The patchwork makes life extremely difficult for people in communities. For example, I mentioned the ozone and particulate Canada-wide standard, which they're now considering in British Columbia when they assess a new polluter--when somebody wants a permit to put in a new boiler or something. But what they do is say the air is not going to be polluted “up to” the Canada-wide standard, so it's okay, whereas the Canada-wide standard was supposed to be the bottom line. It said, this is what we think is achievable, but you're not supposed to make clean areas dirty. But now our government is interpreting it as so long as it doesn't get as bad as the Canada-wide standard, it's okay.
That's the trouble with a voluntary, unenforceable thing.