As far as I know, there weren't consultations, either with NGOs or with the recipient countries themselves.
In 2005, when the new list was announced, a number of African countries that were dropped actually found out from the media, which created a lot of tension and might have contributed to hostility towards Canada's UN Security Council bid. My sense is that this is a very internal process, done at the highest level, and that even employees in what was then CIDA and is now Global Affairs Canada were not involved in this process.