| Climate change has conventionally been framed in Canada as an issue for the federal government to address both domestically and internationally. The extent of provincial participation in climate policy-making and negotiation processes remained limited. To date, subnational interests have been channeled by the federal government through a problematic trade policy model for consultation. The experiences of policy development with Canada's failed implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, and its purposeful inaction at the Copenhagen negotiations, indicates that Canadian climate change policy-making has reached an important political crossroad. The increasingly active role of subnational governments in Canadian climate policy-making is shaping the dynamics of federalism and international relations. Under current practices, federalism prolongs and exacerbates internal tensions and divisions. The thesis concludes with a discussion of multilevel governance theory and related climate change policy-making scenarios, with respect to providing an effective, alternative solution to the current 'top-down' trade-policy system of international relations. |
