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6. The Great Green North? Canada’s Bad Environmental Record and How the Feds Can Fix It
- University of Ottawa Press
- Chapter
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215 Canada’s environmental policy is broken and only federal government action can fix it. Since the late 1970s, the federal government has limited its role in Canadian environmental policy, particularly for regulation. The federal government no longer promulgates environmental regulations. It long ago gave up enforcing the few regulations it has, having delegated that responsibility to the provinces with almost no oversight. It has deferred entirely to interprovincial cooperative processes in setting national standards. The federal government has made strenuous efforts to avoid offending the provinces. In environmental policy, it has pursued impotence, choosing not to exercise even those powers the Supreme Court has already said it has. On the whole, the Canadian environmental policy system has emphasized process to the detriment of performance and outcomes. The decentralization and fragmentation of the Canadian system has had the effect of making it less transparent , which in turn has made it difficult for anyone―particularly NGOs and citizens―to get an accurate picture of environmental performance in Canada. Only recently have data become available to show trends across Canada over time. The data which became available in the late 1990s does not paint a pretty picture. On most dimensions of environmental protection Canada performs poorly compared to the United States and European Union policies. Chapter 6 The Great Green North? Canada’s Bad Environmental Record and How the Feds Can Fix It IngerWeibust 216 Inger Weibust This chapter will make the case for the necessity of stronger federal action by exposing the weaknesses of the existing decentralized and cooperative system, as well as its lackluster performance in protecting Canada’s environment . The chapter has six sections. The first section highlights how decentralized environmental standard setting is in Canada and points to the dominant role of the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment (CCME). The second section describes the CCME standard-setting process and its consequences for environmental protection in regulating dioxin and ambient air quality. The third section discusses the difficulties Canada has in implementing international environmental treaties, focusing on species at risk and climate change. The fourth section discusses the federal government’s constitutional powers for acting on the environment . The fifth section makes recommendations for how the federal government could act to improve environmental quality. The sixth section concludes by arguing that the system which has been in place for over three decades is not up to the task and the federal government needs to assume greater responsibility for this policy. Canada’s system of environmental governance emphasizes : • provincial autonomy; • minimal federal involvement in standard setting; • intergovernmental cooperation, with federal and provincial governments as equals; • non-binding accords; • guidelines, not enforceable regulations; • a lack of transparency about regulations and their enforcement; and • closed door negotiation between industry and provincial governments. The Canadian environmental policy making system is very decentralized in comparison to the United States. In the United States, since the early 1970s, the federal government has set minimum national standards. State environ- [44.192.247.185] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 23:12 GMT) The Great Green North? 217 mental protection agencies (EPAs) can set more stringent standards and are responsible for implementation. If the state EPAs performance is deemed inadequate, the federal EPA can take over the agency (Lowry 1992). The Canadian environmental policy-making system is actually more decentralized than that of the European Union (EU). Individual provinces have more discretion than European Union member states and the federal government plays a more circumscribed role than the European Commission. The European Commission has set more EUwide standards than the Canadian federal government has set national standards for Canada. These European Union standards are binding upon European Union members and must be transposed into member state legislation. Failure to properly implement a European Union directive in national legislation can often result in legal action through the European Court of Justice. There are no equivalent provisions in Canadian law for the federal government to act on behalf of a province if a province is failing to protect the environment. Canada has few federal environmental laws and the enforcement of those laws and regulations has mostly been delegated to the provinces. The Office of the Auditor-General found that the federal government had exercised very little oversight to determine whether these regulations were, in fact, being enforced appropriately (Canada 1999) The focal point of Canadian environmental policy making is the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment (CCME). The CCME is supposed...