Facilitation and Facilitator Training for Government of Canada Consultations
Supporting departments to run high quality stakeholder and Indigenous engagement, on time and to standard, through existing federal supply arrangements.
Boreala Management, in partnership with Facilitation First
Major projects succeed or stall on the quality of the engagement behind them. That has always been true, but the Building Canada Act has raised the stakes: with federal timelines now compressed to two years and the engagement load on each project climbing, there is far less room for a consultation process to go sideways and be redone.
That engagement load is substantial, spanning provinces and territories, industry proponents, communities, and Indigenous rights holders, and much of it has to happen inside a fixed, unforgiving clock. These are high stakes, often high-tension sessions where the outcome depends heavily on how well the room is run. A consultation or stakeholder session that is rushed, poorly structured, or badly facilitated does not just strain relationships. It creates delay and legal risk that can put the entire timeline in jeopardy. In a two-year window, a process that has to be redone is a process that fails.
The volume of engagement is climbing, the standard for doing it well is high, and internal facilitation capability to meet that demand is often stretched thin. Skilled, neutral facilitation is not a nice to have in this environment. It is what turns a legally required, politically sensitive process into one that actually moves projects forward and builds durable partnerships along the way.
How We Can Help
Boreala Management and Facilitation First are sister companies, owned by the same partners.
Together they pair credibility with the communities in the room and mastery of the process that runs it.
Community Consultation and Stakeholder Engagement
Boreala Management works in service of Indigenous communities and organizations across Canada. Our consulting mandates regularly extend into community consultation and stakeholder engagement, and much of our organizational effectiveness work for Indigenous clients carries an engagement component. Among others, a current example is our facilitation of the Line 3 Indigenous Advisory and Monitoring Committee’s 2026 Line-Wide Gathering, the Committee’s national convening that brings impacted Indigenous Nations together with federal representatives to strengthen Indigenous participation in the oversight of a major energy project. Facilitating high-stakes conversations with respect and cultural understanding is central to what we do, and our participation in the Partnership Accreditation in Indigenous Relations (PAIR) program reflects our ongoing commitment to that standard.
Combined Facilitation Expertise
Facilitation First brings the discipline of the process itself. Since 1991 Facilitation First has designed and led consensus driven meetings and trained thousands of professionals to run them. Our methodology is tested, teachable, and repeatable: keeping a session focused, drawing out every voice, managing tension productively, and moving a group toward durable agreement.
How to engage us
Boreala Management is a qualified supplier under two Government of Canada Supply Arrangements, ProServices and TSPS (Task and Solutions Professional Services). Your department reaches both firms' facilitators and trainers through these existing arrangements, contracting once with Boreala as the single, already approved supplier, with no new vehicle to set up. There are two ways to work with us.
Have us facilitate
Between our two firms we hold a deep and varied bench of professional facilitators, and we put forward the right expertise for the engagement in front of you. For consultations and sessions in Indigenous, community, and rights holder settings, we bring facilitators with genuine Indigenous engagement experience and the credibility to be trusted in the room. For broader strategic, multi stakeholder, and organizational sessions, we bring facilitators with decades of practice in running productive, consensus driven meetings. You tell us the need, and we bring the facilitator to match it. This is procured under Stream 9, Business Consulting and Change Management, category 9.15 Facilitator Consultant.
Have us build your facilitation capacity
The ability to run a sharp, productive meetings is one of the most underrated skills in any organization, and in a department managing constant engagement it is a core competency, not a soft skill. Facilitation First trains your teams to run effective, focused sessions themselves, whether that is an internal working meeting or a high-stakes external consultation, so strong facilitation becomes a standard your department holds rather than a service it has to buy. This is procured under Stream 8, Human Resources Services, category 8.7 Leadership Development Consultant.
For reference, Boreala is qualified under the following categories relevant to this work:
- Stream 9, Business Consulting and Change Management: 9.15 Facilitator Consultant, 9.4 Organization Development Consultant
- Stream 8, Human Resources Services: 8.7 Leadership Development Consultant, plus full HR and organizational effectiveness coverage (8.2 Organization Design and Classification, 8.3 Employment Equity, 8.4 Employee Relations, 8.5 Compensation, 8.8 Staffing, 8.10 HR Assistant)
- Stream 5, Project Management Services: 5.3 HR Consultant, 5.4 Organizational Development Consultant
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