| Summary: | This thesis attempts to uncover the reasons why Canada, unlike the United States
and Australia, does not have stand alone federal endangered species legislation. In
particular, I will focus upon the history of Bill C-65, the proposed federal endangered
species statute which died on the Order Table in 1997. Using the "policy regime"
framework developed by George Hoberg, I examine the ideas, actors, and institutions that
have combined within a given set of background conditions to produce this distinctive
lack of a policy outcome, assessing the relative causal importance of each variable in
terms Bill C-65's failure.
Using Peter Haas' epistemic community approach, the causal knowledge of
conservation scientists' regarding habitat loss is found not to have influenced the policy
substance of Bill C-65. However, it is argued that scientists did play an important role in
the legislative failure insofar as they joined forces with environmentalists to discredit the
weak scope and substance of the bill. These pro-environment actors, however, were
matched throughout the interest group competition by the parallel forces of industry and
private landowner groups, who criticized Bill C-65 as a litigious, punitive and
"American" style of legislation. The provinces, for their part, sided with the landowners
and industry groups, arguing that the federal government had overstepped its wildlife
management jurisdiction.
Given a context of low public concern for environmental issues, and the
institutional trend towards regulatory decentralization, the federal government had very
few incentives to introduce a strong bill. However, the provinces, landowners, and
industry groups, all felt it was too strong, while environmentalists and scientists felt just
the opposite. Bill C-65's failure, therefore, was the result of the federal government's
inability to satisfy anyone on this issue. Determining who "won" this first endangered
species battle, however, is quite difficult without knowing whether Cabinet felt the bill
was too strong or too weak, and without knowing what the next legislative proposal will
entail. In conclusion, it is found that all three regime components of ideas, actors, and
institutions were equally important factors in bringing about the failure of Bill C-65, and
the current policy delay that continues to this day. === Arts, Faculty of === Political Science, Department of === Graduate
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