Does the government watch over the environment? Looking at more than 40 years of public environmental action in Canada
During the decade in which Stephen Harper’s conservative government was in power, its environmental practices were heavily criticized. In this article we look at this period in relation to earlier periods, beginning in 1971 when Environment Canada was created, focusing on the ways in which the environment came to be understood and managed as a public issue that required government action. We start by showing how, under successive governments, the environment and its protection have been understood and progressively modified or readapted as part of public policy. We then compare political speech and concrete implementation of environmental policies under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA), the principal federal law regarding the environment. In conclusion, we look at the changes as well as the tension and paradoxes that have been at the heart of public pro-environmental action to see what these sometimes contradictory actions tell us about the motives and direction of Canadian governments in the last 45 years.