Section 2: Legislation that Protects the Environment

Lesson 4: International Efforts

The Environmental Assessment Process

The environmental issues you are most familiar with are global, rather than local, in nature. Global warming, the depletion of the ozone layer, and the extinction of animal and plant species worldwide, due to factors like climate change and loss of habitat, are problems you likely have heard about.

If other countries continue to pump poisons into the environment, the actions of a relatively small country like Canada (small in terms of its population and contribution to global pollution) are not terribly significant. What's needed for global problems is global action; and that calls for co-operation among the governments of different countries.

Once you have two or more countries signing agreements to take actions like cut emission levels or clean up shared bodies of water, a problem emerges that doesn't exist when a country or province is passing laws for itself. That problem is one of enforcement. If the Government of Canada passes a law and a Canadian individual or corporation breaks it, the governmental authorities can prosecute the offender and see that penalties are paid; but if a country fails to live up to a treaty it has made with other countries, who is going to enforce the agreement? Agreements between countries are dependent on the goodwill of the countries that sign them-and their desire for the respect of the international community.

What are your ideas on this problem? How do you think the international community ought to treat countries that don't live up to their agreements with other countries to control pollution? Really, if a country fails to live up to their promises, they may be censured and suffer international condemnation; countries could break off trade, financial aid, and diplomatic relations — but that is really about the extent of it.

Despite this problem, however, signing international agreements seems to be the only possible way to tackle global environmental problems; and Canada has taken an active role in this process.

Because Canada and the United States share a common border, it is natural that these two countries share environmental concerns. Because the United States is so much larger, it has historically produced much more of the pollution that threatens both countries. In the ongoing attempt to keep the Great Lakes clean, Canada and the United States signed another agreement in 1978-the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. In this agreement, the two countries agreed to restore and keep up the "biological integrity" of the Great Lakes Basin Ecosystem. Forty-three so-called "hot spots"-or areas of concern-were pinpointed for clean-up. Twelve of these are in purely Canadian waters. Within Canada, all three levels of government have worked to honour their commitment to the agreement to clean up their polluting. On the other side of the border, Americans have been doing the same.

Check your knowledge by completing the Self-Assessment Something to Think About 10 on the next page.