Examining the Evolving Environmental Protection Policy Convergence in the Ontario Municipal Drinking Water, Wastewater and Stormwater Sectors: Analysis of State/Non-State Governance and the Value of an Environmental Management System Standard for the Wastewater and Stormwater Sectors
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The central question this dissertation attempts to answer is whether there is practical value in Ontario legislatively mandating that municipalities implement an environmental management system (EMS) standard for their wastewater and stormwater activities, to be added to the drinking water quality management system standard (DWQMS) that is already statutorily required. This research explores the evolving governance approaches of the municipal drinking, wastewater and stormwater sectors in Ontario, examining theories of governance, a review of the literature concerning policy convergence and standards as instruments of organizational innovation and the legal and policy framework within which municipal water management takes place. The research method employed a combination of semi-structured interviews, case studies and a focus group as data gathering techniques. The research finds evidence in support of and wide recognition of the practical value of EMS by assisting municipalities in meeting their environmental objectives, addressing environmental and property damage risks, providing an additional mechanism of public accountability, transparency, and improving alignment with the existing legal structure. It was also apparent that there is no political appetite in the provincial government to embark on a mandated EMS, so the preferred option at this time is a provincially-endorsed, voluntary sector-specific standard for wastewater and also for stormwater, which could constitute a catalyst to boost voluntary uptake of EMS by small to medium municipalities (as it is already occurring with large municipalities). This standard could be based on a customized variation of the ISO 14001, DWQMS and other standards to address existing regulatory gaps. The research also reveals that Ontario municipal water management governance is notable because governments are drawing on independently developed and implementing non-state forms of regulation (such as EMS standards), in which private sector, civil society and multistakeholder rule instruments, processes, institutions and actors all perform important roles in support of conventional state-based regulation, showing both horizontal and vertical policy convergence. A limitation of the research is that it focuses on water governance of municipalities of one jurisdiction. Future research could examine the practical utility of examining water governance to other contexts (e.g., water governance for First Nations, and in non-Canadian jurisdictions)
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.011 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".