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Paradigmatic policy change or unintended subordination of rural autonomy: the case of source water protection in Ontario, Canada

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Abstract

In May 2000, E. coli originating from nearby agricultural lands contaminated the municipal water supply of Walkerton, Ontario. As a result, over two thousand people became seriously ill and seven people lost their lives. In response to this crisis, source water protection emerged as part of a multi-barrier approach for the provision of safe drinking water. Intervention at the source provides an early opportunity to contain a range of potential risks, many of them tied to land-use. However, source water protection involved a fundamental shift in Ontario’s policy approach to the provision of safe drinking water. In doing so, it mobilized powerful actors to defend their interests against this change. This study traces how the problem was defined in Ontario, and by whom, establishing a continuum of actor–institution interactions that spans the development and implementation stages of the Clean Water Act (2006), and shows how different preferences were carried forward through the devolution of decision making to the watershed level. By disaggregating the policy change into its constituent parts, and accounting for actor effects at the implementation stage, we observe that decentralization in the context of sustained political pressure led to an effective concentration of decision-making power, thereby actually eroding local control. Caution is thus warranted when considering the devolution of decision making to inclusive social processes, as this may link policy subsystems and thereby create the institutional channels through which special interests can dominate decision making.

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  1. Government of British Columbia (2001). Drinking Water Protection Act.

  2. Gouvernement du Québec (2012). Stratégie de protection et de conservation des sources destinées à l’alimentation en eau potable.

  3. National Collaborating Centre for Environmental Health (2014). Small Drinking Water Systems: Who Does What in Prince Edward Island?.

  4. Government of Yukon (2007). Public Health and Safety Act. Drinking Water Regulation.

  5. New Brunswick Department of Environment and Local Government (2017). Watershed Protection.

  6. Government of Manitoba (2017). The Water Protection Act.

  7. Wang and Patrick (2014). Implementing source water protection plans in Saskatchewan: Local watershed perceptions.

  8. Alberta Environment and Parks (2015). Draft Guide to Source Water Protection Planning in the South Saskatchewan Region (Alberta).

  9. NW Northwest Territories Water Stewardship (2017). Source Water Protection. Government of the Northwest Territories.

  10. The three case study SPC are: Ausable Bayfield Maitland Valley (ABMV), Saugeen Grey Sauble Northern Bruce Peninsula (SGSNBP), and Raisin-South Nation (RSN).

  11. In the paper, information attributable to these respondents is identified by stakeholder group, as follows: Gov—government (Ministry of the Environment, Environmental Commissioner of Ontario); CO—Conservation Ontario; Mun—municipality; Ag—Agriculture; Envi—Environmental organization (including the Canadian Environmental Law Association).

  12. In the paper, information attributable to these respondents is identified by stakeholder group and source protection committee (SPC), as follows: SPA—Source Protection Authority; RSN—Raisin-South Nation SPC; ASBV—Ausable Bayfield Maitland Valley SPC; and, SGSNBP—Saugeen Grey Sauble Northern Bruce Peninsula SPC.

  13. These include: The Advisory Committee on Watershed-Based Source Protection Planning’s report, “Protecting Ontario’s Drinking Water: Toward a Watershed-Based Source Protection Planning Framework” (2003); the Government of Ontario’s White Paper on Watershed-Based Source Protection Planning (2004b); and draft legislation, the Drinking Water Source Protection Act (2004a).

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Acknowledgements

Funding was provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Grant No. 752-2013-2551), and the Ontario Graduate Scholarship Program.

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  1. School of Public Policy and Administration, Room 5224, Richcraft Hall, Carleton University, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6, Canada

    Matthew Retallack

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Retallack, M. Paradigmatic policy change or unintended subordination of rural autonomy: the case of source water protection in Ontario, Canada. Policy Sci 53, 85–100 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-020-09369-0

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