Dr. Matthew Crowe:

I am happy to start on that but there are others before the committee - I am looking at Mr. Boyden in particular - with years of engagement on this. The process is not easy because this issue is not as visible as others. There is a forum recommendation about digging into the issue of meaningful public participation but we do not know what that means yet. There is also the idea of developing a new national approach to public participation. There is developmental work to be done on on how to get people more interested and engaged in the matter. Nonetheless, there are plenty of examples around the country where this is happening. There are river trusts in place and there are many catchment management groups. Both Mr. Boyden and Ms O'Brien are very familiar with many of these initiatives around the country. There are plenty of pockets of good practice. In developing a national approach to this, what we might look at first is where the process is working reasonably well and how we can learn from this and build on it.