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Acid rain policy in the United States: An exploration of Canadian influence
Acid Rain Policy in the United States: An Exploration of Canadian Influence
EVERETT CATALDO* Cleveland State University
This analysis evaluates the effectiveness of Canadian efforts to influence the formulation of acid rain policy in the United States. The findings indicate that, despite an imbalance in resources of power and influence favoring the United States, there still may be limited, but nevertheless important, avenues for Canadian influence in the formulation of U.S. policy. This study questions the generality of static models for analyzing U.S.-Canadian relations, and suggests the use of a policy process framework for examining the political dynamics in the relationship.
INTRODUCTION Recent transactions between the United States and Canada on the environment and trade provide the opportunity to take a fresh look at policy relationships between these North American neighbors. Old assumptions concerning power imbalances and U.S. dominance may be subject to change in a new age of interdependency between the nations. The two issue areas of trade and the environment constitute a rich source for intergovernmental dialogue and policy development with the potential for changing not only the scope of the U.S.Canadian relationship, but, perhaps, its political character as well. The article uses the acid rain case as the basis for analyzing the potential for change in the political relationship between Canada and the United States. Central to political relationships between nations is the ability of one nation to influence the other’s policies on issues of mutual importance. Despite a lengthy history of benign interaction between Canada and the United States, it has been *Direct all correspondence to: Everett Cataldo, Department Cleveland, OH 44115. Telephone: (216) 687-4541.
of Political
The Social Science Journal, Volume 29, Number 4, pages 395409. Copyright @ 1992 by JAI Press Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISSN: 0362-3319.
Science, Cleveland
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said that Canada lives an “uneasy existence” in the shadow of its more populous, wealthy and powerful neighbor to the south.’ With a considerable edge in power resources-by a ratio of at least nine-to-one, according to one estimate’-the United States has been viewed as the dominant partner in the relationship, holding Canada within its sphere of influence by controlling the policy agenda between the nations and making sure that policy differences are resolved in its favor.3 With respect to the acid rain issue, the term “environmental dependence” has been used to describe the impact of U.S. pollution on the Canadian environment4 Describing environmental dependence as a “relatively fixed, structural condition in the relations between dominant and subordinate states,” Don Munton suggests that environmental dependence might be invariant to change.’ Recent inquiry, however, raises some questions concerning these static views of U.S. dominance and Canadian dependence. Examining negotiations on a number of issue areas, Charles Doran suggests that policy disputes may not always be resolved in favor of the United States.6 Doran’s analysis suggests some possible limitations in the ability of the power inequality model to explain U.S.-Canadian relations. The power inequality model may suffice to explain those cases in which policy disputes are resolved in favor of the United States; but for cases when they are not, an alternative framework is needed.
STATEMENT
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It is often alleged that the United States is quick to negotiate treaties with Canada when it has something to gain, but slow to respond when Canada’s interests are at stake. Trade and acid rain are leading examples of these contrasting attitudes. Formal treaties, however, are not Canada’s only means for settling disputes with the United States. In fact, as the acid rain dispute suggests, Canada may have a better chance of negotiating a settlement with the United States by attempting to influence U.S. domestic policy decisions, than by signing a formal treaty. Canada’s power resources may not equal those of the United States; but in terms of political influence, skillful use of available resources may matter more than their sheer number. What resources does Canada bring to its political relationship with the United States, and how may it use them to influence U.S. policy? Doran suggests that Canada possesses a number of institutional assets that are important in policy relationships with the United States. According to Doran, Canada improves its bargaining odds by concentrating more of its attention on bilateral issues, and by superior mobilization of bureaucratic resources and public support.’ Joseph Jockel suggests that U.S.-Canadian bilateral issues are increasingly handled through a “management culture” consisting of the heads of the two governments and their top cabinet officials and diplomatic personnel.* The prevailing norm in this culture is said to be equality of status between U.S. and Canadian officials. According to Jockel, this management culture evolved from a renewed awareness of Canada’s importance to the United States, and it relies on regular and direct personal interaction rather than formal negotiations for managing conflict and resolving differences of opinion.
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While arguing that Canada wins some negotiated outcomes with the United States, Doran also concedes that Canada’s policy demands do not always place high compliance costs on the U.S., and that Canada, exercising “northern forbearance,” as he calls it, has conditioned itself to accept modest returns from its investment in the U.S. relationship.g Jockel also points to cases where the resolution of conflict continues to be impeded by U.S. resistance.” Therefore, concentrated effort on bilateral issues, and institutional access, while necessary, may not be sufficient to leverage important concessions from the U.S. What other resources are available to Canada for influencing U.S. policy? Given the power differential, coercion is, of course, out of the question. Persuasion and the use of incentives, however, are not. Stanbury and Fulton have made a systematic examination of suasion as an instrument of government policy.” Suasion-their term for the effort to persuade-involves exhortation, the appeal to principle, to achieve compliance with a government’s objectives. While Stanbury and Fulton examine suasion in terms of relationships between a government and its citizens, the concept can be applied with equal utility to relationships between nations. As an instrument of foreign policy, suasion involves an exhortation or an appeal from one nation to another to alter its policies or behavior on the basis of principle, as a matter of it being the right thing to do. If pure suasion does not produce the desired response, a material inducement may be added that appeals to the other nation’s self interest-a natural resource it may covet, a reciprocal policy concession, or some other trade-off to seal the bargain. While suasion is usually viewed as a rhetorical instrument, it may also involve the mobilization of political support to enhance the advocate’s bargaining position.12 These perspectives suggest some institutional and instrumental alternatives to raw power for examining policy relationships between the United States and Canada. The U.S. may attempt to use its superior power resources to restrict Canadian input to the bilateral policy agenda, but Canada’s concentration and determination on bilateral issues may not always make that possible. Once an issue reaches the policy agenda, the norm of equality in the management culture may work to Canada’s advantage by neutralizing national power as a decisional criterion, and increasing the possibility that disputes might be settled on the basis of elite accommodation. As a nation that often argues from principle in its relations with others, the United States is susceptible to a similar argument from Canada. In addition, Canada has material incentives to offer and the means for political mobilization if pure suasion fails to move U.S. policy in the desired direction. All of these factors played a part in the resolution of Canada’s acid rain dispute with the United States. The United States preferred to keep acid rain off the bilateral agenda, but Canadian determination kept it there. In appealing for a shift in U.S. policy, Canada made an appeal on principle, but also mobilized political support in the U.S. for its position, and instituted its own acid raid control program in 1985 as an incentive for reciprocal action. At critical junctures in policy formulation, Canada used the network of personal relationships between government policy makers in an effort to negotiate a satisfactory settlement to the dispute.
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NARRATIVE Agenda Setting The acid rain debate started in 1978 when Canada proposed a bilateral treaty with the United States for a 50 percent reduction in the transboundary flow of sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide gases, the main precursors of acid precipitation. From the beginning, the issue assumed greater environmental importance for Canada than the United States. Canada’s soils and waters are more vulnerable to acid damage, and half of the acid rain falling on Canada came from airborne emissions originating in the United States. By contrast, Canada’s contribution to acid precipitation in the U.S. was in the range of 15-25 percent.13 By the late 1970s studies by Canadian scientists revealed that streams, lakes, and forests in eastern Canada were sustaining heavy acid damage. On the basis of the Canadian initiative, a bilateral U.S.Canadian research group was formed in October 1978 to study the long range transport of airborne pollutants, and to make recommendations on curtailing them. Following nearly two years of work by the advisory group, Canada and the United States signed the Memorandum of Intent on Transboundary Air Pollution on August 5, 1980. The Memorandum was a major disappointment to Canada because it fell far short of achieving an agreement for specific bilateral action. Canada had proposed that transboundary emissions be cut by 50 percent. But the U.S. refused to obligate itself to specific reductions or new regulations, promising only to take action under existing authority to reduce emissions when it seemed appropriate. This token response seemed to typify the imbalance in the relationship, and Canada’s policy dependency. In 1979, the Carter administration had already placed U.S. energy needs above environmental considerations by proposing to convert more than one hundred oil burning power plants to coal, a change that would have resulted in even more sulfur dioxide gases crossing the border into Canada. When the Reagan administration took over in 1981, even greater resistance was encountered. Claiming that not enough was known about acid precipitation, the Reagan administration insisted on delaying any formal agreement with Canada until the results of the National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program were known, a ten-year research project scheduled for completion in 1990. Suasion as a Policy Instrument Frustrated on the diplomatic level, Canada went public in its effort to keep acid rain on the bilateral agenda and persuade the U.S. of the need for more serious action. In principle, the Canadian position was beyond reproach-for the sake of the relationship, the United States should recognize the harm it was causing to the Canadian environment, and do the right thing by taking immediate action to ease the damage. While Canada might not be faulted in principle, in practice its initial exhortations came across as strident and accusatory. As a consequence, they were counterproductive. John Roberts, Minister of the Environment in the Trudeau government, accused the United States of committing “environmental aggression”
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against Canada.14 Another Canadian official openly expressed disappointment over the lack of progress in negotiations with the U.S. by saying, “We made the tactical error of telling them what they were doing to us. We found out they were not particularly interested in what they were doing to us.“l’ These angry outbursts did not play well in the United States, and provoked suspicions about Canada’s motives. Canada was accused of using the acid rain issue to exploit its energy resources, and expand the sales of Canadian hydro-electric power into the U.S. market. Fortunately for Canada, rhetoric was only part of its strategy. Political mobilization in the United States became an increasingly important element in the Canadian strategy. The Canadian Coalition on Acid Rain, a citizen’s group subsidized by public and private contributions, opened a Washington office as an officially registered lobby, and immediately went to work building coalitions on Capitol Hill and at the grass roots level with environmental interest groups in the United States.16 These efforts gained friendly support among key actors in the domestic political process.17 Canadian Embassy staff in Washington became involved in monitoring acid rain activity in the bureaucracy and Congress. The Canadian Ambassador to the United States became an outspoken, high-profile advocate of his nation’s case, and various Canadian officials appeared before Congressional Committees and other forums throughout the United States to argue the need for acid rain legislation. Canadian consulates throughout the country were mobilized, aligning themselves with domestic supporters of acid rain legislation, and even attempting to convert non-believers, not always a profitable approach.‘* Effective relations were formed with environmental interest groups, and also with key Congressional supporters of clean air legislation, such as Congressmen Waxman of California and Sikorski of Minnesota, and Senator Mitchell of Maine. U.S. officials and opinion leaders were invited to Canada to tour areas affected by acid rain, and publicity campaigns were organized to sway U.S. public opinion. Canada even took the step of joining in legal proceedings in the United States in cases involving pollution standards and transboundary emission flows.lg In Canadian parlance, this energetic and farflung campaign of intervention into the U.S. political process was called “advocacy diplomacy.” It was based on the growing realization that Washington dealt with other nations as if they were, in the words of the Canadian Ambassador, “just another interest,“and that if Canada was going to be viewed as an interest group it should start behaving like one and lobby hard for its legislative goals.*’ Practically speaking, recognition as a political interest can be beneficial to another nation because it legitimates its active involvement in the U.S. political process. Without abandoning its plea for a bilateral accord, Canada intensified its efforts at political mobilization in the U.S. in an attempt to achieve legislatively what it had not been able to achieve diplomatically. Managing the Issue By 1984, the U.S.-Canadian relationship was strained considerably, and not just over acid rain. The ideological distance between the Trudeau and Reagan governments made it more complicated to manage the relationship. The accommodating style that Jockel associates with his “management culture”followed
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the elections of 1984 in which the Liberal government of John Turner (Trudeau’s successor) was replaced by the Conservative government of Brian Mulroney, whose political spirit was more kindred to President Reagan’s. While Prime Minister Mulroney’s approach was no less insistent on the need for U.S. action on acid rain, it was less adversarial than his predecessor+. With improved and more frequent access to their counterparts in the U.S. government, Mulroney and his ministers made personal appeals for a change in U.S. policy. Not unrealistically, they may have anticipated being able to resolve the acid rain dispute on the basis of partisan accommodation between governments who saw eye-to-eye on most matters. In 1985, the Reagan administration appeared to take a conciliatory step by agreeing to a Canadian proposal to appoint special envoys from each nation to examine the acid rain problem and to make recommendations for action. The Report of the Special Envoys was released in 1986. Once again, Canada absorbed a diplomatic setback. The Report acknowledged the seriousness of the acid rain problem, but, in language virtually identical to the Memorandum of Intent, simply urged both nations to search for opportunities to curb emissions under existing regulations. The only new idea in the report was a proposal to create a $5 billion public-private partnership in the United States to develop clean coal technologies, a proposal dear to the heart of the U.S. coal industry, but of little immediate interest to Canada. Inaction on the diplomatic front was matched by deadlock at the domestic level where efforts in Congress to renew the U.S. Clean Air Act (supported by Canada strongly, albeit discreetly) could not overcome the resistence of powerful legislators like Robert Byrd of West Virginia, the Senate Majority Leader, and John Dingell of Michigan, Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, whose coal mining and auto industry constituents had much at risk. Suasion with Inducements Canada itself was not a blameless victim of acid rain. Sulfur dioxide emissions from industrial smelters and power plants from Manitoba to the maritime provinces caused considerable acid precipitation not only in Canada’s eastern half, but in the northeastern United States as well. Under domestic pressure from the Canadian environmental movement, and needing a fresh initiative in their battle with the U.S., federal and provincial environmental ministers, meeting in Montreal, reached an agreement on February 5, 1985, to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions in Canada’s seven eastern provinces by 50 percent by the year 1994. The base year for calculating reductions was 1980. Since emissions were already below 1980 levels in a number of provinces, the actual reductions over the ten-year period would be less than 50 percent, but still a substantial 35-40 percent below prevailing levels in 1985.*’ Within a month, binding agreements had been signed between Ottawa and the provinces under which each province committed itself to reduce its emissions by an amount sufficient to meet the national goals contained in the Montreal agreement. Having “put our own house in order,” as Canadian officials called it, they now hoped that the United States could be persuaded to follow suit.
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While there was no immediate response from the United States, a prime opportunity for Canada to press the issue came at a summit meeting between President Reagan and Prime Minister Mulroney in Ottawa in the Spring of 1987. Prime Minister Mulroney made a strong appeal to the President to meet Canada half-way on the acid rain issue. In an address to the Canadian Parliament, President Reagan responded by acknowledging that acid rain was a problem, and that he would consider the Prime Minister’s proposal for a bilateral acid rain accord. Negotiations resumed, but were soon stalemated when Canadian negotiators would not accept a U.S. proposal for an accord which ommitted specific figures and timetables for reducing emissions.22 By this time, Canadian scientists had concluded that safeguarding Canada’s environment from acid rain damage would require a 10 year effort by the United States to reduce its sulfur dioxide emissions by half, about 10 million tons, and to keep them at that level permanently. U.S. negotiators were unwilling to get that specific, Ignoring that diplomatic setback, Prime Minister Mulroney, addressing a joint session of the U.S. Congress in the spring of 1988, once again called on Congress and the Reagan administration to conclude an acid rain accord with Canada. The Prime Minister presented an eight-point outline for an acid rain agreement to President Reagan who then instructed Secretary of State George Schultz to give the Canadian proposals top priority in discussions with the head of External Affairs, Joe Clark.23 But these were the twilight months of the Reagan administration and time ran out before any agreement could be pursued. Canada wasted little time in pressing its case with the new Bush administration. Derek Burney, the Canadian Ambassador to the United States, used a ceremonial appearance at the White House in January of 1989 to distribute a statement saying he was under orders to secure from the United States a timetable for reducing acid rain pollutants. Calling acid rain “the one anomaly in our otherwise remarkable record,” the Ambassador revealed that “an important part of my instructions from the Prime Minister is to elicit effective action by the United States to bring about specific reductions of transborder flows of acid rain pollutants within a fixed time.“24 Burney then reiterated Canada’s “firm priority” to also seek a bilateral accord to support that commitment.25 Following the example of his predecessor, George Bush made Canada the site of his first trip abroad on February 9, 1989. The day before, Prime Minister Mulroney announced that he would remind the President that acid rain was still at the top of Canada’s agenda with the U.S. When the Prime Minister raised the issue, the President responded that it was his desire to sign a bilateral accord with Canada on acid rain, and soon thereafter the administration announced that it would prepare legislative proposals for renewing the Clean Air Act, including controls on acid rain, In March, Canada’s Minister of the Environment, Lucien Bouchard, presented his nation’s proposals for U.S. acid rain policy to his counterpart in the U.S. government, EPA Administrator, William Riley, and to Senator George Mitchell of Maine, the new Majority Leader and the foremost Congressional advocate of acid rain legislation.26 Following release of the administration’s clean air proposals, Minister Bouchard declared that Canada’s Ambassador to the U.S. would begin
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to lobby immediately to make sure that Congress passed the President’s proposals.27 Acknowledging that “this is going to be a difficult debate in Congress,” Ambassador Burney said that “our job is going to be to encourage as many supporters as we can find in the Senate and in the House to ensure that the legislation that emerges in the end is consistent with the objectives we have set and what we think is necessary to get rid of this problem.“28 To help encourage potential supporters, 12 Canadian Members of Parliment visited Capitol Hill in October, 1989, and met with members of Congress involved in writing acid rain legislation. Mindful of the delicacy of the task, and the counterproductivity of strident rhetoric, the MP’s stressed Canada’s good will efforts toward the U.S. by cutting down its own emissions by 50 percent since 1985, and establishing an emissions cap, and expressed their hope that the U.S. would now reciprocate with equivalent reductions and regulations.2g More importantly, perhaps, Canadian environmental and diplomatic personnel who were monitoring the formulation of U.S. policy maintained contact with U.S. policy makers in the executive and legislative branches in an attempt to ensure that the acid rain provisions of the clean air bill met Canada’s conditions. When the Bush administration’s proposals on acid rain were sent to Congress, Prime Minister Mulroney took credit for Canada’s role in the reversal of U.S. policy by claiming that “hard work pays off.” Perhaps some back-patting was in order. For the public record, at least, William Riley, Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, declared that the Bush administration was “very conscious” of Canada’s concerns and “very determined” to rectify the problem. Riley made the most frank admission yet heard from a U.S. official when he said that “we have tried to ensure that the United States ceases inflicting this excessive acid deposition on our neighbor.30 It took more than a year, but Congress finally renewed the Clean Air Act on October 27, 1990, and President Bush signed the legislation into law on November 15, 1990. The final version contained a ten-year plan for reducing sulfur dioxide emissions by 10 million tons, with a cap to make those cuts permanent. Those were the exact provisions Canada insisted were necessary, in Ambassador Burney’s words, “to get rid of this problem.” The long awaited bilateral accord on acid rain was signed in Ottawa on March 13, 1991. In terms of emissions controls, it added nothing beyond existing U.S. and Canadian law. The accord provided for consultation on air quality, cooperative research and mechanisms to resolve disputes. The International Joint Commission was assigned the responsibility of holding public hearings and inviting public comment on reports that the two governments would compile on progress in meeting their respective clean air standards. After more than twelve years of conflict, the acid rain dispute finally came to an end.
ANALYSIS What does the acid rain episode demonstrate in terms of the policy relationship between the United States and Canada? Does it tend to confirm the model of U.S. control over the policy agenda and Canada’s relative powerlessness? Or does it suggest at least some limited but, nevertheless, real opportunities for Canada to influence the outcome of U.S. policy in ways that meet important Canadian
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objectives? The manner in which the acid rain dispute was resolved would appear to lend support to the latter view of U.S.-Canadian relations. As the Reagan years made clear, Canada may have considerable difficulty advancing its policy interests when the U.S. is unwilling to bend. But when there is a chance that U.S. policy might change, as there was under Bush, Canada may be able to marshal1 its bureaucratic resources, utilize its connections in the policy making network, and apply suasion to influence the formulation of new policy in ways that benefit Canadian national interests. The Reagan administration never felt compelled by domestic political pressure to change its position on acid rain, Canada’s entreaties notwithstanding. As a result of Canadian persistence, however, the issue remained under discussion between Canada and the United States throughout those eight years. As is often the case with public policy issues in the United States, an election provided the opportunity to move acid rain from the discussion agenda to the action agenda. While the Republicans retained the White House in 1988, its resident opponent of acid rain legislation retired to private life. Like his predecessor, George Bush admitted that he had received an “earful” from Canada on the acid rain issue.3’ Unlike his predecessor, he had made campaign promises to address environmental problems, including acid rain. In addition, his administration faced the problem of repairing the considerable damage in the Canadian relationship caused by his predecessor’s intransigence on the acid rain issue. As changing fortunes would have it, Canada’s prospects appeared to improve on Capitol Hill as well. Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia gave up his position as Senate majority leader in the 1Olst Congress, and was replaced by Senator George Mitchell of Maine. As recently as 1988, Senator Byrd, attempting to protect his state’s local interests, had complicated efforts to pass acid rain legislation by insisting on the mandatory use of scrubbers to control emissions. Senator Mitchell, whose own state was damaged by sulfur dioxide emissions from the midwest, shared Canada’s keen interest in controlling acid rain, and sponsored the legislation that Senator Byrd helped to stymie. Mitchell’s elevation to Senate leadership increased his prominence in the acid raid debate, while Senator Byrd switched his attention to the Senate Appropriations Committee where, as Chairman, he could help his state by dispensing federal funds and projects. Canada was merely a bystander to these domestic political transformations, but they triggered opportunities previously unavailable for Canada to negotiate a settlement of the long-standing dispute. Canada’s policy objectives with the Bush administration were the same as with Reagan’s: enactment by the U.S of strong acid rain controls, followed by a U.S.Canadian acid rain accord providing for monitoring and enforcement.32 Canada’s proposals for U.S. policy were quite specific. To safeguard the Canadian environment against acid rain damage from U.S. sources, Canada was calling on the United States to cut its total sulfur dioxide emissions by 10 million tons, approximately 50 percent, over a ten year period, and then to keep them at those levels, or below, on a permanent basis.33 Even though President Bush assured Canada he would do something about acid rain, there was no assurance that his administration would meet Canada’s demands. Regional interests in the United States had important stakes in the outcome, and
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would fight to protect them. The solutions that Canada was advocating would be costly in the nation’s industrial heartland where older electric power plants produced inexpensive energy by burning local high sulfur coal. A leading GOP member of the Houston environmental affairs said that the President was convinced of the need for a tough bill, but that a number of his subordinates were not.34 The administration’s initial efforts to formulate acid rain controls seemed to favor the position of those subordinates who did not favor a tough bill. The administration proposed cutting emissions by only 8 million tons over ten years, and did not mention a ceiling on future emissions. From the Canadian perspective, this proposal was completely unsatisfactory. “We did not think these cuts were satisfactory, and we told them so,” said an official in the Canadian Embassy.3’ According to this official, a senior staff member who was closely involved in monitoring the situation, Canadian officials immediately redoubled their efforts to persuade the administration to opt for stronger controls before submitting the legislation to Congress. The Canadian Ambassador and other high ranking officials, including Canada’s Environment Minister, pressed their case with their U.S. counterparts, arguing that Canada could not afford to compromise on its demands, and emphasizing that Canada was only asking the United States for reciprocal treatment following Canadian enactment of an acid rain control program four years earlier. Canadian officials backed the efforts of administration policy makers who favored stronger acid rain controls, and enlisted the lobbying support of U.S. environmental interest groups who were also advocating strong acid rain controls.36 Participants in the process credit Canadian officials with arguing their case forcefully and effectively, and also with knowing when to back off and avoid crossing the line between legitimate advocacy of their nation’s interests and inappropriate meddling in U.S. affairs.37 The administration subsequently reformulated its proposals in the direction advocated by Canada by increasing the emission cuts to 10 million tons over 10 years. This reformulation, though a considerable improvement over the original, was still considered incomplete because it did not mandate permanent cuts. Once again, Canadian officials intervened in an effort to persuade the administration to accept the idea of placing a permanent ceiling on emissions.38 Following these interventions, the administration inserted an emissions cap into the acid rain section of its clean air bill just before submitting the legislation to Congress3” How can Canadian influence be assessed in this process of policy formulation? Canada’s negotiators may not have succeeded without additional pressure for action from the strong U.S. environmental lobby, or without supporters within the administration who found the Canadian case persuasive and favored an accommodation with Canada on the issue. On the other hand, Canada had carefully nurtured its relationships with U.S. environmental interest groups, even to the extent of coordinating lobbying activities, and administration policy makers may not have gone as far as they did without Canada’s determined and forceful advocacy of its case. After all, Canada was the main sponsor of the formula for the reduction of U.S. emissions by 10 million tons over 10 years, followed by an emissions cap to make those cuts permanent. Initially, at least, U.S. policy makers were inclined
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to prefer lower figures and no cap as a way of protecting U.S. coal and utility interests, and providing for growth in future energy supplies without costly tradeoffs. Canada expressed its dissatisfaction with these initial proposals, and pressed for the administration to reconsider. The administration’s response was to increase the reductions to 10 million tons, and then, following another round of negotiations, to accept Canada’s final proposal for placing a permanent cap on emissions. Had the Bush administration been unprepared to deal with Canada on acid rain, Canada’s efforts, once again, might have stalled, as they had so many times before. At stake this time, however, were not only the protection of U.S. interests, or the preservation of an anti-regulatory ideology, but also repairing the damage in the Canadian relationship caused by the previous administration’s intransigence on this very issue. Consequently, influential policy makers in the Bush administration, including the top leadership in EPA, favored reaching an accommodation with Canada on acid rain, and Canadian officials worked with them to gain formal acceptance of Canada’s ideas, with apparent success. At successive intervals in the process of policy formulation, U.S. policy makers incrementally adjusted their legislative proposals in the direction advocated by Canada’s negotiators. Official pronouncements should usually be consumed with several grains of salt, but there was at least some measure of sincerity when William Riley, announcing the administration’s proposals, said, “we have tried to ensure that we have met Canada’s needs and goals with this proposal. ” To Canada’s credit, it made those needs and goals, and the legitmacy of its case, consistently and abundantly clear, and an accommodation on acid rain policy was eventually reached with the Bush administration. When the administration’s acid rain proposals reached Capitol Hill, Canada’s main goal was to hold the line and protect them from assault by opposing interests in the United States. The politics of policy formulation in the executive branch may allow for accommodating the interests of other nations, but in Congress, as former Speaker O’Neill used to say, “all politics is local.” Capitol Hill may be crawling with lobbyists from foreign nations, but unless they can claim some economic or electoral clout in a state or Congressional district, they are marginal players at best. In that sense, Canada is a marginal player in Congressional politics. In the sense of shared interests in clean air, however, Canada had some important Congressional allies. These included Representative Henry Waxman from Lost Angeles, who chaired the important House Subcommittee on Health and the Environment, Representative Jerry Sikorski from Minnesota, a ranking member on the Waxman subcommittee, Silvio Conte, a senior Republican from Massachusetts, Senator Mitchell from Maine, and others. They had worked with Canadian officials on acid rain legislation on the past, and did so again in the 1Olst Congress. But as Senator Mitchell admonished an audience in Toronto, U.S. policy would not be predicated “exclusively on the needs and wants of Canadians.“40 The administration’s acid rain proposals emerged unscathed in the House and Senate versions of the clean air bill. As the legislation moved through Congress, Canadian officials kept in touch with their supporters, and monitored progress on the bill. Canada’s position was well known, however, and with the legislation proceeding slowly but satisfactorily, Canadian lobbying was covert and
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unobtrusive.41 Legislative progress on the measure was facilitated mainly by a combination of effective Congressional leadership, strong lobbying by environmental interest groups, and the waning influence of the midwestern coal and utility bloc. Once the administration took the initiative, the latent support in Congress for clean air legislation became increasingly manifest and powerful, and opposition correspondingly weaker. When a battle on the bill’s acid rain section finally erupted in the House-Senate conference, it was not over the provisions of greatest interest to Canada-the amount and timing of emission cuts-but over the allocation of extra pollution allowances for midwestern utilities which could be sold or traded in order to ease their financial burden in meeting the new emission standards. When agreement on the amount of extra pollution allowances was finally reached early in the morning of October 22, 1990, the last obstacle was removed, and the clean air bill sped to passage in the House on October 25, and in the Senate on the next day, becoming law with the President’s signature on November 15. The formula which Canada successfully negotiated with the administration, a 10 million reduction in emissions over 10 years and a permanent ceiling, was retained by Congress, and became the centerpiece of U.S. acid rain policy. The acid rain accord signed in 1991 added little of substance, but it was symbolically important to the Canadian Prime Minister who, insisting on its necessity, had invested considerably political capital in getting the U.S. to sign it. Canadian and U.S. officials had discussed features of a bilateral agreement on acid rain while the clean air amendments were moving through Congress. It is doubtful whether these discussions prior to passage of the bill would have occurred without diplomatic pressure from Canada.42 The agreement’s signing passed largely unnoticed in the U.S. media. Not so in Canada, however, where it was covered by the media, and prominently featured as a “landmark agreement” in Canada Reports, the official publication of the Ministry of External Affairs and International Trade.43 Following Canadian support of U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf, and considering Prime Minister Mulroney’s political vulnerability at home, the formal accord seemed to be a relatively cost free concession by the United States.
CONCLUSIONS This analysis of the acid rain issue has explored the potential for Canadian influence over U.S. policy. As demonstrated by the Reagan years, when the U.S. Is intransigent, Canada’s influence may be limited to the discussion agenda. However, Canadian leverage over the issues on that agenda may set the tone for future action. When the opportunity finally arose to settle the acid rain issue, the Bush administration acknowledged Canada as a legitimate player in the politics of policy formulation. As an alternative to the static power imbalance and dependency models, a policy process framework has been proposed for examining the dynamic aspects of U.S.Canadian relationships. Such a framework examines interactions that may affect the formulation of policy as well as its passage. As the acid rain case indicates, the United States may not be able to dominate the policy agenda to the total or permanent exclusion of Canadian interests, and Canada may have opportunities
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to shape the formulation of U.S. policy in ways that are sustainable in subsequent of the U.S. policy process. This conclusion is based not merely on the observed similarity between the Bush administration’s acid rain proposals and Canada’s demands, but on the fact that the similarity was produced by successive incremental adjustments to policy the administration appeared to make in direct response to Canadian pressure. Even if Canada was not alone in pressing for stronger acid rain controls, the manner in which the administration made conciliatory responses to the Canadian stimulus suggests that Canada’s policy demands figured seriously in the administration’s selection of policy options. On two matters of critical importance to Canada-targets and ceilings on emission reductions-policy options offered by Canada replaced the administration’s original formulations. Participants in the process acknowledged Canada’s purposeful action on these matters and the effectiveness of its advocacy. This analysis does not argue that Canadian pressure was the primary factor in the reversal of U.S. policy on acid rain. Influential groups in the U.S. were also pressuring for new legislation. As a party with interests in U.S. legislation, Canada, like any other interest group, cannot succeed without forming coalitions with individuals and groups whose objectives are similar, and waiting for the appropriate time to advance its interests. Even as a secondary actor, however, Canada’s unflagging advocacy of a bilateral solution to the acid rain problem put considerable pressure on the Bush administration to address Canada’s concerns as well as U.S. domestic interests in its formulation of policy to deal with the problem. Whether Canada’s role was of primary or secondary importance, or whether it acted alone or in concert with others, matters less than the fact that Canada could articulate its preferences and bargain effectively for them in the competitive game of policy formulation. In contrast to its potential for playing offense in the administrative politics of policy formulation, Canada seems more restricted to playing defense in the Congressional politics of policy adoption. Canadian officials may be able to team up with their allies in Congress, but in Congressional politics, any proposal is hostage to domestic political pressures of the moment which may or may not be congenial to the interests of another nation. Fortunately for Canada, those pressures were driving approval of the clean air bill in directions that were consistent with Canadian interests on acid rain. In attempting to settle a long-standing policy dispute with the United States, this analysis suggests that Canada may counterbalance its inequality in power resources by using a combination of the institutional and instrumental assets it possesses in order to exert pressure on U.S. policy makers. To the extent that the employment of these assets reflects a conscious strategy, it seems to be based on a long term view of conflict resolution that recognizes the ability of the U.S. to use its superior power resources to delay decisions and prolong Canadian dependency. But even on an issue where the United States enjoys the benefits of the slatus quo to the extent that it did on acid rain, the politics of delay may still have limits. Domestic conditions in the U.S. may change eventually, altering the pressures to which political decision makers must respond and potentially enhancing Canada’s opportunities to advance its interests on the U.S. policy agenda.
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Acknowledgements: This article is a revised version of a paper delivered a Social Science Association Meetings, Portland, Oregon, April 27, 1990. Rm support from the Canadian Embassy and the Cleveland State University Colleg Studies is gratefully acknowledged. Three anonymous reviewers provided help on an earlier draft of this article.
NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.
12. 13.
14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.
John W. Holmes, Life with Uncle: The Canadian-American Relations University of Toronto Press, 1981) p. 2. Charles F. Doran, Forgotten Partnership: U.S.-Canada Relations Tot. Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 1984), p. 34. Kenneth M. Curtis and John E. Carroll, Canadian-American Relations: and the Challenge (Lexington: Lexington Books, 1983), pp. 12-13. Don Munton, “Dependence and Interdependence in Transboundary E Relations,” International Journal 36 (1980-1981: 182. Ibid., p. 183. Doran, op. cit., p. 59. Ibid, pp. 60-61. Joseph T. Jockel, Canadian-American Public Policy: Canada-U.S. Re Bush Era (Orono: University of Maine Press, 1990) pp. 3-8. Doran, op. cit., p. 60. Jockel, op. cit., pp. 10-11. William T. Stanbury and Jane Fulton, “Suasion as a Governing Instrun Ottawa Spends, edited by K. Graham, (Ottawa: Carleton University Pre 282-324. For the general argument on political mobilization, see E.E. Schattsc Semi-Sovereign People (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 196C Alex Manson, “Acid Rain: Canadian Concerns, Actions and Objectives the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Symposium on Acid Rain Air Act, Philadelphia, PA., August 21, 1989, p. 3. Stephen Clarkson, Canada and the Reagan Challenge: Crisis and Adju, 1985 (Toronto: James Lorimor and Co., 1985) p. 190. Ibid., p. 191. Ibid., pp. 194-195. Adele Hurley, Canadian Coalition on Acid Rain, Toronto. Interview P August 1989. Clarkson, op. cit., pp. 195-196. Dennis Bueckert, untitled Canadian Press story, 21 December 1988. On f Embassy, Washington, D.C. Jockel, op. cit., p. 6. Leslie R. Alm, “The U.S.-Canadian Acid Rain Debate: The Science-Poli The American Review of Canadian Studies, 20 (1990): 69.
22.
Canada. House of Commons. 1988, p. 92.
23. 24.
Ibid.
25.
Special Committee on Acid Rain. Report.
Frank J. Murphy, “Canada Presses Acid Rain Talks,” Washington Time 1989. Ibid.
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26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43.
States
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William Glenn, “Campaign Promises, CEPA and Acid Rain,” Hazmat World, 3 (1989): 57. Anne Mullroy, “Bouchard Lands U.S. Acid Rain Program,” The Ottawa Citizen, 12 June 1989. Scott White, untitled United News story, 21 July 1989. On file, Canadian Embassy, Washington, DC. Scott White, untitled United News story, 24 October 1989. On file, Canadian Embassy, Washington, DC. John Valorzi, untitled United News story, 12 June 1989. On file, Canadian Embassy, Washington, DC. Cleveland Plain Dealer, 14 March 1991. Senior official for acid rain policy, Environment Canada, Ottawa. Confidential interview with author, 29 June 1989. Manson, op. cit., pp. 8-9. Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, 1 January 1989, p. 690. Senior diplomatic official, Canadian Embassy, Washington, DC. Confidential interview with author, 16 January 1990. Ibid. Senior officials, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC. Confidential interviews with author, 17-18 January 1990. Confidential interview with Canadian Embassy official, op. cit. Phillip Shabecoff, “President’s Plan for Cleaning Air Goes to Congress,’ New York Times, 22 July 1989. Toronto Globe and Mail, 19 June 1989, Senior staff members, Canadian Embassy, Washington, DC. Confidential interviews with author, 16 January 1990. Senior official for acid rain policy, Environment Canada, Ottawa. Confidential interview with author, 9 July 1990. 4(1991): 19
EVERETT CATALDO* Cleveland State University
This analysis evaluates the effectiveness of Canadian efforts to influence the formulation of acid rain policy in the United States. The findings indicate that, despite an imbalance in resources of power and influence favoring the United States, there still may be limited, but nevertheless important, avenues for Canadian influence in the formulation of U.S. policy. This study questions the generality of static models for analyzing U.S.-Canadian relations, and suggests the use of a policy process framework for examining the political dynamics in the relationship.
INTRODUCTION Recent transactions between the United States and Canada on the environment and trade provide the opportunity to take a fresh look at policy relationships between these North American neighbors. Old assumptions concerning power imbalances and U.S. dominance may be subject to change in a new age of interdependency between the nations. The two issue areas of trade and the environment constitute a rich source for intergovernmental dialogue and policy development with the potential for changing not only the scope of the U.S.Canadian relationship, but, perhaps, its political character as well. The article uses the acid rain case as the basis for analyzing the potential for change in the political relationship between Canada and the United States. Central to political relationships between nations is the ability of one nation to influence the other’s policies on issues of mutual importance. Despite a lengthy history of benign interaction between Canada and the United States, it has been *Direct all correspondence to: Everett Cataldo, Department Cleveland, OH 44115. Telephone: (216) 687-4541.
of Political
The Social Science Journal, Volume 29, Number 4, pages 395409. Copyright @ 1992 by JAI Press Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISSN: 0362-3319.
Science, Cleveland
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said that Canada lives an “uneasy existence” in the shadow of its more populous, wealthy and powerful neighbor to the south.’ With a considerable edge in power resources-by a ratio of at least nine-to-one, according to one estimate’-the United States has been viewed as the dominant partner in the relationship, holding Canada within its sphere of influence by controlling the policy agenda between the nations and making sure that policy differences are resolved in its favor.3 With respect to the acid rain issue, the term “environmental dependence” has been used to describe the impact of U.S. pollution on the Canadian environment4 Describing environmental dependence as a “relatively fixed, structural condition in the relations between dominant and subordinate states,” Don Munton suggests that environmental dependence might be invariant to change.’ Recent inquiry, however, raises some questions concerning these static views of U.S. dominance and Canadian dependence. Examining negotiations on a number of issue areas, Charles Doran suggests that policy disputes may not always be resolved in favor of the United States.6 Doran’s analysis suggests some possible limitations in the ability of the power inequality model to explain U.S.-Canadian relations. The power inequality model may suffice to explain those cases in which policy disputes are resolved in favor of the United States; but for cases when they are not, an alternative framework is needed.
STATEMENT
OF PROBLEM
It is often alleged that the United States is quick to negotiate treaties with Canada when it has something to gain, but slow to respond when Canada’s interests are at stake. Trade and acid rain are leading examples of these contrasting attitudes. Formal treaties, however, are not Canada’s only means for settling disputes with the United States. In fact, as the acid rain dispute suggests, Canada may have a better chance of negotiating a settlement with the United States by attempting to influence U.S. domestic policy decisions, than by signing a formal treaty. Canada’s power resources may not equal those of the United States; but in terms of political influence, skillful use of available resources may matter more than their sheer number. What resources does Canada bring to its political relationship with the United States, and how may it use them to influence U.S. policy? Doran suggests that Canada possesses a number of institutional assets that are important in policy relationships with the United States. According to Doran, Canada improves its bargaining odds by concentrating more of its attention on bilateral issues, and by superior mobilization of bureaucratic resources and public support.’ Joseph Jockel suggests that U.S.-Canadian bilateral issues are increasingly handled through a “management culture” consisting of the heads of the two governments and their top cabinet officials and diplomatic personnel.* The prevailing norm in this culture is said to be equality of status between U.S. and Canadian officials. According to Jockel, this management culture evolved from a renewed awareness of Canada’s importance to the United States, and it relies on regular and direct personal interaction rather than formal negotiations for managing conflict and resolving differences of opinion.
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While arguing that Canada wins some negotiated outcomes with the United States, Doran also concedes that Canada’s policy demands do not always place high compliance costs on the U.S., and that Canada, exercising “northern forbearance,” as he calls it, has conditioned itself to accept modest returns from its investment in the U.S. relationship.g Jockel also points to cases where the resolution of conflict continues to be impeded by U.S. resistance.” Therefore, concentrated effort on bilateral issues, and institutional access, while necessary, may not be sufficient to leverage important concessions from the U.S. What other resources are available to Canada for influencing U.S. policy? Given the power differential, coercion is, of course, out of the question. Persuasion and the use of incentives, however, are not. Stanbury and Fulton have made a systematic examination of suasion as an instrument of government policy.” Suasion-their term for the effort to persuade-involves exhortation, the appeal to principle, to achieve compliance with a government’s objectives. While Stanbury and Fulton examine suasion in terms of relationships between a government and its citizens, the concept can be applied with equal utility to relationships between nations. As an instrument of foreign policy, suasion involves an exhortation or an appeal from one nation to another to alter its policies or behavior on the basis of principle, as a matter of it being the right thing to do. If pure suasion does not produce the desired response, a material inducement may be added that appeals to the other nation’s self interest-a natural resource it may covet, a reciprocal policy concession, or some other trade-off to seal the bargain. While suasion is usually viewed as a rhetorical instrument, it may also involve the mobilization of political support to enhance the advocate’s bargaining position.12 These perspectives suggest some institutional and instrumental alternatives to raw power for examining policy relationships between the United States and Canada. The U.S. may attempt to use its superior power resources to restrict Canadian input to the bilateral policy agenda, but Canada’s concentration and determination on bilateral issues may not always make that possible. Once an issue reaches the policy agenda, the norm of equality in the management culture may work to Canada’s advantage by neutralizing national power as a decisional criterion, and increasing the possibility that disputes might be settled on the basis of elite accommodation. As a nation that often argues from principle in its relations with others, the United States is susceptible to a similar argument from Canada. In addition, Canada has material incentives to offer and the means for political mobilization if pure suasion fails to move U.S. policy in the desired direction. All of these factors played a part in the resolution of Canada’s acid rain dispute with the United States. The United States preferred to keep acid rain off the bilateral agenda, but Canadian determination kept it there. In appealing for a shift in U.S. policy, Canada made an appeal on principle, but also mobilized political support in the U.S. for its position, and instituted its own acid raid control program in 1985 as an incentive for reciprocal action. At critical junctures in policy formulation, Canada used the network of personal relationships between government policy makers in an effort to negotiate a satisfactory settlement to the dispute.
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NARRATIVE Agenda Setting The acid rain debate started in 1978 when Canada proposed a bilateral treaty with the United States for a 50 percent reduction in the transboundary flow of sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide gases, the main precursors of acid precipitation. From the beginning, the issue assumed greater environmental importance for Canada than the United States. Canada’s soils and waters are more vulnerable to acid damage, and half of the acid rain falling on Canada came from airborne emissions originating in the United States. By contrast, Canada’s contribution to acid precipitation in the U.S. was in the range of 15-25 percent.13 By the late 1970s studies by Canadian scientists revealed that streams, lakes, and forests in eastern Canada were sustaining heavy acid damage. On the basis of the Canadian initiative, a bilateral U.S.Canadian research group was formed in October 1978 to study the long range transport of airborne pollutants, and to make recommendations on curtailing them. Following nearly two years of work by the advisory group, Canada and the United States signed the Memorandum of Intent on Transboundary Air Pollution on August 5, 1980. The Memorandum was a major disappointment to Canada because it fell far short of achieving an agreement for specific bilateral action. Canada had proposed that transboundary emissions be cut by 50 percent. But the U.S. refused to obligate itself to specific reductions or new regulations, promising only to take action under existing authority to reduce emissions when it seemed appropriate. This token response seemed to typify the imbalance in the relationship, and Canada’s policy dependency. In 1979, the Carter administration had already placed U.S. energy needs above environmental considerations by proposing to convert more than one hundred oil burning power plants to coal, a change that would have resulted in even more sulfur dioxide gases crossing the border into Canada. When the Reagan administration took over in 1981, even greater resistance was encountered. Claiming that not enough was known about acid precipitation, the Reagan administration insisted on delaying any formal agreement with Canada until the results of the National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program were known, a ten-year research project scheduled for completion in 1990. Suasion as a Policy Instrument Frustrated on the diplomatic level, Canada went public in its effort to keep acid rain on the bilateral agenda and persuade the U.S. of the need for more serious action. In principle, the Canadian position was beyond reproach-for the sake of the relationship, the United States should recognize the harm it was causing to the Canadian environment, and do the right thing by taking immediate action to ease the damage. While Canada might not be faulted in principle, in practice its initial exhortations came across as strident and accusatory. As a consequence, they were counterproductive. John Roberts, Minister of the Environment in the Trudeau government, accused the United States of committing “environmental aggression”
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against Canada.14 Another Canadian official openly expressed disappointment over the lack of progress in negotiations with the U.S. by saying, “We made the tactical error of telling them what they were doing to us. We found out they were not particularly interested in what they were doing to us.“l’ These angry outbursts did not play well in the United States, and provoked suspicions about Canada’s motives. Canada was accused of using the acid rain issue to exploit its energy resources, and expand the sales of Canadian hydro-electric power into the U.S. market. Fortunately for Canada, rhetoric was only part of its strategy. Political mobilization in the United States became an increasingly important element in the Canadian strategy. The Canadian Coalition on Acid Rain, a citizen’s group subsidized by public and private contributions, opened a Washington office as an officially registered lobby, and immediately went to work building coalitions on Capitol Hill and at the grass roots level with environmental interest groups in the United States.16 These efforts gained friendly support among key actors in the domestic political process.17 Canadian Embassy staff in Washington became involved in monitoring acid rain activity in the bureaucracy and Congress. The Canadian Ambassador to the United States became an outspoken, high-profile advocate of his nation’s case, and various Canadian officials appeared before Congressional Committees and other forums throughout the United States to argue the need for acid rain legislation. Canadian consulates throughout the country were mobilized, aligning themselves with domestic supporters of acid rain legislation, and even attempting to convert non-believers, not always a profitable approach.‘* Effective relations were formed with environmental interest groups, and also with key Congressional supporters of clean air legislation, such as Congressmen Waxman of California and Sikorski of Minnesota, and Senator Mitchell of Maine. U.S. officials and opinion leaders were invited to Canada to tour areas affected by acid rain, and publicity campaigns were organized to sway U.S. public opinion. Canada even took the step of joining in legal proceedings in the United States in cases involving pollution standards and transboundary emission flows.lg In Canadian parlance, this energetic and farflung campaign of intervention into the U.S. political process was called “advocacy diplomacy.” It was based on the growing realization that Washington dealt with other nations as if they were, in the words of the Canadian Ambassador, “just another interest,“and that if Canada was going to be viewed as an interest group it should start behaving like one and lobby hard for its legislative goals.*’ Practically speaking, recognition as a political interest can be beneficial to another nation because it legitimates its active involvement in the U.S. political process. Without abandoning its plea for a bilateral accord, Canada intensified its efforts at political mobilization in the U.S. in an attempt to achieve legislatively what it had not been able to achieve diplomatically. Managing the Issue By 1984, the U.S.-Canadian relationship was strained considerably, and not just over acid rain. The ideological distance between the Trudeau and Reagan governments made it more complicated to manage the relationship. The accommodating style that Jockel associates with his “management culture”followed
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the elections of 1984 in which the Liberal government of John Turner (Trudeau’s successor) was replaced by the Conservative government of Brian Mulroney, whose political spirit was more kindred to President Reagan’s. While Prime Minister Mulroney’s approach was no less insistent on the need for U.S. action on acid rain, it was less adversarial than his predecessor+. With improved and more frequent access to their counterparts in the U.S. government, Mulroney and his ministers made personal appeals for a change in U.S. policy. Not unrealistically, they may have anticipated being able to resolve the acid rain dispute on the basis of partisan accommodation between governments who saw eye-to-eye on most matters. In 1985, the Reagan administration appeared to take a conciliatory step by agreeing to a Canadian proposal to appoint special envoys from each nation to examine the acid rain problem and to make recommendations for action. The Report of the Special Envoys was released in 1986. Once again, Canada absorbed a diplomatic setback. The Report acknowledged the seriousness of the acid rain problem, but, in language virtually identical to the Memorandum of Intent, simply urged both nations to search for opportunities to curb emissions under existing regulations. The only new idea in the report was a proposal to create a $5 billion public-private partnership in the United States to develop clean coal technologies, a proposal dear to the heart of the U.S. coal industry, but of little immediate interest to Canada. Inaction on the diplomatic front was matched by deadlock at the domestic level where efforts in Congress to renew the U.S. Clean Air Act (supported by Canada strongly, albeit discreetly) could not overcome the resistence of powerful legislators like Robert Byrd of West Virginia, the Senate Majority Leader, and John Dingell of Michigan, Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, whose coal mining and auto industry constituents had much at risk. Suasion with Inducements Canada itself was not a blameless victim of acid rain. Sulfur dioxide emissions from industrial smelters and power plants from Manitoba to the maritime provinces caused considerable acid precipitation not only in Canada’s eastern half, but in the northeastern United States as well. Under domestic pressure from the Canadian environmental movement, and needing a fresh initiative in their battle with the U.S., federal and provincial environmental ministers, meeting in Montreal, reached an agreement on February 5, 1985, to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions in Canada’s seven eastern provinces by 50 percent by the year 1994. The base year for calculating reductions was 1980. Since emissions were already below 1980 levels in a number of provinces, the actual reductions over the ten-year period would be less than 50 percent, but still a substantial 35-40 percent below prevailing levels in 1985.*’ Within a month, binding agreements had been signed between Ottawa and the provinces under which each province committed itself to reduce its emissions by an amount sufficient to meet the national goals contained in the Montreal agreement. Having “put our own house in order,” as Canadian officials called it, they now hoped that the United States could be persuaded to follow suit.
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While there was no immediate response from the United States, a prime opportunity for Canada to press the issue came at a summit meeting between President Reagan and Prime Minister Mulroney in Ottawa in the Spring of 1987. Prime Minister Mulroney made a strong appeal to the President to meet Canada half-way on the acid rain issue. In an address to the Canadian Parliament, President Reagan responded by acknowledging that acid rain was a problem, and that he would consider the Prime Minister’s proposal for a bilateral acid rain accord. Negotiations resumed, but were soon stalemated when Canadian negotiators would not accept a U.S. proposal for an accord which ommitted specific figures and timetables for reducing emissions.22 By this time, Canadian scientists had concluded that safeguarding Canada’s environment from acid rain damage would require a 10 year effort by the United States to reduce its sulfur dioxide emissions by half, about 10 million tons, and to keep them at that level permanently. U.S. negotiators were unwilling to get that specific, Ignoring that diplomatic setback, Prime Minister Mulroney, addressing a joint session of the U.S. Congress in the spring of 1988, once again called on Congress and the Reagan administration to conclude an acid rain accord with Canada. The Prime Minister presented an eight-point outline for an acid rain agreement to President Reagan who then instructed Secretary of State George Schultz to give the Canadian proposals top priority in discussions with the head of External Affairs, Joe Clark.23 But these were the twilight months of the Reagan administration and time ran out before any agreement could be pursued. Canada wasted little time in pressing its case with the new Bush administration. Derek Burney, the Canadian Ambassador to the United States, used a ceremonial appearance at the White House in January of 1989 to distribute a statement saying he was under orders to secure from the United States a timetable for reducing acid rain pollutants. Calling acid rain “the one anomaly in our otherwise remarkable record,” the Ambassador revealed that “an important part of my instructions from the Prime Minister is to elicit effective action by the United States to bring about specific reductions of transborder flows of acid rain pollutants within a fixed time.“24 Burney then reiterated Canada’s “firm priority” to also seek a bilateral accord to support that commitment.25 Following the example of his predecessor, George Bush made Canada the site of his first trip abroad on February 9, 1989. The day before, Prime Minister Mulroney announced that he would remind the President that acid rain was still at the top of Canada’s agenda with the U.S. When the Prime Minister raised the issue, the President responded that it was his desire to sign a bilateral accord with Canada on acid rain, and soon thereafter the administration announced that it would prepare legislative proposals for renewing the Clean Air Act, including controls on acid rain, In March, Canada’s Minister of the Environment, Lucien Bouchard, presented his nation’s proposals for U.S. acid rain policy to his counterpart in the U.S. government, EPA Administrator, William Riley, and to Senator George Mitchell of Maine, the new Majority Leader and the foremost Congressional advocate of acid rain legislation.26 Following release of the administration’s clean air proposals, Minister Bouchard declared that Canada’s Ambassador to the U.S. would begin
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to lobby immediately to make sure that Congress passed the President’s proposals.27 Acknowledging that “this is going to be a difficult debate in Congress,” Ambassador Burney said that “our job is going to be to encourage as many supporters as we can find in the Senate and in the House to ensure that the legislation that emerges in the end is consistent with the objectives we have set and what we think is necessary to get rid of this problem.“28 To help encourage potential supporters, 12 Canadian Members of Parliment visited Capitol Hill in October, 1989, and met with members of Congress involved in writing acid rain legislation. Mindful of the delicacy of the task, and the counterproductivity of strident rhetoric, the MP’s stressed Canada’s good will efforts toward the U.S. by cutting down its own emissions by 50 percent since 1985, and establishing an emissions cap, and expressed their hope that the U.S. would now reciprocate with equivalent reductions and regulations.2g More importantly, perhaps, Canadian environmental and diplomatic personnel who were monitoring the formulation of U.S. policy maintained contact with U.S. policy makers in the executive and legislative branches in an attempt to ensure that the acid rain provisions of the clean air bill met Canada’s conditions. When the Bush administration’s proposals on acid rain were sent to Congress, Prime Minister Mulroney took credit for Canada’s role in the reversal of U.S. policy by claiming that “hard work pays off.” Perhaps some back-patting was in order. For the public record, at least, William Riley, Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, declared that the Bush administration was “very conscious” of Canada’s concerns and “very determined” to rectify the problem. Riley made the most frank admission yet heard from a U.S. official when he said that “we have tried to ensure that the United States ceases inflicting this excessive acid deposition on our neighbor.30 It took more than a year, but Congress finally renewed the Clean Air Act on October 27, 1990, and President Bush signed the legislation into law on November 15, 1990. The final version contained a ten-year plan for reducing sulfur dioxide emissions by 10 million tons, with a cap to make those cuts permanent. Those were the exact provisions Canada insisted were necessary, in Ambassador Burney’s words, “to get rid of this problem.” The long awaited bilateral accord on acid rain was signed in Ottawa on March 13, 1991. In terms of emissions controls, it added nothing beyond existing U.S. and Canadian law. The accord provided for consultation on air quality, cooperative research and mechanisms to resolve disputes. The International Joint Commission was assigned the responsibility of holding public hearings and inviting public comment on reports that the two governments would compile on progress in meeting their respective clean air standards. After more than twelve years of conflict, the acid rain dispute finally came to an end.
ANALYSIS What does the acid rain episode demonstrate in terms of the policy relationship between the United States and Canada? Does it tend to confirm the model of U.S. control over the policy agenda and Canada’s relative powerlessness? Or does it suggest at least some limited but, nevertheless, real opportunities for Canada to influence the outcome of U.S. policy in ways that meet important Canadian
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objectives? The manner in which the acid rain dispute was resolved would appear to lend support to the latter view of U.S.-Canadian relations. As the Reagan years made clear, Canada may have considerable difficulty advancing its policy interests when the U.S. is unwilling to bend. But when there is a chance that U.S. policy might change, as there was under Bush, Canada may be able to marshal1 its bureaucratic resources, utilize its connections in the policy making network, and apply suasion to influence the formulation of new policy in ways that benefit Canadian national interests. The Reagan administration never felt compelled by domestic political pressure to change its position on acid rain, Canada’s entreaties notwithstanding. As a result of Canadian persistence, however, the issue remained under discussion between Canada and the United States throughout those eight years. As is often the case with public policy issues in the United States, an election provided the opportunity to move acid rain from the discussion agenda to the action agenda. While the Republicans retained the White House in 1988, its resident opponent of acid rain legislation retired to private life. Like his predecessor, George Bush admitted that he had received an “earful” from Canada on the acid rain issue.3’ Unlike his predecessor, he had made campaign promises to address environmental problems, including acid rain. In addition, his administration faced the problem of repairing the considerable damage in the Canadian relationship caused by his predecessor’s intransigence on the acid rain issue. As changing fortunes would have it, Canada’s prospects appeared to improve on Capitol Hill as well. Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia gave up his position as Senate majority leader in the 1Olst Congress, and was replaced by Senator George Mitchell of Maine. As recently as 1988, Senator Byrd, attempting to protect his state’s local interests, had complicated efforts to pass acid rain legislation by insisting on the mandatory use of scrubbers to control emissions. Senator Mitchell, whose own state was damaged by sulfur dioxide emissions from the midwest, shared Canada’s keen interest in controlling acid rain, and sponsored the legislation that Senator Byrd helped to stymie. Mitchell’s elevation to Senate leadership increased his prominence in the acid raid debate, while Senator Byrd switched his attention to the Senate Appropriations Committee where, as Chairman, he could help his state by dispensing federal funds and projects. Canada was merely a bystander to these domestic political transformations, but they triggered opportunities previously unavailable for Canada to negotiate a settlement of the long-standing dispute. Canada’s policy objectives with the Bush administration were the same as with Reagan’s: enactment by the U.S of strong acid rain controls, followed by a U.S.Canadian acid rain accord providing for monitoring and enforcement.32 Canada’s proposals for U.S. policy were quite specific. To safeguard the Canadian environment against acid rain damage from U.S. sources, Canada was calling on the United States to cut its total sulfur dioxide emissions by 10 million tons, approximately 50 percent, over a ten year period, and then to keep them at those levels, or below, on a permanent basis.33 Even though President Bush assured Canada he would do something about acid rain, there was no assurance that his administration would meet Canada’s demands. Regional interests in the United States had important stakes in the outcome, and
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would fight to protect them. The solutions that Canada was advocating would be costly in the nation’s industrial heartland where older electric power plants produced inexpensive energy by burning local high sulfur coal. A leading GOP member of the Houston environmental affairs said that the President was convinced of the need for a tough bill, but that a number of his subordinates were not.34 The administration’s initial efforts to formulate acid rain controls seemed to favor the position of those subordinates who did not favor a tough bill. The administration proposed cutting emissions by only 8 million tons over ten years, and did not mention a ceiling on future emissions. From the Canadian perspective, this proposal was completely unsatisfactory. “We did not think these cuts were satisfactory, and we told them so,” said an official in the Canadian Embassy.3’ According to this official, a senior staff member who was closely involved in monitoring the situation, Canadian officials immediately redoubled their efforts to persuade the administration to opt for stronger controls before submitting the legislation to Congress. The Canadian Ambassador and other high ranking officials, including Canada’s Environment Minister, pressed their case with their U.S. counterparts, arguing that Canada could not afford to compromise on its demands, and emphasizing that Canada was only asking the United States for reciprocal treatment following Canadian enactment of an acid rain control program four years earlier. Canadian officials backed the efforts of administration policy makers who favored stronger acid rain controls, and enlisted the lobbying support of U.S. environmental interest groups who were also advocating strong acid rain controls.36 Participants in the process credit Canadian officials with arguing their case forcefully and effectively, and also with knowing when to back off and avoid crossing the line between legitimate advocacy of their nation’s interests and inappropriate meddling in U.S. affairs.37 The administration subsequently reformulated its proposals in the direction advocated by Canada by increasing the emission cuts to 10 million tons over 10 years. This reformulation, though a considerable improvement over the original, was still considered incomplete because it did not mandate permanent cuts. Once again, Canadian officials intervened in an effort to persuade the administration to accept the idea of placing a permanent ceiling on emissions.38 Following these interventions, the administration inserted an emissions cap into the acid rain section of its clean air bill just before submitting the legislation to Congress3” How can Canadian influence be assessed in this process of policy formulation? Canada’s negotiators may not have succeeded without additional pressure for action from the strong U.S. environmental lobby, or without supporters within the administration who found the Canadian case persuasive and favored an accommodation with Canada on the issue. On the other hand, Canada had carefully nurtured its relationships with U.S. environmental interest groups, even to the extent of coordinating lobbying activities, and administration policy makers may not have gone as far as they did without Canada’s determined and forceful advocacy of its case. After all, Canada was the main sponsor of the formula for the reduction of U.S. emissions by 10 million tons over 10 years, followed by an emissions cap to make those cuts permanent. Initially, at least, U.S. policy makers were inclined
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to prefer lower figures and no cap as a way of protecting U.S. coal and utility interests, and providing for growth in future energy supplies without costly tradeoffs. Canada expressed its dissatisfaction with these initial proposals, and pressed for the administration to reconsider. The administration’s response was to increase the reductions to 10 million tons, and then, following another round of negotiations, to accept Canada’s final proposal for placing a permanent cap on emissions. Had the Bush administration been unprepared to deal with Canada on acid rain, Canada’s efforts, once again, might have stalled, as they had so many times before. At stake this time, however, were not only the protection of U.S. interests, or the preservation of an anti-regulatory ideology, but also repairing the damage in the Canadian relationship caused by the previous administration’s intransigence on this very issue. Consequently, influential policy makers in the Bush administration, including the top leadership in EPA, favored reaching an accommodation with Canada on acid rain, and Canadian officials worked with them to gain formal acceptance of Canada’s ideas, with apparent success. At successive intervals in the process of policy formulation, U.S. policy makers incrementally adjusted their legislative proposals in the direction advocated by Canada’s negotiators. Official pronouncements should usually be consumed with several grains of salt, but there was at least some measure of sincerity when William Riley, announcing the administration’s proposals, said, “we have tried to ensure that we have met Canada’s needs and goals with this proposal. ” To Canada’s credit, it made those needs and goals, and the legitmacy of its case, consistently and abundantly clear, and an accommodation on acid rain policy was eventually reached with the Bush administration. When the administration’s acid rain proposals reached Capitol Hill, Canada’s main goal was to hold the line and protect them from assault by opposing interests in the United States. The politics of policy formulation in the executive branch may allow for accommodating the interests of other nations, but in Congress, as former Speaker O’Neill used to say, “all politics is local.” Capitol Hill may be crawling with lobbyists from foreign nations, but unless they can claim some economic or electoral clout in a state or Congressional district, they are marginal players at best. In that sense, Canada is a marginal player in Congressional politics. In the sense of shared interests in clean air, however, Canada had some important Congressional allies. These included Representative Henry Waxman from Lost Angeles, who chaired the important House Subcommittee on Health and the Environment, Representative Jerry Sikorski from Minnesota, a ranking member on the Waxman subcommittee, Silvio Conte, a senior Republican from Massachusetts, Senator Mitchell from Maine, and others. They had worked with Canadian officials on acid rain legislation on the past, and did so again in the 1Olst Congress. But as Senator Mitchell admonished an audience in Toronto, U.S. policy would not be predicated “exclusively on the needs and wants of Canadians.“40 The administration’s acid rain proposals emerged unscathed in the House and Senate versions of the clean air bill. As the legislation moved through Congress, Canadian officials kept in touch with their supporters, and monitored progress on the bill. Canada’s position was well known, however, and with the legislation proceeding slowly but satisfactorily, Canadian lobbying was covert and
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unobtrusive.41 Legislative progress on the measure was facilitated mainly by a combination of effective Congressional leadership, strong lobbying by environmental interest groups, and the waning influence of the midwestern coal and utility bloc. Once the administration took the initiative, the latent support in Congress for clean air legislation became increasingly manifest and powerful, and opposition correspondingly weaker. When a battle on the bill’s acid rain section finally erupted in the House-Senate conference, it was not over the provisions of greatest interest to Canada-the amount and timing of emission cuts-but over the allocation of extra pollution allowances for midwestern utilities which could be sold or traded in order to ease their financial burden in meeting the new emission standards. When agreement on the amount of extra pollution allowances was finally reached early in the morning of October 22, 1990, the last obstacle was removed, and the clean air bill sped to passage in the House on October 25, and in the Senate on the next day, becoming law with the President’s signature on November 15. The formula which Canada successfully negotiated with the administration, a 10 million reduction in emissions over 10 years and a permanent ceiling, was retained by Congress, and became the centerpiece of U.S. acid rain policy. The acid rain accord signed in 1991 added little of substance, but it was symbolically important to the Canadian Prime Minister who, insisting on its necessity, had invested considerably political capital in getting the U.S. to sign it. Canadian and U.S. officials had discussed features of a bilateral agreement on acid rain while the clean air amendments were moving through Congress. It is doubtful whether these discussions prior to passage of the bill would have occurred without diplomatic pressure from Canada.42 The agreement’s signing passed largely unnoticed in the U.S. media. Not so in Canada, however, where it was covered by the media, and prominently featured as a “landmark agreement” in Canada Reports, the official publication of the Ministry of External Affairs and International Trade.43 Following Canadian support of U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf, and considering Prime Minister Mulroney’s political vulnerability at home, the formal accord seemed to be a relatively cost free concession by the United States.
CONCLUSIONS This analysis of the acid rain issue has explored the potential for Canadian influence over U.S. policy. As demonstrated by the Reagan years, when the U.S. Is intransigent, Canada’s influence may be limited to the discussion agenda. However, Canadian leverage over the issues on that agenda may set the tone for future action. When the opportunity finally arose to settle the acid rain issue, the Bush administration acknowledged Canada as a legitimate player in the politics of policy formulation. As an alternative to the static power imbalance and dependency models, a policy process framework has been proposed for examining the dynamic aspects of U.S.Canadian relationships. Such a framework examines interactions that may affect the formulation of policy as well as its passage. As the acid rain case indicates, the United States may not be able to dominate the policy agenda to the total or permanent exclusion of Canadian interests, and Canada may have opportunities
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to shape the formulation of U.S. policy in ways that are sustainable in subsequent of the U.S. policy process. This conclusion is based not merely on the observed similarity between the Bush administration’s acid rain proposals and Canada’s demands, but on the fact that the similarity was produced by successive incremental adjustments to policy the administration appeared to make in direct response to Canadian pressure. Even if Canada was not alone in pressing for stronger acid rain controls, the manner in which the administration made conciliatory responses to the Canadian stimulus suggests that Canada’s policy demands figured seriously in the administration’s selection of policy options. On two matters of critical importance to Canada-targets and ceilings on emission reductions-policy options offered by Canada replaced the administration’s original formulations. Participants in the process acknowledged Canada’s purposeful action on these matters and the effectiveness of its advocacy. This analysis does not argue that Canadian pressure was the primary factor in the reversal of U.S. policy on acid rain. Influential groups in the U.S. were also pressuring for new legislation. As a party with interests in U.S. legislation, Canada, like any other interest group, cannot succeed without forming coalitions with individuals and groups whose objectives are similar, and waiting for the appropriate time to advance its interests. Even as a secondary actor, however, Canada’s unflagging advocacy of a bilateral solution to the acid rain problem put considerable pressure on the Bush administration to address Canada’s concerns as well as U.S. domestic interests in its formulation of policy to deal with the problem. Whether Canada’s role was of primary or secondary importance, or whether it acted alone or in concert with others, matters less than the fact that Canada could articulate its preferences and bargain effectively for them in the competitive game of policy formulation. In contrast to its potential for playing offense in the administrative politics of policy formulation, Canada seems more restricted to playing defense in the Congressional politics of policy adoption. Canadian officials may be able to team up with their allies in Congress, but in Congressional politics, any proposal is hostage to domestic political pressures of the moment which may or may not be congenial to the interests of another nation. Fortunately for Canada, those pressures were driving approval of the clean air bill in directions that were consistent with Canadian interests on acid rain. In attempting to settle a long-standing policy dispute with the United States, this analysis suggests that Canada may counterbalance its inequality in power resources by using a combination of the institutional and instrumental assets it possesses in order to exert pressure on U.S. policy makers. To the extent that the employment of these assets reflects a conscious strategy, it seems to be based on a long term view of conflict resolution that recognizes the ability of the U.S. to use its superior power resources to delay decisions and prolong Canadian dependency. But even on an issue where the United States enjoys the benefits of the slatus quo to the extent that it did on acid rain, the politics of delay may still have limits. Domestic conditions in the U.S. may change eventually, altering the pressures to which political decision makers must respond and potentially enhancing Canada’s opportunities to advance its interests on the U.S. policy agenda.
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Acknowledgements: This article is a revised version of a paper delivered a Social Science Association Meetings, Portland, Oregon, April 27, 1990. Rm support from the Canadian Embassy and the Cleveland State University Colleg Studies is gratefully acknowledged. Three anonymous reviewers provided help on an earlier draft of this article.
NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.
12. 13.
14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.
John W. Holmes, Life with Uncle: The Canadian-American Relations University of Toronto Press, 1981) p. 2. Charles F. Doran, Forgotten Partnership: U.S.-Canada Relations Tot. Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 1984), p. 34. Kenneth M. Curtis and John E. Carroll, Canadian-American Relations: and the Challenge (Lexington: Lexington Books, 1983), pp. 12-13. Don Munton, “Dependence and Interdependence in Transboundary E Relations,” International Journal 36 (1980-1981: 182. Ibid., p. 183. Doran, op. cit., p. 59. Ibid, pp. 60-61. Joseph T. Jockel, Canadian-American Public Policy: Canada-U.S. Re Bush Era (Orono: University of Maine Press, 1990) pp. 3-8. Doran, op. cit., p. 60. Jockel, op. cit., pp. 10-11. William T. Stanbury and Jane Fulton, “Suasion as a Governing Instrun Ottawa Spends, edited by K. Graham, (Ottawa: Carleton University Pre 282-324. For the general argument on political mobilization, see E.E. Schattsc Semi-Sovereign People (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 196C Alex Manson, “Acid Rain: Canadian Concerns, Actions and Objectives the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Symposium on Acid Rain Air Act, Philadelphia, PA., August 21, 1989, p. 3. Stephen Clarkson, Canada and the Reagan Challenge: Crisis and Adju, 1985 (Toronto: James Lorimor and Co., 1985) p. 190. Ibid., p. 191. Ibid., pp. 194-195. Adele Hurley, Canadian Coalition on Acid Rain, Toronto. Interview P August 1989. Clarkson, op. cit., pp. 195-196. Dennis Bueckert, untitled Canadian Press story, 21 December 1988. On f Embassy, Washington, D.C. Jockel, op. cit., p. 6. Leslie R. Alm, “The U.S.-Canadian Acid Rain Debate: The Science-Poli The American Review of Canadian Studies, 20 (1990): 69.
22.
Canada. House of Commons. 1988, p. 92.
23. 24.
Ibid.
25.
Special Committee on Acid Rain. Report.
Frank J. Murphy, “Canada Presses Acid Rain Talks,” Washington Time 1989. Ibid.
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26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43.
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William Glenn, “Campaign Promises, CEPA and Acid Rain,” Hazmat World, 3 (1989): 57. Anne Mullroy, “Bouchard Lands U.S. Acid Rain Program,” The Ottawa Citizen, 12 June 1989. Scott White, untitled United News story, 21 July 1989. On file, Canadian Embassy, Washington, DC. Scott White, untitled United News story, 24 October 1989. On file, Canadian Embassy, Washington, DC. John Valorzi, untitled United News story, 12 June 1989. On file, Canadian Embassy, Washington, DC. Cleveland Plain Dealer, 14 March 1991. Senior official for acid rain policy, Environment Canada, Ottawa. Confidential interview with author, 29 June 1989. Manson, op. cit., pp. 8-9. Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, 1 January 1989, p. 690. Senior diplomatic official, Canadian Embassy, Washington, DC. Confidential interview with author, 16 January 1990. Ibid. Senior officials, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC. Confidential interviews with author, 17-18 January 1990. Confidential interview with Canadian Embassy official, op. cit. Phillip Shabecoff, “President’s Plan for Cleaning Air Goes to Congress,’ New York Times, 22 July 1989. Toronto Globe and Mail, 19 June 1989, Senior staff members, Canadian Embassy, Washington, DC. Confidential interviews with author, 16 January 1990. Senior official for acid rain policy, Environment Canada, Ottawa. Confidential interview with author, 9 July 1990. 4(1991): 19