I think it's that very complexity that you highlight that recommends an institution that's specifically dedicated to developing best practices in citizen engagement and consultation around science and technology issues. That is kind of the missing third pillar in the emerging structure for scientific and technological advice in Canada in the transformation that was discussed earlier.
The Council of Canadian Academies and STIC have a role to play. It's interesting that it's a double complexity. Citizen engagement that's productive is a very complex thing to achieve on any topic. As you as parliamentarians know, it's very difficult to engage citizens in productive ways on any of the issues that government faces. It's doubly complex when it comes to science and technology.
I think what we would need is an institution, and again, in my brief I talk about the European Parliamentary Technology Assessment network, where they've been developing, in many European jurisdictions, institutions that are specifically about combining best practices and citizen engagement in outreach with developing the kinds of materials, the kinds of outreach on complicated scientific and technological issues, so that you can marry those two things and produce advice to government that is of a high quality. I think that's hard to achieve when engagement is a kind of afterthought, a secondary theme, and not the main focus.