vocabularies and forms of authority. The work required people to negotiate not only language, but meaning. The resulting principles had credibility because they were built by the kinds of people who would have to use them. The process was also informed by a substantial body of practice in structuring and mediating complex public disputes. Years of work in large-scale environmental and resource conflicts, and years of training practitioners at the Banff Centre, provided practical knowledge about how multi-party processes succeed or fail. That experience did not substitute for the negotiation. It informed it. It helped ensure that the principles were not aspirational statements detached from practice, but operational tools grounded in what complex disputes actually require.² The most important point is this: the process was built in the image of the principles. It was inclusive, informed, voluntary, self-designed, flexible and accountable. Participants were not simply consulted about a framework. They participated in constructing it. That is why the Guiding Principles carried authenticity. They expressed a way of working that had already been demonstrated in the way they were made. One principle is especially important for the argument of this paper: equal opportunity and equal access to relevant information. In complex public decisions, participation without information is symbolic. Informed participation is not an accessory to decision-making; it is a condition of it. 5. FROM CONSULTATION TO CONSENSUS TO PARTNERSHIP The distinction between consultation and consensus is not semantic. It goes to the distribution of influence and responsibility in decision-making. Consultation informs decision-makers who retain authority. It may be necessary, and when done well it can improve understanding and reduce risk. But consultation does not, by itself, build a decision with the parties who must live with it. Consensus-based processes do something different. They engage participants in constructing the outcome. Consensus is not unanimity; it is a condition in which participants can live with the total package and support its implementation. That understanding is drawn directly from the Guiding Principles, and is set out in full in the Appendix to this paper.³ This distinction is central to the progression from consultation to collaboration, consensus, consent and partnership. Each step changes the relationship to power. Consultation expands voice. Collaboration creates joint work. Consensus seeks agreement on an implementable package. Consent introduces a stronger requirement of acceptance, particularly in Indigenous rights contexts. Partnership embeds shared responsibility, and in some cases shared ownership, into the structure itself. Of all the dimensions of this progression, it is the Indigenous dimension that has risen most sharply. The expectations have changed fundamentally — not merely for consultation or even 159
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