G. Bruce Doern

The priorities and policies of the Harper conservatives as they confront a climate of change both politically and environmentally.

The past twenty years have seen considerable shifts and struggles in 'government science' - that is, in the way the state funds, supports, regulates, conducts and uses scientific and technological activity. Focusing on federal labs and agencies, Strategic Science in the Public Interest explores how these labs have been located within, and often buried by, the larger commercially-focused federal innovation agenda. G. Bruce Doern and Jeffrey S. Kinder examine four labs whose mandates deal with the Alberta oil sands, environmental technologies, wildlife research, and mining and metals, respectively. The authors use these cases to explain why a better middle-level approach to analysis is needed for strategic public interest-centred government science. They illustrate the importance of understanding the variety, as well as the similarity, of federal science and technology labs and agencies, and of instituting policies that reflect this diversity. The growing importance of Related Science Activities (RSA) is also explored, as well as the core trade-offs between commercial and public goods science in their mandates and their internal capacities.

An expert account of how innovation, science, and environmental (ISE) policies and institutions in Canada are being radically reshaped by the Harper conservative government.

The priorities of the Harper government analyzed in the context of the policies of the defeated Liberal minority government.

Inter-disciplinary essays on ISE and related sustainable development policy priorities of the federal government.

Inter-disciplinary essays on ISE and related sustainable development policy priorities of the federal government.

Assesses the Liberal Government

A critical assessment of the priorities, spending, and policy initiatives of the new Paul Martin era in key areas of national debate.

In the energy sector of Canadian economic and political life, power has a double meaning. It is quintessentially about the generation of power and physical energy. However, it is also about political power, the energy of the economy, and thus the overall governance of Canada. Power Switch offers a critical examination of the changing nature of energy regulatory governance, with a particular focus on Canada in the larger contexts of the George W. Bush administration's aggressive energy policies and within North American energy markets. Focusing on the key institutions and complex regimes of regulation, Bruce Doern and Monica Gattinger look at specific regulatory bodies such as the National Energy Board, the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board, and the Ontario Energy Board. They also examine the complex systems of rule making that develop as traditional energy regulation interacts and often collides with environmental and climate change regulation, such as the Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Power Switch is one of the first accounts in many years of Canada's overall energy regulatory system.

In the energy sector of Canadian economic and political life, power has a double meaning. It is quintessentially about the generation of power and physical energy. However, it is also about political power, the energy of the economy, and thus the overall governance of Canada. Power Switch offers a critical examination of the changing nature of energy regulatory governance, with a particular focus on Canada in the larger contexts of the George W. Bush administration's aggressive energy policies and within North American energy markets. Focusing on the key institutions and complex regimes of regulation, Bruce Doern and Monica Gattinger look at specific regulatory bodies such as the National Energy Board, the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board, and the Ontario Energy Board. They also examine the complex systems of rule making that develop as traditional energy regulation interacts and often collides with environmental and climate change regulation, such as the Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Power Switch is one of the first accounts in many years of Canada's overall energy regulatory system.

In this first in-depth examination of the governance of the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) in over twenty-five years, G. Bruce Doern and Richard Levesque show how the agency's history is interwoven with the evolution of Canada's economic and industrial development and with the fostering of science at Canada's universities, in industry, and within the federal government. Using a policy and institutional approach, the authors demonstrate the ways in which the NRC has had to simultaneously absorb significant budgetary and personnel cuts and become, in its own structure and operations, an innovating institution that helps support and facilitate an innovating Canadian economy - one increasingly characterized by knowledge-based industries. By reconfiguring itself in terms of its institutional mix of hierarchies, networks, and markets, the NRC has had to confront and change its own traditions, yet maintain itself as a complex government agency that still values research for its own sake as a public good.