In February 2007, the NCCHPP launched a pan-Canadian participatory project on the role of not-for-profit organizations in influencing public policy. Six not-for-profit organizations from across Canada were invited to participate in this project: Equiterre (Quebec), Urban Ecology Centre (Quebec), Partenaires pour la revitalisation des anciens quartiers- PRAQ (Quebec), Portland Hotel Society (British Columbia), Quint Development Corporation (Saskatchewan), and MANGO (New Brunswick).
In the context of this year-long participatory project, the six organizations were invited to reflect on their policy-influencing practices through the lens of nine thematic reflections. The first objective was to have the organizations reflect upon their policy-influencing practices in order to increase their own effectiveness. The activities related to this objective were concluded in March 2008. The second objective is to produce descriptive analyses of the organizations' policy-influencing practices in order to enable regional public health authorities to reflect on the partnerships that they may have established with organizations and to orient them accordingly
For the NCCHPP, one of the key points of interest in this project was to co-construct this information with the not-for-profit organizations, a position that is congruent with our understanding of knowledge production.
The nine thematic reflections were based on the following topics:
- Definition of the object of reflection
- Context I: The Actors and Coalitions involved in public policy processes
- Context II: Public Policy Regimes
- Context III: Governmental Rationalities
- Obstacles to and Factors Facilitating Change I: The Concept of Change
- Obstacles to and Factors Facilitating Change II: Citizen Involvement
- Obstacles to and Factors Facilitating Change III: Scientific and Expert Knowledge and Public Policy Processes
- Obstacles to and Factors Facilitating Change IV: Communications and Funding
- Prospective Review
On March 27-28, 2008, Montréal was the site of a final meeting of the project's six participating organizations with the NCCHPP in order to review, discuss and evaluate the year's work, and to make comments and suggestions to the NCCHPP for how future collaborative activities might be undertaken.