7 The NBEI came about in the context of the complex public controversy over a possible fracking industry in New Brunswick described above. In 2011, the Conservative provincial government released the Energy Blueprint, which was meant to provide policy direction and a three-year action plan for the energy sector in New Brunswick (Department of Energy). One of their objectives was to gather stakeholder input (defined as input from citizens, industries, and other interest groups) in the production of another “blueprint,” this time more precisely dealing with oil and natural gas. That oil and gas investments in the province were an area of controversy became obvious during these input-gathering processes, which ended in May 2013 with the release of the Oil and Natural Gas Blueprint. The blueprint outlined guiding principles for the development of oil and natural gas policy decisions: environmental responsibility, effective regulation and enforcement, community relations, First Nations engagement, stability of supply, and economic development (Department of Energy). The Conservative government founded the NBEI with the intention that it would further the objectives of this Oil and Natural Gas Blueprint in (1) producing a solid evidence base relating to the benefits and risks of fracking, and (2) providing a forum for roundtable dialogue between energy leaders and members of the public about these risks and benefits (NBEI).

8 Policy-makers are increasingly dealing with controversial decisions by creating formal channels for debate. Innovations in the energy sector are especially contentious (Stankiewicz), and as a result the political bodies responsible for implementing energy innovations are more and more undertaking social dialogue with groups of interested actors or stakeholders. Dialogue-based policy tools, such as roundtables, are envisioned as formal mechanism by which governments can make decisions involving new practices and technologies for engaging members of the public in the anticipation and evaluation of the social, cultural, ethical, and political consequences of new technologies (Einsiedel; Rowe and Frewer; Joss and Brownlea; Durant; Irwin; Fischer; Morone and Woodhouse). In their ideal form, dialogues can enable democratic policies but also positive interconnections among science, technology, and society by (1) helping to understand the ethical, legal, and other social impacts of new technologies on individuals and society (Lewenstein); (2) enhancing social trust (Price and Cappella); and (3) reducing conflicts through the identification of common values and areas of policy agreement (e.g., International Risk Governance Council).

9 The increasing use of dialogical policy-making comes about as part of a broader shift within policy away from expert-driven policy decisions, where expertise has been defined as the propositional knowledge of credentialed scientists (Wynne), to decision processes that engage ordinary citizens. Wherever a policy decision involves technical elements, the question arises: how is technical knowledge to be deployed within the policy process? Historically, the dominant response to this question was to put mechanisms in place for the efficient translation of technical knowledge into public policies (Gregory and Locke), where policy-makers explain their decisions to citizens in publicly accessible language. This public understanding of science and technology (PUST) approach to policy-making involves members of the public by correcting for their lack of scientific or technical knowledge on policy-relevant issues through public education campaigns (Brossard and Lewenstein). For instance, the Canadian government and biotechnology industry have attempted for decades to educate members of the public on the established safety of genetically engineered foods in order to bring these publics on board with already-occurring governmental investment in the biotechnology economy (Bronson, “Reflecting”).

10 For decades, academic critiques have been leveraged against the public understanding model, for the most part focusing on the inaccuracy and inefficacy of efforts informed by it. Academic analysis has revealed that those who are well educated in science and technology are just as likely to protest against it (Bronson, “What We Talk About”). A significant problem is that PUST approaches to policy-making ultimately make those with credentials the source of information and authority in the planning process and thus lead to what Daniel Sarewitz calls scientized governance arrangements, ones that marginalize citizen knowledge and concern when it cannot be made sense of as properly scientific. PUST leads to technocratic policy-making, or policies made by those with technical expertise like engineers (Postman). A scientized and technocratic decision process around fracking, for example, would marginalize activist concerns that fracking in New Brunswick may lead to the concentration of corporate power in the province, thus exacerbating socioeconomic inequities.

11 A different response to the question, “How is technical knowledge to be deployed within the policy process?” has been put forward by science studies scholars and some policy actors, who suggest that mechanisms should be put in place to facilitate informed public debate as the basis for workable and also democratic policy-making (Gregory and Locke). Opening up policy decision-making to a variety of social groups (including technical experts, other experts, interest groups, and citizens) is a way of establishing socially sustainable policies that command general public confidence (Guston). More recent policy language uses the term social licence to describe such policies (Prno and Slocombe). Critiques of PUST have translated into new policy-making processes in Denmark, the UK, and increasingly in the U.S. and Canada (Brossard and Lewenstein). Governments have deployed specific public engagements in policy-making through citizens’ juries, consensus conferences, planning cells, citizens’ panels, town halls, and roundtable meetings, each of which, broadly, brings together groups of citizens for useful deliberation and seeks to feed back the results of such deliberation into policy processes (Guston). One of the first dialogical technology assessments was a consensus conference hosted in 1999 by the Danish Board of Technology on the topic of genetically modified technologies. These dialogues were structured “in response to the perception of a heated public debate on the issue, which the Danish Board of Technology believed could benefit from informed public input” (Joss and Kluver 38).

12 Despite the apparent enthusiasm for citizen engagement, existing empirical work on particular public engagements shows that their organization has to be considered with the utmost care to prevent the recapitulation of technocracy within engagement modes (Evans and Kotchetkova). The engagement exercises that came out of the Canadian Biotechnology Advisory Committee, as one Canadian example, failed to bring in democratic and robust policies because they privileged technical expertise over citizen participation in policy decisions (Prudham and Morris).

15 I use a textual analysis of the transcribed audio recordings of three NBEI roundtable sessions (21 August 2013; 21 October 2013; and 28 March 2014). The NBEI recorded the roundtable meetings, and their executives gave me the recordings in the form of digital audio files. As the organization is public and has transparency as one of its organizing principles, there was no requirement for me to guarantee the anonymity of the roundtable members or the NBEI executives. That said, in most scenarios the speakers did not identify themselves, and it did not seem necessary for me to use names in this paper. With the help of a research assistant, I transcribed the audio recordings, producing 161 pages of textual data for analysis.

16 I performed the analysis using the open-source coding software Tams. I coded data inductively with attention to the problematic and the ways in which different views on energy were being brought into interaction. During the analysis process, I asked the following questions when coding the data: What appears to be the conceptual framing of the roundtable processes? How does the structure of the roundtable either enable or constrain the participation of particular participants or particular views? How does the language used by the roundtable members enable or constrain the participation of non-normative forms of expertise? To what degree is the roundtable conversation dominated by technical rather than social, political, or cultural issues, needs, and concerns? What do participants’ statements take for granted, or what do they say about assumptions and values at play in the roundtable process?

17 I bring a reflexive politics of knowledge approach to this study, informed by critical theories of communication, critical cultural theories, and science and technology studies approaches (Hall; Grossberg; Jasanoff). I take seriously the power of language in shaping the relationship between science and society. More precisely, I am interested in how technologies achieve social stability through social struggles over the control and distribution of meaning, central to which is language. Significantly, language always connects to power and difference; particular texts empower some possibilities and disempower others. I am interested in how the NBEI roundtable processes may be legitimating particular visions of energy technologies in New Brunswick, authoring some visions as viable for the province’s energy futures. My emphasis is on how those textual processes and the assumptions that appear to guide them may give power to particular actors and particular ways of approaching energy conversations.

18 One of the dominant categories to emerge from the data analysis was that of integrity. Integrity appears as a theme across the entire data set, though related categories of “trust” and “security” were also coded.At the first NBEI roundtable, held at the Chateau Moncton, the then-chair of the organization, Louis LaPierre, moderated the session. I did not attend this roundtable meeting, but the transcript begins with a presentation made to roundtable members by LaPierre. In outlining the mandate of the institute, LaPierre described the NBEI as a neutral mechanism for delivering citizens the kinds of truths they expect to receive but are not getting from government:

It is well accepted that a lack of trust among citizens represents a legitimation crisis for policy-makers intent on making democratically accepted decisions (Habermas). Responding to citizens’ lack of trust in political institutions in New Brunswick, LaPierre recommended that the provincial leaders form an organization that could help to shape energy policies independent of vested financial and political interests. From the textual data, I see evidence of genuine attempts on the part of the NBEI executive at developing formal independence from government and industry. For instance, the NBEI is legally independent from government and roundtable members are protected under a liability policy that presumably is meant to allow them to speak critically, even against government and powerful interest groups. At the first roundtable meeting, Louis LaPierre stated, “[The NBEI has] obtained liability insurance for the institute. We incorporated as an independent research institute and we have a policy for each of you.”

19 Interestingly, if integrity is linked to independence, it is clear from the data that the NBEI executive and those who formed the organization view science as synonymous with independence. The belief that deliberations should be “science-based” was another dominant category that emerged from the data set, where similar codes included “objective,” “evidence-based,” “scientific,” and “unbiased.” A bureaucrat from the Department of Energy and Mines spoke to the roundtable members at the first meeting and described the role of the NBEI (including the roundtable) as one of fostering truths about possible energy directions through the production of “science-based” information:

Also at this meeting, LaPierre described the NBEI as “an independent body, separate from government, [whose goal is] to examine the science surrounding energy development in New Brunswick. So we have science focus; we will look at science, evidence-based science, peer-reviewed.”

20 Even the structuring of the roundtable meetings speaks to this presumption that science will help to generate integrity around the policy advice produced by the NBEI. Roundtable members are not “average” citizens—that is, uneducated in the technical matters at hand. Rather, participants are well-educated professionals drawn from stakeholder groups involved in the wider provincial energy debates. These elite members are able to deal with discussion on technical matters. Despite their technical acumen, roundtable members are told at the first meeting that they are not experts compared to the NBEI’s Scientific Advisory Council (SAC), which is populated by hard and natural scientists who “are in charge of looking at the science” (LaPierre, August 2013). One could imagine a role for the roundtable members in helping to direct the research programs and data collection of this advisory council—say, identifying areas of public concern that need research attention. This sort of dialogue between citizens, researchers, and policy actors would follow from the broad aims of participatory policy-making. Louis LaPierre does hint at such a role during the August 2013 meeting:

But at the same meeting, LaPierre also suggests that the advisory council is itself directing the collection of an evidence base for energy policies, calling it the “executive branch” of the entire NBEI:

21 While there is clarity about the SAC’s role in generating integrity around energy recommendations made by the NBEI, there is ambiguity across the roundtable meetings about the role of the roundtable members. Members are variously told that their role is to receive questions and concerns from members of the public, to review documents coming from the advisory council, to “assess” (assess what exactly is not specified), to “examine the science on fracking,” to “understand the possibilities involved with shale gas industry,” and to facilitate (again, what exactly is not made clear). Based on the principles of public engagement, one might imagine a role for the roundtable in facilitating democratic relations among industry, government, and civil society. At their first meeting, LaPierre does say that “industry has concerns and government has concerns and we need to see how we might integrate the science....Society has concerns.” At this same meeting, LaPierre instructs the roundtable members to communicate the SAC’s scientific research to their “constituents,” a directive that appears to undercut his other claims at “facilitating democratic relations”:

22 During my observations of roundtable activity there was little time made available for members to discuss issues among themselves; predominantly, discussion was initiated and highly directed by NBEI executives. Textual data also reveal less discussion among roundtable members than presentations to the members delivered by invited experts—either from government, industry, or academia. The roundtable meetings I attended followed a similar pattern of presentations to members by the executive, followed by presentations to members by an outside expert, after which there was a short question period. It was during this question period that roundtable members brought their issues and concerns forward, although from my observations, which are supported by the textual data, members largely limited their questioning to asking for clarification. There was little substantive critique made and I find no evidence of deliberation—the incorporation of alternative perspectives—having occurred within the NBEI roundtables based upon my reading of the textual data. Supporting this reading, I never witnessed such deliberation—there were no raised voices—during roundtable meetings. Furthermore, there appears to have been no revision of behaviour or direction by the NBEI, including the SAC, based upon roundtable dialogue.

23 Roundtable members did challenge the lack of clarity regarding their specific role within the institute. At the first meeting one member asked, “Is there a communication linkage between different levels [of the NBEI]…like, will this roundtable ever see the actions and recommendations or the conversations of the SAC?” The chair, LaPierre, responded: “The conversations won’t be, but the recommendations will be.” By the third roundtable meeting, there is evident confusion among the members about the nature of their participation within the organization, particularly in relation to the work of the advisory council. One member said:

24 Three meetings in, a roundtable member interrogates the director, now David Besner, regarding the NBEI funding of a two-year project to assess domestic well-water quality. They ask how decisions are made on SAC research, and questions the fact that the NBEI is not giving roundtable members a role in directing SAC priorities: “Sorry, but just in reference to this project, I was hoping to better understand the decision-making process for deciding which projects get funded or supported, versus, like, how you seem to be calling for projects and decide [sic] which one to move ahead with.”

25 Besner explained that this water research resulted from an “unsolicited proposal” brought to the NBEI by an academic researcher and SAC member (Dr. Kerry MacQuarrie) and that “it was a decision and if you’re asking how the decision is made, it is made by the SAC. Any other questions?” Dr. Maurice Dusseault, an environmental scientist and member of the SAC who was in attendance at this roundtable meeting, voiced a justification for the decision to fund this study:

26 Despite the fact that the study parameters appear to have been set before this roundtable meeting—the study was set to begin weeks after this meeting—there was an extended exchange between Dr. MacQuarrie, who was invited to the meeting as an expert presenter, and several roundtable members about sampling technique, possible privacy and access issues, and the public communication of results. It is not clear from the transcripts whether the advice of the roundtable members was taken up by the SAC. The textual data speak, then, to a policy organization aimed at growing democratic integrity around energy commitments in the province, but one perhaps failing to fully empower roundtable members in this task.

27 Even though roundtable members are told that science is being given separate consideration by the SAC, the textual data reveal that the majority of the roundtable dialogue focuses on risks associated with fracking, where risk is defined as a technical issue to be evaluated using highly reductionist scientific methods. This founding assumption about risk as a technical issue was never questioned or deliberated upon by roundtable members. A scientist and consultant, presenting to the roundtable members at the first meeting, describes the risk that the NBEI will evaluate this way: “L’évaluation des risques, c’est très importante parce que si on veut procéder à développer un programme scientifique, il faut être capable d’évaluer les risques.”

28 As director, LaPierre (August 2013) described risk as something assessable via “scientific data,” which then guides regulations and industry standards: “We [the NBEI] are looking at current industry practices and the scientific data associated with it….We need to know the impact of new technology on the assumptions of current industry practices.”

29 Another time (October 2013) he said, “Once we [the NBEI] obtain additional knowledge, it then should go back and interact with the rules and regulations that we have developed in the industry….We should test our rules and regulations to see if they work and we should address these science issues.”

30 In the conceptualizations given in these quotations, risk is something to be understood by science and managed by government regulatory mechanisms; risk is a measurable technical issue instead of an overall stance toward possible outcomes from technologies—the kinds of outcomes that cannot be measured in advance. Strictly speaking, the conception of risk at work within the NBEI dialogues might not square with the realities of fracking as an engineering process. Fracking might indeed be a classic example of “post-normal” science where “facts are uncertain, values disputed, the stakes high” (Funtowicz and Ravetz 739). Hydraulic fracturing is a relatively new and radically local technique where the attending possible impacts depend almost entirely on its very local geological and social context. What contamination has been reported in the peer-reviewed literature, which is just now surfacing, shows it being the product of very particular interactions of fracking contaminants with local organic matter (Volz et al.). Nonetheless, SAC members, roundtable members, and NBEI leaders appear to assume, as a starting point, that fracking is beneficial (just like any development) unless proven dangerous through a risk assessment founded on existing scientific measurements. What would likely be a controversial definition or framing of risk outside of the context of NBEI roundtables never arises therein as an object for dialogue, which suggests a shared assumption about the definition of risk among roundtable members.

31 That the NBEI dialogues are founded on an assumption that risk is technical issue is presumably what pre-empts the NBEI roundtable members from discussing other risks related to provincial energy developments that can less easily be made sense of as scientific. One concern circulating in the informal debates on fracking in the province, which does not get discussed at the NBEI roundtables, is the complex and socially determined health risks associated with fracking development—in particular, with “boom-and-bust” economies that bring large and transient populations into rural areas for short periods of time. Such risks include the high prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases among transient industrial labourers, escalating rates of family dissolution and domestic violence and abuse, and stress-related illnesses expressed in industrial labourers (Office of the Chief Medical Officer of Health; OCMOH). The province’s previous chief medical officer of health and other health workers in New Brunswick have raised concerns about over such socio-medical risk in the context of possible legislation of hydraulic fracturing (OCMOH).

32 Another citizen concern that is not brought into the roundtable dialogue is the possible cultural risk associated with fracking, such as those Indigenous peoples have raised regarding the threat fracking poses to water’s cultural role for Aboriginal peoples. In fact, my textual analysis reveals that roundtable members share the assumption that water is a scarce “resource” with an economic value in its competing uses—namely industrial and recreational: “We have to pay attention to the impacts on water recreation” (SAC member). Cultural descriptions of water (e.g., as life force)—those that have been raised by Indigenous activists—however, do not appear in the roundtable dialogues.

33 Assumptions about risk may be shared among those present at roundtable dialogues but they are also actively shaped by those in positions of power at the NBEI. Presentations made by technical experts to roundtable participants clearly shore up the scientistic conceptions of evidence by conditioning what is admissible as a valid subject for roundtable dialogue. As one example, in his invited presentation on hydraulic fracturing, a technically trained SAC member cautioned (March 2014) roundtable members against engaging in the telling of untruths that might compromise the capacity for economic and resource development in the province:

The preceding quotation reveals that members are being called upon as disseminators (not creators) of truths to their respective “constituents” at the same time that they are being given a model for understanding “real” risk issues, which do not include concerns over the possible social and environmental effects of fracking.

34 The textual analysis also indicates that the NBEI roundtables have been organized within and are proceeding according to a technological, solutionist Weltanschauung—a foundational assumption that investments in technological innovations will lead to a progressively better social condition (Smith and Marx). The technological solutionism that frames the NBEI roundtable dialogues converges with its scientist logic by espousing science-led progress in service of economic, as opposed to widely democratic, goals. “Progress” was a dominant word coded from the data, and there is continual mention among the executive of “moving on” or “moving forward” with energy “development” after the “proper scientific assessment,” or “stepwise process.” An energy policy-maker, invited as an expert presenter to speak to the first roundtable, remarked to members:

Interestingly, the criteria for what would constitute progress are never explicitly brought forward as a topic for deliberation for roundtable members. Instead, the unstated and uncontested assumption that appears to be circulating at the roundtable is that investment in fracking technologies would constitute “moving forward” into an ideal future because of the economic gain that it will bring. A discussant from Siemens, a German-based engineering firm, opened with the following advice during the October roundtable:

Clarifying what he meant by innovation, the speaker asked rhetorically,

Here, roundtable participants are encouraged to see their mandate as thinking innovatively, defined as mobilizing scientific “solutions” to energy qua economic “problems” on the basis of a technological solutionist understanding of the social good; participants are encouraged to see industrial innovation and market expansion as a panacea for New Brunswick citizens’ problems.

35 There is no apparent consideration given to who exactly stands to benefit from the “business case” for fracking, and there is no conversation about bringing the energy needs of New Brunswickers, as have been articulated by citizens themselves—say, in the public protests—into these dialogues. For example, green energy technologies, like those being advocated for by local environmental activists (see Coon and Couture), are never explicitly the subject of dialogue for roundtable members—neither are they built into the deliberation of roundtable members. During the October 2013 roundtable meeting, a member initiated a discussion on renewable energy technologies. The NBEI director, then David Besner, shifted the conversation toward one about the limitations of energy storage technologies upon which the success of renewables ultimately hinges:

36 As the meeting, this conversation about renewables goes no further. Additionally, two representatives from NB Power presented to the October 2013 roundtable, which I attended. This well-presented talk given by two junior, male employees at NB Power showcased a strategic plan to increase efficiency in the energy system through smart grids and other so-called green innovations. The presentation outlined possibilities for increasing the efficiency of the production and delivery system through renewables as well as the kinds of technological investments needed to make renewables feasible in the province:

There was no conversation on renewables at this meeting, however, as the roundtable broke for food, skipping questions in, as David Besner put it, “an effort to get closer to lunch.”

37 The textual data from the meeting in March 2014 speak to predetermined commitments— especially among those organizing the NBEI activities—to carbon-based energy investments as the technological solution to the province’s economic vulnerabilities. A representative from TransCanada Corporation was invited to present to the roundtable members about a pipeline for shipping domestic crude oil for refinery production in Canada. His presentation turned on economic gain:

38 This discussion of the proposed pipeline turns social problems—widespread poverty and inequity—into commercial opportunity: locally processed oil for commodity export. This problem framing simplifies issues that are wide and complex and historically produced, and it also has the effect of discounting alternative techno-economic solutions. Curiously, this framing of the proposed TransCanada pipeline in terms of economic gain gets taken up by roundtable members, even those representing “stakeholder” groups whom have otherwise contested the pipeline on environmental grounds:

39 Ultimately, the results of this study raise further questions: Why are particular technological policy directions apparently being favoured over others? Why does this favouring go un-critiqued by roundtable members? Finding an answer to this is important, but beyond the scope of this data set; however, it is worth noting that the dominant techno-utopic vision at the NBEI supports existing power structures and already powerful actors, such as large energy oil and gas corporations.