Citizen Engagement in Practice - Informing Digital Futures: Strategies for Citizen Engagement - page 57

Dialogue on Health and Health Care ”, was sent to all participants in the
community study circles, to conference attendees, to individuals and
groups who had expressed interest to the Secretariat and other federal
departments, to stakeholders such as the Canadian Medical Association,
unions, and community-based organizations.
These events were instrumental in identifying where members of the
two groups agreed or disagreed with the interpretations and views of the
Forum members.
The conferences and telephone interviews (the latter were held both
with study circle participants and randomly selected members of the
public) verified that the Forum had done a good job of capturing and res-
ponding to the concerns, opinions and suggestions of Canadians. Forum
members also reviewed the findings of the consultation and found a strong
degree of consensus between the views of the public and stakeholders in
both phases of consultation. On February 4, 1997, the Forum presented its
findings to the Prime Minister. The report, “ Canada Health Action: Build-
ing on the Legacy ”, was well received by health care consumers, practitio-
ners, and administrators alike.
Regarding outcomes from the consultation, the government did, in fact,
begin to act on a number of these key recommendations. Work was initi-
ated in the areas of pharmacare, home care and the determinants of health,
directions firmly rooted in the work of the Forum. In addition, the public
consultations illustrated that:
• Canadians are willing to commit a considerable amount of time to pol-
icy discussions that have meaning and value to them;
• study circle participants were willing to prepare for discussions;
• participants were willing to modify their views as the discussions con-
tinued. For example, participants' sense of imminent decline of the
health system was significantly reduced after the discussion;
• participants felt ownership for the directions proposed by the National
Forum on Health;
• participants realized that they had a role to play in implementing the
directions and ensuring government action;
• the deliberative technique used in the study circles was successful in
generating informed and constructive directions for policy change.
As a further outcome, in September 1999, the Annual Conference of
Federal-Provincial-Territorial Ministers of Health produced a firm com-
mitment to joint action and collaboration on a number of key health issues
(Wyman et al. 1999).