Command and Control, or Persuasion?

The Native Reserves of Ontario have in the past been mainly subject to their own rules and regulations concerning environmental protection. A recent audit by the Auditor General Shelia Fraser calls for a change in that policy. She has believes that the government of Canada is neglecting their environmental duties on First Nations Reserves. Although laws do exist to control environmental degradation, they are neither severe enough nor well enough enforced to be effective. The minimal laws present do not include rules for sewage treatment, solid waste disposal, drinking water quality or landfill locations on reserves, despite these laws being the present throughout the rest of Ontario. This lack of regulation is decreasing water quality significantly on reserves. To change this, Fraser believes the Canadian government should use regulatory control.

Regulatory control is the use of a law or policy to change an environmental problem. In this case, the auditor general believes that introducing stricter pollution regulations and enforcing these regulations will prevent further damage. This could be a lengthy and costly method of environmental protection. The laws will first have to be drafted, reviewed and passed, taking months to years. Then many people will have to be paid to enforce these laws. Another course of action would be to use economic incentives.

Economic incentives are methods of environmental protection that use a dollar value to prevent environmental degradation. The costs of polluting are made to be more then the cost of reducing. Examples include taxes, subsidies, deposits, bonds, liability insurance and pollution permits. Instead of the Canadian government implementing regulatory control on Native reserves, they could use economic regulation. The government would not have to be as forceful and in many ways the community can benefit.

One major source of pollution highlighted as needing regulatory control is industrial waste water. Taxes or subsides would work well to reduce this type of pollution. A tax on the amount of toxic water produced would make the companies reduce to the point where the cost of abating is the same and the cost of paying the tax. Similarly, if a subsidy was paid for every unit of pollution reduced, companies would abate until they would no longer profit from the subsidy. By choosing the correct dollar value per unit of pollution, the government can decide the level of pollution produced. These levels should be compatible with what lakes and streams can accept.

Although taxes and subsides both achieve the same end, subsidies would be much better received by the residents of the reserve. The land on Native Reserves was set aside to belong to the residents of that reserve. Therefore in many ways they have the right to pollute their water as they wish. To tax the polluter goes against the ownership right. Subsidies however acknowledge that right by paying the owner to do something that an outside party wants. It is the owner’s land, so for the government to have that land protected, it must pay for it.

Another problem was the disposal of residential garbage. No regulations are present to control where landfill sites are located in relation to bodies of water. Pollution permits would be a good economic incentive to use to prevent harmful disposal of this waste. To reduce the amount of waste, permits could be issued to each household for the amount of solid garbage produced. These could be traded or sold depending on each home’s garbage production, but over all there would then be a cap on the total garbage produced. Deposits could also be used to encourage recycling.

For the actual disposal of this waste, another type of permit system would be required to prevent landfills from being close enough to contaminate water. If companies had to buy permits to start a landfill, the permits close to a lake could be made more expensive. Sites further from the lake would then be used because it would not cost as much to buy the permit.

Finally, water treatment plants were lacking in both regulation of waste water and drinking water quality. Fraser felt that regulatory control was the solution. However, instead of forcing a form of water treatment on the plants, the government could implement a tax on pollution above a set amount. The company could then reduce their water pollution in the cheapest and perhaps most innovative way.

I believe that in this situation a combination of regulatory control and economic incentives would work the best for both the government and the residents of the reserve. Some more specific regulations with substantial penalties need to be created and some enforcement will of course be needed to establish them. Drinking water quality should not be left up to economic incentives because there is a standard of health involved. However, beyond the basics, economic incentives will work much better. Subsidies would be well received because there is the potential to make money. Deposits would have no negative effect on the polluter because their money is refunded. And taxes, although not initially desirable, can be reinvested in the community. Economic incentives allow for environmental protection at the lowest cost. They also promote innovation to try and reduce emissions in new and cheaper ways.

In most cases I think a combination of regulatory control and economic incentives are needed for good environmental protection. Ground rules are set and enforced and then additional goals are obtained through incentives.

- Amy Adair

References

Rennie, S. (2009, November 9). Environmental rules more lax on reserves, Fraser finds. Retrieved November 14, 2009, from thestar.com: http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/auditorgeneral/article/720498--environmental-rules-more-lax-on-reserves-fraser-finds