Murphy, Michael

Planning for community resilience and climate change requires new forms of engagement that are accountable to Indigenous peoples and the social and cultural upheavals associated with colonial harm. This thesis shows that climate governance requires partnerships and policy actions that reflect needs and priorities of communities in specific geographic, political, and cultural contexts. As a case study, it examines the development of the 2020 Our Clean Future (OCF) strategy by Government of Yukon and Indigenous partners. Through semi-structured interviews and document studies, the research applies a theoretical lens of procedural justice and self-determination to the OCF process. Outcomes from this research offer a set of policy cycle considerations and recommendations for future environmental planning partnerships that include taking a rights-based approach, increasing capacity for collaboration in multiple areas, stronger integration of culturally diverse ways of knowing and doing, and targeted urban Indigenous engagement. Findings suggest OCF can serve as a useful procedural policy tool that supports Indigenous self-determination if lessons learned from the process are carried forward in future environmental planning partnerships.

Canada is a settler-colonial state that specially targets and others minority groups, such as Indigenous peoples and recent immigrants. This was no more apparent than during the 2015 federal election, which saw debates on whether to ban Muslim women from wearing niqabs and other head coverings and whether to hold an inquiry into the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women. By examining excerpts from speeches, tweets, articles, and interviews made by politicians, citizens, and journalists, this thesis traces the shape of settler-colonial systems and their impact on Indigenous and immigrant women. Canadian society demands conformity to sexual and cultural norms that require walking a tightrope of these double-edged ideals. Conformity is maintained through societally enforced regimes, known as the Panopticon, where each individual is both prisoner and guard. This constant surveillance does not simply end there, however, as Canadian settler society has different gender structures and norms for both men and women: women are subject to far stricter social expectations than men and, as this thesis brings to light, women in minority groups, such as indigenous and Muslim women, fall under an even harsher Canadian spotlight.

Democracy serves as a governing philosophy where decisions are made by a vote of the population. Due to the large numbers of citizens who live in modern democracies, this is mainly done through elections to legislative assemblies as a form of representative democracy. But representative democracy does not always ensure policy alignment between citizens and elected representatives. Citizen initiatives serve as a means of promoting greater policy alignment by allowing citizens to propose their own legislation, to be voted on by the electorate. This thesis investigates why British Columbia chose to enact citizen initiative alone among Canadian provinces, and also why British Columbia’s policy was written with the provisions and constraints that elected representatives chose to include. The research shows that key individuals in power used their influence to advocate for citizen initiative in the province, and that British Columbia’s citizen initiative process was written to accommodate constitutional requirements and public opinion on what citizen initiative should look like.