Canadian Public Policy and the Political Economy of Hydroelectric Development: Building Partnership

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Canadian Public Policy and the Political Economy
of Hydroelectric Development Building
Partnership with Indigenous Population or ???

• Mitja Durnik, PhD Candidate, University of
  Ljubljana

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Public Policy and Political Economy Approach to
Canadian Resource/Environmental Policy

• From a political economy perspective public
  policy-making is an activity of government -
  fuses knowledge and interests (Holwett, 19979)
• the traditional context of resource policy
  analysis costs and benefits of resource
  extraction are understood primarily as market
  transactions practices
• Political economy understands the economic
  process as socially and politically driven - the
  way in which power and authority are derived,
  transmitted, and channelled through economic
  processes

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• policy analysis rooted in political economy
  allows us to better understand the conditions
  under which resource activities take place and
  the consequences of their development for
  environmental policy-making
• better understanding of the origins of policy
  change and prediction what future policy changes
  might occur.

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The Main Dilemma
the aboriginal socio/economic development
control of the aboriginal participation in
the policy process
affects???
Public policy approach causes
Political economy approach consequences
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Important Question Why Building Partnership
between the Government and Aboriginal Groups?

• many hydropower projects in Canada are built in
  areas which are inhabited mainly with indigenous
  population
• many communities are not against the
  hydro-electric development, rather they want to
  benefit form it
• the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act
  presupposes public participation in the
  development process.

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Influencing the Policy Process

• incremental changes mean higher competence of
  particular policy and focus to better known
  experience reduce possible alternatives
  (Lindblom, 1968 26-27)
• Brant-Castellano (120) getting on the
  agenda is not synonymous with influencing
  policy.

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Research Focus Main Gatekeepers and Opportunity
for Outsiders

• HYPOTHESES
• Hg Current Aboriginal economic development is
  largely depended upon native participation in the
  core of public policy making.
• sub-hypotheses to deal with specific questions
• H1 Instruments for greater public participation
  (public inquires, round tables, etc.) serves as
  invited policy spaces through provincial
  government controls and selects actors and
  issues.
• H2 Aboriginal interest groups are unsuccessful
  in influencing policies because they lack of
  resources and specific knowledge about policy
  problems.

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Theories of Agenda-Setting Control

• the pluralist perspective the outcome of the
  competition of different groups (Truman, 1951
  Dahl and Lindblom, 1953 Dahl, 1958, 1961 in
  Parsons, 1995125)
• Schattschneider (1960) real power of the
  government is its power that can manage conflict
  before it appears
• Bachrach and Baratz those with power can exclude
  issues and problems from the agenda
• Lukes (2005) Three faces of power Application
  Gaventa

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Power of Gatekeepers

• gatekeeping is not a mainstream in the field of
  political science
• originally formalized by Denzau and Mackay
  (1983) committee advantages and their political
  behaviour of legislature committees that
  concentrated to maintain a status quo.

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Gaventa (1982) Three Faces of Power
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Forms of Power, Levels, and Spaces (VeneKlasen,
2002 Gaventa, 2005)

• policy spaces moments and opportunities where
  citizens and policy-makers can set up contacts
  (claimed, invited, closed-formal)
• Policy levels local, nationalprovincial,
  federal, global
• Three Expressions of Power
• visible power presupposes that formal rules,
  authorities, and procedures are visible and
  recognizable,
• Hidden power is in hands of policy actors when
  want to influence and control what would become a
  part of agenda-setting,
• Invisible power usually shapes psychological and
  ideological boundaries of participation.

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Modified Gaventas Power Cube Additional Level
(Province)
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Howlett (1997) Societal Agenda Evolution
Resource/Environmental Agenda-Setting

• pre-organizational Societal Agenda-Setting
  petitions, protests, and civil disobediencepublic
  participation is relatively passive escalate to
  some kind of letter-writing campaign or community
  petitions
• organized societal agenda-setting transition
  from preoccupation with ad hoc, reactive, and
  transitory forms of citizen input to
  better-organized, longer-term, and increasingly
  'proactive' activities
• institutionalized societal agenda-setting public
  inquiries, task forces, round tables, and
  environmental assessments.

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Special Focus Institutional Agenda-Setting
Canadian Context

• new forms of public administrations (boards,
  commissions, and tribunals) have offered more
  institutionalized means for public involvement.

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Institutional Societal Agenda Different Forms of
Public Participation

• Consultative hearings investigation of issues,
  recommendations, policy formulation
• Environmental task forces created for planning,
  consultation, or conflict resolution...
• Roundtables legitimation devices, educating the
  public about the merits of conservation
  strategies
• Federal environmental assessment review process
  (EARP) and its provincial counterparts.

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Limitations of Institutional Agenda-Setting (for
all three evolutional phases) (Howlett, 1997)

• Many activities too general, diffuse, radical, or
  philosophical
• many environmentalists are suspicious of
  consultative policy processes
• the establishment of a commission may divert
  public attention
• the appointed body lacks substantive power to
  implement decisions.

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Proposed model????
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Indigenous Peoples and Development Processes

• the aboriginal desire to keep control over their
  traditional lands
• still in a position subordinated within the
  nation-state and international system dominated
  by the western way of life and development
• equality where each individual (member) of a
  group had an access to resources (Blaser, Feit,
  McCree 2004).

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The Combined and Uneven Development in
Canadian History

• aboriginal socioeconomic life as a separate
  system native economies could work as a
  self-reliant system?????
• approaches which could explain the relationship
  between Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals domestic
  mode of production, dual economy, or mixed
  economy.

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Aboriginal Economic and Social Environment

• higher poverty rates, lower education levels, and
  chronic unemployment
• low-income
• the poverty reality of native children
• poor housing.

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Prosperous Canadian Economy

• one of the strongest periods of economic growth
  in its history
• Canadas real economy doubled (93 growth)
  between 1981 and 2005 (adjusting for inflation).

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Canadian Political Economy

• honorable tradition
• Two main schools
• non-Marxist school of political economy (Innisian
  Approach) based on staples (raw material
  exports) and the impact of staple dependence on
  other social, political and economic
  institutions,
• New Canadian Political Economy attempt to
  integrate much of the traditional institutional
  approach with elements of Marxist political
  economy and Keynesian/Kaleckian economics.

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Political Economy of Hydro-Electric Development

• three important stages
• the development of provincial hydro monopolies
  and their decline 1946-1990,
• the sustainability/regionalization regime post
  1990,
• Canada-United States Policy Integration.

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IMPORTANT POLICY PLAYERS Government
Administrative Agencies (Howlett and Ramesh,
1997)

• central actors to initiate policy discusions and
  dominate the agenda-setting process
• very sophisticated in the last years, well funded
  possess a power of introducing certain policies
  and implementing them
• central player in the context of many policy
  debates.

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Hydroelectric Provincial Crown Corporations

• wholly or party owned federal or provincial
  organizations structured like private or
  independent enterpises
• provide regulatory, advisory, administrative,
  financial, and other services or carry out goods
  and services to the public (Ferfila. 1994 118)
• enjoy a greater freedom from direct political
  control than government depeartments,
• 'money losers ????

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Aboriginal Groups

• The Indian Act status recognized by federal
  government (Status Indians), the rest are called
  as non-Status Indians
• The Inuit of the Canadian Arctic have a separate
  origin and history,
• The Metis emerged as a group during the fur trade
  eramale fur traders of French-Canadian origin,
  and native women (particularly Cree) (McMillan,
  1995).

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Case Studies Focus on Aboriginal Participation
in Agenda Setting Process

• James Bay Project
• Wuskwatim project Northern Manitoba
• Cree nations in James Bay
• Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation

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Wuskwatim Project

• Previous projects Grand Rapids Project, South
  Indian Lake and the Churchill Diversion Project -
  provincial government in a large measure ignored
  the Aboriginal peoples
• Wuskwatim project cooperative strategy joint
  action of provincial government, aboriginal
  groups and provincial hydro.

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James Bay Project

• First Phase James Bay I (Great Whale Project)
• Serious resistance of the James Bay Cree,
• Building alliances with other pressure groups,
• The move of the Cree pressure from local to the
  national level,
• The Conflict between Aboriginal and Quebec
  Nationalism
• Second Phase James Bay II (La Grande project)
• The opposition by the Cree was a result of
  complex alliances and networks organized mainly
  by the Great Council of the Cree,
• Cree protests in New York (United Nations)
• The Last Phase (Eastmain 1-A)
• public debates has become an important part of a
  dialogue.