The Fisheries Act and federal-provincial environmental regulation: Duplication or complementarity?

Article Abstract:

The Neilson Task Force Report recommended a stronger commitment of the federal government to environmental issues and a more effective role at the federal level for the Department of the Environment in addressing these issues. Yet the multi-authored task force reports are somewhat ambivalent in recommendations relating to provincial-federal jurisdiction. A central question is whether the presence of both levels of government in this regulatory domain serves the goal of efficient resource allocation. Using evidence drawn from the past decade of regulation in the area of water pollution control in British Columbia, this paper provides one test of the hypothesis that the goal of environmental protection is well served by concurrent federal-provincial legislative and regulatory activity and the continuation of federal enforcement under section 33 of the Fisheries Act. Itis concluded that there is both a theoretical rationale and direct empirical evidence to justify the presence of both provincial and federal levels of government in the domain of pollution control in Canada. A federal legislative and regulatory presence, as exemplified by the Fisheries Act, is especially important in this area when provincial regulatory resources or will are weak. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

Laws, regulations and rules, Environmental aspects, Water pollution, Conservation of natural resources, Natural resource conservation, Environmental protection, Federal-state controversies

---

The politics of sustainable development: impediments to pollution prevention and policy integration in Canada

Article Abstract:

Sustainable development has been widely hailed in Canadian environmental-policy circles, as has its related goals of promoting pollution prevention and integrating policy across sectoral, jurisdictional, and medium (e.g., air, water, land) boundaries. But such broad support has generally not served to translate sustainability into concrete policy initiatives at the federal or provincial levels. Indeed, most Canadian efforts to foster sustainability appear to be largely symbolic in nature, leaving the bulk of environmental regulatory functions highly fragmented by medium and oriented towards pollution control. In comparison with the United States, it remains much more difficult to discern prevention and integration principles being put into practice in Canada in many important areas of environmental policy. The decentralization of policy-making and the lack of policy entrepreneurship within environment ministries in Canada appear to contribute to this comparatively slower response to the challenge of sustainability. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

Sustainable development

---

The 1987 National Forest Sector Strategy and the search for a federal role in Canadian forest policy

Article Abstract:

After obtaining office in 1984, the federal Conservative government began a lengthy process of consultations and conferences intended to define a new, expanded, federal role in Canadian forest policy. Despite their best efforts, however, the 1987 National Forest Sector Strategy which emerged from this process envisioned only a very restricted federal role in the sector. On the basis of a survey of federal government activity in the forest sector since 1867, it is argued that the most recent federal initiative, like similar attempts made in 1949, 1966, and 1978, foundered on the the obstacles presented to any expanded federal role by the fact that resource ownership and constitutional authority over the forest resource are vested in the provincial governments. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

Forest policy, Provinces, Forest reserves

Similar abstracts:

• Abstracts: On efficiency of decentralized environmental regulation. Controlling pollution with relaxed regulations
• Abstracts: The effects of firm specific taxes and government mandates with an application to the U.S. unemployment insurance program
• Abstracts: Price squeezes in a regulatory environment. The need for regulating a Bayesian regulator
• Abstracts: The case of the missing pollution haven hypothesis. Effects of environmental regulation on foreign and domestic plant births: is there a home field advantage?
• Abstracts: The cost-effectiveness of alternative instruments for environmental protection in a second-best setting. Environmental regulation and labor demand: evidence from the South Coast Air Basin

This website is not affiliated with document authors or copyright owners. This page is provided for informational purposes only. Unintentional errors are possible.