Like our home institution the SFU Centre for Dialogue, Canada's World used dialogue as the basis of our events and interactions with citizens. Dialogue is a process of open-minded interaction, where people come together to seek mutual understanding and common ground. Canada's World empowered citizens to use dialogue to collaboratively write the new story of Canada's role in a changing world.

In the fall of 2007, Canada's World conducted research on the "new realities facing Canada in the international arena". This research included an online dialogue in our Facebook group, ten roundtable sessions, and interviews with over a hundred Canadians. Based on the research the Canada's World Advisory Committee selected nine new realities as themes to focus the citizens' dialogue. Canada's World also fielded a poll of Canadian attitudes towards international policy, led by Environics.

At the end of this process, Canada's World was prepared to launch the dialogue phase, and our cross-Canada team produced discussion guides on each of the nine realities. These guides provide a comprehensive overview of the major issues defining Canada's role in the world today, combined with approaches for addressing the opporunities and challenges these issues present.

Regional dialogue process

Throughout the spring of 2008, Canada's World organized eight regional dialogues across the country. Thirty Canadians were randomly selected to participate in each two-day dialogue. A final report, entitled "Moving Beyond Dichotomies: Canada's role in the 21st Century," and highlights from each of the sessions are now available in the results section of our website. The input of regional dialogue participants from all across the country is absolutely crucial to our process, and Canada's World is grateful to the amazing Canadians who made contributions of their time, energy and insights. Key findings from these dialogues helped guide our community dialogue phase, and will be essential to the final stage of writing a new story for Canada in the world.

In addition to the deliberative dialogue process, dozens of organizations, business groups and academic institutions have participated in community dialogues, kitchen roundtables, events and forums with their members and constituencies.

In January 2008, the regional and sector-wide dialogues will culminate in a national dialogue. The outcome of this national event will be a book that will highlight a new story for Canada in the world.

In the last year of the initiative, the focus of Canada's World shifted from engaging Canadians in the dialogue to communicating the outcomes of the initiative to citizens, government, the media and key policy stakeholders with the aim of empowering citizens to make Canada a genuine model for integrity in the global arena. We worked on making our processes even more participatory on the Web and engaged citizens with a variety of social media tools and video-based outreach. Along with several other collaborators, we organized and hosted ForeignPolicyCamp - the first hybrid conference to focus on Canadian foreign policy - on Nov 30, 2009.