When the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) published their Adaptive Phase Management pathway, they declared the importance of achieving consent from the residents of the township, or Treaty Territory, that may become the host community for the massive infrastructure project and facility. The first critical step in promoting and insisting on taking a consent-based approach was when the parties with stake in the outcome declared that this was important to them, as much as it was to the residents. 

The second key step was taken when the parties with interest then stepped forward to provide information to those who would eventually declare their position of willingness.  The example of Ignace is one of deliberative democracy, where residents could engage with each other, experts, advocates, and key information to best inform their position of willingness. Dialogue, learning events, tradeshows, tours, articles, a local information office, webpages, flyers, and much more was carried out over more than ten years in an effort to animate deliberative democracy.  For Ignace, the parties involved included the township, the NWMO, the project’s oppositional parties, and experts, among others. In this case, several years of exploration of the concept of the Deep Geological Repository (DGR) and the critical factors involved in its development took place among interested residents. 

The third key step was taken when Hardy Stevenson and Associates Limited was hired to determine how the residents wanted to declare their perspective on the opportunity to become a host community of used nuclear fuel. The resulting report, which provided data collected from residents over six months, was critical to inform the design of the willingness study and consent-seeking process. The report provided insight into exactly how residents wanted to “cast their vote” on the subject and what mattered to them about the process. That information was used when we designed the community engagement aspects of the willingness study. 

Eventually, this stepped process culminated in a Willingness Study, that we branded as Your Voice, Your Choice Ignace, that proved a 74% majority in favour of the development project, with a 93% confidence rate. The approach we took as the willingness study consultants was designed by our team of researchers and community engagement experts, uniquely positioned to effectively interact in smaller, rural, and remote communities. 

We took on two commitments from the onset of the project that kept us accountable every step of the way; that we would reach everyone determined to be eligible to participate and report exactly what opinion they held, regardless of what it ended up to be, should they consent to participate in our study. 

We made sure to reach everyone eligible and we let the data speak for itself. 

Our neutrality combined with the robust project design made trust in the result more likely. 

The resulting evidence serves as a clear, defensible indicator of willingness to become a host community for Canada’s nuclear waste, and in our case, it provides leaders with the irrefutable reasoning residents made for taking that position. The information that explains why the residents adopted their position can help inform further decisions made by leaders and provides a clear opportunity to continue the conversation as the project progresses. 

Our process of engaging data collection concerning the reasons why residents took certain positions on the issue permitted access beyond a typical referendum result that would only capture a statistical outcome of few responses to one question.

Our innovative process in conducting the Ignace Willingness Study enabled us to advance classic community consultations and familiar ways of collecting valuable data into something more robust in terms of results defensibility and inclusion of all eligible respondents. We applied research and community engagement tactics in a manner that served our innovative approach to building strong representation and resident-informed evidence rather than relying on the opinions of few to inform the broader community impact typical of classic community consultations.  

The leadership precedence was set when the commitment was made and funded by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization and the Township of Ignace to determine resident consent to host Canada’s largest planned infrastructure project before proceeding. Our team had the distinct privilege of designing and animating the study that produced the evidence that informed the township’s decision to declare consent, and eventually be selected by the NWMO as the host community for the deep geological repository of Canada’s used nuclear fuel as a result.