Sure.
There have been fairly informal consultations to date. One of the key anchor points is the round table that the minister held in January, which has been a point of discussion here. Leading up to that, we've had some consultation, largely with conservation groups who were keen to talk to us about a national conservation plan, who were keen to offer their suggestions and perspectives. It was mainly the key national groups like the NCC, Ducks Unlimited, etc.
We've worked on organizing the home team to try to get those five departments thinking about this and getting excited about it. We've done that. That's obviously very backroom but important work. At both the ministerial level and the officials' level, we've engaged our provincial colleagues, both in the environment ministries and in the natural resource ministries—sometimes they're the same ministry, but in many provinces they're not—in terms of updating them about what we're thinking of doing, how we want to work collaboratively, and beginning to get ideas and suggestions from them. We're currently working to try to organize, more from an officials' level, a technical workshop on innovations in conservation. We can begin to look at what is out there for ideas, what is out there for pilot projects that somebody's tried, that look promising. And we can just start building, in our own offices, a better sense of what the potential majors are that could support a future vision.
As we move forward, though, the minister is keen to go from these informal discussions he's having to a higher-profile formal consultation. I imagine he'll be doing a speech at some time in the near future and kicking off a more formal engagement of key partners across the country.
In that context, obviously, the insights and advice of the committee would be very helpful.