Canadian Politics Research Articles

The Internet and Canadian Politics: Journey into the Absurd

The Internet and Canadian Politics: Journey into the Absurd

Battling for Votes: The Ascent of the Permanent Campaign in Canada

This paper describes a recent shift being seen in Canadian politics. By studying the concept of the permanent campaign, it can be seen that voters are involved in politics in a new way. The permanent campaign is characterized by how it increasingly uses recent and new technologies in a sophisticated manner. This includes what is known as Web 2.0, which is seen with the broader widespread usage of the internet as well as social media platforms. Web 2.0 makes practices of data collecting possible, such as microtargeting and narrowcasting. The permanent campaign is also evident in the changing landscape of news media. These various techniques of using technology in Canadian politics shapes the way that the electorate receives messages. There are differing opinions as to whether this shift is positive or negative for Canadian politics. Journalists tend to view the permanent campaign as harmful while some authors view things like social media as more participatory.

Dismantling the public airwaves: Shifting Canadian public broadcasting to an online service

In 2014, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation released a five-year plan entitled A Space For Us All. The plan outlined a bold new vision for the Canadian public broadcaster, placing digital mobile content at the forefront of the corporation’s priorities. This article examines the shifting priorities of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation against established principles of public broadcasting. It also interrogates the relationship between mobile digital media and legal obligations of the public broadcaster under current Canadian broadcasting regulation. Drawing upon Canadian broadcasting history, contemporary data and recent examples from sport and politics in Canada, the article questions this new direction for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and argues that despite the significant new opportunities in mobile digital media, traditional broadcasting methods remain the dominant tool to reach mass audiences and will provide a significant forum for public information and debate for the foreseeable future.

The Canadian Homevoter: Property Values and Municipal Politics in Canada

ABSTRACT:In The Homevoter Hypothesis, William Fischel argues that concern for property values influences the attitudes and behavior of homeowners toward municipal politics. Local government has the greatest impact on the value of property of any order of government, and is the primary political avenue through which homeowners act to protect their investment. We examine the applicability of Fischel’s theory to Canada, a country in which little research has been conducted on municipal voters. Using data from government and academic sources, three testable implications of the homevoter hypothesis are examined. Results reveal that the theory is congruent with the behavior and attitudes of Canadian municipal voters. Homeownership leads to increased turnout in municipal elections, the attitudes of homeowners differ from those of renters with respect to policies that are perceived to have a relationship with property values, and homeowners are particularly opposed to municipal amalgamations.

Conflictual and cooperative childcare politics in Canada

In 2005, after many years of inaction, the Canadian government seemed poised to make real changes to national childcare policy?a marker of social movement success for the grassroots Childcare Advocacy Association of Canada (CCAAC). In this paper, we analyse childcare policy developments in Canada between 2003 and 2005, drawing on qualitative interviews conducted with CCAAC staff and members, allies from other national childcare organizations, and former elected government officials and policy makers. Given its role as a grassroots social movement organization and not a professional association (which can be more closely aligned with governments), we hypothesized that the CCAAC would take a conflictual approach to the federal government’s policy initiative. Our close analysis of interviews with CCAAC staff, their allies and elected government officials and civil servants instead reveals conflictual and cooperative relations (Giugni and Passy, In: From contention to democracy. Lanham, MD, Rowman & Littlefield. 1998) during this important period. Our discussion explores some possible conditions in the sociopolitical environment and the internal structure of CCAAC that account for this conflictual-cooperation SMO?government relationship from 2003 to 2005.

Managing Dissent: Energy Pipelines and “New Right” Politics in Canada

Managing Dissent: Energy Pipelines and “New Right” Politics in Canada

Multicultural Identity and Matters of Gender in Melina Marchetta’s <em>Looking for Alibrandi</em>

The purpose of this essay is not to provide definitive statement on multicultural literature in Australia but to show how Melina Marchetta's fiction can open new spaces for debate. The novelist, being aware of cultural variations, explores range of issues such as identity, home, the physical and psychological challenges, the search for cultural roots, and the position of the other; in Looking for Alibrandi, it is used with reference to women's position in patriarchal framework.Marchetta (1965-) sets her novels in the suburbs, addressing issues that confront teenagers in multicultural setting. Multiculturalism in Australia has seen the country's core values shift due to the influence of diverse cultures that migrants have brought with them and the cultural practices that have been absorbed into the mainstream. Marchetta's novels reflect such adaptations and adjustments that are made both by the migrants and by mainstream Australians. Her novels also help us comprehend as creating tolerance and parity among varied cultures, languages, and religions that exist in Australia. The focus on in Australia encourages unity with diversity. As an island, it has provided an objective for migrants who have made it place apt for promoting diverse cultures. Minorities have not completely adopted dominant mainstream cultural influences; instead, they have been influential in modifying the dominant culture. This is positive sign that implies conglomeration of cultures and some adjustments. Indeed, such feature makes one recognize as promoting plurality of cultures.Multiculturalism pertains to two different worlds, the ethnocultural and the place of relocation. These factors contribute to the place of the characters depicted by Marchetta as ambiguous-neither Australian nor Italian or Greek or Chinese. As Stuart Hall observes, migrant subjects are often suspended in between; such ambivalence is likely to give rise to new meanings for minority communities.The term originated in the 1970s in Canadian politics, where it was found convenient to replace ambiguous set of ideas, with the intention being to promote the cultural and economic concerns and interests of certain non-Anglophone categories, basically to counter the emerging weight of French Canadians. As Christian Champion has noted, in Canada, there was a complex nexus between ethnic political participation, changes in the symbolic order, and the emergence of multiculturalism (23). And the stereotypical narrative of Anglophone Canadians encouraging speakers of other languages into the body politic of Canada's glorious mosaic was simplistic. Australia, without another European language in defined, Quebec-like space on its territory, did not have this particular wrinkle to its multicultural policy, but the ambiguity about whether was inclusion or co-optation remained.Multiculturalism is represented as an important container for the harmonious coexistence of two major nationalities or cultures, which in turn projects the integrity of the nation. Canadian is understood as historic appeasement of third, allophonic group caught between English-speaking migrants and French-speaking equivalents. But these conditions cannot be taken to pertain to an Australian context, because as concept requires the acceptance of varied cultures in Australia. It demands the right of every ethnic community to establish its language and culture in Australia. Further, should not be confused with an inclusion of Indigenous Australians, as Indigenous Australians were on the continent before any Europeans arrived, and their history and relation to the Australian polity are different than that of migrant ethnic groups like Italians, Greeks, or Chinese.It is within this framework that Marchetta's Looking for Alibrandi can be understood. …

The Internet and Canadian Politics: Journey into the Absurd

The Internet and Canadian Politics: Journey into the Absurd

Amanda Bittner and Royce Koop (eds.), Parties, elections and the future of Canadian politics, University of British Columbia Press, Vancouver 2013 (ss. 342)

Amanda Bittner and Royce Koop (eds.), Parties, elections and the future of Canadian politics, University of British Columbia Press, Vancouver 2013 (ss. 342)

Bringing the provinces back in: Re-evaluating the relevance of province-building to theories of Canadian federalism and multi-level governance

Three decades have passed since Canadian political scientists last seriously engaged with the concept of province-building. Popular in the 1970s as a means for explaining patterns of policy-making and constitutional politics in Canada, the currency of province-building met an abrupt end after its analytical use was questioned by Young, Faucher and Blais in 1984. Thirty years on, this discussion piece revisits their critique and, far from finding the idea void of empirical validity or theoretical utility, suggests that province-building continues to best capture the general structure of policy formulation and implementation in Canada and provides lessons for how to examine matters of authority and decision-making in multi-level settings.

How French Canadians became White Folks, or doing things with race in Quebec

ABSTRACTAs far as nineteenth century Anglosaxons were concerned, French Canadians were not quite white. This article considers the racial dimension of French-Canadian subjugation, long elided and ignored by historians. However, the descendants of French Canadians are no longer construed, and no longer construe themselves, as a racialized group, but rather as a modern, white, western nation. These changes in racial assignment still influence how French and English Canadians make sense of Canadian politics and identities today. Although Quebec's dual majority/minority status in Canada has been well studied, this article also taps into critical race and whiteness studies to examine how notions of evolution, civilization and progress continue to influence how to do things with race in Quebec.

Across the Aisle: Opposition in Canadian Politics by David E. Smith (review)

Across the Aisle: Opposition in Canadian Politics by David E. Smith (review)

The Canadian general election of 2015: The Liberal victory marks a swing back to the center in Canadian politics

Introduction Canadians went to the polls on October 19th 2015 and placed the Liberal Party leader, Justin Trudeau, son of former Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau, at the head of their next government, thereby putting an end to nine years of Conservative Party rule. The left of center New Democratic Party, which had won the second most seats in 2011, had consistently placed first in the early polls that were all predicting a tight three-way race. As the Liberals gained momentum, the NDP st...

From Normative Debates to Comparative Methodology: The Three Waves of Post-Charter Supreme Court Scholarship in Canada

This article surveys the literature on the Supreme Court of Canada following the 1982 introduction of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and argues it has taken place in three distinct “waves.” The first involved tentative, prospective, and normative arguments about the impact of the Charter on national unity and Canada’s political institutions. The second was characterized by the legitimacy debate, the dialogue debate, and qualitative examination of how other political actors responded to Supreme Court decisions. By contrast, the third wave, initiated by American scholars drawing from American research, has been less normative, more comparative, and methodologically rigorous. While this comparative shift has been beneficial, the retreat from normative questions contributes to a misplaced sense that important debates are now settled. We urge scholars to engage in intellectual cross-fertilization by drawing from third-wave contributions to address normative questions about the Supreme Court’s increasingly important role in Canadian politics.

From Guardianism to Postmodernism: Historiography and the Interpretation of Canadian Political Culture

This article seeks to go some way toward shedding light on a certain dimension of Canadian intellectual history, specifically that dimension wherein the changing theoretical approaches to the phenomenon of Canadian political culture is the core subject matter. Canadian political culture will be defined here as that collation of ideas, principles, thoughts and opinions which foster the establishment and continuation of a set of political structures and institutions which are liberal democratic at their foundations. With this as a guiding definition the article examines the “paradigm shifts” in the study of English Canadian political culture that have taken place from the days of “The Makers of Canada,” through the ascendancy of the “Fragment Thesis,” to the more contemporary postmodernism of the “Liberal Order Framework.” The foundational assumption of the article is that debate and discussion about the Canadian experience in such fields as political philosophy, intellectual history, party ideology, constitutional structure, legislative procedure, executive power, judicial authority and local governance will tend to be shaped by the historiographical paradigm which has been most successful in making itself the accepted “orthodoxy” in the academic and intellectual circles of the period.

Across the Aisle: Opposition in Canadian Politics, David E. Smith, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013, pp. xiii, 228.

Across the Aisle: Opposition in Canadian Politics, David E. Smith, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013, pp. xiii, 228.

Building The New Canadian Political Economy

Since the late 1960s, the New Canadian Political Economy (NCPE) has played an important role in shaping the trajectory of the social sciences in Canada and informing the political goals and strategies of a range of progressive social movements. However, few studies have attempted to trace the history of the NCPE as a distinctive intellectual tradition or account for its place in consolidating a Left political milieu in Canada outside of Quebec. Exploring the NCPE as part of a wider Left formation, this article examines the role played by organic intellectuals in building this tradition.

Une arme à double tranchant : le déploiement du portrait de la reine dans les édifices gouvernementaux et dans les caricatures québécoises

Since the recent increase in the number of representations of Queen Elizabeth II in Canadian government buildings, Quebec cartoonists have seized the motif of the royal portrait to denounce the Harper government’s uses of the sovereign’s image. Drawing on Louis Marin’s definition of representation, this article considers the powers granted by the state to the Queen’s portrait and highlights its critique in Quebec caricatures. Indeed, while the portrait of the Queen allows the Prime Minister to legitimize his authority, its satirical representations denounce the government’s re-actualization of an absent monarchy. The royal portrait is then satirized both as a powerless object and as a weapon threatening to overshadow other Canadian political and religious symbols.

The Once-Forgotten Battlegrounds: Studying Provincial Elections in Canada

This special edition of Canadian Political Science Review tests many of the leading assumptions surrounding Canada’s ten provincial electoral battlegrounds. Based on data and research emerging from the Comparative Provincial Election Project, these studies reveal how many theories based on federal-level evidence require refinement when it comes to their applicability to the provincial realm.

Politicizing Bodies: Hegemonic Masculinity, Heteronormativity, and Racism in News Representations of Canadian Political Party Leadership Candidates

Based on the argument that bodies are politicized when their gendered, sexualized, and racialized features are woven into mediated political discourses, our study investigates newspaper coverage of candidates for the leadership of Canadian national political parties. A systematic intersectional analysis of reporting on 30 candidates who competed in 13 leadership contests found that only certain bodies are seen to embody and personify political leadership. High-profile women, a gay man, and a Black woman were noticed for their visual dissonance from the prototypical body of the political leader, as news coverage highlighted their physical characteristics in ways that marked them as aberrant and inauthentic in their desire for political power. Men with physiques incompatible with idealized masculinity were also presented as incapable of offering commanding performances on the political stage. We conclude that deeply held cultural norms, based on hegemonic masculinity, heteronormativity, and racism, are expressed in news mediation of political leadership competitions.