Territory of Nunavut is undertaking its own poverty reduction initiative. Australia is using public engagement to better align and deliver services in key areas, such as services to seniors or to working families. The province of Ontario is planning an engagement project to integrate services to businesses. British Columbia’s new premier, Christy Clark, has declared engagement a key goal of her government. In short, what began in New Brunswick as a series of small pilot projects to explore the prospects for collaboration between that government and stakeholders, communities and citizens within the province, appears to be emerging as a trend. If so, how far might this go? What are the limits of public engagement? For instance, can public engagement really change the way our politics work? We saw how in New Brunswick it led to bipartisan cooperation to reduce poverty. Will this trend continue or will partisan politics reassert itself? Is public engagement really scalable? That is, can a country the size of Canada or Australia really have a “national” dialogue? How would that work? What about a national action plan? How binding is a government’s commitment to public engagement likely to be? Can a successor government easily revert to old ways of doing things? If public engagement processes can be launched by non-governmental organizations, should we expect this to become a big part of the future? How would this affect our democracy? Is there a fit between public engagement and other political systems and cultures? Would public engagement work in countries such as India or China? Presumably, the answers to such questions will come in time. For the moment, however, it will suffice to say this: New Brunswick has let the genie out of the bottle, and it will be difficult to put it back in. As the final report of the Public Engagement Project notes, in the last two decades citizens have become far less deferential toward
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