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There is strong evidence that gender mainstreaming (GM), a gender equality governance strategy, is performing poorly across jurisdictions. While many national and regional governments have adopted gender equality policy tools, developing and implementing an integrated GM strategy requires substantive reforms to existing procedures and institutional settings. The goal of the article is to demonstrate that, in Canada, current gender equality policy using a gender-based analysis (GBA) approach does not feature the same governance arrangement as the alternative GM approach would entail. Using the Canadian federal government as a case study, the gender equality policy instrument mix is examined to demonstrate how different problem definitions result in suboptimal performance. The article concludes that Canada’s current gender equality policy regime only advances the mainstreaming of GBA, and not the mainstreaming of gender equality in general. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Constitutional and institutional legacies were combined to create a very decentralized forest policy sector in Canada. Where coherent policy requires a national response-as is the case with adaptation to climate change-the critical challenge is to locate the relevant decentralized policy capacity and steer it toward meeting national objectives. While there is some evidence that significant policy capacity exists in provincial forest and resource management departments, climate change adaptation has led to an expansion of departmental mandates that is not being addressed by better coordination of the available policy capacity. The relevant federal agencies are not well represented in information networks and forest policy workers report lower levels of internal and external networking than workers in related policy subsectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines policy capacity in relation to climate change adaptation in the Canadian finance sector. Through a meso-level analysis focused on the level of integration of the finance policy network and a survey of policy professionals in the area regarding climate change issues, the article illustrates both challenges to operationalizing the concept of 'policy capacity' and limitations to effective policy capacity on climate change in this policy domain. Though a central concern for governments, improvements in policy capacity require more attention to network integration and governance arrangements if governments are to effectively respond to the unique challenges posed by climate change adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the infrastructure policy sector's capacity to respond to climate change adaptation through an analysis of the Canadian case. It includes a three-level examination of capacity: at the macro level through a virtual policy network analysis; at the meso level through examination of the lead department's evolving mandate and resources; and at the micro level through analysis of survey data related to departmental workers policy tasks and attitudes. Four hypotheses across these three levels are set out and tested at the national and subnational levels. Together, the findings suggest that the policy capacity in the Canadian infrastructure sector will be unable to meet the demands placed upon the sector to respond to the increasing challenges of climate change adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]