Alberta's Tar Sands
One of the major environmental issues that Canada must face is the consequenses of the exploitation of Alberta's massive oil reserves. A friend of mine (and a recent UBC engineering grad)recently moved to Fort McMurray and is making a lot of money there. I'm very curious about federal and provincial controls on this lucrative and destructive industry.
http://oilsands.alberta.ca/ This particular chart made me laugh: http://oilsands.alberta.ca/FactSheets/The_Facts_v5_FINAL.pdf
A much more critical perspective: http://informedvote.ca/2009/11/19/the-alberta-tar-sands-and-the-environment-does-canada-set-the-agenda-or-will-the-u-s-determine-our-fate/
If we were to include the Tar sands into our survey, I think we should make a small section on current environmental projects in Canada. Possible questions: What do you think about the potential creation of the Site C dam in Northern BC? good/bad/unsure What do you think about the potential creatin of the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline? good/bad/unsure What do you think about the extraction of oil from Alberta's oil sands? good/bad/unsre
But these questions are only addressing the public's opinion on current environmental debates and are not including discussion of government policy. Suggestions?
We could also include a question addressing who should have more say in these projects. Potential question: Who do you think is most effective in formulating environmental policies to ensure sustainability? 1) international organization 2) federal government 3)provincial government 4) local government 5) differnet levels of government should decide together
Kelli, I like the idea of including questions regarding current environmental projects in Canada (Enbridge Northern Gateway, Site C dam, etc). We could broaden our research question to something like; "What are citizen's attitudes towards current environmental projects in Canada, and who do they think would be most effective in formulating environmental policies to ensure the projects are done in a sustainable manner?"
Then we could incorporate survey questions regarding both current environmental events and policy decision making related topics. Let me know what you think?
We're supposed to have 5 questions. Marie, I think we should separate your question into two since it's asking two different things.
Should we ask what surveyor A thinks are other citizens' attitudes? Or should we just ask what A's attitude is (toward environmental projects)? In this case, I would like to use an open-ended format. What do you think of Canada and environmental issues? _______________________________________________________________________________________ (max 500 words etc.)
I like the second question. Do we want to ask "effective" or more "moral" i.e. "should" formulate environmental policy? "Who do you think is most effective in formulating environmental policies to ensure sustainability?" 1)international organization 2)federal government 3)provincial government 4)local government 5)different levels of government should decide together vs "Who do you think should make decisions on environmental policy?" etc...
I really like this question as well. I also thought of it from this perspective: "What actor has the strongest influence in ensuring that environmental policies are sustainable?
1) International Organization 2) Federal Government 3) Provincial Government 4) Local Government 5) Local (independent) Organizations (Perhaps: Voters/citizens/individuals)
I think it is interesting to see what actor people generally believe is the most influential / powerful in environmental politics and policy making! Especially here in BC, where people are more environmental conscientious.
Jennifer, I like your suggestion on the second question so I edited it.
Are we allowed to include open-ended questions into surveys? That may be hard to measure once we need to put the data together.
I'm really not sure because I don't know how much flexibility we have. http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/qual.php
How much "funding" (in terms of our time) does Dr. Owen expect us to use?
We would have to have a trade off if we did include open-ended questions (they take more time).
I'm guessing we're supposed to stick mainly to more easily quantifiable question structures...
How would we change that question to something not open-ended?
A lot of people are uninformed about current environmental projects in Canada. Im concerned that if we ask questions without prompting people with at least some basic information, we wont get reliable results. and I am not sure that prompting people with info is what Owen wants us to do. What do you guys think?
Hey Everyone,
Sadie - I agree with you. I don't think the Site C dam or the Enbridge pipeline is quite common knowledge in Canada. However, if we wanted to we could measure awareness of these issues with questions like "Are you aware of the development of Site C" and "... the Enbridge Dam in North Vancouver". We could also ask Canadians to weigh the environmental costs with the economic benefits, although we would have to do some research to what those are if we wanted to do that question.
I do like the question "What do you think about the extraction of oil from Alberta's oil sands? good/bad/unsure", but I think we should modify it to "How supportive of you of the Alberta tar sands?" with a scale of 1 - 5 1 being very supportive etc.
I think this would be the best approach to specific issues as well. I'm not from Canada, and all I've ever heard of the tar sands dispute is that it's incredibly damaging to the environment. All this talk of "site C" and "Enbridge Dam" make no sense to me. Granted, I'm not the person we'd be surveying, but I'm sure I'm not the only one with questions on this subject.
So I like the proposal that we ask more general questions, but that we keep it concerning big issues like the Tar sands. We should ask how much people know about the topic, and if they feel the government is providing sufficient information on the subject. and if not, should the people actually be better informed? Or are people willing to leave this to be figured out between Government and Firms?
I really like the idea of using a scale, 1-5, to rank people's support concerning issues such as the Alberta Oil Sands.
In regards to questions about environmental policy decision making, the wording of who has the greater influence or who people think would be most effective of initiating policies regarding sustainable actions are quite different. What are we wanting to measure? 1)Who people think would be most effective in formulating and ensuring environmental policies are sustainable? OR 2)Which actors people think have the strongest influence in ensuring that environmental policies are sustainable?
or both?