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For instance, the OECD鈥檚 2024 Trust Survey indicated that Canadians were more than three times more likely to trust government if they felt it was responsive to public consultations鈥攜et only 40% of Canadians are confident that the government would adopt opinions gathered in public consultations. The OECD鈥檚 surveys on Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions (2022 and 2024) also demonstrate that having a say in decision-making is the leading driver of trust in government, far outpacing partisanship, financial concerns, education, gender or age.

Alongside increased resources and capacity building for civil servants conducting engagement processes, establishing shared language and common standards for public participation can help increase consistency across engagement initiatives so that all Canadians can feel meaningfully engaged in the issues that impact their lives.

A Maturity Model for Public Participation

To this end, the Centre for Dialogue has been working in partnership with Canada鈥檚 Treasury Board Secretariat and national and international engagement leaders to develop a Maturity Model for Public Participation, a first-of-its-kind tool that: 1) builds upon existing principles to define what high-quality participation looks like in practice and 2) supports governments in building their organizational capacity to meet these standards.

This new tool鈥攚hich will launch in September 2025鈥攚orks around an understanding that public participation is a dynamic practice where the most appropriate methods depend on multiple factors such as the engagement topic, objectives, target audience, available resources and social or political dynamics. Rather than prescribing a 鈥渙ne-size fits all鈥� set of rules, evaluating quality in public participation benefits from a principles-based approach that allows adaptation to diverse contexts and emerging needs while upholding core values.

As part of the development of the Maturity Model, we conducted a comparative scan of guiding values and principles that have been articulated across the field of public participation, including from the , the , the ,  and the .

We found there is near-unanimous convergence around five core principles: 

• Accountability demonstrated by engaging the public when there is a real opportunity to influence decisions and communicating the impact of public input on final outcomes;
• Transparency around the process and outcomes of an engagement; 
• Equitable inclusion of the full diversity of people who may be impacted by a decision by distributing resources to support the participation of those who are most impacted and/or face greater barriers to participation;
• Informed participation facilitated by the provision of evidence-based information reflecting diverse perspectives on the engagement topic;
• Responsive design that meets the objectives of the engagement and the needs of participants while upholding the integrity of the process

Identifying these markers of quality participation was the first step in our work. However, principles need to be grounded in concrete actions to avoid becoming empty rhetoric. The Maturity Model for Public Participation helps to bridge this gap by articulating a baseline of evidence-based engagement practices that uphold core principles, alongside organizational structures that support consistent application.