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Overall, the evaluation concludes that there is room for improvement in regard to Canada's participation in the CEC. Effort to improve the latter is important in light of the organisation's potential to help the federal government integrate its environment and economic agendas in an economically integrated North America. The achievements of recent intergovernmental collaboration as well as the organisation's track record regarding its efforts to encourage public participation and transparency in its operations make Canada's participation all the more relevant.
After more than 10 years of existence, however, it is generally believed that the full potential of the CEC has not been realized. Indeed, the need to adapt to an evolving context by changing the way of conducting business at the CEC has led to some changes. The organization, however, is still looking for its modus vivendi. Previously identified areas for improvements are still germane today, including the need to improve decision-making within the organisation and to focus CEC work and generate concrete and measurable results.
Findings generally indicate that North American environmental cooperation appears to be the area providing the greatest benefits to Canada's participation. This is also an area where the CEC is making continuous progress, especially in the area of information sharing and capacity building. It was also found that the limited utilisation of CEC work by the federal government as well as the absence of domestic mechanisms to learn from CEC activities/reports (including the SEM process) contributed to the challenges in linking Canadian policy improvements to the CEC. In the area of trade and environment, the evaluation found that the diminished expectations by Canadian officials on the benefits of work performed by the CEC in this area were generally attributed to factual and institutional realities (e.g., limited trade disputes and collaboration between trade and environment communities) as well as to the fact that Canadian policy discussions have evolved to focus on broader economy-environment linkages. The general perception that the federal government has not been sufficiently supportive of the organisation and the ongoing desire for the CEC to improve corporate communications and outreach served to explain the lack of engagement in, and/or understanding of, the CEC by Canadian stakeholders and the general public.
In addition to the findings above, the governance of Canada's involvement in the CEC (i.e., absence of a mechanism to develop and align Canadian positions to be brought at the CEC, lack of performance monitoring for EC's involvement) served to explain the lack of integration of the CEC into the Canadian agenda and vice versa and why Canadian efforts have tended to focus on operational rather than content-related ones. In this respect, the finding of an increased administrative and financial oversight of the Parties in regard to the management of the Secretariat (e.g., in the area of quality assurance, budgeting and finances and professional staffing) also contributed to the notable focus on operational-related discussions. The evaluation's own analysis of CEC administrative and financial processes did indicate that there was room for improvement in regard to the effectiveness and transparency of these processes (e.g., absence of human resource planning, need for clearer and more comprehensive policies, rules, and/or procedures and for enhanced transparency of budgeting and financial practices). Finally, in light of the similarities and/or synergies between CEC work and the work conducted in other organisations as well as the regularity of CEC funding by three governments, there appears to be opportunities for the CEC to further develop work niches to uniquely position the organisation's contributions and to increase collaboration and leverage financial and in kind resources.