Canadian-American Environmental Relations: A Case Study of the Ontario-Michigan Municipal Solid Waste Dispute

Abstract

Canada and the United States are faced with many cross-border environmental issues and therefore must negotiate potential solutions with one another. Complicating such negotiations is the fact that both countries are federal systems which require negotiations and decision-making interactions amongst various levels of government domestically which, in turn, influence and are influenced by bilateral relations. Therefore, this study focuses on governmental relations both within each country (intergovernmental relations) and between the two countries (bilateral/international relations). Using the Ontario-Michigan Municipal Solid Waste dispute (1996-2006) as a case study, this thesis advances an organizational framework for the examination of the role of formal and informal interactions in shaping bilateral environmental policy. Through application of this framework, it is revealed that both formal and informal federal level relations in the U.S. prevented sub-national and local level authorities from effectively developing a solution to the dispute. Future studies which apply the organizational framework used in this thesis to other cross-border environmental issues are needed in order to determine whether such conclusions hold true in the case of all cross border disputes.