Environmental Issues In Canada

In Canada there are numerous environmental problems the country faces, from climate change to urban sustainability. These environmental problems result in political action being taken in order to create a solution to these problems. Despite of these serious problems there are political obstacles in the way of resolving these issues. The two most important environmental problems, which face huge political challenges, are water management and air pollution. The largest political issues faced by water management are federalism and the lack of information regarding groundwater. With regards to air pollution federalism and a lack of public awareness are the main political issues.

Federalism is a political system in which government power and

Currently in Canada the provinces deem who gets water and when; they also allocate water to public or private entities within their province. Currently the provinces are doing a terrible job with water management, no province has an accurate estimate of how much groundwater they possess. This is extremely problematic because they are issuing permits without knowing how much water there actually is or how many permits they should give out. The risk with this situation is that if they give out too many permits without knowing the total amount of groundwater available then there might not be enough water left for the ecosystems, or even worse when there is a drought (Olive,

One of the biggest issues with federalism and air pollution is that both provincial and federal levels of government have some legal jurisdiction. This creates a lot of ambiguity with which level of government has control over what situation, similar to the water management problem. Even determining which province is doing the most in terms of controlling air pollution is extremely difficult. Within the provincial level there are numerous departments, for example departments from public health, natural resources, environmental, energy, and even departments of commerce and trade that all have some responsibility over water management. With several levels of provincial departments comes various policies, guidelines, and standards making it incredibly difficult to keep track of which province is doing the most for air pollution. Since federalism divides the power amongst various levels of government, provinces have the ability to set their own restrictions for air pollution. This can be quite problematic, for instance one province may legislate strict restrictions for air pollution but if the neighbouring province seems to have much less restrictions then it will still negatively impact the air quality in the neighbouring province. Olive suggest that there is a need to track air pollution in the Alberta oil sands development, because the provincial governments are still unsure of how much air pollution moves