

But the underlying structure will include teams of civil servants who have developed some specialized knowledge of a particular sector. And that could make for an ideal support structure for PLG's proposal for scaled participatory democracy featuring a combination of experts and self-selected citizens serving to steer policy on specific issues, with the ability to escalate decisions to broader but similarly participatory groups if they're sufficiently controversial to warrant it.

From there, it looks like a simple pitch to voters as to who they want making decisions with support from a civil-service sectoral team. And the choice between a hand-picked, industry-led group with a narrow set of priorities under the Sask Party's structure, or a self-selected group of interested citizens under the modified version, would look like an ideal contrast for the NDP's purposes.

Of course, it could be that something along those lines would be a natural policy result of the general consultation principle in any event. But in case nobody's made the connection yet, I'll hope to see the current business-based structures put to better use to ensure that all interested citizens can be heard on issues which affect them.