Catherine Rockandel has played a leading role in guiding IAP2 Canada over the past six years, first as a regional chapter leader, then as as Vice President of the national organization and, for the past three years, as President of IAP2 Canada.
She sat down recently with Joseph Thornley to talk about her time as the head of IAP2, leading through Covid, how the practice of public participation (p2) has evolved, and how p2 practitioners benefit from participating in IAP2 Canada.
Following the conversation, Joe is joined by co-hosts Allison Zupan and Elizabeth Thornley, who discuss the aspects of the conversation that stood out for them
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Inside Public Participation by Joseph Thornley is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Transcript
Joseph Thornley
Welcome to the inside P2 podcast. My name is Joe Thornley.
Allison Zupan
I’m Allison Zupan.
Elizabeth Thornley
And I’m Elizabeth Thornley.
Joseph Thornley
And together, we’re your hosts for this season of the inside P2 podcast. Allison, Liz, I am so happy to be able to do this with you. It’s a lot easier to do a podcast when you have some other people to bounce things off of.
Allison Zupan
Yeah, it’s great to be here.
Elizabeth Thornley
It’s great to be chatting.
Joseph Thornley
And when we talk about chatting, we have a very good and appropriate guest for the first of this year’s interviews. Catherine Rockandel has been the president of IAP2 Canada for the past three years. Before that, she was vice president of IAP2 Canada. And she’s been a practitioner for more than two decades. She’s experienced, well known. She’s guided IAP2 Canada through a period of change through the whole COVID thing. And she has some very interesting things to say, both about IAP2 and the practice of public participation. Let’s listen to my interview with Catherine, and then we’ll come back and we’ll chat about it.
Allison Zupan
Sounds great.
Elizabeth Thornley
Let’s do it.
Joseph Thornley
Catherine Rockandel, thank you so much for joining me today. I’ve wanted to chat with you for a long time, as I’ve watched you as the Canada President for IAP2. A position that I think that you’ve held for a couple of years following a long period of active engagement with them?
Catherine Rockandel
Thank you first, Joseph, for inviting me to chat with you today. I was really looking forward to it as well. I have been involved with IAP2 broadly since 2010 and have been involved with IAP2 Canada, on the board, since 2018, serving two years as Vice President and now three years as president. So, I’m coming close to the end of my term and one more year moving into the past presidents. So, it will have been six years with IAP2 Canada by the time it wraps up.
Joseph Thornley
That’s a good long stint. That’s a lot of giving to an organization. And you probably know it now better than anyone else. And you took us through the COVID period when we all found ourselves on the other side of microphones instead of in real life.
Catherine Rockandel
Yes, well I started my term in 2018 and then, as we know, March 13th was the lockdown. And we had been planning for a face-to-face conference in Banff and we had to quickly pivot, which was the word of the time, to go to a virtual conference. So, there was a lot of things that changed with COVID.
Joseph Thornley
How did COVID affect the practice of P2 and IAP2 in particular. Obviously, we’ve come out of the other side, but have we come out of the other side changed?
Catherine Rockandel
We absolutely have and there’s a couple of things that we can look at. First of all, when the pandemic first started, most organizations had a bit of a pause. And then, as they started to reorient, they were doing a lot of work virtually. Of course, people got very…uh…when we started, we had to orient people to what was Zoom and how did it work. And well into a year everybody understood mostly, even in public meetings, in my private practice, how Zoom works and how the functions work. As we came out of the pandemic, what you started to see was more hybrid meetings and that has stayed. We are seeing, with a return to face-to-face meetings, more of an integration with hybrid meetings. So that has changed the practice in terms of the way that people are doing engagement.
Joseph Thornley
People gained the ability to meet anywhere, anytime during COVID. They lost the ability to meet in real life, and now that we can meet in real life again, there’s no taking away that remote from them. I assume that’s the way that everybody’s approaching it, that now people expect both options.
Catherine Rockandel
It’s not just about the expectation, it’s also about that doing both virtual and face to face it improved accessibility inclusiveness, because now you had the ability for people who perhaps had limited mobility or had busy schedules, to have more options. So, in many ways it improved the practice of public engagement because it broadened the ability for people to basically participate in public processes when it suited them. And if they still wanted to come to a face-to-face meeting those were being offered as well. So, what we found is more people could actually be engaged and be involved in processes.
Joseph Thornley
What has that done to the overall cost of public participation? Has the need to offer hybrid driven up the cost of P2?
Catherine Rockandel
From my professional practice, I find that perhaps it’s driven up the cost a little in terms of having to do more planning upfront. When you’re doing hybrid, it takes a lot more planning to basically ensure that it’s effective. When we’re actually looking at IAP2 Canada and the way that we talk about the practice there is a strong focus on effective public participation. And so in order to do that, you need more planning up front when you are doing the hybrid events. I don’t think there’s a huge cost increase but there’s probably some.
Joseph Thornley
Has the industry developed standards for measuring the output of the results to justify that increased planning and increased cost.
Catherine Rockandel
I would say that when we look at public engagement and in the planning stage and anybody who’s taken any of the IAP2 training, like the foundations training or any of the planning or the… there’s an evaluation component as part of that. So, we have always evaluated the effectiveness of public engagement to, you know, looking at that. And so that’s just part of the practice that supports effective public engagement.
Joseph Thornley
As the President over the last few years, when you were talking to people who may be coming into the practice of public participation and they met you and they said, oh, the president of IAP2, tell me about IAP2. What is it and why should I join? What would be your elevator pitch to potential people in order to give them a sense of IAP2 and its benefits?
Catherine Rockandel
The critical, as you call it, elevator pitch for IAP2 has to do with the member value and the member value is based on two foundations. One is networking and the other is learning. And when we talk about networking, we’re talking about relationships and that happens on two levels. One is from the local level through the chapters, chapter learning events. Those are in each of the provinces across Canada. And then at the national level when you’re talking about networking and member value, you have the North American conference that alternates between Canada and the US each year. This year, in about two weeks, it’s in Seattle. And then we also offer symposiums. When you look at the learning side, there are two aspects to the member value around learning. One is the formal learning. So, when I was talking about the foundations training, the different types of IAP2 and IAP2 Canada training, there’s all kinds of training. There’s the foundational training and then there’s additional courses offered by IAP2 Canada that build out the practice. And we also offer, for example, indigenous learning programs where people can participate in that mentorship program. So that’s all part of the formal side. But on the informal side of learning, there’s also the webinars that IAP2 Canada offers from other presentations. And there’s the communities of practice. And we can’t underestimate the value in those community of practices, we have several. One is an energy another is in equity diversity and inclusion, another is around indigenous peoples, and those webinars bring together practitioners to discuss contemporary issues, challenges they face in their in their day-to-day work, and explore ways to approach emerging issues. And they often have speakers that challenge our thinking and broaden our perspectives. So, you know when I’m talking about the elevator pitch, if I want to make it really quick, I just talk about the member value and what you get from the networking and learning.
Joseph Thornley
Tell me about the formal training and certification.
Catherine Rockandel
Essentially, the formal training, you know, there’s a number of courses you can take. There’s a certificate program that includes three basically foundational components around public engagement planning and communications. So those pieces actually provide you with tools and learning to, in an advanced way, implement effective public engagement and they really are the foundation. And so, if someone decides, you know, they’ve been practicing for some time and they would like to become a CP3, which is the certified Public Engagement Practitioner that you’re talking about, you need to take that foundational certificate in order to demonstrate that you have those essential skills and that knowledge. And then you can build on that with other courses. Each year the CP3’s program certifies more practitioners. You can see the core competencies that are required and evaluated on the IAP2 website.
Joseph Thornley
Do you have a sense of the percentage of IAP2 members who have actually gotten their certification CP3.
Catherine Rockandel
Uh, well, I would say it’s a growing program. Some years we have more than others. Essentially, IAP2 Canada has 937 members across Canada, and 62% of those are in BC and Alberta. Those are our two largest chapters. When we look at the CP3 program, I don’t know the exact numbers of how many people are CP3s right now, but they are representative of people from across Canada. And so, you know, it gives you a sense that more and more people are looking at it. Particularly for organizations who are looking to demonstrate either through their practice that their people are well trained. We have local government, federal, provincial government people. We have private practitioners, consultants who are all CP3s.
Joseph Thornley
Have you, in Canada or IAP2 in the United States, done any research that gives you a sense of whether employers give priority or express preference for P2 professionals who have a CP3 certification?
Catherine Rockandel
I’m not aware of any research specifically on the CP3 but one of the things that we hear quite a bit from our CP3s, and the people who’ve taken the course across Canada, is that there are more and more RFP’s (request for proposals) being placed out there that actually call for not just the certificate, many of them have asked for the certificate in public participation, but they’re actually talking about certification. And we’ve also heard from some of our members that they, in actually applying for jobs, they’ve been asked whether or not they have that.
Joseph Thornley
I would think that for a young professional if they’re deciding whether taking courses and seeking a certification is worth their time, that an easy sell is that it will help them with their next job search.
Catherine Rockandel
Absolutely. I would agree with you. And it also improves the practice. So, they actually become better at their job, they deepen their understanding. I’m a CP3 and I found it to be a really great learning experience. And the rigor of it helped me to think through some of the work that I do.
Joseph Thornley
Tell me about the chapters themselves. How active are they and what kinds of activities do they undertake?
Catherine Rockandel
So, as I mentioned, our biggest chapters are in… well the very first chapter actually ever established in Canada was Wild Rose, which is Alberta. And then it followed that with BC. I was the IAP2 BC chapter president for six years. And when we started there were under 100 members and now there’s 261 British Columbia members and we have 258 in Alberta. We also have chapters in Great Lakes, the Prairies. As well there are chapters in the Maritimes, smaller chapters. So, each of those chapters has an organizing committee. Some of them have boards if they’re larger. And they organize, for example, in Alberta, every year they do a signature event, which is a one or two day event almost like a mini conference. And I’ve attended that and gone to Alberta, down to Calgary, because I’m in British Columbia, and attended those. And it’s been really great to hear some of the perspectives from our colleagues in Alberta. They also do networking events. In British Columbia we would do all different types of combining learning, have guest speakers around networking events in different sectors. So, we would talk about, for example, public engagement for engineers, public engagement for architects. Really trying to look at the different types of practices and sectors where public engagement occurs. Government, whether it’s local government or regional or provincial government. And so those networking and those learning events are done by most of the chapters.
Joseph Thornley
OK. And if I wanted to, if I was a new person in the practice and I wanted to join, would I join via IAP2 on the website or would I find my local chapter in a physical sense? What’s my on ramp to IAP2 activity?
Catherine Rockandel
So, the best way to basically meet your people, we call it meet your family, is to join IAP2 Canada because your membership is with IAP2 Canada. So, you can go online. You become a member. And depending whichever province you’re living in, then your name is shared with that chapter, you start getting emails and information and invites to their events. And so, you can become a member and get involved that way. Sometimes chapters will do “meet IAP2” events, where they invite people who aren’t IPA2 members. This often happens aligned with some of the training. For example, when you look at the certificate program, a lot of people who aren’t IAP2 members take that training. So, you have nonmembers and members and so the chapters will actually create events aligned with that training so that these nonmembers can actually meet members and start to network and see the value of getting involved in their local event. And then they would basically join IAP2 Canada. And if you’re traveling one of the great things about IAP2 Canada is if you’re traveling for work or, and we’ve even had people on vacation, they pop into other events. Whether they’re over in the Maritimes or they’re in the Great Lakes or they’re at another area, they can join as a member and come to any events that the chapters are offering.
Joseph Thornley
Now you told me that you were finishing your term as President. So how are you going to spend the extra time after your presidency is over?
Catherine Rockandel
What a great question.
Joseph Thornley
You’re a practitioner yourself.
Catherine Rockandel
Yes, I am a practitioner myself. I work in British Columbia with local and regional governments and universities actually doing public engagement. I’m also an International Association of Facilitators, certified professional facilitator. So, I bring both those together. I’ve been practicing for over 30 years, so I’ll still be working. I have, you know, essentially in about two weeks when my president term ends, I’ll move into past president for a year. You know, when you look at IAP2 Canada, and I would encourage everyone to look at IAP2 Canada’s strategic plan. We’ve got one currently and it has three major strategic priorities areas. And we’re making a lot of progress on those strategic priorities in terms of some of the work we’re doing. And so, as a director in the next year, I’ll be working with and supporting some of those initiatives. So, I’m not quite ready for retirement yet from IAP2, but I’ll be moving into the behind the scenes to support some policy work and just building and strengthening our foundation.
Joseph Thornley
Nice. Really nice. And because you mentioned the strategic priorities, if someone was wanting to get involved and thinking about where the association is going, in a nutshell, what are those priorities?
Catherine Rockandel
Well, we have three big areas. One is around being a responsible, responsive, and sustainable organization. And that is focused on understanding diversity, equity inclusion within the practice and IAP2 Canada. Looking at improving some effective management processes and practices. That’s a lot of work behind the scenes that we’ve been doing. Everything from just strengthening the foundation of operations behind the scenes. And then looking at supporting reconciliation and meaningful engagement and relationships with indigenous peoples across Canada. And we’ve been doing some work on identifying, we’ve done a couple of audits, we’ve got some framework, so we’ve put some foundational pieces in the past year into play. And we’ll actually be starting to roll some of that out into action plans and doing some work on that. The second area is all around professional development and training. And with the launch of the new global harmonized training. One of the things that our members and practitioners across Canada are going to see, and particularly for our Quebec chapter, is we were able to acquire some funding to translate all that material into French and this fall we’ll be launching completely French training with French trainers. But we also have, you know, within our professional development training, of course, is championing the professional certification program as the gold standard for P2 professionals. Still very important. And we’re looking at enhancing some of our digital tools for communication and learning. That’s everything from some of the online tools that you see now, the platforms, we are implementing that in terms of a learning platform. So, there’s some strength building there. And then the last focus area is around connecting communities with the power of P2. And this is really about looking at the value proposition, what we’ve been talking about here in terms of growing and retaining our members. Looking at what is the value of effective P2 to decision makers. This is a really important area and even Austral Asia has been doing some work on this. They recently released a research paper on what is the impact of public engagement and the importance of it for decision makers. It was released on LinkedIn. People can probably see it through my profile if they’re interested in tracking that down. And then looking at basically best practices through research and knowledge sharing. So, you can see these three areas of focus really touch on IAP2 Canada’s vision, very forward-looking vision. And I would just say, Joseph, when we look at all that, it basically is built on a foundation of an alignment with IAP2’s culture and values. These are the ethics, the values, the core competencies that really are the pillars of IAP2 Canada’s practice and the practice for all practitioners.
Joseph Thornley
In talking about the professional development, you mentioned global harmonization of professional development. Now, recognizing that IAP2 is active in the States, Canada, Australasia, some other places, has the training taken into account different conditions? and has it benefited from research about different tactics, strategies for those different conditions?
Catherine Rockandel
Absolutely. So, I’ve been talking a lot about IAP2 Canada and as the president of IAP2 Canada, I’m also the regional chair for IAP2 international. We have all the regions in the international family, which includes the United States, Australia, Asia, Indonesia, South Africa, Latin America. And every quarter we meet, and we talk about global issues around public engagement, what’s happening. We also aligned and looked at the international, they hold the intellectual property for their training, for the foundations training, the certificate program that I talked about. And they license the trainers that deliver that to ensure quality of control of the delivery of that across the world. So, you know that you’re getting the same knowledge and training whether you take this course in Australasia or in Canada or in South Africa. The trainers are trained across the world on that to ensure quality control. And, what happens is, the materials are actually sent, and this is part of when I talk about the global harmonization. So, you have this universal materials, but they actually are sent to the training groups in each of the countries and those regions, just like in Canada, actually develop the case studies and all of the relevancy related to our market. So when you’re taking the course in Canada, you’re learning a lot about the truth around indigenous peoples and the experience in Canada from a colonial perspective and what that means for indigenous people. Whereas there would be different types of regional tailoring that would happen in the United States versus Latin America versus Australasia. So, the context for each of those courses is relevant to those countries. The CP3 program in Canada is completely different and it is unique to Canada. Just like the US also has a certification program which is unique to the US. And we will often partner with them, but our competencies are slightly different.
Joseph Thornley
I get the distinction. So if I’m taking courses to become a CP3. I’m going to have a distinctly Canadian perspective on indigenous relations, indigenous peoples that reflects Canadian conditions?
Catherine Rockandel
Correct. That’s one of the unique features of the CP3 program in Canada. It includes that aspect as part of the core competencies where it’s not part of the US process. So, we have a very unique, and unique to our context in Canada, in terms of our certification program. And even the case studies that you would take in any of the training programs, they’re unique to Canada. And there is cultural differences between Canada and the United States so it’s important for our practitioners in Canada to have that local experience. And our trainers are actually practitioners so they understand the practice in Canada.
Joseph Thornley
Well, thank you so much. I understand so much more than I did before and it provides a lot of good context around IAP2, which as a Member I can tell you I have really benefited from. So, thank you for the time that you put into being the President. I hope that you enjoy your autumn. And enjoy being past president. Now you can have your voice, but without the need to leave every meeting saying it’s up to me to make it happen.
Catherine Rockandel
Well, I’d say in a closing thing, you know, the thing I would acknowledge the most, Joseph, is we have a really great team. The board is a strong working team and so I’ve never felt it’s just up to me to make it happen. We work as a team. Together we make it happen and I think that’s a that’s a really foundational piece that I would leave with everyone. We as practitioners and we as directors all make it happen together. We are the change.
Joseph Thornley
That’s a good final note when talking about public participation, the “we”. Thank you, Catherine. Thank you for taking the time with me here today.
Catherine Rockandel
Thank you, Joseph, for inviting me. And have a great day.
Joseph Thornley
Well, that was Catherine, she covered a lot of territory. Allison, Liz, any thoughts?
Allison Zupan
Yeah, that was great. I was happy to hear Catherine say that public participation has actually improved since COVID, you know, you hear so many negative stories about COVID and it’s just nice to hear that as terrible as it is, and was, there were some positives that came from it. You know, she was saying that COVID kind of forced people to go from in person consultations to online consultations, which would have been a huge learning curve for a lot of people. As we know. But in a way, it’s almost like it had to be done. It was time to make that switch. And we saw that because even after things started to go back to normal, instead of just going back to in person meetings, many organizations actually adopted that hybrid strategy. They kept the infrastructure that was built during the lockdowns.
Elizabeth Thornley
Yeah, that’s a really good point. I think that’s interesting. You know, just because we can go back to in person consultations doesn’t mean that we should now limit ourselves to them because we do have all of this great technology that’s been developed over the past three to four years. I think that we’ve all been involved in hybrid engagements, and we can all identify what some of the benefits are of them. I think about, you know, improving equity and improving access when you increase the methods that people can participate through. That’s the best way to get diverse representation from your audiences. I think also about, you know, environmental sustainability when you give your stakeholders and your participants an alternative option for access that doesn’t require them to be in a physical location that they have to get to by, you know, a car ride or in some cases even a flight, you can really reduce the carbon footprint of your consultation.
Joseph Thornley
Another thing that Catherine talked about was training and providing training through a range of things. Courses, leading to certification, webinars, the North American conference… What do you think of the training program that they were putting forward?
Allison Zupan
I really like what IAP2 is doing with their training. I think Catherine called it global harmonized training? and I just think that it’s very unique that the curriculum and basic principles of that training is standardized across the globe, but the topics and examples and case studies are pertaining to a particular geographic location based on the cultural differences experienced in that part of the world. I imagine the courses become a lot more interesting and relevant with that approach.
Elizabeth Thornley
Yeah, I think that practitioners getting training that is localized is really critical for ensuring that the public engagement that happens is culturally inclusive and regionally relevant. I think we’ve all seen examples of P2 that’s gone wrong because the wrong tools are used for the geographic audience or the cultural audience.
Joseph Thornley
Well, there was a lot to think about in that conversation. You can see why Catherine was the President of IAP2. She’s a great representative for not only the practice of public participation, but for the organization. And I thought that was a great conversation. Again, I want to thank her for having given us the time. And I want to thank you for being here, our listener. And Allison, Elizabeth, thank you for the conversation. See you soon.
Elizabeth Thornley
See you next time.
Allison Zupan
Bye. Thank you.