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In Canada, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions continue to remain high despite the federal government's commitment to reduce GHG emissions. Environmental policy across Canadian provinces has largely lacked consistency with some provinces implementing targeted policy such as carbon taxes while others have strongly resisted the federal government's attempts to encourage such policy. This study examines the impact of environmental policy on GHG gas emissions across Canadian provinces with policy uniquely measured by public and business sector spending on environmental protection as well as notable province-specific policies. An extended STIRPAT model is specified with the inclusion of proxies for environmental policy using panel data from Canada's ten provinces from 1995 to 2019. The cointegration and the error correction modelling approaches are employed to estimate the non-stationary panel data. A pooled mean group estimation is applied to provide short run and long run coefficients. The findings indicate that although per capita GDP is the main driver of GHG emissions in Canada, environmental policy has a significant mitigating effect, as shown by the negative association between emissions and private and public sector spending on environmental protection in the long run. Furthermore, provinces with targeted policies, such as Ontario's coal phase-out and British Columbia's carbon tax, experienced significant emissions reductions. The theoretical implication is the successful addition of policy variables to the STIRPAT model, providing the model a new application for future research. [Display omitted] • Assess the impact of environmental protection policies on per capita greenhouse gas emissions in Canada. • Utilize public and private expenditures on environmental protection, along with provincial policies. • Extend the STIRPAT model to incorporate environmental protection policies in an empirical model. • Demonstrate a significant negative relationship between environmental protection policies and GHG emissions. • Offer insights with implications for global environmental sustainability efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is putting infrastructure, food supply, water resources, ecosystems, and human health at risk. These risks will be exacerbated depending on the degree of additional greenhouse gas emissions. Urgent action is needed to limit the severity of impacts associated with further warming. British Columbia (BC) has taken action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from carbonbased fuels by introducing a carbon tax in 2008. As an innovative approach to climate change mitigation, especially in North America, studies evaluating its effectiveness are valuable. We assessed the long-term viability potential of the BC carbon tax using common pool resource design principles, a novel application of the design principles to environmental policy. We found that the design principles can be applied productively to environmental policy and larger scale air pollution problems. With regard to the BC carbon tax, our findings suggest that closer monitoring of user behavior, further increases of the tax over time, and pursuing efforts for a more elaborate system of nested enterprises and interjurisdictional cooperation could increase the long-term success of the BC carbon tax. We also found that the design principles allowed us to more comprehensively reach conclusions regarding the broader effectiveness of the tax when compared to existing policy analysis. Traditionally, climate policy evaluation has focused on the end goal without considering broader constraints and issues of resource allocation. We suggest that common pool resource theory, which is based on strong theoretical principles and encourages reflexivity, will be able to address those limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2007-08, British Columbia implemented two significant climate policies: the first broadly based carbon tax and the first almost 100-percent 'clean' electricity standard in North America. We describe the key design characteristics of these policies and analyse them against the criteria of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions, economic efficiency, administrative feasibility, and public acceptance. We find that the clean electricity standard is estimated to reduce four to six times more emissions per year by 2020 than the carbon tax, but at an average cost per tonne of CO2 reduced that is significantly higher than the carbon tax at its current level. Interestingly, the clean electricity standard achieves higher and steadier levels of public acceptance, which might be attributed to its lack of visibility, relative to the carbon tax. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

British Columbia's introduction in 2008 of a revenue-neutral carbon tax shift was controversial. This analysis compares changes in fuel consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and gross domestic product (GDP) between British Columbia and the rest of Canada. It finds that in the four years since the tax was introduced, British Columbia's per capita consumption of fuels subject to the tax has declined by 19 percent compared to the rest of Canada. At the same time, its economy has kept pace with the rest of Canada. British Columbia's experience mirrors the European experience with carbon tax shifting and should inform the federal debate on climate change policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]