Thank you.
Mr. Chair, I wish I'd thought of that list, actually. It's a really good list.
As you work through something like this, starting out with the broader idea of purpose and goals is absolutely right, and moving along to principles and then beginning to bring it down to concrete examples. I would say that in our early thinking we tried to keep both of those two dimensions alive, because we absolutely want to foster and encourage people to bring ideas in.
For example, in the round table one of the things I think the minister heard quite frequently is that you actually have to have a vision. There has to be some passion behind it. You have to have some kind of place on the hill in the future that you can get people to buy into in order to bring the partnership together and the collaboration. Starting there, I would submit, makes a lot of sense. Things like guiding principles are very helpful. So that would be fantastic and very helpful.
Things like metrics and implementation strategies are really good. The one thought we've had is that you do want to be able to have some sort of indication of what you are succeeding in, of what success looks like. What is the definition of “success”? So it can come to the metric issue.
From the early discussions we've had, when people come in with energy, they come in with ideas of principles and things like that. So it's a great way to start.
In terms of implementation strategies, it's an interesting issue. Ultimately, one needs to get there because it's about creating a consensus for what you're trying to do, for why you're doing it, what you're doing, and then the how. The one thought we've had is that it's a question of timing, and it would be interesting to get the perspective of the committee on this. At this point, we're really trying to get people to come with ideas. We've had some early discussion with two groups, Ducks Unlimited and the Nature Conservancy of Canada, about organizing a workshop of specialists on innovations--so where are there neat things happening, where people have tried something and it's working?
As part of the implementation strategies, it's something that does testing and is innovative and brings in the idea of new approaches, and it's finding evidence in Canada. The one thing we've discovered is there are a lot of interesting things happening at a local level that may not have a direct Government of Canada connection, but they are still accomplishing things. And it's bringing those in.
In summary, my first response is that a framework like that would have a tremendous amount of promise because it would deliver on the grand ideas we're trying to bring in, and also it would root it in practical implementation. It sounds fantastic.