Canadian Politics Research Articles

Evaluating Bill C-76: The Elections Modernization Act

Bill C-76, the Elections Modernization Act, was a landmark piece of election law in Canada. It was passed by Parliament in time to be in force for the October 2019 federal election. It is the second major set of amendments to Canadian election law in recent years, after the passage of the controversial Fair Elections Act2 in 2014. C-76 had multiple goals. It was designed to undo many elements of the Fair Elections Act, especially around voter identification and election administration. It was also the primary legislative vehicle for updating election law to account for extensive online political advocacy, the emerging role of social media platforms as conduits for advertising, and new digital threats. It addressed many of the concerns prevalent in democracies globally that arose from the 2016 U.S. presidential election, such as foreign interference and hacking. It also engaged with the realities of the permanent campaign in Canadian politics, by updating the treatment of third parties and introducing for the first time in federal politics a spending limit in a regulated pre-writ period prior to the start of the official election campaign. Any one of these objectives and the accompanying amendments would have been significant in their own right. Collectively, the amendments represent a key moment in the ongoing attempt to ensure electoral integrity in Canada. This article sets out the major elements of C-76, seeks to provide the context for the most significant amendments, and provides critical commentary as to the desirability of the changes and their likelihood of enhancing the values that underpin Canadian election law. The article groups the amendments into five overarching themes, which I address in turn: 1) online politics; 2) the campaign period; 3) voting rights; 4) foreign interference; and 5) election administration.

Politicians in the line of fire: Incivility and the treatment of women on social media

A seemingly inescapable feature of the digital age is that people choosing to devote their lives to politics must now be ready to face a barrage of insults and disparaging comments targeted at them through social media. This article represents an effort to document this phenomenon systematically. We implement machine learning models to predict the incivility of about 2.2 m messages addressed to Canadian politicians and US Senators on Twitter. Specifically, we test whether women in politics are more heavily targeted by online incivility, as recent media reports suggested. Our estimates indicate that roughly 15% of public messages sent to Senators can be categorized as uncivil, whereas the proportion is about four points lower in Canada. We find evidence that women are more heavily targeted by uncivil messages than men, although only among highly visible politicians.

БРИТАНСЬКИЙ “ІМПЕРСЬКИЙ ФЕДЕРАЛІЗМ” У ВІЗІЯХ КАНАДСЬКИХ “ЛОЯЛІСТІВ” КІНЦЯ XIX СТ.

The article is devoted to the vision of the Canadian political elites of British “imperial federalism” concept, which resonated with the British Empire in the second half of the nineteenth century. This concept appeared in the circles of British politicians and public figures and, in the long run, should become a federal alliance between the colonies and the United Kingdom. Canada, which at that time was a full-fledged state entity, offered its own vision on this issue. The Canadian political elites, most of whom were supporters of a close relationship with the United Kingdom (the so-called “loyalists”), expressed broad support for the British Crown and a close alliance with Britain. In this article the author draws attention to the concept of “imperial federalism” and its origins, highlights the views of Canada’s major political figures who have expressed their thoughts about the imperial federation, and focuses on discussions about the vision of the future alliance of Canadian politicians. Separately analyzed are the colonial conferences of the late nineteenth century, which became the platform for solving colonial problems. They gave the opportunity to the Canadian “loyalists” to express their own position on the activity mechanism of the Imperial Federation in the future. The emergence of the idea of federalization of the British colonial system in the second half of the nineteenth century became a reaction to the outdated colonial system of the United Kingdom, which required updating and optimization of its work. This idea was geopolitical in its nature, because it was the result of the loss of a dominant position in the world colonial system by the United Kingdom and a desire to reclaim its former positions. The Canadian Loyalists’ vision of the concept of British “imperial federalism” is a clear example of Canadian politicians’ attitudes toward Britain at the end of the 19th century. It was to endorse the British idea by making its own adjustments to the future imperial federal system of the British Empire. The very concept of “imperial federalism” did not find its realization throughout the political debate, and its alternative was the imperial conferences that were held throughout the XX century. It was imperial conferences that served as a platform for solving common colonial problems and facilitated closer ties between the Metropolia and the colonies.

The Terrific Engine: Income Taxation and the Modernization of the Canadian Political Imaginary by David Tough

The Terrific Engine: Income Taxation and the Modernization of the Canadian Political Imaginary by David Tough

Американские и канадские научные школы по исследованию канадской политической культуры

Американские и канадские научные школы по исследованию канадской политической культуры

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).

Service Representation in a Federal System: A Field Experiment

AbstractFederal systems can also provide citizens with multiple avenues to obtain service representation. In shared issue areas, citizens are officially represented by two sets of politicians. When politicians are willing to cross jurisdictional boundaries, citizens might also obtain help or information from more than one set of politicians, even in areas of exclusive jurisdiction. We report an experiment designed to examine responses to requests for assistance in different issue areas. Our sample includes 202 Canadian politicians, each of whom received two requests for assistance from fictional constituents. We show that federal arrangements can enhance service representation. On average, politicians are as helpful on issues of shared jurisdiction as issues of exclusive jurisdiction. They are less helpful for issues outside of their jurisdiction. These results suggest that federal arrangements can work to provide citizens with multiple access points to their representative, even in areas that fall outside their representatives’ jurisdictional purviews.

The Life and Death of a Good Idea: Murray Ross’s Vision for the “New University”

In Ontario, in the 1960s, several new universities were founded; students flocked to post-secondary institutions in record numbers; and enrolment in arts and science programs reached the highest level since the end of the Second World War. Each of the new universities had its own mandate. As articulated by Murray Ross, its founding president, that of York University was to provide an interdisciplinary education that would contribute to students’ personal development, and understanding of the Canadian political system and world in which they lived. This article focuses on the first students to earn a York degree through Glendon College and the extent to which their university experiences and outcomes were consistent with the objectives identified by Ross. An examination of information collected on students at Glendon in the 1960s shows that by and large their reported experiences and outcomes were in keeping with Ross’s ideals; however, by the time they graduated, the mandate of the university and college had changed. While liberal arts continued to be important, the main mandate of the college became that of providing a bilingual education.

Do Women Get Fewer Votes? No.

AbstractWe study data on the gender of more than 21,000 unique candidates in all Canadian federal elections since 1921, when the first women ran for seats in Parliament. This large data set allows us to compute precise estimates of the difference in the electoral fortunes of men and women candidates. When accounting for party effects and time trends, we find that the difference between the vote shares of men and women is substantively negligible (±0.5 percentage point). This gender gap was larger in the 1920s (±2.5 percentage points), but it is now statistically indistinguishable from zero. Our results have important normative implications: political parties should recruit and promote more women candidates because they remain underrepresented in Canadian politics and because they do not suffer from a substantial electoral penalty.

Lived Fictions: Unity and Exclusion in Canadian Politics John Grant Vancouver and Toronto: UBC Press, 2018, pp. ix, 292.

Lived Fictions: Unity and Exclusion in Canadian Politics John Grant Vancouver and Toronto: UBC Press, 2018, pp. ix, 292.

Charles Taylor at the front line in Canadian politics

Charles Taylor at the front line in Canadian politics

Introduction: Environmental Literatures and Politics in Canada

Introduction: Environmental Literatures and Politics in Canada

Engaging with Identity Politics in Canadian Political Science

AbstractThis paper critiques the deployment of the term “identity politics” in Canadian political science. Through a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of research articles in leading English language academic journals in the Canadian social sciences, we examine whose politics are labelled identity politics and what intellectual work transpires through this label. Identity politics tends to be applied to scholarship that foregrounds analyses of ethnicity, race and gender, but with a lack of analytical rigour, indicating a degree of conceptual looseness. Moreover, the designation identity politics is not neutral; it is often mobilized as a rhetorical device to distance authors from scholarship that foregrounds analyses of ethnicity, race and gender, and to inscribe a materialist/culturalist divide in claims-making. We argue that the effect of this demarcation of identity from politics is to control the boundaries of political discourse, limiting who and what gains entry into the political. This serves to reassert an exclusionary conception of Canadian identity.

The Blueprint: Conservative Parties and Their Impact on Canadian Politics Edited by J.P. Lewis and Joanna Everitt

<i>The Blueprint: Conservative Parties and Their Impact on Canadian Politics</i> Edited by J.P. Lewis and Joanna Everitt

The Future of Canadian Political Science: Boundary Transgressions, Gender and Anti-Oppression Frameworks

AbstractIn light of theCanadian Journal of Political Science(CJPS) self-reflexive “50thAnniversary” issue on the state of Canadian political science (CPS), this article maps the discipline's engagement with intersectional anti-oppression scholarship. Analyzing abstracts inCJPSand theCanadian Political Science Review,we argue while these journals—and mainstream CPS more generally—tackle questions of diversity, there remains a gap between conversations recognized in these particular forums and the incorporation of what we term an intersectional anti-oppression lens. In its deconstruction of systems of power and privilege, we explore analytic and pedagogical possibilities this lens presents for mainstream CPS.

Восприятие и трактовка Сталинградской битвы премьер-министром Канады У.Л.М. Кингом

The article is devoted to the analysis of the views of Canadian Premier W.L.M. King on the significance and role of the battle of Stalingrad in World War II. The author, relying on the diaries of the Canadian leader, concludes that W.L.M. King admits the world scale of the Red Army victory on Volga, but overall he professes a completely Machiavellian approach to the struggle of the USSR with Nazi Germany. Basing on the sources used in the article, the Canadian politician perceives the battle of Stalingrad as primarily an important factor leading to the defeat of Germany, rather than the triumph of Soviet troops.

Narrating Canadian Political Science: History Revisited: Presidential Address to the Canadian Political Science Association Toronto, Ontario May 30, 2017–ADDENDUM

Narrating Canadian Political Science: History Revisited: Presidential Address to the Canadian Political Science Association Toronto, Ontario May 30, 2017–ADDENDUM

Pushing the limits of urban research: Urbanization, pipelines and counter-colonial politics

This article confronts debates about extended and concentrated urbanization with Indigenous claims to time and space. It does so in part by discussing the degree to which notions of extended and concentrated urbanization allow us to understand the dynamics of pipeline politics in Canada, notably Indigenous claims leveled at infrastructure projects. It argues that Lefebvre-inspired research is both promising and insufficient in this regard. Their promises can only be realized provided one considers urban research as mediation (between everyday life and the social order), contextualize urbanization as a product of non-linear histories through which ‘city’ and ‘non-city’ are transformed or reinstituted as socio-spatial forms, and take seriously imaginaries that may not only contest but also refuse the expansion of the urban field. Meeting these conditions is not possible without resorting to other, non-Lefebvrean approaches that help us understand the settler-colonial aspects of Canadian urban history and grasp the inter-national dimensions of Indigenous politics. Finally, opening up Lefebvre scholarship to considerations of settler colonialism is impossible without the distinct relational theories of time and space that inform radical Indigenous theories (and some pipeline struggles). Indigenous claims in or against urbanization thus represent a limit case of urban research.

Book Review: Framed: Media and the Coverage of Race in Canadian Politics by Erin Tolley

A Journal Article by Dr. Kioko Ireri, an Assistant Professor of Journalism in the School of Science and Technology in USIU- Africa

A Taste of the Library

Eating is one of the most innate human instincts. People need food to survive, and food and the culture around eating have been transformed into indicators of personal, community, and national identity. As an often-overlooked branch of social history, food history provides a critical look into the social nature of our nation’s past, as well as the effect of food on the culture and politics of Canada. It is for these reasons our course has decided to mount an exhibit in Special Collections on the history of food in Canada, showcasing the Library’s historical cookbooks. We will be structuring our exhibit through the lens of the following critical themes: Food Nationalism, Women and Community, Multi-culinary-ism, Business of Food, and Local Food Sources in Kingston, using cookbooks dating as far back as the 19th century. These will be brought together to share a glimpse into the study of food history and its importance within Canadian Social History. Sifting through the impressive assortment of cookbooks that W.D Jordan Rare Books and Special Collections has to offer will lead to the selection and presentation of 25 cookbooks that are an essential representation of the food history of the nation. Representing our classmates, we hope to share an overview of our research with Inquiry@Queen’s and promote our exhibit, which opens two weeks after the conference.