Graeme Auld

With an authoritative and courageous approach, Beyond Policy Analysis examines public policymaking in Canada at all areas of governance, including Heath Care, Education, Economic Development and Trade. This title goes beyond conventional categories and concepts to examine how the world of policymaking has changed with the increasing pressures of globalization, information technology, changing public values and cultural assumptions, citizen distrust, and decentralization and subsidiary. The sixth edition investigates ever-evolving governance, and proactively discusses contemporary Canadian issues.

Anchored in the core literature on natural resources, energy production, and environmental analysis, Green-lite is a critical examination of Canadian environmental policy, governance, and politics drawing out key policy and governance patterns to show that the Canadian story is one of complexity and often weak performance.

Making a compelling argument for deeper historical analysis of environmental policy and situating environmental concerns within political and fiscal agendas, the authors provide extended discussions on three relatively new features of environmental policy: the federal-cities and urban sustainability regime, the federal-municipal infrastructure regime, and the regime of agreements with NGOs and businesses that often relegate governments to observing participants rather than being policy leaders. They probe the Harper era’s muzzling of environmental science and scientists, Canada’s oil sands energy and resource economy, and the government’s core Alberta and Western Canadian political base.

An exploration of product certification programs and the factors that explain their varied success in becoming global governors equipped to tackle environmental and social problems effectively.

Consumers now encounter organic or fair-trade labels on a variety of products, implying such desirable benefits as improved environmental conditions or more equitable market transactions. But what do we know about the origins and development of the organizations behind these labels? Why have some flourished while others faltered? And why are some sectors rich with labeling organizations while others have very few? This book compares the rise and evolution of certification programs in the coffee, fishery, and forest industries to arrive at a model that reveals how market and political conditions, as well as the characteristics of program founders, shape the early character of the governance rules and certification standards that programs adopt.

In recent years a startling policy innovation has emerged within global and domestic environmental governance: certification systems that promote socially responsible business practices by turning to the market, rather than the state, for rule-making authority. This book documents five cases in which the Forest Stewardship Council, a forest certification program backed by leading environmental groups, has competed with industry and landowner-sponsored certification systems for legitimacy.
The authors compare the politics behind forest certification in five countries. They reflect on why there are differences regionally, discuss the impact the Forest Stewardship Council has had on other certification programs, and assess the ability of private forest certification to address global forest deterioration.