Brian Mulroney's Influence On Canada

In 2006, former Progressive Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney was honoured as being Canada’s most environmentally friendly Prime Minister. Nearly ten years later, it is likely that Mulroney would still be able to hold on to that claim. Following Mulroney’s government, the environmental policies of both Jean Chretien, and his successor, Paul Martin’s Liberals and Stephen Harper’s Conservatives have been lacklustre, at best. Despite being involved in many international environmental initiatives, such as the Kyoto Protocol, Canada has been criticized for its poor environmental policy. Though there has been a tendency among Canadians to blame former Stephen Harper and his Conservative government for Canada’s poor environmental performance,

Looking at the international sphere, there have been many conferences, conventions and treaties signed that have had seemingly little effect. The Kyoto Protocol, for example, was not ratified by the United States, because President Bush argued that it was unfair to exclude China and India, the countries with the largest populations. The influence that American opinion has on Canadian environmental policy is also worth looking into. During the recent election campaign, Justin Trudeau and his Liberal party made many promises for new environmental policies, and have won with a majority government. Already, prime minister-designate Trudeau has committed to attending the United Nations Climate Change Conference taking place in Paris this November. As it stands, however, Canada’s environmental policy has been very poor, consistently ranking as one of the worst offenders, when compared to other developed

The OECD: An Environmental Comparison, a report comparing Canada’s environmental record to those of 28 other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. The report found that, of the twenty-nine countries included, Canada ranked 28th, only above the United States, which “provides compelling evidence that Canada is a laggard, not a leader, with one of the poorest environmental records in the industrialized world” . As a follow up to this report, the David Suzuki foundation published a report, authored once again by David Boyd, titled Sustainability within a Generation - A NEW VISION FOR CANADA. The document was intended to set a plan for Canada’s environmental policies going forward. This new report stated that “Canadians are among the most staunchly pro-environment citizens on the planet” and that Canadians had “the highest proportion of support for environmental protection in the 30 countries surveyed by the research firm Environics International” . Boyd’s report laid out nine areas that Canadian environmental policy should focus on, with the goal of achieving environmental sustainability within 20-25 years. In 2005, the David Suzuki foundation published The Maple Leaf in the OECD - COMPARING PROGRESS TOWARD SUSTAINABILITY, an academic study by the Sustainable Planning Group at Simon Fraser University that would look at Canada’s progress using the nine areas that were