Voluntary Planning

An exciting time for VP.  Next week we hit the road!

 Staff are busy preparing for a month-long schedule with twenty-six community meetings around the province.  With so many community meetings scheduled, we're hoping to provide as many Nova Scotians a we can with a chance to contribute. 

 If you have checked it out yet, the schedule is online here.

 And for those unable to make the meeting, there is still opportunity to contribute and get involved.  Check the the Natural Resources Project Get Involved Page.

We've been working hard to solidify the dates of the community meetings. I'm happy to say that they should be revealed as early as today or tomorrow. The Committee met yesterday for their last meeting before they hit the road to meet with citizens from across the province. I think it's fair to say that the volunteers on the committee are pretty excited to get out there. We're hoping to have some great discussions and I have no doubt that there'll be some great debate.

Be sure to check out a meeting in a community near to you!

Today IPAC is hosting an event at the Delta Halifax on the topic of Citizen Engagement and Consultation.  The event features Grant MacDonald from the Dalhousie University College of Continuing Education as its speaker.

CBC Radio's Maritime Noon is focusing on democracy and citizen engagement today.  Here's the way they've described it on their site:

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       On Thursday's Show

Our leaders trumpet the glories of our political system - democracy.

One person, one vote. Multi-party elections. Vigourous debate in our legislatures.

But some people say there aren't enough avenues for citizens to
participate between elections and not enough accountability by
politicians.

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Voluntary Planning's role is to provide citizens with the opportunities and avenues for participation in public policy creation.  Whew!  That's a mouth full.  But that's what we do.  

You can check out the show by tuning your radio to CBC Radio 1 at noon (Atlantic time) today, or if you're not near a radio you can always stream the show off the Internet here. 

One of the hopes we have for the Natural Resources Project, is to publicly post submissions we get from citizens and stakeholders.  In past projects, we haven't publicly shared all those submissions (emails, faxes, letters, position papers, etc...) , it becomes a bit complex because of FOIPOP (freedom of information and protection of privacy). 

Currently, Rita - the project coordinator, is working hard to navigate the tricky waters of FOIPOP so that we can publicly share the wealth of contributions that we get while doing these projects.  In part, we hope that this information, publicly shared, will help to inform folks of some of the immense complexities when it comes to the topic of natural resources in Nova Scotia.  

At the same time we want to share, we have to insure that things we post on this website are in line with our own terms of use.  So while criticism of a decision or department made on a general level are in line with our terms of use, attacking a particular decision-maker or employee would violate our terms of use and prohibit us from publicly posting the information. 

Tricky stuff!