Canadian Exceptionalism Research Articles

The Great Canadian Paradox: Jordan Peterson, Right-Wing Canadian Internet Personalities, and the End of Canadian Exceptionalism?

The Great Canadian Paradox: Jordan Peterson, Right-Wing Canadian Internet Personalities, and the End of Canadian Exceptionalism?

"I arrived with just $1 in my pocket": Narratives of immigrant exceptionalism on X

Narratives of immigrant exceptionalism such as “I arrived with just $1 in my pocket” are commonly used by established immigrants in Canada to signal their personal achievement, their resilience, their claims to legitimacy on Canadian issues, or simply to counter narratives of an unwelcoming place. The convenience of the temporal and seemingly causal communicative form of the narrative, further combined with the social position of the established immigrant, the narratives of immigrant exceptionalism are highly amenable for reproduction. These narratives must be contextualized within the wider discourse of Canadian exceptionalism that allow such narratives to be further reproduced over generations and cohorts of new immigrant arrivals through the creation of the imaginary integrated immigrant. The framing of the narratives of immigrant exceptionalism tells us about the spectrum of meanings that people attach to immigrant exceptionalism, as well as what Canadian exceptionalism means to them. I collected 165 posts from X/Twitter and categorized the tweets into frames. I find that relevant problem frames such as “taking responsibility” and “threat“ stand out, as well as benefit frames such as “solidarity”.

Confronting or incorporating middle-class nation-building? Right-wing responses in the pan-Canadian context

ABSTRACT Canada is often praised for successfully integrating ethnically diverse immigrants into its multicultural nation, so successful indeed that the country has been considered an exception to the twenty-first-century right-wing populist wave. The recent ascent of political mobilization associated with right-wing populist repertoires across Canada, however, has exposed the need to revisit the exceptionalism thesis. With this goal in mind, our article examines the contemporary right-wing responses to the Liberal Party of Canada’s (LPC) post-2015 discourses and policies on immigration and multiculturalism. Building on existing scholarship, we first characterize the LPC’s approach as a nation-building project with strong middle-class partialities that emphasize high skills and human capital. We then explore how right-wing parties oppose or embrace this ‘middle-class nation-building’. Qualitatively analyzing the platforms of center-right parties and those further to the right at the federal and provincial levels (Alberta and Québec), we observe three prevalent response types: those that follow a cultural logic to prioritize identity and values, an economic logic to underline merit and contribution, or a combination of the two. Besides modulating the Canadian exceptionalism thesis, our findings complicate the assumed dichotomy between market-based and cultural forms of nationalism, as political actors can merge them in various permutations.

Learning to Enact Canadian Exceptionalism: The Failure of Voluntourism as Social Justice Education

ABSTRACT Voluntourism, or volunteer abroad, is a form of travel involving unpaid work intended to benefit a local community. Critiques of voluntourism as reproducing and, indeed, perpetuating global inequities are yielding a re-framing of voluntourism around principles of partnership and equality. Drawing from ethnographic data, this article analyzes one school’s efforts to establish and leverage a voluntourism program as social justice education. I trace a reversible discourse of inspiration (“I inspire Others” and “I am inspired by Others”) to demonstrate how elite school students, white and of color, transmute extractive relationships with their Black South African peers into feeling good about doing good, thus becoming an exceptional Canadian subject: the global (girl) citizen. The findings have implications for understanding voluntourism as a salient site for grooming young elites to participate in the production of the white settler state. This article demonstrates how voluntourism fails as social justice education, and provokes a larger debate about abolishing school-based voluntourism.

Canada: the standard bearer of multiculturalism in the world? An analysis of the Canadian public debate on multiculturalism (2010–2020)

ABSTRACT The academic literature features a growing critique of multiculturalism in the public sphere, especially in Europe. What about Canada, historically a pioneer in this field? This study analyzes how the term “multiculturalism” was perceived in Canadian newspapers between 2010–2020. It shows that: 1) Unlike in other Western democracies, there was no increased criticism of the term “multiculturalism” over time in Canadian public debate. Newspapers that supported multiculturalism maintain that positive view over time. 2) There is a sharp ideological divide between the left and the right on this subject, the former being largely in favour of multiculturalism, and the latter being clearly hostile to it. This finding contradicts the thesis of a “Canadian exceptionalism” in the shape of a cross-party consensus between Conservatives and Liberals in support of multiculturalism.

On Guard: The Discourse of Difference in Trudeau’s Speech on National Unity

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s July 1, 2017 speech to commemorate 150 years of Canadian Confederation and its seemingly banal content and delivery ironically beckons for critical attention. Delivered to the Prince of Wales on Parliament Hill and millions via television and Internet, the address capped off the immense cultural spectacle of Canada’s sesquicentennial with tributes to Canadian exceptionalism in battle and in sport. However, behind references to reconciliation and tolerance is a well-documented history of contestation that runs contrary to the international myth of Canadian unity. This essay deconstructs a consonance of perspectives on Indigenous relations, multiculturalism, and citizenship proposed by Prime Minister Trudeau in his Canada 150 address on Parliament Hill that is inconsistent with a defining decade of Canadian resistance. I analyze the speech’s attempts to whitewash Canada’s colonial origins and dispel numerous claims of peaceful coexistence between the nation-state and various minorities, fundamentally challenging perceptions of Canadian identity and national values.

The Precarious Resilience of Multiculturalism in Canada

ABSTRACT Compared to other Western democracies, there has been relatively stable support for multiculturalism in Canada since its adoption in 1971, both amongst the general public and amongst the three main political parties. Conservative opposition to multiculturalism has, therefore, typically taken the form of “stealth” reforms to undercut its progressive potential, not direct frontal attacks. During the 2015 election, however, the Conservative Party campaigned on an explicitly anti-multiculturalist platform. This provided a clear opportunity to test “Canadian exceptionalism” in relation to public support for multiculturalism. In this article, I explore the Conservatives’ strategy, and its impact on the election. The evidence suggests that a significant part of the Canadian electorate was responsive to an anti-multicultural—and more specifically anti-Muslim—discourse. However, when this discourse was pushed too far, voters recoiled from what was perceived as an excessive, and indeed “unCanadian,” politics of distrust and division. The article explores different ways of understanding this tipping point, and what it tells us about the precarious resilience of multiculturalism in Canada.

The Foundations, Limits, and Consequences of Immigration Exceptionalism in Canada

ABSTRACT Canadian immigration politics and policymaking are striking. Canadian admission targets have steadily increased since the global economic crisis of 2008-2009, regardless of the party in power and despite the COVID-19 pandemic. In contrast to the less welcoming attitudes of publics in other industrialized democracies, Canadians have enthusiastically supported expansive immigration policies. Elite and popular support for Canada’s official multiculturalism policy also runs counter to trends in other states. The articles in this special issue of the American Review of Canadian Studies explore the factors underlying Canada’s distinctive approach to immigration, pointing out some important limits and attendant tensions in the ‘Canadian model.’ Canadians’ embrace of immigration and multiculturalism is based on important qualifications. Taken together, these qualifications raise questions about the scope and extent of Canadian exceptionalism. They also help us understand what, if anything, other countries can borrow from Canada and the likely trajectory of Canadian immigration policy moving forward.

Unwanted and Uninvited: Canadian Exceptionalism in Migration and the 2017-2020 Irregular Border Crossings

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on the irregular migration flow from the United States to Canada from 2017 to 2020. This irregular migration, defined as unauthorized border crossings, challenges a central tenet of the perceived exceptionalism of Canadian immigration policy by illustrating that while legal migration remains publicly popular and receives political support, the public rejects unwanted, irregular, or illegal migration, demanding strong response from the Canadian government. The 2017–2020 irregular migration of refugee claimants from the United States generated discord in a number of public and political settings. Debates existed over the terminology for unauthorized border crossings, public opinion was divided, and prior to the 2019 Canadian federal election, political parties developed different and opposing positions. Disagreement over costs and funding for the settlement of irregular migrants emerged at city, provincial, and federal levels. The federal government subsequently amended immigration legislation and increased budgets for border control activities.

Problematizing Canadian exceptionalism: A study of right-populism, white nationalism and Conservative political parties

The myth that Canada has resisted the “West’s populist wave” persists despite evidence that demonstrates otherwise. This article traces how the assumption that Canada has avoided the rise of right-wing populism and white nationalism is tethered to the fiction that Canada has been a raceless society. After briefly reviewing the myth of racelessness and the history of right-populism in Canada, the article explores how the Reform Party of Canada conceptualized “the people” in racialized terms. This article examines how the Conservative Party of Canada’s appeals to symbolic “diversity” and denial of systemic oppression have enabled more overt forms of racism. By examining the recent rise of hate crimes, this article makes the case that a direct link can be traced between the Conservative government’s seemingly neutral discourses about the preservation of Canadian “heritage” and “common values” and the re-emergence of right-wing populism and the re-emboldening of white nationalism in Canada. El mito de que Canadá ha resistido la “ola populista de Occidente” perdura a pesar de que se puede demostrar lo contrario. Este artículo expone que la aceptación generalizada de que Canadá ha evitado el auge del populismo de derechas y del nacionalismo blanco está unida a la ficción de que Canadá ha sido una sociedad sin razas. Tras repasar brevemente el mito de la ausencia de razas y la historia del populismo de derechas en Canadá, el artículo explora cómo el Partido Reformista de Canadá conceptualizó “el pueblo” en términos racializados, y examina cómo las apelaciones del Partido Conservador de Canadá a la “diversidad” simbólica y su negación de cualquier opresión sistemática han permitido formas más abiertas de racismo. Al analizar el aumento reciente de crímenes de odio, el artículo argumenta que se puede hallar un nexo directo entre el discurso aparentemente neutral del gobierno conservador sobre la defensa del “patrimonio” y los “valores comunes” de Canadá y el resurgimiento del populismo de derechas y el reforzamiento del nacionalismo blanco en Canadá.

Internationalization of Canadian Teacher Education: Teacher Candidates’ Experiences and Perspectives

Purpose: Informed by social imaginary, Canadian exceptionalism, and social inclusion, this study explores how teacher candidates experience and interpret internationalization at home at one university in Canada. Design/Approach/Methods: Data were collected from three sources: (a) policy analyses of public documents related to internationalization in Canada and at the university; (b) a student survey on the internationalization of higher education; and (c) individual interviews with 12 teacher candidates. Eight interviewees were local, four White and four racialized minorities, and four were international. Findings: Findings indicate that most participants relate internationalization to student mobility. They present the Canadian society and themselves as open, tolerant, and accepting. Such an imaginary of Canadian exceptionalism does not necessarily coincide with everyday realities of international and racialized teacher candidates. They reported that they experienced Eurocentric curricula, different forms of exclusion, and racism. Some participants enacted agency to disrupt the dominance of White perspectives. Originality/Value: This research addresses knowledge gaps related to internationalization policy as teacher candidates’ voices are not often heard in internationalization initiatives. The study suggests that the internationalization of teacher education requires decolonization of curriculum, bridging with anti-racism education, and the internationalization of teacher educators.

The Puzzle of Canadian Exceptionalism in Contemporary Immigration Policy

This paper seeks first to describe features of contemporary Canadian immigration policy that render it exceptional relative to its own earlier history and relative to current public and political sentiment favoring much more restrictive immigration policies in many other developed countries. Canada, since the 1970s and more markedly since the early 1990s, has adopted a highly expansionist and non-discriminatory immigration policy that in immigrant per capita terms exceeds that of most other developed countries and also reflects an increasingly diverse range of source countries. Accompanying this shift in immigration policy over recent decades, public attitudes, as reflected in various public opinion polls, to these policies have become increasingly supportive and are not the source of serious division among the major national political parties. The paper then goes on to evaluate possible explanations for this state of exceptionalism, including geography, economic necessity, the changing geo-political environment, the structure of the Canadian political system, and political leadership. The paper concludes with some tentative thoughts on the sustainability of current policies and the wisdom of adopting even more expansionary policies (as sometimes proposed).

From Border Pedagogy to Treaty Pedagogy: Canadian Exceptionalism in a Canadian Film Studies Classroom

When, how, and why does the forty-ninth parallel come into view in our classrooms? And, from there, by what means can we map out a pedagogy that accounts for the specificity of the Canada-US border? Whether the border is seen or not, how it is seen, and why, is obviously contingent upon viewers' cultural assumptions, affective experiences, and socio-political contexts. Drawing on data from our most recent study, we closely examine participants' responses to argue for a further reconceptualizing of border pedagogy north of the forty-ninth parallel. Referring to what Rachel Bryant calls “Canadian exceptionalism,” we suggest that teaching students about the Canada-US border requires more than a (modified, Canadianized) border pedagogy. We conclude by turning to tenets of treaty pedagogy, which offer teaching strategies that acknowledge and respect a variety of borders equally.

Cultivating a Cross-border, Extra-theatrical Assemblage in Resistance to Femicide in the Americas

Abstract: The panamerican ROUTES/RUTAS panamericanas international multiarts festival on human rights (RUTAS) took place at Toronto’s Daniels Spectrum from 27 February to 9 March 2014. Produced by Aluna Theatre—in partnership with Native Earth Performing Arts—the international performing arts festival brought together artists, activists, and scholars from across the Americas. The events discussed in this article—performances and a panel—took place on the final weekend of RUTAS and were part of a cluster organized around the issue of “Femicide in the Americas.” In curating theatrical productions within the context a larger assemblage of performances and conversations organized around the question of Indigenous and human rights issues in the Americas RUTAS overcame two of theatre’s primary challenges—its containment and its positioning of the audience as spectator—dangers that are amplified when staging trauma and when placing narratives of the “other” on display. Further, by extending the horizon of our collectivist accounting to a Pan-American perspective RUTAS also challenged the containment of narratives of femicide and colonialism within nationalistically inscribed borders and in the process disrupted conventionally held notions of Canadian exceptionalism and cultivated possibilities for the mobilization of transborder resistance.

Canadian exceptionalism: shareholder proposals, filer identities, and voting outcomes

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to study filer identities and voting outcomes of Canadian shareholder proposals and their impact on shareholders' wealth during the period from 2001 to 2008.Design/methodology/approachIn total, 762 Canadian shareholder proposals and related information on targeted firms were collected from the Shareholder Association for Research and Education (SHARE) and the System for Electronic Document Analysis and Retrieval (SEDAR) databases. Statistical analyses are carried out on the features of shareholder proposals. Regression analyses are performed on voting outcomes, and an event study is conducted to test the impact of shareholder proposals on stock prices.FindingsThe authors' analyses show that proposals submitted by institutions or coordinated shareholder groups receive stronger support than those submitted by individuals and religious groups. Targeted firms are more willing and more likely to reach agreements with institutional investors, which in turn prompts activists to withdraw their proposals. The voting behavior of the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan (OTPP) has a significant impact on voting outcomes. The targeted firms' stock prices respond substantially to news on proposals submitted by institutional and coordinated investors and proposals on social and environmental issues.Originality/valueIn addition to in‐depth analyses (issues, filers, voting outcomes, and impacts on stock price) of Canadian shareholder proposals, this paper explores the voting behaviour and impact of a large institutional shareholder that has been passive in filing shareholder proposals. Special attention is paid to Canadian features of shareholder activism, and differences between Canadian and US shareholder proposals are highlighted and discussed. The paper thus extends shareholder activism studies from focusing on open shareholder activists to investigating passive institutional shareholders.

A Canadian exceptionalism? Trust and diversity in Canadian cities

Canadian research is seriously scarce in the fast-growing literature on social trust—defined as the degree to which one can trust others whom one does not know personally. In this article, we have tried to address this issue by examining the levels of trust in various Canadian provinces and cities. The study shows that the level of trust in Canada rises as one moves away from the centre and toward both west and east coasts, and that the trust levels are alarmingly low for cities in the province of Quebec. We have also made an attempt to further our understanding of the dynamics of social trust, by looking at the determinants of trust at the city level. The factors examined are: the city’s population, the size of its immigrant population, average income of residents, the extent of income inequality, and the degree of its ethnic diversity. Out of these, the positive relationship found between ethnic diversity and social trust—that is, as the former rises, the latter increases as well—constitutes a uniquely Canadian trend, which is in contrast to what the existing literature on social trust suggests. Moreover, within Canada, Quebec appears as an anomaly, given the extremely low levels of trust in cities located in this province. Also, within Quebec, Montreal seems to be in a class by itself, showing the unusual combination of high diversity and low trust. Although some speculative hypotheses are proposed to explain some of these trends, the anomalies found warrant particular attention in future research.

On Protocols and Fireproof Houses: The Re-Emergence of Canadian Exceptionalism

On Protocols and Fireproof Houses: The Re-Emergence of Canadian Exceptionalism

Canadian Exceptionalism: Explaining Differences over Time in Provincial and Federal Voter Turnout

Canada is unusual among advanced industrial democracies in having some provinces which regularly have greater voter turnouts for provincial than for federal elections. Provincial and federal turnouts by province in Canada are analyzed for the 1945-1998 period using multiple regression analysis, both for each set of elections and by comparing differences between the two. Federal turnout has declined over the years but provincial turnout appears to have increased slightly. Although the effects found here largely confirm previous findings about the relative effects of different types of variables found for the Canadian federal level only, several of the political explanations previously supported in cross-national research find less support. Instead, region, population density, months since the last federal or provincial election, and season of the year generally have greater and sometimes more consistent effects. This suggests the need for more studies of turnout in democracies at sub-central levels.

Duverger's Law and the Meaning of Canadian Exceptionalism

Duverger's law is an unusually simple and specific elaboration on exactly how political institutions “matter”: It proposes that plurality rule elections result in two-party competition. Canada is commonly thought to violate the law at the national level, but to match its predictions at the district level, and thus not to constitute a genuine counterexample. In fact, analysis of a vast data set of Canadian election returns reveals that these elections are multicandidate events, district by district, year after year. An explanation for this multipartyism may lie in the complicating factor of federalism, because Canadian provinces often feature strikingly different national and provincial party systems. Generally, the Canadian case illustrates that theories relating party systems to electoral law but not to other institutions are unrealistically parsimonious.

Cumulative Voting: The Value of Minority Shareholder Voting Rights

W HEN investors purchase shares of common stock, they typically acquire the right to vote in the election of the firm's board of directors and on other major issues facing the corporation. In most corporations board members are elected through "straight voting." In straight voting each shareholder is entitled to cast votes equal to the number of shares held for each director position. If a group controls 51 percent of the vote, it can elect the entire board of directors by casting all of its votes for the candidate that it favors for each position. Some firms do not use straight voting but elect their board members through "cumulative voting" instead. In cumulative voting each share entitles the shareholder to as many votes as there are directors to be elected. A shareholder may cast all votes for a single candidate or distribute them among more than one nominee. With cumulative voting it may be possible for minority shareholders to elect some board members even if the majority of shareholders oppose their election. To elect these directors, the minority shareholders would cumu-