The ultimate horizontal issue: Environmental politics and policy in Ontario and Alberta, 1971-199

This thesis explores environmental politics in Ontario and Alberta which, in 1971, became the first Canadian provinces to establish cabinet departments of the environment. As such, it highlights the roles played by electoral competition, conflicting group pressures and opposition parties in environmental policy-making. It also focuses on the extent to which the machinery of government is challenged by the cross-cutting claims of environmental policy, which has been aptly called the "government's ultimate horizontal issue.".;Allowing for an uneven pace of environmental policy development in the two provinces, what amount to striking commonalities in the field emerge. In the beginning, the clientele of the two environment departments was composed of the waste generators which they were to regulate. This clientele relationship between waste generators and environment departments was challenged by policy networks of environmental interest groups and opposition parties and, eventually, displaced. The presence within cabinets of environment ministers who then advocated environmental interests beget conflict with other ministers, especially those with economic and municipal responsibilities. In the result, first ministers were summoned to adapt the decision-making mechanisms of their cabinets to address the emerging clashes. In this context, first ministers could be seen as organizational architects whose discretion in structuring executive institutions is circumscribed.;The differences in the pace of the emergence of this pattern are principally the result of well-know contrasts between the two provinces. Ontario's more populous and pluralistic society has sustained a more vigorous environmental activism. In Alberta, a strong societal consensus that the province's energy based economy should become more diversified temporarily deprived group life of an environmentally sensitive middle class constituency. These differences are also reflected in Ontario and Alberta election outcomes.;A number of other factors have affected the pace of environmental policy development in the two provinces. Judicial decisions, and federal environmental initiatives, have played a greater role in Alberta than Ontario, especially in the last few years. The story of environmental politics in these provinces is also frequently punctuated by markers of American influences on the behavior of both regulators and environmental groups.