G.Bruce Doern - Böcker

In this first in-depth examination of the governance of the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) in over twenty-five years, G. Bruce Doern and Richard Levesque show how the agency's history is interwoven with the evolution of Canada's economic and industrial development and with the fostering of science at Canada's universities, in industry, and within the federal government. Using a policy and institutional approach, the authors demonstrate the ways in which the NRC has had to simultaneously absorb significant budgetary and personnel cuts and become, in its own structure and operations, an innovating institution that helps support and facilitate an innovating Canadian economy - one increasingly characterized by knowledge-based industries. By reconfiguring itself in terms of its institutional mix of hierarchies, networks, and markets, the NRC has had to confront and change its own traditions, yet maintain itself as a complex government agency that still values research for its own sake as a public good.

In the energy sector of Canadian economic and political life, power has a double meaning. It is quintessentially about the generation of power and physical energy. However, it is also about political power, the energy of the economy, and thus the overall governance of Canada. Power Switch offers a critical examination of the changing nature of energy regulatory governance, with a particular focus on Canada in the larger contexts of the George W. Bush administration's aggressive energy policies and within North American energy markets.Focusing on the key institutions and complex regimes of regulation, Bruce Doern and Monica Gattinger look at specific regulatory bodies such as the National Energy Board, the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board, and the Ontario Energy Board. They also examine the complex systems of rule making that develop as traditional energy regulation interacts and often collides with environmental and climate change regulation, such as the Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Power Switch is one of the first accounts in many years of Canada's overall energy regulatory system.

The dynamics of multi-level regulatory governance are ever-changing, not just in a North American context, but in a global one as well. Rules, Rules, Rules, Rules, clarifies the nature, causes, and dynamics of levels of regulatory governance in, or affecting, Canada. Edited by G. Bruce Doern and Robert Johnson, this collection makes conceptual and practical contributions to the debate over what kinds of principles and institutional approaches can resolve the problems of multi-level regulatory governance. This is the first text to provide an integrated discussion of key politico-institutional issues such as smart regulation, innovation, social and economic regulatory governance, accountability and transparency in Canada through a study of the multi-level regulatory interactions that the nation must function within.Rules, Rules, Rules, Rules considers various sectors where rule-making spans all or most of the four levels of jurisdiction - international, federal, provincial, and city or local - in areas such as food safety, investment and trade, forestry, drinking water, oil and gas, and emergency management. A central argument of the collection is that the pressure to merge, collapse or rationalize levels of regulation is mainly driven by business interests, liberalized trade ideas, and related technological changes. Economic concerns about Canada's declining productivity compared to the U.S. are also discussed, as are issues of security, terrorism, and core business and economic concerns in the post-911 era.

Environmental matters have become increasingly important in Canadian and world policy agendas. In this study, G. Bruce Doern and Thomas Conway trace the development of Canadian environment policy, giving an in-depth account of twenty years of environmental politics, politicians, institutions, and decisions as seen through the evolution of Ottawa's policy agency, Environment Canada.The Greening of Canada is an extensively researched look at the entire period from the early 1970s to the present and is the most complete and integrated analysis yet of federal environmental institutions and key decisions. From Great Lakes pollution to the Green Plan, from the Stockholm Conference to the post–Rio Earth Summit era, the authors deal with both domestic and international events and influences on Ottawa's often abortive efforts to entrench a green agenda into national politics.The book explores the crucial relationships of institutional and political power, directing attention at the DOE and its parade of ministers, intra-cabinet battles, federal-provincial relations, business relations and public opinion, and international and Canada–U.S. relations. It also examines important topics from acid-rain policy to the politics of establishing national parks, and from the Green Plan to the realities of environmental enforcement. Employing a framework cast as the 'double dynamic' of environmental policy making, the authors show the growing struggle between the management of power among key institutions and the need to accommodate a biophysical realm characterized by increased uncertainty as well as scientific and technological controversy.

Risky Business is a comprehensive look at Canada's science-based policy and regulatory regime. It asks what risks Canadians might be exposed to as fiscal pressures strain the capacity of regulators in areas such as food, drugs, pesticides, fisheries, and the environment. The first part of this book focuses the reader's attention on diverse and major themes and issues that pervade science-based regulatory regimes today. The second part suggests a framework for analysis and endeavours to present both sympathetic and critical perspectives on the inner-workings of regulatory departments and agencies in the area of the protection of human and environmental health and safety.Covering such topics as the organizational evolution of regulatory agencies, regulatory bodies' changing sources and levels of funding, a review of the independence of science, and the increased potential for realization of risk, these essays point to the need for these regulators to operate with openness and accessibility in order to maintain public confidence. Indeed, the contributors argue that this openness is crucial to both democratic governance and the development of innovative knowledge economies.

In the energy sector of Canadian economic and political life, power has a double meaning. It is quintessentially about the generation of power and physical energy. However, it is also about political power, the energy of the economy, and thus the overall governance of Canada. Power Switch offers a critical examination of the changing nature of energy regulatory governance, with a particular focus on Canada in the larger contexts of the George W. Bush administration's aggressive energy policies and within North American energy markets.Focusing on the key institutions and complex regimes of regulation, Bruce Doern and Monica Gattinger look at specific regulatory bodies such as the National Energy Board, the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board, and the Ontario Energy Board. They also examine the complex systems of rule making that develop as traditional energy regulation interacts and often collides with environmental and climate change regulation, such as the Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Power Switch is one of the first accounts in many years of Canada's overall energy regulatory system.

In recent years, energy policy has been increasingly linked to concepts of sustainable development. In this timely collection, editor G. Bruce Doern presents an overview of Canadian energy policy, gathering together the top Canadian scholars in the field in an examination of the twenty-year period broadly benchmarked by energy liberalization and free trade in the mid-1980s, and by Canada's ratification of the Kyoto Protocol in 2002.The contributors examine issues including electricity restructuring in the wake of the August 2003 blackout, the implications of the Bush Administration's energy policies, energy security, northern pipelines and Aboriginal energy issues, provincial changes in energy policy, and overall federal-provincial changes in regulatory governance. They also demonstrate that, since per capita energy usage has actually increased in the past several years, sustainable development remains very much a struggle rather than an achievement. When the Kyoto Protocol and its requirements for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are factored in, the Canadian record is especially dubious in basic energy terms. Canadian Energy Policy and the Struggle for Sustainable Development is key to understanding many of the issues in Canada's endeavour to live up to its energy-related environmental responsibilities.

The past twenty years have seen considerable shifts and struggles in 'government science' - that is, in the way the state funds, supports, regulates, conducts and uses scientific and technological activity. Focusing on federal labs and agencies, Strategic Science in the Public Interest explores how these labs have been located within, and often buried by, the larger commercially-focused federal innovation agenda.G. Bruce Doern and Jeffrey S. Kinder examine four labs whose mandates deal with the Alberta oil sands, environmental technologies, wildlife research, and mining and metals, respectively. The authors use these cases to explain why a better middle-level approach to analysis is needed for strategic public interest-centred government science. They illustrate the importance of understanding the variety, as well as the similarity, of federal science and technology labs and agencies, and of instituting policies that reflect this diversity. The growing importance of Related Science Activities (RSA) is also explored, as well as the core trade-offs between commercial and public goods science in their mandates and their internal capacities.

In an increasingly knowledge-based economy, Canadian universities are important spaces for the development of research and innovation in many areas. This collection is the first systematic examination of the evolving relationship between the federal government and Canadian universities as revealed through changes in federal research and innovation policies.Focusing on the last two decades of federal policy under the Chrétien and Martin Liberal governments and the Harper Conservative government, Research and Innovation Policy considers issues such as the transformation of federal research granting bodies, the creation of new research infrastructure funding organizations such as the Canada Foundation for Innovation, pressures and incentives to create intellectual property and to commercialize, and the regulation of research ethics. With timely essays ranging in scope from the regulation of research ethics to the pressures of commercialization, Research and Innovation Policy is essential reading for any student or scholar committed to the well-being of higher education in Canada.

Biotechnology has become one of the most important issues in public policy and governance, altering the boundaries between the public and the private, the economic and the social, and further complicating the divide between what is scientifically possible and ethically preferred. Given the importance of biotechnology in shaping relations between the state, science, the economy, and the citizenry, a book that explores the Canadian biotechnology regime and its place in our democracy is timelier than ever.Three Bio-Realms provides the first integrated examination of the thirty-year story of the democratic governance of biotechnology in Canada. G. Bruce Doern and Michael J. Prince, two recognized specialists in governance innovation and social policy, look at particular ‘network-based’ factors that seek to promote and to regulate biotechnology inside the state as well as at broader levels. Unmatched by any other book in its historical scope and range, Three Bio-Realms is sure to be read for years to come.

Biotechnology has become one of the most important issues in public policy and governance, altering the boundaries between the public and the private, the economic and the social, and further complicating the divide between what is scientifically possible and ethically preferred. Given the importance of biotechnology in shaping relations between the state, science, the economy, and the citizenry, a book that explores the Canadian biotechnology regime and its place in our democracy is timelier than ever.Three Bio-Realms provides the first integrated examination of the thirty-year story of the democratic governance of biotechnology in Canada. G. Bruce Doern and Michael J. Prince, two recognized specialists in governance innovation and social policy, look at particular ‘network-based’ factors that seek to promote and to regulate biotechnology inside the state as well as at broader levels. Unmatched by any other book in its historical scope and range, Three Bio-Realms is sure to be read for years to come.