Provincial Government Of Quebec Research Articles

De l’Église-Nation à l’État-Nation (1945-1968). Le Québec français face à l’enjeu de l’immigration

Beginning in the 1960s, the Quebec provincial government gradually replaced the Catholic Church in the sectors of social regulation such as education, health care and social services. However among the numerous causes that can explain this profound transformation of Quebec society, immigration is rarely mentioned. In the aftermath of the Second World War, a new discourse appeared among the Catholic clergy, the French Canadian elites and the nationalist press who called for an increased intervention by the provincial government in the immigration field. The emergence of this new discourse is caused by new socio-demographic conditions unfavourable to the French-speaking majority which raise fears in the long term of its minorization. This study attempts to show how the immigration issue brought to question the role of the Catholic Church in the reception and integration of immigrants and has prepared the transition from a traditionalist nationalism to a political, linguistic and secular nationalism, embodied by the figure of the Provincial State.

Hijab, niqab, and the religious symbol debates: consequences for health and human rights

ABSTRACT Recently there has been a rise in state surveillance of racialized persons, immigrants, and religious minorities. While there is abundant literature that discusses the discourses of security and concerns over international terrorism, as well as acculturation and accommodation, little is known about how some of these public policies and practices intersect with human rights, health, and wellbeing. This paper seeks to illuminate the health and human rights consequences of policies about the hijab and niqab, including bans on religious symbols in public workplaces. This work is guided by interdisciplinary health, social justice, and anti-racism frameworks, and it explores the human rights concerns of policies that may be used to justify surveillance and control over racialized people, migrants, and their cultural practices. Various countries have increasingly expanded their surveillance of immigrant people from South Asia and the Middle East, especially Arabs, Central and South Asians, Africans, and Muslims. These groups have been experiencing racism at their places of worship, borders, ports of entry, and at airports. 1 Many governments, including the provincial government of Quebec from within Canada, have introduced policy interventions aimed at persons displaying religious symbols, which I argue have undermined the human rights and well-being of affected groups.

Developing Quebec's Water Efficiency Strategy

Key TakeawaysLaunched in 2011 by the Quebec provincial government in partnership with its municipalities, the Quebec Water Efficiency Strategy aims to improve water use efficiency.The Quebec government now uses the infrastructure leakage index, the ratio of current annual volume of real losses to unavoidable annual volume of real losses, as a key performance indicator.The Quebec Water Efficiency Strategy will help cities better understand their infrastructure assets to help ensure sustainability of water services in a time of increased pressure on water resources.

THE SENSITIVITY OF CHARITABLE GIVING TO THE TIMING AND SALIENCE OF TAX CREDITS

The January 12, 2010 Haiti Earthquake led to a strong response from donors in Canada. The federal government matched donations made by Canadians to specific charities tied to the provision of disaster relief. The Quebec provincial government provided additional incentives by allowing donors to claim donations made between January 12 th and February 28 th , 2010 on their 2009 tax return. We use this natural experiment to study how the timing of tax incentives affects charitable donations. We use several different estimation techniques to cleanly and to robustly estimate the effect of the Quebec tax incentive on giving using a panel data set that captures tax-receipted giving on individual tax returns at a neighbourhood level. With these data we can measure both whether individuals report a donation and the level of reported donations. Our preferred specification uses a propensity score matching method to match neighbourhoods in Quebec with neighbourhoods in the rest of Canada. We find strong positive effects for both the share of tax-filers donating as well as on the level of giving suggesting that the increased salience and immediacy of the tax credit increased giving on the extensive margin. We explore several robustness checks, including a placebo treatment test and a test using the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami; both fail to find any treatment effect. This result has important policy implications given debates around the use of tax incentives to encourage charitable giving.

Building a Foundation for Knowledge Co-Creation in Collaborative Water Governance: Dimensions of Stakeholder Networks Facilitated through Bridging Organizations

The sustainable governance of water resources relies on processes of multi-stakeholder collaborations and interactions that facilitate the sharing and integration of diverse sources and types of knowledge. In this context, it is essential to fully recognize the importance of fostering and enhancing critical connections within and between networks of relationships between different government and non-government agencies, as well as the dynamics that are in support of the development of new knowledge and practices. In Quebec, a network of watershed organizations (WOs) has been put in place to serve as bridging organizations (BOs) for stakeholder groups in their watershed territories. Using the WOs as a case study, this research aims to contribute to a greater understanding of how stakeholder groups can be effectively connected to support knowledge co-creation through networked relationships facilitated by BOs. In line with this overall research aim, the following research objectives are proposed: (1) to assess the quality of the knowledge that is developed and shared through the WOs and their stakeholder networks; (2) to determine the characteristics of stakeholders participating in the WOs’ networks that either hinder or support collaborations and knowledge co-creation; (3) to describe the collaborative processes and mechanisms through which the WOs facilitate stakeholder interactions and knowledge co-creation; and (4) to assess the quality of the relationships and interactions between stakeholders participating in the WOs’ collaborative networks. A comprehensive literature review is provided of collaborative network dimensions that are in support of knowledge co-creation that forms the foundation of a research framework to assess knowledge co-creation processes that are facilitated through BOs and their collaborative networks. Documented experiences have been gathered through face-to-face semi-structured interviews, as well as a Quebec-wide survey distributed to all WOs and their staff. A total of 41 interviews were conducted, of which nine interviews were with staff members of six selected WOs. Stakeholder perspectives were captured through 33 interviews with diverse stakeholders from three of the six selected WOs. Additionally, interviews were also conducted with five decision makers at the Quebec provincial government level. The findings of this study point to some key challenges and constraints for the effective facilitation of collaboration and knowledge co-creation through the Quebec WOs and their stakeholder networks. Through diverse collaborative mechanisms, most WOs have, to an extent, succeeded in creating opportunities for learning through a renewed sense making of different practices (and related identities) through the development of their watershed master plans, as well as through the facilitation of new communicative connections and translation efforts between diverse stakeholder groups. Key challenges to their effectiveness have been relating to a limited capacity and resources, limited territory-wide impacts, as well as limited perceived legitimacy that hindered the WOs as BOs in their ability to facilitate effective knowledge co-creation. Areas for further research to overcome these challenges are in developing a greater understanding of how BOs can optimize resources and capacities available in their collaborative networks through, e.g., the development of boundary-crossing leaders and competences, as well as the use of Information Communication Technology (ICT).

Quebec provincial government evaluates the potential of OR in the midst of its forest regime renewal

ABSTRACTIn implementing a new forest management regime, the provincial government of Quebec is evaluating the use of operational research (OR) to develop plans. This article presents findings from one such study. The main objectives of this project were to quantify the potential reduction in wood procurement cost through (1) the inclusion of an optimization routine in the development of the annual plans and (2) a greater integration and coordination during delineation of harvest blocks and planning forest operations among companies. A wood procurement planning problem was formulated and solved as a mixed integer program. Inclusion of an optimization routine in the planning process led to a cost reduction of 0.88 $/m3 (2.6%) in comparison to the benchmark scenario. Greater integration and coordination coupled with the optimization routine reduced wood procurement costs by 1.52 $/m3 (4.5%), which translates into potential annual cost savings of $ 950, 000.

Integration of early identification and brief intervention in frontline health services: the case of Quebec

In 2006, the Quebec provincial government committed itself to developing capacity for evidence-based alcohol and other drug screening and brief intervention (SBI) in frontline health-service delivery settings. Two studies were conducted prior to province-wide deployment to inform decision makers as to possible implementation challenges. Study 1 evaluated the efficacy of implementing a model of SBI, adapted from the World Health Organization, in three frontline public health services. Sixty-two clinicians were trained in systematic detection of substance use and brief motivational intervention. Chart review of new admissions (N = 453) prior and following training assessed clinician conformity to SBI guidelines. Forty percent of patients endorsed at least one item on the four-question CAGE-AID (Cut Down, Annoyed, Guilty, Eye Opener screen Adapted to Include Drugs). Systematic screening among new admissions peaked at 70% and decreased to pre-training levels seven months after training. However, more than half of all new patients were assessed with validated questionnaires rather than informal questioning. Implementation of motivational interviewing techniques led to modest changes in clinician interventions. A second qualitative study was conducted to document possible organizational barriers to SBI implementation. Interviews were conducted with 24 clinicians and program administrators from frontline services of the six main health regions of Quebec province. Choice of vocabulary used in public policy documents and program material and sequence of delivery of services created confusion among clinicians as to what constituted alcohol and other drug SBI. Many resources developed for other SBI health programs in these frontline services seemed to be transferable to alcohol and drug SBI. Lessons learned were as follows: complexity in the SBI program is inversely related to the subsequent integrity of program deployment; clarity as to what constitutes SBI is paramount; and integration of parallel competencies/related programs could facilitate deployment of alcohol and other drug SBI.

Dynamic Labour Supply Effects of Childcare Subsidies: Evidence from a Canadian Natural Experiment on Low-Fee Universal Child Care

This paper shows that a temporary incentive to join the labor market or to work more can also produce substantial life-cycle labor supply effects. On September 1997, a new childcare policy was initiated by the provincial government of Quebec, the second most populous province in Canada. Licensed and regulated providers of childcare services began offering day care spaces at the subsidized fee of $5 per day per child for children aged 4. In successive years, the government reduced the age requirement, created new childcare facilities and spaces, and paid for the additional costs entailed by this low-fee policy. No such important policy changes for preschool (including kindergarten) children were enacted in the nine other Canadian provinces over the years 1997 to 2004. Using annual data drawn from Statistics Canada's Survey on Labour and Income Dynamic and a difference-in-differences quasi-experimental methodology, the paper estimates the dynamic labor supply effects of the program. The results demonstrate that the policy had long-term labor supply effects on mothers who benefited from the program when their child was less than 6. A striking feature of the results is that they are driven by changes in the labor supply of less educated mothers.

Child‐Care Policy and the Labor Supply of Mothers with Young Children: A Natural Experiment from Canada

In 1997, the provincial government of Quebec, the second most populous province in Canada, initiated a new child‐care policy. Licensed child‐care service providers began offering day‐care spaces at the reduced fee of $5.00 per day per child for children aged 4. By 2000, the policy applied to all children not in kindergarten. Using annual data (1993–2002) drawn from Statistics Canada's Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics, the results show that the policy had a large and statistically significant impact on the labor supply of mothers with preschool children.

The challenges of linguistic duality for francophone Canada: contact, conflict and continuity

This article analyses the principle and practice of linguistic duality in Canada, a country where official bilingualism has been rooted in federal policy on language issues since Confederation (1867). A recent example of a major federal initiative is the Action Plan for Official Languages (2003), which has set as one of its objectives the doubling of bilingual high-school graduates. Historically, conflict has characterized the relationship between the federal government and the provincial government of Quebec, which has pursued a diametrically opposed policy of official monolingualism, culminating in the enactment of the Charte de la langue franaise (Bill 101) in 1977. Several of the provisions of Bill 101 have been challenged in the Supreme Court, in the context of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982), notably in the area of minority education rights (e.g. Casimir case, 2005). Analysis of the 2001 census data is used to discuss the demolinguistic reality of French, leading to the conclusion that it is under threat in all provinces and territories except Quebec. The issues of language contact are also challenging for Quebec; though it is the only province with a francophone majority, it is also the province with the highest rate of bilingualism. Important research projects on the long-term continuity and vitality of francophone minority communities are ongoing.

Impact of Early Childhood Care and Education on Children's Preschool Cognitive Development: Canadian Results from a Large Scale Quasi-Experiment

On September 1st, 1997, a new early childhood care and education policy was initiated by the provincial government of Quebec, the second most populous province in Canada. Providers of childcare services licensed by the Department of the Family began offering daycare spaces at the reduced parental contribution of $5 per day per child for children aged 4. In successive years, the government reduced the age requirement and engaged in a plan to create new childcare facilities and pay for the cost of additional $5 per day childcare spaces. By September 2000, the low-fee policy applied to all children aged 0 to 59 months and the number of partly subsidized spaces increased from 77,000 in 1998 to 170,000 spaces, totally subsidized, by midyear 2003. In addition, on September 1st 1997, all public schools offered full-day rather than part-day kindergarten for 5-year-old children. No such important policy changes for preschool (including kindergarten) children were enacted in the other Canadian provinces over the years 1994 to 2003. Using biennial data drawn from Statistics Canada's National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY), conducted since 1994-1995, this study attempts to estimate the effect of the policy on Quebec's preschool children cognitive test scores. A non-experimental evaluation framework based on multiple pre- and post-treatment periods is used to estimate the effect of the early childhood care and education regime on school readiness. The econometric results support the hypothesis that the policy had no effects on the cognitive development of 4-year-olds (the PPVT-R raw scores and the PPVT-R standardized scores). However, we provide evidence that the policy had a substantial negative impact on the scores of 5-year-olds.

Low-fee ($5/day/child) Regulated Childcare Policy and the Labor Supply of Mothers with Young Children: A Natural Experiment from Canada

On September 1st, 1997, a new childcare policy was initiated by the provincial government of Quebec, the second most populous province in Canada. Childcare services licensed by the Ministry of the Family (not-for-profit centres, family-based childcare, and for-profit centres under the agreement) began offering day care spaces at the reduced parental contribution of $5 per day child for children aged 4 years. In successive years, the government reduced the age requirement and engaged in a plan to create new childcare facilities and pay for the cost of additional $5 per day childcare spaces. By September 2000, the low-fee policy applied to all children aged 0 to 59 months (not in kindergarten) and the number of partly subsidized spaces increased from 77,000 in 1998 to 163,000 spaces, totally subsidized by the end of year 2002, while the number of eligible children, zero to four years old, declined from 428,000 to 369,000 over the same period. Using annual data (1993 to 2002), drawn from Statistics Canada's Suvey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID), this study attempts to estimate the effect of the policy on the labor supply behavior of Quebec mothers with pre-school children, aged from 0 to 5 years old. The analysis examines the impact of the policy on the following outcomes: labor force participation, annual number of weeks and hours at work, annual earned income and whether the job was full-time for mothers who declared having a job during the reference year. A non-experimental evaluation framework based on multiple pre- and post- treatment periods is used to estimate the effect of the childcare regime. The econometrics results support the hypothesis that the childcare policy, together with the transformation of public kindergarten from a part-time to a full-time basis, had a large and statistically significant impact on the labor supply of Quebec's mothers with pre-school children. The estimates also suggest, though less convincingly, that the size of the impact increased concurrently with the positive growth in the number of low-fee spaces.

Montréal, laboratoire politique

<titre>Montreal as a political laboratory&#160;: a metropolis confronted with the power of the agglomeration </titre> Both the territory and the social and economic fabric of Montreal are extremely fragmented. Faced with this problem, at the end of the 1990s the government of Quebec announced its intention to implement a sweeping reform of local institutions. However, it was the provincial government of Quebec that took the lead, overhauling institutions with an unexpected result&#160;: Montreal&#8217;s urban area, the core of the government&#8217;s project, was paradoxically divided, and Montreal, a new city located on its central island and which integrated all the so-called &#8220;suburban&#8221; communities, was given powerful institutions allowing it to restructure municipal competencies and the services of the agglomeration. Determined overall by the rationales of the city&#8217;s &#233;lites, this reform reflects a hybrid political model.

The Election Everybody Won? The Impact of Party System Change, Voter Turnout, and Strategic Voting in the 1998 Quebec Election

Introduction In a rather surprising twist, Quebec's two traditional major provincial parties, the Parti Quebecois (PQ) and the Parti Liberal du Quebec (PLQ), and an upstart third party, the Action Democratique du Quebec (ADQ), could all claim victory in the 1998 election. The PQ with 42.7 percent of the vote retained a clear majority of seats (75 of 125) and renewed its mandate as the governing party. The PLQ defied the preelection polls by overtaking the PQ in total votes (43.7 percent) and gained some seats, bringing its total to 48. Although unable to increase its seat total beyond the riding of its young leader Mario Dumont, the ADQ over-achieved. It fielded candidates in all 125 ridings, captured nearly 12 percent of the vote provincewide, and increased its share of the vote in most ridings where it ran in the previous election. The ADQ proved the only party capable of increasing its vote tally. Significantly, it upped its count in sixty-eight of the eighty tidings it contested in 1994 and in 114 of 125 ridings overall. Furthermore, the Adequiste vote exceeded the margin between the PQ and the PLQ tallies in more than one-third (37 percent) of all constituencies (see Table Five) and the party made impressive gains in Lanaudiere, Laurentides, Mauricie, and Chaudiere-Appalaches, constituencies that favored the oui side in the 1995 referendum (des Rivieres 1998). This outcome may be considered surprising, especially since few, if any, experts forecast such an improbable denouement. For the first time since 1966 a losing party a plurality of votes in a Quebec election. In addition, not since the Union Nationale (UN) in 1976 had a third party picked up more than 10 percent of the provincial vote (Nadeau and Belanger 1999). Whether this election can be deemed critical or the harbinger of a realignment similar to the one that occ urred in the 1930s with the UN or the 1970s with the PQ cannot yet be fully assessed, but it does provide some important clues (Fitzmaurice 1985,183-197; Quinn 1979, 48-72; Lemieux 1995, 242-247). This article represents an effort to make some sense Out of the election results. By examining party system change, strategic voting, and regional voting patterns, it can be said that, contrary to the 1997 Canadian national election--the contest nobody won (Clarke, Wearing, Kornberg, and Stewart 1997)--all the major parties achieved at least some success in the last Quebec election of the century. Our examination of the election and its implications proceeds in several steps. First, we present a breakdown of the results provincewide and by region. Second, we test alternative hypotheses regarding the possibility of transformation of the party system and the impact of voter turnout. In particular, we focus on the role and impact of the ADQ as an important player in any party-system transition. Finally, we discuss the extent to which strategic voting, rather than party-system change, had an impact on the outcome of the 1998 election. Vote Change and Movement There was a great deal of media speculation regarding the significance of this election, much of it wrong. Some pundits suggested that the strong showing of the PQ in the preelection polls convinced many of its supporters to stay home on 30 November, with victory seemingly assured. They suggested that low turnout by Pequiste voters distorted the electoral results. Other members of the media opined that the ADQ's impressive showing signaled an overall decline in the PLQ. They speculated that the Liberals might never again form another Quebec Provincial Government. Yet these and other viewpoints begged the following questions. Were moving away from the Liberals to the ADQ as a convenient alternative? Conversely, would the ADQ's success foreshadow the eventual demise of the PQ, which might splinter into hard and nationalist factions with the soft nationalists gravitating to the ADQ? …

Les initiatives québécoises dans le domaine de la capitalisation des entreprises: Le point de vue des investisseurs

Starting in 1976, the Quebec provincial government has introduced several programs and organisations with the objective of raising equity capital for companies; the Societes de developpement de l'entreprise quebecoise (SODEQ) were followed by the availability of the 'developing company' category under the QSSP and then by the Fonds de Solidarite ( FTQ). These programs were instigated in an attempt to diminish the 'small business under-capitalisation problem'. To attain this and encourage Quebec residents to invest more in equity securities, the government chose tax incentives. Nevertheless, unlike most tax incentive programs, these were not neutral; by changing the risk-return relationship of securities, the government provoked a redistribution of the savings of Quebec investors. In this study, we evaluate the effect of this redistribution on the wealth of investors and demonstrate that these investments had a very low return, even if the resulting deductions and credits are considered. In fact, the total cost of these programs for investors adds up to $200 millions.

Canada

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Quebec and the Canadian Political Crisis

For the first 90 years of Canada's existence, political conflict between the French-Canadian minority and the English-Canadian majority embraced electoral politics, government policies, and federal-provincial relations, but there was no major challenge to the Canadian political community itself. At the same time, there was only limited accommodation of French Canadians in federal institutions and virtually none in provinces other than Quebec. Appar ently, the existence of a Quebec provincial government sufficed to prevent the rise of a strong secessionist movement. With the modernization of Quebec, however, such a move ment has now emerged. The large difference in size between the English-speaking majority and the French-speaking minority appears to preclude mutual veto arrangements or general parity of representation in federal institutions. It has even hindered the attainment of proportional representa tion in federal power structures. Attempts to reinforce the French-Canadian presence outside Quebec have also been frustrated by demographic factors. Meanwhile, intensification of ethnic conflict within Quebec and preference for French- Canadian controlled institutions have strengthened demands by French Canadians to make Quebec their primary political community.

Architectural Criteria &amp; French Traditions

It is notorious that our present age, for all the lip service that it pays to structural and economic considerations and the sanctity of the program when it theorizes about architecture, tends to give undue weight to pictorial or sculptural criteria when it judges individual buildings. Photography and the illustrated press are sometimes blamed for this. Mr. Collins, in an address to the annual meeting of the Province of Quebec Architectural Association, shows that the trouble has deeper roots, which reach back three centuries to the establishment of the French Académie de Peinture, Sculpture et Architecture in Rome. He points out that the so-called “beaux-arts” system in France, far from being characteristically and traditionally French, is essentially Italian, and suggests that the Quebec Provincial Government's Report on Architectural Education may well be a major factor leading to a revival of a truly French tradition in architecture—and in France itself.

Quebec: Nationalism and the Working Class

For some time Quebec, the French-speaking underdeveloped province of Eastern Canada, has begun to make itself heard in the newspapers of the whole world. What is going on in Quebec? A revolution? Bombs burst last year in Montreal. A hundred thousand farmers marched on the Quebec parliament in the spring. Students and unions also marched on the Quebec capital. The Prime Minister, Jean Lesage, head of the Quebec provincial government, sent off several ultimatums to the government in Ottawa; and he recently warned the Anglo-Canadians in the rest of Canada that special status will soon have to be accorded to Quebec or, according to him, the political situation there might take a serious turn.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.