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Since the 1990s, there has been a global proliferation of discourses of political reconciliation. In Canada, major debates regarding the place of Quebec and Indigenous peoples in the federation have seen the concept of reconciliation being mobilized by different groups to address these key constitutional relationships. This is a complex development, as reconciliation is understood and used in widely varying ways depending on the political projects different actors seek to advance. While much recent scholarship has critically analyzed the divergence between Indigenous and state conceptions of reconciliation, there has been little comparative analysis that considers the deployment of the concept in both constitutional relationships. Many gaps also remain in accounting for the emergence of reconciliation as a political concept in Canada and in considering the implications of framing constitutional relationships through this ambiguous and widely contested term. This article addresses these gaps by drawing on an analysis of royal commission reports and Supreme Court decisions to explore the character of early appearances of the term as a political concept and to provide an initial sketch of the role the concept plays in Canadian politics by comparing its use with respect to constitutional relationships with Quebec and with Indigenous peoples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1979 classic Prairie Capitalism controversially asserted, "we find no confirmation of the thesis that provinces, heavily dependent on the exploitation and sale of staples, are thereby placed in a permanent position of political dependency vis à vis external capital" (Richards and Pratt 1979, 8). Developments in the years since have confirmed the book's analysis, and this has clear implications both for our understanding of the trajectory of Canadian capitalism, and for our assessment of the core tenets of Canadian political economy. Further, an appreciation of the contemporary utility of this aspect of the analysis in Prairie Capitalism is a necessary corrective to the contemporary " resource colony" discourse associated with Canada's bitumen sands industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the intersection of the history of women’s movements, history of civil society, migration policy and social work, this article examines the approach that the women of the Canadian Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) took toward the issue of immigration and the work they undertook with migrants during the 1920s and 1930s. Following an initial time (from the 1870s to the post-war period), when the legal reform and the nationalization of immigration policies were predominant, a transnational approach to assisting immigrants emerged within the YWCA. In the context of the post-war period, when the federal state intervened in the reception of migrants and called for the closure of borders, the YWCA forged close ties with major international organizations rising in Europe. Transcending the imperial and national spheres, and orienting itself toward a less sectarian and no longer women-oriented action, throughout the 1930s the Canadian YWCA contributed to the emergence of a new humanitarian and transnational approach to assisting migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate election timing by Canadian provincial and federal governments from 1976 to 2008. Using monthly data, our provincial regressions indicate that lower unemployment and the prospect of increasing unemployment spur election calls. Our federal regressions also suggest that lower unemployment triggers elections and the effect is stronger at the federal level than at the provincial level. We present evidence that US monthly unemployment rates are lower before Canadian variable-date federal elections but are not lower before US fixed-date elections. This finding further indicates that Canadian politicians have used our variable-date election system to exploit favourable conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay brings environmental and diplomatic history into conversation in order to examine the Trudeau government's response to the 1969-70 voyages of the oil tanker "Manhattan" through the Northwest Passage. By passing the "Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act" and extending Canada's territorial sea to 12 miles, Ottawa successfully instrumentalized the heightened environmental concern of the period in order to press Canadian claims to sovereignty in the Arctic. The essay demonstrates that this custodial approach was consistent with the functionalist tradition in Canadian liberal internationalism. More broadly, it reveals the promise of re-examining Canadian international history through the prism of environmental history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the works of sociologist and philosopher Joseph Yvon Thériault to look at how he demonstrates the social, political, and identity dynamics of French-Canadian minorities still driven by the French-Canadian dream of a society different from the Anglo-American continent despite being separated from Québec since the 1960s. The author focuses on Thériault's thesis, sketches the Canadian linguistic regime with particular focus given to laws specific to Francophone minorities, and retraces administrative practices inspired by horizontal management in the domain of official languages. Some of the works examined include the book "Faire société: Société civile et espaces francophones."

The article studies the history of federal cultural policies and their relationship to the debates concerning the question of nationalism in French Canada and Québec from 1949 to 2011. Particular focus is given to the role and impact of the Commission royal d'enquête sur le développement national des arts et des sciences, or the art and science development royal investigative commission, known as the Commission Massey, launched by the Canadian government in 1949. The author looks at the role social conflicts played in the definition of nationalism and the evolution of public policies and argues that the debates about culture participated in an intellectual history which established to foundation of the Révolution tranquille, or Quiet Revolution, in Québec from 1960 to 1980.

The article discusses the Canadian government's official bilingualism policy and how such legislation frames and constraints not only the political action of community leaders but also their identity ideas. It follows the development of the official bilingualism policy as a result of fears related to linguistic assimilation and political conflicts and how this policy, looking to reassure people, limiting the risks, and guaranteeing a satisfactory linguistic peace in Canada. It examines how the official bilingualism context impacted ideas concerning the notion of francophonie, particularly the political aspects of francophonie in Canada such as the role of linguistic militant in the political construction Francophone communities.

This article examines how religious and cultural stereotypes of India and Pakistan affected the perceptions and attitudes of Canadian policy-makers and the Diefenbaker government from 1957 to 1963. Canadian policy-makers initially believed that India's elites shared numerous commonalities with the West that were rooted in a shared language and a similar judicial and democratic parliamentary system. Through these 'commonalities' officials believed that India would align with the West as the Cold War intensified. Such assumptions proved to be ill-considered. The Indian government practised a doctrine of non-alignment in the 1950s, and senior Canadian officials regarded this as hypocritical and even anti-Western. By contrast, Pakistan aligned with the West and raised its anticommunist rhetoric. A growing pool of Canadian officials looked to Islam, Hinduism, and cultural stereotypes to explain why Pakistan differed from India and perceived the threat of communism in the same way as the West. These officials also re-evaluated the importance Ottawa placed on ties with New Delhi. The election of Prime Minister John Diefenbaker in June 1957 hastened this trend. Diefenbaker viewed communism in binary terms and concluded that, unlike India, Pakistan was on the 'right side' in the Cold War. The Diefenbaker era saw Ottawa relegate India to the periphery of its foreign policy interests and bilateral relations with Pakistan at their apogee. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the use of traditions and ideas associated with hockey in Canadian politics. According to the authors, hockey is used as a signifier for the idea of so-called ordinary Canadians promoted by the country's Conservative-led government. It is suggested that this concept plays a significant role in neoliberal discourses surrounding Canadian citizenship and identity. Details on the relationship between political promotion strategies and marketing in capitalist democracies are presented. Other topics include Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, social class, and former U.S. President George W. Bush.

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In 1971, following a protracted and tumultuous debate, the Toronto Board of Education formally abolished the use of corporal punishment in its schools – the first Ontario board to do so. Corporal punishment continued to be employed elsewhere in Ontario and throughout Canada well into the 1980s, and the use of physical discipline was prohibited in all Canadian schools only in 2004, following a ruling of the Supreme Court of Canada. Why did educators and legislators defend corporal punishment for so long, and why did the tide turn in the last part of the twentieth century? Concentrating on legal and political dynamics, this article explores the ways in which the Toronto Board of Education grappled with the issue of corporal punishment in the three decades before its abolition. It seeks to situate the story of Toronto's approach to school discipline on the broader social landscape on which the battle over corporal punishment was conducted. It concludes that the particular configuration of the Toronto Board of Education following trustee elections in 1969 strongly affected the shape and outcome of the corporal punishment debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1958, the Canadian government has used the celebration of 1 July to promote particular models of national identity and to foster national unity. Commemorating the anniversary of Confederation, these Dominion Day and Canada Day (as renamed in 1982) observances changed over the decades to reflect changing government public policy objectives and new conceptions of the nation. From a celebration rooted in military pageantry stressing Canada's British heritage, these events were modified to promote a vision of a multicultural, bilingual country with a strong Aboriginal component. Moreover, Canada Day messages increasingly stressed the themes of individual achievement and respect for diversity. Although politicians played roles in determining the form and content of these events, and public response influenced which components were maintained, bureaucrats working in the Secretary of State department exercised a particularly strong influence on these celebrations, providing institutional continuity and expertise to planning efforts. These celebrations provide a key window into understanding the Canadian government's evolving cultural and national identity policies in the post–Second World War era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the early 1960s to 2005, with Canada's ratification of the 1989 "Second Optional Protocol of the International Covenant of Political and Civil Rights," norms relating to the abolition of the death penalty have been advanced only incrementally, and in many respects tentatively. The process of making Canada abolitionist began at the level of high politics as an attempt to simultaneously make the criminal justice system more humane and bring Canada into the modern era. Parliament officially removed the death penalty from Canada's "Criminal Code" in 1976 and defeated a motion to have it reinstated in 1987, and yet both debates were deeply divisive and did little to settle the issue for Canadians, the majority of whom still favoured the practice. This reluctance was later reflected in two high-profile cases involving the extradition of violent fugitives to the United States to face execution that were heard before the Supreme Court of Canada in 1991 and 2000. Indeed, since the initial efforts to remove capital punishment from the "Criminal Code," the abolitionist norm has had a tenuous hold in Canada, its eventual strengthening occurring only with the combination of the increase in authority of the Canadian judiciary in the era of the "Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms," and the emergence of definitive norms and laws at the international level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]