A series of sharp cuts to the Ontario Ministry of Environment's (MOE) budget in the 1990s have left it with fewer resources at the turn of the century than it controlled in the mid-1970s when the ministry was first created. This paper reviews the impact of those cuts on the ministry's mandate and organizational structure, and argues that public pressure and party politics models offer a good explanation for most of the ministry's historical development, but an insufficient account of the more recent drastic cuts and downsizing. Rather, the neo-conservative ideology of Premier Mike Harris' Conservative government accounts for the major retrenchment of the late 1990s.