Blue-Green Province: The Environment and the Political Economy of Ontario

Despite the fact that environmental policy has become increasingly
important in Ontario politics since the end of the Second World War,
very little scholarship has been devoted to exploring either the
development of that policy or the pivotal relationship between the
environment and the province's wider political economy. In
Blue-Green Province, Mark Winfield provides the first
comprehensive study of environmental policy in Ontario.

A recognized authority in the field, Winfield masterfully explains
the formulation and implementation of environmental policy in
Canada's most populous province, tracing its development through
the Progressive Conservative dynasty that ruled Ontario politics from
the mid-1940s to the mid-1980s, to the dramatically different
governments of Premiers Peterson, Rae, Harris, Eves, and McGuinty. He
offers particularly trenchant coverage of the little-studied period
following the Harris's Common Sense Revolution, examining the
implications of the 1999, 2003, and 2007 elections and their subsequent
governments for Ontario's environment and politics.

Blue-Green Province is a timely, original analysis of one of
the most crucial issues in Ontario politics today. It will be welcomed
by students, scholars, and practitioners of environmental policy,
political science, economics, history, as well as anyone with an
interest in Ontario's environmental and economic future. With the
provinces playing increasingly dominant roles in Canadian environmental
policy, it will be compelling reading for those following the interplay
of environmental policy, politics and economic development across
Canada as well.

Mark S. Winfield is an assistant professor in the
Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University. He was policy and
program director with the Pembina Institute from 2001 to 2007, and
director of research at the Canadian Institute for Environmental Law
and Policy from 1992 to 2001. He has written numerous articles on
environmental law and policy, and testified at the Walkerton Inquiry as
an expert witness on Ontario environmental law and policy affecting
drinking water quality.