A chapter from A Breath of Fresh Air: The State of Environmental Policy in Canada, a collection of essays edited by Nicholas Schneider exploring market-based environmental policy options for Canada. In this chapter, Elizabeth Brubaker discusses the roles that property rights play in protecting the environment: They provide powerful incentives for the preservation of natural resources and they are effective tools to resolve differences over resource use. Although Brubaker proposes a number of means to strengthen property rights, she advocates one principal reform: the enshrining of property rights in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Water and Wastewater Treatment in Canada: Tapping into Private-Sector Capital, Expertise, and Efficiencies
Gallery
This chapter from A Breath of Fresh Air: Market Solutions for Improving Canada’s Environment reviews the challenges faced by Canada’s water and wastewater utilities and proposes private investment, private operations, and better accountability mechanisms, including enforceable contracts and more effective regulation of utility performance. It also recommends a federal role in facilitating private-sector involvement.
Who killed water markets?
Gallery
To really grasp the enormity of Alberta’s coming water challenges, you have to make a trip to the Columbia Icefields viewpoint in Jasper National Park. (You have to make the trip there anyway, but that’s another story.) A series of signs mark how far the glacier extended in past years. Back in the 1890s, it buried what is now the Icefields Parkway. In the 1920s, it was where the parking lot is now located. To reach the ice today, you have to leave your car and trudge over a kilometre of moraine, and on the way a shocking realization hits you. At the 1983 sign, you’re still only halfway there. The pace of the retreat has been picking up alarmingly.
Unacceptably Green
Gallery
Much of the Canadian environmental movement’s efforts to fight climate change have been directed towards advocating for increased government intervention. But what about existing regulatory barriers that hamper the market’s own ability to address environmental problems? Before enacting new legislation to deal with environmental ills, it is worthwhile to consider removing existing laws that block financial incentives for green initiatives. In Canada, government regulation has held back the development and usage of environmentally friendly alternatives like electric cars and hybrid taxis.
Environmentalist makes case for privatization of water treatment
Gallery
A leading water environmentalist is urging Alberta to privatize publicly run water utilities, ending a "cozy relationship" between the government and municipal utility operators. Elizabeth Brubaker, executive-director of Toronto’s Environment Probe policy group, says privatization will improve accountability and is the best way to boost water quality while reducing costs.
The Economic Water Cycle
Gallery
The 2007 EPCOR Distinguished Lecture, presented by the Centre for Applied Business Research in Energy and the Environment, in Edmonton, Alberta, on October 18, 2007.
Water is too precious for politics
Gallery
Alberta’s water utilities need work. A few years ago, the province conducted an assessment of its 534 water-treatment plants. It found widespread problems – especially in southern Alberta, where 70% of the systems got poor ratings.
Greener Pastures: Reforming the regulation of agricultural pollution
Gallery
"Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems." That warning, issued by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, couldn’t be clearer. Farmers around the globe are polluting the air, degrading the land, and fouling the water on a "massive scale," the FOA charged. "Urgent action is required to remedy the situation."
Elizabeth Brubaker responds to “Our Toxic Harvest”
Gallery
In her review of Greener Pastures: Decentralizing the Regulation of Agricultural Pollution, Harriet Friedmann is right to insist that not all agricultural pollution can be addressed by restoring rural residents’ rights to challenge agricultural nuisances in court. As Friedmann explains, “to hang the solution to agricultural pollution on courts responding to complaints by neighbours seems wildly inadequate…. [Neighbours] cannot be expected to take responsibility for wider problems that affect whole societies, watersheds, and bioregions.”
Our Toxic Harvest: is deregulation the way to reduce agricultural pollution?
Gallery
A seven-year mystery about the contamination of well-water in Walkerton, Ontario was solved for me in Elizabeth Brubaker’s very first paragraph. I recall good media reports when it happened in 2000 about the livestock operations that were a possible source of the bacteria which caused illness and death to citizens of the town. Yet the livestock operations faded from view as the public inquiry turned the spotlight on government inspections. Brubaker’s treatise on agricultural pollution begins with a paradoxical finding of the Walkerton Inquiry —- that pollution of wells came from manure which had been spread on farm fields in accordance with provincial regulations.
Right-to-Farm Legislation in Canada
Gallery
This paper outlines the provincial laws that exempt farmers from liability for the nuisances they create. It describes the new standard of "normalcy" by which agricultural practices are often measured and examines the farm practice review boards that have been established to determine whether disputed practices are normal, and thus acceptable.
Treating Victoria’s sewage: Key roles for the public and private sectors
Gallery
Victoria is, at long last, preparing a plan to treat its sewage. After decades of denying that it is causing harm and resisting pressures to clean up, BC’s capital regional district (the CRD, as the greater Victoria region is known) is being forced to assume its environmental responsibilities.
Book Review: ‘Greener Pastures’ disputes notion that right-to-farm prevents disputes
Gallery
A new book takes aim at right-to-farm legislation, arguing that relying on the creation of common law through court decisions would result in fewer disputes and would make polluting farmers responsible to their communities.
The Future of Water and Wastewater in British Columbia: The Case for Public-Private Partnerships
Gallery
A presentation to the Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce, in Victoria, British Columbia, on May 2, 2007.
Interview with Elizabeth Brubaker
Gallery
Joe Easingwood, of CFAX 1070 Radio, interviews Elizabeth Brubaker about plans for sewage treatment in Victoria, BC, and about the services best provided by the private sector.
Greener Pastures: Decentralizing the Regulation of Agricultural Pollution
Reply
By Elizabeth Brubaker.
This book traces the evolution of laws permitting farms to grow larger and to create nuisances — especially odours — that harm their neighbours. It argues for a return to a more decentralized, rights-based regulatory regime in which individuals and communities are empowered to protect themselves from polluting farms.
Published by the University of Toronto’s Centre for Public Management, 2007
When the (financial) cupboard is bare
Gallery
The continuing decline of Canada’s water treatment and and wastewater systems is one of the most pressing issues facing infrastructure across the country. According to reports from the Fraser Institute, there is several billion dollars worth of water infrastructure work that needs to be done before our water treatment and wastewater systems are brought up to an acceptable level.
Our Aging Water and Wastewater Systems Need New Investment and Management
Gallery
Cash-strapped governments all across Canada need to encourage private investment in water and wastewater systems if the nation wants to better protect public health and the environment, urges a new study by the Fraser Institute.
$90B to fix Canada’s water infrastructure
Gallery
TORONTO— A recent report from The Fraser Institute says $90 billion is needed to fix aging and poorly regulated, managed, and maintained water systems throughout Canada, and private investments may be the only hope.
Needed: private partners
Gallery
A wave of new privately funded roads, water and wastewater facilities, hospitals and schools could reverse New Brunswick’s demographic woes and attract new investment, say experts.
Environment Probe 