THE PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE & COMPLEX SOVEREIGNTY: USING THE PATHWAYS FRAMEWORK TO EXPLAIN DOMESTIC POLICY OUTCOMES

The precautionary principle has emerged as one of the most contentious international norms within international environmental law. Yet, despite the vexing conceptual uncertainties confronting the precautionary principle, it is repeatedly invoked by policy makers and incorporated within international and domestic environmental law and agreements. This thesis explores how the international norm of precaution comes to be translated from the international sphere to domestic public policy. The research utilizes the pathways framework, which suggests that there are three additional pathways in additional to the direct implementation of international rules in national law and policy - international norms and discourse, markets and direct access - through which actors, institutions and interests can influence domestic and firm-level policy change. The findings propose an explanation of why Canada came to adopt a particular version of the precautionary principle, also revealing the complex nature of norm transfer, the significance of multiple causal pathways of influence and the interactions arising along these pathways

The Changing Governance of Rural Regional Development: A case study of the Cariboo-Chilcotin Beetle Action Coalition.

Traditional approaches to rural regional development in Canada and in British Columbia have been dominated by senior government involvement through program and policy development, initiation, and support. However, as governments have come under neoliberal influence since the 1980s, such programs, policies, and supports are actively being broken down. This has resulted in changes to the scale and structure of rural regional development governing in BC. This case study of the Cariboo-Chilcotin Beetle Action Coalition (C-CBAC) examines one regional governance organization. Two research questions are central to this thesis. First, given the devolution of rural regional development governance to local levels, to what extent is C-CBAC representative of dominant trends in Canadian rural regional development? Second, against the background of a history of regional activity in the Cariboo-Chilcotin, a transition towards neoliberal policies, and the emergence of the MPB epidemic, what factors have assisted or impeded the formation of C-CBAC? This research determines that C-CBAC was devolved the responsibility of rural regional development planning in the Cariboo-Chilcotin and this is representative of dominant trends in Canadian rural regional development. The research also determines that the mountain pine beetle was the chief factor in C-CBAC's formation, but that the region's history of working together and transition towards neoliberal policies supported their formation. However, this thesis also determines that the same factors which facilitated C-CBAC's formation also hindered it formation. First, the mountain pine beetle as a crisis situation was not able to sustain interest on behalf of regional stakeholders or senior governments. Second, the region's history of working together resulted in one group of repetitive regional leaders and excluding others. Finally, the transition towards neoliberal policies resulted in C-CBAC not having the financial or policy control required to implement their development plans. ThThe original print copy of this thesis may be available here: http://wizard.unbc.ca/record=b167480

Proximity to clinical care and time to resolution following an abnormal cancer screening in an urban setting

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston UniversityBarriers to care have been identified as a major factor in cancer health disparities. Previous research at Boston Medical Center (BMC) found that women referred from community health centers (CHCs) following abnormal breast cancer screening took longer to achieve diagnostic resolution than women referred from a BMC-based practice, consistent with research showing longer delays and worse outcomes for disadvantaged urban populations. It is not known whether this difference relates to the additional distance to BMC. To evaluate the effect of proximity from subjects' residence to the site of clinical care on time to diagnostic resolution in this urban setting we conducted a secondary analysis using data collected as part of the Boston Patient Navigation Research Program (PNRP). The database included all women who had a breast or cervical cancer screening abnormality at six Federally-qualified CHCs from January 2007 to June 2009. Using geocoded home address data captured at the time of registration, we calculated straight-line distances to the location of the diagnostic evaluation, which was the CHC for subjects with a cervical abnormality or BMC for subjects with a breast abnormality, and plotted the time to diagnostic resolution versus distance to site of care. We used proportional hazards regression models to examine the effect of distance to site of care on time to resolution, adjusting for CHC, subject age, race/ethnicity, language, and insurance. Results. We geocoded addresses for 1512 of 1544 subjects (98%). Among the diverse group of subjects with a breast screening abnormality (36% Black, 33% Hispanic; 44% non-English speaking), there was no significant difference in adjusted hazard ratios based on distance to care in 1,000 meter units (adjusted Hazard Ratio 1.00, 95% CI 0.99 -1.01). Similarly, among those with a cervical screening abnormality (22% Black, 21% Hispanic; 15% non-English), there was no significant difference in adjusted hazard ratios based on distance to care in 1,000 meter units (adjusted Hazard Ratio 1.01, 95% CI 1.00- 1.02). Conclusions. Increased distance between residence and clinic alone is not a barrier to diagnostic resolution for this vulnerable urban population receiving care at a CHC who had an abnormal cancer screening exam

The Regional Response to Federal Funding for Bicycle and Pedestrian Projects

Examines the efficacy of federal funding for non-motorized modes of transportation based on funding patterns across metropolitan regions, case studies of policies and projects, and an analysis of the funding's impact on bicycling and walking behavior

Multi-stakeholder policy processes : lessons for genetic resources policy development

Project number related to IDRC support could not be determine

National Network of Prevention Training Centers

I. Letter from the Capacity Building Branch Chief -- II. Preface -- III. Overview -- Capacity building assistance (CBA) providers -- V. National Network of Prevention Training Centers (NNPTCs) -- VI. Abbreviations -- VII. GlossaryContinues the 2010 Capacity building assistance (CBA) grantee directory."CS210362-B."Available via the World Wide Web as an Acrobat .pdf file (3.54 MB, 177 p.)

Transparency in Federal Policy-Making: the Case of Biotechnology in Animals Intended for Human Consumption

This research project examines the degree of transparency of the Canadian Federal Government’s decision-making processes and institutions with respect to the human consumption of animals produced through modern biotechnology (biotechnology-produced animals). It provides a timely study of the Federal Government’s decision-making process; as of January 2013 the government has yet to determine whether, and how, biotechnology-produced animals are to be approved for human consumption. Foods that contain genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are already commercially widely available in Canada. Research is well underway to see if biotechnology-produced animals may also be developed and introduced into the food system. Government decisions regarding the human consumption of biotechnology-produced animals have the potential to revolutionize food systems globally and nationally. This thesis offers an analysis of primary and secondary data focusing on the degree of federal transparency with respect to regulating GMO foods generally and, more specifically, the emerging policy issues around biotechnology-produced animals. This exploration sets the stage for the following investigation of barriers as well as opportunities to fostering federal transparency with respect to policy and regulatory decisions regarding GMO foods. Findings are directed towards members of the communities of interest who are interested in questions relating to the degree of federal transparency and government approaches to foods that contain material produced through modern biotechnology

The Innovation and Diffusion of Policy: Novelty in the Canadian Regulatory System for Plants with Novel Traits

In 1993, the Canadian federal government made a decision with respect to the direction that the country would take in regulating agricultural products of biotechnology, commonly referred to as GMOs or GM crops. Following the lead of the United States, Canada adopted the innovative “product-based” approach to regulation, making it necessary for all GM crops to go through the regulatory system in order to gain approval for commercialization. However, the iteration that Canada’s adoption of the policy took differed from the form that the product-based approach took in the United States. Canada created a category of “plants with novel traits”, which is based on the concept of novelty and reflects the idea that products of newer technologies such as recombinant DNA are not fundamentally different than those developed through more conventional means. The United States does not require regulation on novel plants created through conventional means via a regulatory trigger which seeks out plant pathogens, present only in newer, recombinant technologies. As a result, many crops developed through more conventional modification techniques such as mutagenesis are not subjected to the American regulatory system, but are in Canada. The objective of this paper is to determine how Canada and the United States came to adopt the product-based approach to regulation, where the Canadian system began to differ from the American system, and why the Canadian system has not diffused internationally, despite being the most directly implemented representative of the product-based approach. This is accomplished via the application of the policy change, policy diffusion, and policy innovation literatures. Theories of policy change and diffusion are introduced. I trace the history and diffusion of novelty using the historical method, and test the applicability of other diffusion models to the case study in order to determine their predictive power in an international diffusion scenario. The innovation literature is also applied in order to explain how and why the product-based approach to regulation has been incorporated differently at multiple levels of regulatory policy. I conclude with an argument that Canada has lost a “standards war” with the United States for regulatory superiority, in light of lost marketability and a less permissible regulatory landscape, which must prompt us to re-evaluate our regulatory approach

Subterfuge-safe trust management for delegation of permissions in open environments

Open environments involve distributed entities interacting with each other in an open manner. Many distributed entities are unknown to each other but need to collaborate and share resources in a secure fashion. Usually resource owners alone decide who is trusted to access their resources. Since resource owners in open environments do not have a complete picture of all trusted entities, trust management frameworks are used to ensure that only authorized entities will access requested resources. Every trust management system has limitations, and the limitations can be exploited by malicious entities. One vulnerability is due to the lack of globally unique interpretation for permission specifications. This limitation means that a malicious entity which receives a permission in one domain may misuse the permission in another domain via some deceptive but apparently authorized route; this malicious behaviour is called subterfuge. This thesis develops a secure approach, Subterfuge Safe Trust Management (SSTM), that prevents subterfuge by malicious entities. SSTM employs the Subterfuge Safe Authorization Language (SSAL) which uses the idea of a local permission with a globally unique interpretation (localPermission) to resolve the misinterpretation of permissions. We model and implement SSAL with an ontology-based approach, SSALO, which provides a generic representation for knowledge related to the SSAL-based security policy. SSALO enables integration of heterogeneous security policies which is useful for secure cooperation among principals in open environments where each principal may have a different security policy with different implementation. The other advantage of an ontology-based approach is the Open World Assumption, whereby reasoning over an existing security policy is easily extended to include further security policies that might be discovered in an open distributed environment. We add two extra SSAL rules to support dynamic coalition formation and secure cooperation among coalitions. Secure federation of cloud computing platforms and secure federation of XMPP servers are presented as case studies of SSTM. The results show that SSTM provides robust accountability for the use of permissions in federation. It is also shown that SSAL is a suitable policy language to express the subterfuge-safe policy statements due to its well-defined semantics, ease of use, and integrability