Institutionalized Inhibition: Examining Constraints on Climate Change Policy Capacity in the Transport Departments of Ontario and British Columbia, Canada

This paper examines the interaction between
transportation policy and climate change policy in two Canadian provinces, British Columbia and Ontario. The concept of policy capacity is used to qualitatively measure the
effectiveness of instruments in advancing goals in an area
where established policy paradigms may not be congruent
with new initiatives. A review of official policy documents
and budgetary information on policy-related spending, as
well as primary interviews with policy managers in relevant
provincial ministries, reveals that overlapping policy goals
and instruments may have created a situation of institutionalized policy inhibition, in which conflicting layers of policy
goals and instruments constrain the available policy capacity