Provincial Responsibility Research Articles

Defining provincial responsibility for controlling transportation CO2 emissions in China: As fairness perspective

Transportation CO2 emissions (TCE) in China account for a high proportion and are growing rapidly, making this sector likely one of the last to achieve carbon peaking nationally. However, directly comparing absolute TCE values to measure the responsibility of TCE control targets for each province in future years would be unfair due to substantial disparities between provinces in population, affluence, and technology characteristics. To address this issue, this study establishes an equitable and efficient framework to help policymakers determine province-specific and year-specific TCE benchmark and policy values. The results show that the less developed regions face greater challenges in controlling TCE per unit of GDP, and they should focus more on the use of shifting and improvement measures to reduce TCE. In contrast, the developed provinces bear a higher responsibility for TCE control in the near future; thereby, they need to implement an appropriate combination of measures.

Towards a coherent flood forecasting framework for Canada: Local to global implications

AbstractOperational flood forecasting in Canada is a provincial responsibility that is carried out by several entities across the country. However, the increasing costs and impacts of floods require better and nationally coordinated flood prediction systems. A more coherent flood forecasting framework for Canada can enable implementing advanced prediction capabilities across the different entities with responsibility for flood forecasting. Recently, the Canadian meteorological and hydrological services were tasked to develop a national flow guidance system. Alongside this initiative, the Global Water Futures program has been advancing cold regions process understanding, hydrological modeling, and forecasting. A community of practice was established for industry, academia, and decision‐makers to share viewpoints on hydrological challenges. Taken together, these initiatives are paving the way towards a national flood forecasting framework. In this article, forecasting challenges are identified (with a focus on cold regions), and recommendations are made to promote the creation of this framework. These include the need for cooperation, well‐defined governance, and better knowledge mobilization. Opportunities and challenges posed by the increasing data availability globally are also highlighted. Advances in each of these areas are positioning Canada as a major contributor to the international operational flood forecasting landscape. This article highlights a route towards the deployment of capacities across large geographical domains.

Driving forces of China's provincial bilateral carbon emissions and the redefinition of corresponding responsibilities

The carbon transfers caused by inter-provincial commodity flows account for about 35 % of the total carbon emissions in China. There are great differences between the production-side and consumption-side carbon emissions for each province. Therefore, under the constraints of carbon peak and carbon neutralization, bilateral carbon emissions management is crucial to mitigate carbon emissions and the driving forces of bilateral carbon emissions must first be identified. Based on China's inter-provincial input-output data and carbon emissions data released by China Emissions Accounts and Datasets (CEADs), this paper uses a multi-regional input-output model (MRIO) to calculate the bilateral carbon emissions in 30 China's provinces from 2007 to 2017 and then apply structural decomposition analysis (SDA) to measure the influencing factors of these emissions. We also use counterfactual analysis to investigate the adjustment of provincial responsibilities for carbon emissions. The results show that the provinces in central and northern China undertake major net carbon inflows from other provinces in the eastern and southern coastal region. According to the results of SDA, the technological effect is an important factor in curbing the bilateral carbon emissions and the demand effect promotes the bilateral carbon emissions, but their contribution rates show a downward trend. By contrast, the variation in structural effect has significantly restrictive effects on the bilateral carbon emissions. Based on the provincial contribution to emissions mitigation, the adjusted consumption-side carbon emission embodies the principle of “more emission reduction, more compensation”. We suggest implementing differentiated bilateral carbon emission management, taking the adjusted consumption-side carbon emission as the evaluation standard, and promoting inter-provincial carbon compensation.

Community Engagement With Proactive Wildfire Management in British Columbia, Canada: Perceptions, Preferences, and Barriers to Action

Wildfires in the wildland-urban interface (WUI) are increasingly threatening lives and livelihoods. These growing impacts have prompted a paradigm shift toward proactive wildfire management that prioritizes prevention and preparedness instead of response. Despite this shift, many communities remain unprepared for wildfires in the WUI due to diverse individual and social-political factors influencing engagement with proactive management approaches. The catastrophic fire seasons of 2017, 2018, and 2021 in British Columbia (BC), Canada, highlighted just how vulnerable communities continue to be and the urgent need to understand the factors limiting engagement to future resilience to wildfire. Our study, conducted prior to the catastrophic fire season in 2017, surveyed 77 community leaders across BC to better understand the factors driving engagement, including risk perception, preferences and support for approaches, and key barriers limiting progress. We demonstrate that wildfire risk is an urgent issue facing communities across BC, but a range of factors drive variable community engagement with proactive wildfire management. First Nations and smaller (≤5,000 residents) communities were less likely to have developed a community wildfire plan, even though First Nations were significantly more concerned than municipalities/regional districts about certain values (such as drinking water and biodiversity) that were at risk from wildfire. In general, proactive approaches that were considered effective were also the most supported. The most highly supported approaches included enforcement of regulations and education, both of which are considered provincial responsibility in BC and are unlikely to alter community values in the WUI. In contrast, approaches involving prescribed burning of the understory had the highest levels of opposition. Despite variability in these individual factors, social-political barriers related to financial and social (time and expertise) capacity primarily limited engagement with proactive wildfire management, including provincial and federal funding programs. However, these barriers are not equally felt across community groups; First Nations identified social capacity (such as expertise on government-sponsored approaches and awareness of funding programs) as significantly more limiting than municipalities/regional districts. Our study illustrates the limitations of implementing a “shared responsibility” of proactive wildfire management in the WUI in BC without targeted supports to address unequal capacity barriers.

Healthcare Federalism in an Age of Nation-to-Nation Interaction

Primary provincial responsibility over healthcare in Canada has consistently produced sub-optimal results, but any increased federal role in healthcare faces familiar hurdles. Attempts to optimize the system by shifting at least some responsibilities to the federal government are undermined by a lack of clarity on the constitutionally acceptable and morally optimal contours of a central (if not primary) federal responsibility. Resolving this apparent dilemma is crucial if we are to achieve enhanced healthcare performance and healthcare justice in Canada. Yet even an increased federal role capable of surmounting those hurdles faces another, often-overlooked problem: a case can be made that the recognition of sub-state nations (e.g., the Québécois and Indigenous nations) in Canada would require the admission of their claims to greater authority over healthcare. This study examines this potential additional obstacle by setting out the options for an increased federal role in healthcare and how they interact with legitimate sub-state nationalist claims. It ultimately demonstrates that there is no ideal option for balancing those competing values. Even the best option – a national healthcare strategy – raises a number of moral issues. Yet this need not lead to an impasse. An explanation of the relevant moral concerns and analysis of the relevant policy options instead demonstrates the need to make trade-offs between values in determining who should make healthcare policy decisions in a state. The provision of examples of how one can approach the weighing of values to arrive the least bad option in this sphere should be valuable for Canadians and scholars working in this domain in other multinational states.

(IN) Access to Artificial Limbs: the Patient's Perspective According to the War Amps of Canada.

Funding agencies, both public and private, do not adequately meet the needs of Canadian amputees. This often leaves amputees without access to appropriate prosthetic care due to outstanding balances that are to be paid out of pocket, or by charitable organizations. There are several factors that result in these inadequacies. As healthcare is a provincial responsibility in Canada, provinces and territories have the authority to create individual public regimes, each with their own weaknesses. In fact, there are a few provincial regimes which do not include prosthetic funding at all. Private healthcare is meant to offset the remaining balance; however, their lack of knowledge regarding amputation has resulted in the creation of policies with ambiguous language, limiting the funding available for prosthetic care. Attitudinal barriers and missed legislative opportunities further exacerbate the shortcomings of prosthetic funding provided by public and private funding agencies, requiring action.

Global Dialysis Perspective: Canada.

Canada is a federation of ten provinces and three territories, and health care is primarily a provincial responsibility. The provinces, therefore, have substantial autonomy in health care delivery but are required to follow the basic tenets of the 1967 Canada Health Act as a condition for receiving essential health care transfer payments from the federal government. These conditions include the key requirement that all essential medical services have a single public payer, and therefore, no private insurance systems are allowed to fund such services. Therefore, neither dialysis providers nor physicians can directly charge patients for dialysis care, and conversely, patients cannot pay extra to see a particular nephrologist or attend a particular dialysis unit. This is uniquely restrictive compared with other countries (1). Health care funds come from provincial tax revenues and from federal transfer payments. Exclusively public funding does not exclude private provision of health care, and indeed, most Canadian physicians are self-employed and reimbursed “fee for service” by provincial governments. Hospital care is delivered by “not for profit” hospitals that are nominally independent, but they are funded by the provincial ministries of health (1). The delivery of maintenance dialysis services described here will be primarily on the basis of the model used in Ontario, the most populous province with 40% of the entire population. Key points of difference from other provinces will be noted however. Maintenance dialysis is almost entirely provided by Renal Programs based in “not for profit” government-funded hospitals. These range from large academic centers associated with medical schools to modest-sized community hospitals. These Renal Programs typically provide in-center hemodialysis (HD), home peritoneal dialysis (PD), and often, home hemodialysis (HHD) as well as outpatient and inpatient nephrology. Most academic Renal Programs have an associated kidney transplant unit. Many of the Renal Programs operate in …

Inter-regional carbon flows embodied in electricity transmission: network simulation for energy-carbon nexus

Energy use and CO2 emissions are inextricably linked. Energy utilization leads to an increase in CO2 emissions, which will in turn limit the formulation of energy policies and stability of energy systems. A provincial-scale Energy-Carbon Nexus Model is established to shed insight into the complicated system interactions among provinces. Specifically, different power generation types are considered to quantify the inter-provincial transfers of CO2 embodied in electricity transmission through the Multiregional Input-Output Analysis. Ecological Network Analysis is used to describe the integral mutual relationships between provinces and distinguish the control intensity of each province from different CO2 flows directions. Five new Energy-carbon emission factors are first performed to provide a more accurate assessment of the province's emissions capacity from different perspectives. Based on the theoretical basis of energy-carbon nexus, the emission reduction simulations considering energy substitution policy can be conducted to forecast the changes of provincial responsibility under different interventions. Results show that some provinces (e.g., Beijing) depend heavily on the supply of other provinces because of their low self-sufficiency rate in electricity, while some provinces (e.g., Guangdong) have high self-sufficiency rate and still emit more CO2 to other provinces to promote their own development. The importance of East China to the system cannot be ignored, but it should also undertake more responsibility for reducing emissions. However, the pace of development in Shandong will slow down because it mainly relies on coal power generation to indirectly promote the development of other provinces. What's more, importing electricity to achieve emission reduction may result in a rebound in indirect emissions and have a negative impact on the region's use of its own energy resources. This paper offers a new way to reveal details of energy-carbon interrelations across provinces and the achievements could provide references for formulating CO2 reduction policies of China electricity trading.

Attitudes Towards Physicians Requiring Remediation: One-of-Us or Not-Like-Us?

The data for this paper were collected as part of a larger project exploring how the medical profession conceptualizes the task of supporting physicians struggling with clinical competency issues. In this paper, the authors focus on a topic that has been absent in the literature thus far-how physicians requiring remediation are perceived by those responsible for organizing remediation and by their peers in general. Using a constructivist grounded theory approach, the authors conducted semistructured interviews with 17 remediation stakeholders across Canada. Given that in Canada health is a provincial responsibility, the authors purposively sampled stakeholders from across provincial and language borders and across the full range of organizations that could be considered as participating in the remediation of practicing physicians. Interviewees expressed mixed, sometimes contradictory, emotions toward and perceptions of physicians requiring remediation. They also noted that their colleagues, including physicians in training, were not always sympathetic to their struggling peers. The medical profession's attitude toward those who struggle with clinical competency-as individuals and as a whole-is ambivalent at best. This ambivalence grows out of psychological and cultural factors and may be an undiscussed factor in the profession's struggle to deal adequately with underperforming members. To contend with the challenge of remediating practicing physicians, the profession needs to address this ambivalence and its underlying causes.

A Commentary: Education in Canada - Does Anyone Read Our Constitution?

Education in Canada is generally considered to be within the exclusive domain of the thirteen provincial and territorial governments. There are numerous statements or writings from politicians, textbook authors, federal and provincial governments, researchers, newspaper columnists, as well as education organizations that state unequivocally that education in Canada is the exclusive jurisdiction of the provinces and territories. Some statements indicate that the federal government has no constitutional role in education. Such misinformation and beliefs have had severe consequences for First Nations as Canadians absolve federal inaction in First Nations education because ‘education is a provincial responsibility’. However, education in Canada is the constitutional responsibility of both the federal and provincial/territorial governments. This article will examine the federal government’s constitutional responsibility in education, as well as the consequences of the misinformation.

Change in the role of cities in China’s air transport 2005–2015

ABSTRACTAir transport has been expanding rapidly in China over the past decade. That growth corresponded with economic development as well as liberalization in the regulations surrounding airline operations and city and provincial responsibilities for air transport infrastructure. This paper analyses the way the airline industry responded to those changes by identifying the rank of 37 cities on a series of measures of airline operations in 2005 and 2015. Results show that the ranks of the seven leading cities remain unchanged, and only a small change has been recorded on each of the measures at other cities over this time period. The results suggest that there is a level of inertia in the overall geography of China’s air transport. Closer attention to the activity of the airlines, with particular attention to small and large airlines, as well as those within corporate groups will be an important direction in future research.

Federalism, Free Trade within Canada, and the British North America Act, S.121

The article examines Confederation-era views on trade, tariff and non-tariff barriers, and provincial responsibilities, with regard to the drafting of s.121 of the British North America Act, 1867 (the Constitution Act, 1867), which provided that goods be admitted free across provincial boundaries. It proposes that a strong founders' intent cannot be ascribed to s.121, which should be understood within the constitutional architecture of the British North America Act and the principles of federalism and provincial responsible government.

A Project to Reduce Canadians' Constitutional Illiteracy

How is it determined who is prime minister? Does the leader of the party that wins the most seats in the House of Commons, or that gets the most votes in the election automatically become prime minister? Who appoints cabinet ministers? Do cabinet ministers have to be MPs? Who appoints deputy ministers? What are deputy ministers? What are parliamentary secretaries? What is the PCO? What is the PMO? How is the Governor General selected? What are the Governor General’s powers? What is the role of the Queen in governing Canada? What contact, if any, can senior civil servants have with opposition parties? What contact, if any, can government leaders have with judges? How are treaties with foreign countries ratified? Why does Canada have treaties with Aboriginal peoples? Are there any constraints on federal spending in areas of provincial responsibility? What is the constitutional status of the northern territories and how does the federal government’s relationship with them differ from its relations with the provinces?A Canadian citizen who wants to know how her country is governed should be able to get clear, authoritative answers to these questions without much trouble; so should a civics teacher in a school classroom or a person preparing immigrants for Canadian citizenship. These are not small technical questions — they are basic to knowing how Canadian government and democracy work — yet the citizen who looks for answers to these questions in the written text of Canada’s Constitution will look in vain.

Defined by 0.11%: Policies delimiting access to prescription drugs for First Nations people in British Columbia

The Non-Insured Health Benefits (NIHB) program is a federal program that funds prescription medication, as well as other primary healthcare benefits, for First Nations people registered under the Indian Act and for Inuit. NIHB policies have been developed within the Canadian political realities of ambiguity in interpretation of historical legal obligations, patterns of cost shifting onto provincial governments, and a move towards chronic disease management. This study critiques the ambiguities embedded in NIHB and provincial pharmaceutical benefit policies for First Nations people in British Columbia. British Columbia’s Fair PharmaCare and PharmaCare Plan C provincial prescription programs are compared to NIHB. We conducted a review of these policies and completed our understanding by interviewing three pharmacists to better understand decisions surrounding the dispensing process. Four themes surfaced from our analysis: discrepancy between policy and practice in terms of federal versus provincial responsibility; restrictive processes of access to coverage; a system dependent on pharmacists’ goodwill when NIHB denies a claim; and NIHB policies at times being at odds with pharmacists’ clinical judgment and business compensation. Our findings suggest the existence of an ethnically differentiated social contract that perpetuates rather than diminishes barriers to care for First Nations people.

Provincial responsibility for carbon emissions in China under different principles

By applying a multi-regional input–output model, the study compares the provincial responsibility for carbon emissions and provincial carbon multipliers in China under seven responsibility-allocating principles, including three basic principles, the production, income and consumption principles, and four shared responsibility principles, the income-weighted, consumption weighted, comprehensive, and weighted comprehensive principles. Empirical results indicate that carbon multipliers of provinces under these principles are significantly different from one another. The carbon multipliers of provinces with higher ratios of carbon intensive sectors in their outputs are also larger. At the same time, the carbon multipliers of the same sector in the provinces are significantly different from one another. Changing the principle causes significant changes in the responsibility for carbon emissions of some provinces, but only slight changes in the responsibilities of some other provinces. However, the responsibilities of provinces with large economic sizes (output) are always the largest, whereas provinces with the smallest economic sizes are always the smallest regardless of the principles. Further, this study proposes a series of regional policies for carbon mitigation according to provincial carbon multipliers and responsibility allocation features under the different principles.

Promoting Sustainable Forest Management Among Stakeholders in the Prince Albert Model Forest, Canada

Model Forests are partnerships for shared decision-making to support social, environmental, and economic sustainability in forest management. Relationships among sustainable forest management partners are often strained, but the Prince Albert Model Forest (PAMF) represents a process of effective stakeholder involvement, cooperative relationships, visionary planning, and regional landscape management. This article seeks to critically examine the history, drivers, accomplishments, and challenges associated with the PAMF. Four key phases are discussed, representing different funding levels, planning processes, research projects, and partners. Key drivers in the PAMF were funding, urgent issues, provincial responsibility, core of committed people, evolving governance, desire for a neutral organisation, role of protected areas, and potential for mutual benefits. The stakeholders involved in the Model Forest, including the forest industry and associated groups, protected areas, Aboriginal groups, local communities, governments, and research groups, were committed to the project, cooperated on many joint activities, provided significant staffing and financial resources, and gained many benefits to their own organisations. Challenges included declining funding, changing administrative structures, multiple partners, and rotating representatives. The PAMF process promoted consultative and integrated land resource management in the region, and demonstrated the positive results of cooperation between stakeholders interested in sustainable forest management.

First Nation Students with Special Needs in Canada: How a ‘non-system’ is Hidden From Canadians and the World Community

First Nation students with special needs who reside on First Nations/reserves throughout Canada and attend a school on a reserve encounter discrimination by the federal government of Canada. The federal government is constitutionally responsible for approximately 120,000 students attending over 500 schools on First Nations throughout Canada. These schools are not part of any ‘system’ of education. Canada has hidden their constitutional responsibilities in education, as well as the absence of special education programs and services for First Nations students with special education needs. These students and their schools are not part of any regional, provincial, national or international assessment programs. ‘Canadian’ education and special education statistics and information that is given to international education organizations (e.g., OECD, UNESCO) exclude First Nations schools. Many federal documents indicate that education is a provincial responsibility. In late 2012 the federal government’s department of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) changed its name to Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada (AANDC).

Healthcare is political: case example of physician advocacy in response to the cuts to refugees’ and claimants’ healthcare coverage under the Interim Federal Health Program

“Healthcare is political.” That phrase seems obvious. While healthcare is constitutionally a provincial responsibility, it has become a hallmark of Canadian federalism with all levels of government taking part in its function. Furthermore, it has become one of the core Canadian values, with Canadians continuing to place healthcare as the strongest symbol of their national identity. Yet, as future physicians, medical students are wary of “getting political” in fear of taking sides, loosing impartiality, and losing focus on patient care. However, political actions and issues can have a significant impact on the clinical practices of all physicians. This article will argue that changes to the Interim Federal Health Program (IFHP) have hindered the ability of physicians to provide best practice, evidence-based medicine, and will outline how members of the medical profession, including University of Ottawa medical students, have played an important role in advocating for those affected by the changes to the IFHP.

"Just get on with it." Linking data systems to report on infant mortality and the First Nations population in Manitoba (Canada)

The routine reporting of actionable statistics to improve system performance and prevent premature mortality has been promoted for decades. A key statistic produced nationally and globally is infant mortality. State governments define, collect and report vital events. In Canada, vital statistics is a provincial responsibility. The provinces, however, do not uniformly collect vital events for First Nations who are under Federal fiduciary responsibility or uniformly maintain a registration group field for disaggregation purposes. In 2008, Canada's Public Health Agency conceded that a lack of a First Nations identifier has obscured any understanding of First Nations perinatal health. Given these drivers of variability and the complex multi-jurisdictional vital statistics environments in which they occur, this paper demonstrates, using data linkage methods, a way to improve the estimation of infant mortality for the First Nations population in Manitoba, Canada. The method improved estimation, and demonstrated a persistent gap in infant mortality.

Prioritizing regionally rare plant species for conservation using herbarium data

Because the conservation of biodiversity occurs under time and resource constraints, it is necessary to prioritize species most deserving of attention. Natural history collections have been identified as a valuable source of information in applied conservation practice, particularly for species-rich taxa like plants. Here, online herbarium information was combined with a novel, straightforward priority setting approach to screen a large list of rare vascular plant species (n = 418) in Saskatchewan, Canada. Data was quantified to develop priority scores (for a given species) using three key criteria: (1) provincial responsibility in species survival, (2) species local population characteristics, and (3) the anthropogenic threats causing species to be rare. The use of a hierarchy of the three criteria, wherein provincial responsibility was assigned the most weight, resulted in the highest ranking for 13 species that exist only in Saskatchewan and no other Canadian province or territory. The list is a first step in identifying species deserving of conservation attention and/or further study, while the method itself was deemed to be highly relevant to conservation managers and decision makers due to its scale adaptability and fairly minimal resource requirements.