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Topic

Emergency Climate Governance: Surveying Provincial Opportunities for Leadership on Emissions Mitigation through Emergency Management Legislation

Department of Political Science

Date & location

• Friday, May 2, 2025

• 10:00 A.M.

• Clearihue Building

• Room B007

Reviewers

Supervisory Committee

• Dr. James Lawson, Department of Political Science, University of Victoria (Supervisor)

• Dr. Matt James, Department of Political Science, UVic (Member) 

External Examiner

• Dr. Penny Bryden, Department of History, University of Victoria 

Chair of Oral Examination

• Dr. Victor Ramraj, Faculty of Law, UVic

   

Abstract

Greenhouse gas emissions are undeniably the greatest contributor driving a changing climate, and as the climate continues to change, we have moved into a climate emergency with increasingly frequent, longer, and more severe climate-driven disasters and biospheric destabilization. This thesis takes up the question of what it means to deal with the climate emergency as an actual emergency, not a symbolic one, and how emergency power could be exercised for drastic change. Provinces appear the most capable head level of government to engage with the climate emergency as a real emergency through provincial emergency management (EM) legislation, and in doing so could benefit provincial jurisdiction with a sensitivity to regional contexts while also bolstering nationally (and globally) felt climate action. Provinces are constitutionally tied to high GHG emitting industry, and EM is already tied to traditional emergencies, many of which a changing climate is exacerbating. But most of the focus in emergency management, as it relates to the climate-driven aspects of hazards, remains on response and recovery. EM should be leveraged to further include the mitigation of emergency, and directly consider the climate case, meaning GHG mitigation and reduction. In making the argument for provincial EM to be exercised for emergency climate governance, this thesis considers the hypothetical opportunities and benefits to be had from emergency climate action, the conceptual potential for the application of EM for climate action in different provincial political contexts, and offers some practical examples for how EM could be engaged through EM regulations and emergency planning to impact the highest GHG producing and emitting sectors in all provinces. To explore this, British Columbia and Alberta are comparatively assessed, with these provinces representing the two different provincial sub-types (more climate action progressive and more climate action restrictive) that appear to bear the most meaning for whether real provincial emergency action on the climate emergency would occur in Canada. This thesis also attends to the dangers and fears associated with emergency power use, and offers lessons learned from past province-led emergency response, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. The thesis culminates with reflection on how its arguments might translate into three potential futures, with lessons for each: widespread provincial emergency climate action; asymmetric emergency climate action; or, no provincial emergency climate action.