RRI Green Planning Archives
Canada Environmental Policy Review
(current to 1995)

Canada's environmental history is characterized by heavy dependence on natural resources, international leadership, a strong personal environmental ethic, and emphasis on public participation in policy-making.

Government action on the environment began at the turn of the century, with the founding of the Commission on Conservation in 1909. The commission served as a research clearinghouse for the natural resources work done by the federal and provincial governments. It was disbanded in 1921.

Canada began to seriously consider national and international environmental issues in the 1970s. The Department Environment Act of 1971 combined federal entities responsible for various aspects of the environment into the newly formed department Environment Canada. In 1972, the Canadian government released the report Conservation in Canada to correspond with the U.N. Conference on the Human Environment, which was chaired by the Canadian Maurice Strong. The following year, the Science Council of Canada began a national environmental study, which was published in 1977 under the title Canada as a Conserver Society. Meanwhile, Canada was developing a system of problem-specific environmental legislation and regulations similar to those in other industrialized countries, such as the United States. Among these was a strategy for national parks developed in 1979.

The 1980s was a decade of considerable activity and change in Canadian environmental protection. The first half of the decade saw the development of many sectoral environmental policies, such as those for land use (1980), forestry (1981), wildlife (1982), heritage rivers and chemicals (1984), and water (1985). By the middle of the decade, Canada began to consider the theory of sustainable development, newly developed by the U.N.'s World Commission on Environment and Development, commonly known as the Brundtland Commission.

Canada's first moves toward comprehensive environmental planning grew out of series of public meetings held by the Brundtland Commission in May of 1985. The meetings were to gather input for the commission's report, Our Common Future, released in 1987. The Brundtland meetings sparked interest in sustainable development and led within months to the creation of a National Task Force on Environment and Economy, which reported to the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment (CCME). The task force was a multistakeholder forum with members from various sectors of society, including business, government, universities, aboriginals (native peoples), and environmental and labor organizations. In 1987, the task force submitted to the Brundtland Commission a broadly supported report endorsed by the prime minister, provincial and territorial leaders, and several business groups, trade associations, and environmental organizations.

Interest in this stakeholder approach to policy-making had been building for some time before the Brundtland Commission meetings. Dr. Robert Slater, senior assistant deputy minister of conservation for Environment Canada, believes the stakeholder approach was seen as an alternative to government inaction on policy issues:

"By the early 1980s the policy process had become fractious and polarized. There was widespread dissatisfaction with the government role of locating compromise on government proposals through separate discussions with the different sectors.... By the mid-'80s, we were beginning to experiment with alternative approaches that encouraged all sectors to sit around the same table as equals for the purpose of both defining the problem and developing the solution." (1)

One important recommendation of the Environment and Economy Task Force was to establish permanent forums, known as round tables, in which government officials and representatives of sectoral interest groups could meet to discuss issues involving the environment and economy. The duties of these round tables were to include conducting studies, reporting on the state of the environment, and developing "blueprints for sustainable economic development" to be integrated at provincial, national, and international levels. (2) Within three years, round tables had been established at the national level, in all provinces and territories, and in many communities.

For more information on the round tables and their role in the policy process, please visit the Policy Development page.

Throughout the 1980s, public interest in environmental issues was increasing, eventually becoming the nation's number one concern. This interest in the environment was also tied to political tensions in the country, as concluded in a survey conducted for Environment Canada:

"In the late '80s, Canadians were almost waiting for a pervasive, quality of life issue like the environment to come along to sweep away old cultural norms and provide new opportunities for individual expression and emotive outpourings of concern for the future." (3)

Concern for the environment became a national policy focus after the 1988 parliamentary elections. During the campaign, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney had promised to give environmental factors the same weight as economic issues in national policy. Mulroney's Conservative party won the elections and the government began drafting a comprehensive national environmental plan in the summer of 1989.

Environment Canada led the effort, with a cabinet committee of other federal departments responsible for areas such as energy, fisheries, forests, agriculture, finance, and health. In less than one year the committee released a draft report entitled "A Framework Discussion on the Environment." Over the next ten weeks the government conducted a frenetic public input phase, involving information sessions in 39 cities. Four hundred public suggestions were incorporated into the document, which was released in final form in December of 1990 with the title Canada's Green Plan for a Healthy Environment.

The Green Plan was supported by more than 40 federal departments and initially committed C$ 3 billion in additional funding to environmental programs over five years (this was later modified to 6 years). It is exemplary in its comprehensive approach, ambitious goals, and clear guidelines. The speed with which it was developed, however--and especially the limited time allowed for public input--proved to be a major weakness. As Huey D. Johnson, president of the Resource Renewal Institute, concluded in his book Green Plans:

"Unfortunately, the whole process was a bit too hurried, and that has become something of a problem for the government, because the public did not have enough time to assimilate the information and respond to it." (4)

The Green Plan was seen by many as a political document of the Mulroney government, and was not well-supported by many environmental organizations and other political factions. The plan's long-term viability has also been damaged by the fact that, in Canada's highly adversarial political environment, a newly elected party is virtually bound to undo the work of its predecessor. Furthermore, the Conservative government that devised the Green Plan was somewhat of an anomaly in Canada's postwar history, which had been dominated by liberal governments.

(For more information on the Green Plan, please visit the Policy Implementation page.)

The liberal politicians who came to power in 1993 also declared sustainable development a priority, and dedicated a chapter to it in their campaign document Creating Opportunity (commonly called the "Red Book"). The Red Book contains strong language on sustainable development principles: "In the next decades, the development of stricter environmental standards will be propelled by a number of international environmental, moral and market forces. Canada cannot remain isolated from these trends." (5) It also promises more than a dozen specific actions, such as:

• a study of financial barriers to environmental protection
• creation of an environmental Auditor General
• the commitment of 25 percent of research and development funding to environmental technologies
• completion of the national parks system by the year 2000 (also a goal of the Green Plan)

At first, the only real change the new government made was to drop the name "Green Plan"; most of the plan's individual programs, and funding, remained intact. However, Environment Canada, which was in the process of developing a second Green Plan when the new government was elected, found many of its efforts under the Green Plan directed into new projects, such as the creation of a Canadian Environmental Auditor General.

Later, due to serious fiscal problems, the government mandated a "program review" for all departments, charging them with eliminating or trimming programs to meet projected reductions in funding. Environment Canada, for example, will eventually lose 30 percent of its previous funding, hampering many programs, such as toxic site assessments. Despite these setbacks, many Green Plan initiatives, such as forestry and conservation measures, remain intact.

The Canadian Green Plan was still strong in 1992 when the Conservative government attended the U.N. Conference on Environment and Sustainable Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro. Having already made a first attempt at a federal sustainable development strategy, Canada was one of the few countries poised to respond to the demands of the conference, put forth in the document known as "Agenda 21." In addition to signing all the UNCED agreements, Canada also strongly advocated an international forestry convention, international action to protect fisheries, and the adoption of an Earth Charter.

Canada's extensive preparations for UNCED were based on a consensus approach involving various stakeholders, including business and environmental organizations. In November of 1992, the same group of stakeholders that had helped the government prepare for Rio met again to devise a follow-up strategy. The meeting was held by five organizations: the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment, Environment Canada, the International Institute for Sustainable Development, the International Development Research Center, and the National Round Table on Environment and Economy. Jean Charest, then the environmental minister, proposed that the consensus process be continued through a federally funded but autonomous organization dubbed Le Projet de Société. He described the term as follows: "In French, there is an expression 'projet de société' that does not translate well. It refers to an aim of a society at large, a defining purpose and ambition that inspires all sectors, all elements ... 'Un projet de société' is not used lightly but it is appropriate for the fundamental change that sustainable development requires." (6)

Le Projet now represents approximately 40 parties, including the government, the private sector, aboriginal societies, and environmental and social groups. Its two main functions have been to track Canada's progress in implementing Agenda 21 (the 1995 report is online) and to propose a national sustainable development strategy.

The second function has not been fulfilled as originally intended. Le Projet has been an experiment in very democratic decision-making, which has proven difficult to direct. Members of Le Projet, while undoubtedly dedicated to the concept of sustainable development, have tended to engage in theoretical discussions rather than develop a concrete agenda. The new liberal government placed Le Projet under the authority of the National Round Table in order to give it a more focused direction.

Le Projet's final product, Canadian Choices for Transitions to Sustainability, was published in May of 1995. More of a thought piece than an actual strategy, it considers the history of sustainability in Canada and some important questions to be answered in implementing a national strategy. The document is a good primer on sustainability initiatives, and may well prove influential in the policy process. (For a more detailed discussion of this document, please visit the Principles page..)

1. Slater, R. W., Changing the Way We Govern: Sustainable Development in Canada. Paper presented to the Environment Conference of the United Kingdom's Centre for Business and Public Sector Ethics, 1993, p. 9.

2. Le Projet de Société, Canadian Choices for Transitions to Sustainability: Final Draft. Ottawa, Canada: The National Round Table, 1995, p. 6.

3. Miller, Doug, Canadians and the Environment: Key Trends and Implications for Federal Decision-Makers. Toronto: Synergistics Consulting Limited, 1993, p. 5.

4. Johnson, Huey D., Green Plans: Greenprint for Sustainability. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1995, p. 91.

5.The Liberal Party of Canada, Creating Opportunity. The Federal Liberal Agency of Canada, 1993, p. 66.

6.Slater, Changing the Way We Govern, p. 20.