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Summary: Drawing on historical constructions of Indigenous peoples, this paper analyses the continued impact of settler discourses of Indigenous families, parenting, and children on child welfare policy in Canada today. Findings: In this work, two provincial children's Advocate reports on the deaths of Indigenous children in care, Tina Fontaine and Alex Gervais, are critically assessed in order to explore the processes through which these colonial constructions operate to create adverse outcomes for Indigenous people. Through this analysis, a number of contemporary colonial narratives are made visible, including the belief that Indigenous parents are inherently incapable of caring for their children, and the gendered construction of Indigenous men and boys as criminal and deviant and Indigenous girls as sexually exploitable. Application: These findings suggest that greater critical reflection is needed when working with Indigenous peoples, including greater awareness of the ongoing impact of settler colonialism and the necessity of engaging in anti-colonial work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social work education in Canada has struggled to identify and disrupt systems of oppression and marginalization, rooted in a history of colonialism and slavery, that continues to reverberate through neocolonial policies, pedagogy, and practice. Universities and social work programs remain white spaces that uphold white supremacy, while actively excluding nonwhite members and their ways of knowing and being in the world. It wasn't until the deepened retrenchment of anti-Black racism during the pandemic, punctuated by the killing of George Floyd, that a group of educators seized an opening to teach an anti-racist and anti-colonial praxis course for the Bachelor of Social Work students in spring of 2021, the first one of its kind in our faculty. Students were encouraged to engage with Indigenous and racialized community youth to imagine and integrate anti-racist and reconciliatory actions as part of their assignments. This paper shares our experiences co-designing and co-teaching this course together with community partners. We emphasize lessons from the applied pedagogical approaches as well as its implications for social work education and social work practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores Christian anarchist ideas to encourage the reader to consider how to apply these to social work practice. The author contends that social work and the Christian faith have been associated with harmful practices that remain troubling legacies to this day. While social work has sought to distance itself from oppressive constructs, it has done so by becoming secularized, disconnected from any faith-based orientation seeking to help the least of these. By reconsidering Christian anarchism, it may be possible to challenge the notion that faith need be a form of justification for oppression and control, but is rather a liberatory force that can move us all toward an empowering and hopeful future for Christians and other believers that practice social work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In October 2018, Canadian retailer Mountain Equipment Co-op publicly asked, "Do white people dominate the outdoors?" and acknowledged that their representations were "part of [a] problem." Relying on Ahmed's theorizations of diversity work, this paper offers an intersectional interrogation of Mountain Equipment Co-op's (MEC's) commitment to including more "diversity" in their representations and considers how both MEC's statement and their early efforts to diversify simultaneously efface the gendered, ableist, fatphobic, settler colonial and racist structuring of "the outdoors" both in MEC's practices and in "Canada" more broadly. Our analysis highlights how MEC's practices continue to reflect and reproduce the appropriation of wilderness for a narrow range of bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic debate on the interplay between politics and intelligence is dominated by the U.S. experience. Our research, based on interviews with over sixty individuals in the Canadian intelligence and national security community and including political staffers, provides a new case study: that of Canada, a middle power with considerable access to intelligence through the Five Eyes partnership. We found that cases of hard politicization of intelligence analysis are virtually non-existent in Canada. The most important factor explaining this finding is Canada's structural position in the world, or how its geography shapes the broader context of interactions between intelligence and politics. Beyond this, six more specific factors at the domestic level also matter: the relative unimportance of foreign and security policy as political issues, few opportunities, a lack of political benefits, low intelligence literacy generally among policy makers, poor transparency in national security decision making, and a tradition of non-partisanship in the civil service. The paper concludes by reflecting on this assessment: while hard politicization remains a rarity in Canada, the shields that have prevented the emergence of politicization will likely be increasingly tested in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indigenous Peoples experience significant health inequities that must be understood in relation to historical and ongoing colonialism, racism, and discrimination. The occupational therapy profession has claimed commitment to addressing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) calls to action, however, the profession is firmly grounded in Euro-Western epistemologies, including its assessments. The purpose of this paper was to assess the Canadian Occupational Performance Measure (COPM) for use with Indigenous clients and communities. Although the COPM uses flexibility through semi-structured interviews and the exclusion of standardized score comparisons, it is mired in colonial underpinnings and has hierarchical therapist-client power dynamics threaded throughout. The COPM has potential given its semi-structured nature and client-led approach. However, acknowledgement of the assessments' Euro-Western roots and biases are necessary. This assessment may be modified for improved use, which should occur in collaboration with Indigenous clients, communities, and leaders. Comments The authors declare that they have no competing financial, professional, or personal interest that might have influenced the performance or presentation of the work described in this manuscript. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jean Raspail's controversial 1973 novel The camp of the saints predicts mass migration to Europe that will destroy European civilization. Decades later, the book has accurately predicted the hundreds of thousands of refugees arriving in Europe annually, prompting a continent-wide crisis. From Lesbos and Lampedusa to the Canary Islands and Calais, no one seems to know how to stem the flow of humanity. Borders are being resurrected, despite Schengen and European Union (EU) agreements, in an effort to control the movement of populations. European governments disagree on how to proceed and some are suggesting that the EU could be torn apart by differing approaches to the problem. But does this have to be the response to the migration crisis? This paper compares the predictions of The camp of the saints to events in Europe today and critiques the book's conclusions with regard to what is an ancient phenomenon: movements of migrants from surplus to deficit labor settings. The paper will also evaluate the response to migrants in the United States under its populist president, Donald Trump, and will review related issues in other parts of the world: Turkey, Russia, and Canada. Contrary to Raspail's predictions, world leaders will need to accept what has already become a de facto reality: large scale admission of migrants and refugees to the EU and North America, as full citizens, will be the only realistic way to preserve prosperity in the years to come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction Research in palliative care (PC) is often regarded as challenging due to the vulnerability of the population and other peculiarities. We aim to systematically identify barriers to research in PC in the literature. Methods The electronic databases CINAHL, MEDLINE were searched for papers published in the last 25 years. Citations and then abstracts were screened for inclusion. Original papers were included on first-level analysis. On a second level reviews, reports, and position papers were analyzed. Papers containing a direct patient report were specifically analyzed. Barriers were categorized (ethical considerations, financial and time expenses, study design and methodology, human resources and politics) and results quantified. Results Twenty-one original papers and 65 other papers were included. Five studies involved patients directly, five were systematic reviews, three were study experiences, and seven were surveys or workshop reports. Most papers originated from UK, USA, or Norwegian Universities. Ethics and methods were the most often mentioned categories on both levels. Accrual, attrition, and gatekeeping were frequently named barriers. Complex invasive studies or possible side effects hinder patients' participation, as patients are often willing to participate for altruistic motivations. Discussion Barriers to PC research are ethical concerns and methodological challenges. Possible strategies to overcome methodological barriers include international collaborative efforts to include more patients and improve study designs. Ethical barriers indicate the need for patient involvement in the research development process and tailoring research specifically to the PC population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this discussion paper is to explore how nurses can be strategically poised to advocate for needed policy change in support of greater income equality and other social determinants of health. We adapted Bronfenbrenner's social‐ecological model to highlight how four broad pervasive subsystems shape the opportunities that nurses have to engage in advocacy at the policy level. These subsystems include organizations (the microsystem), professional bodies (the mesosystem), public policies (the exosystem), and societal values (the macrosystem). On the basis of this adapted model, we recommend changes among modifiable elements of the microsystem and mesosystem that can help position nurses (ecologically and collectively) to advocate for public policy change and use examples from a Canadian context to illustrate these points. We believe that the ideas arising from this model can be widely used where policy action on the social determinants of health is needed to inform, guide, and frame change efforts and advocacy work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the tensions racialized migrants negotiate when politically organizing and enacting citizenship within the context of the Canadian white settler state. I focus on the experiences of Latin Americans in Toronto and the politics surrounding a cultural celebration – Hispanic Heritage Month. While some Latin Americans sought to use this event to gain recognition and assert their belonging to Canadian society, others opposed its naming, objectives and organization, and opted to create an alternative celebration – the Latin-America History Collective's Día de la Verdad/Day of Truth Rally. I demonstrate that the narratives and practices mobilized around Hispanic Heritage Month and Latin-America History Collective's Rally reveal how different forms of migrant political organizing can internalize, reproduce and contest white settler colonial social relations. Overall, this paper aims to contribute to and complicate debates on the fraught nature of racialized migrants' citizenship, politics and identity formation in Canada, by emphasizing the vast heterogeneity of Latin American communities and decolonizing possibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indigenous peoples throughout the world, despite being known to suffer from increased risk of stroke and traumatic brain injury (TBI), are marginalised in terms of access to rehabilitation services and have poorer health outcomes than non-indigenous peoples. Speech-language pathology services for indigenous people with aphasia have rarely been discussed in either clinical or research fora in this field, with few guidelines available for clinicians when working with indigenous clients, families, and communities. Exploiting the broad input gathered through the collective problem-solving of a focus group, the paper integrates the input of a group of practitioners and researchers at an international roundtable held in 2016 to generate a "declaration" of issues that need to be addressed regarding aphasia services for indigenous clients with aphasia. The paper aims to promote a transformative approach to service delivery that is driven by decolonizing attitudes and practices, and acknowledges historical, sociopolitical, linguistic, and family contexts as a framework for understanding indigenous clients with aphasia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In this paper we assess the quality of six deliberative stakeholder consultations regarding the implementation of a precision diagnostic for life-threatening pediatric brain tumors. Decision makers who base policy recommendations on the outputs of consultative exercises can presuppose that all deliberants are well informed of the policy issue, that participation in the deliberative process was fair, and that overcoming implementation barriers will necessarily result in practice change. Additional evidence is therefore needed to substantiate the informational quality of the deliberation, measure the equality of participation and study the effects on stakeholder reasoning to appropriately guide uptake of proposed recommendation(s). Methods: Using the DeVries framework for assessing the deliberative quality, we analyzed data from 44 post-consultation evaluation surveys completed by pediatric oncology and palliative care teams at two tertiary pediatric healthcare centers in Canada. We also conducted turn-taking and word-contribution analyses from the text transcriptions of each deliberation to assess equality of participation using descriptive statistics. Results: Deliberants agreed the quality of the deliberative process was fair (median ratings ranging from 9–10 out of 10) and the opportunities to receive expert information and discuss with others about the implementation of a new LDT were helpful (9.5 out of 10). While the session improved understanding of the implementation barriers and opportunities, it had marginal effects on deliberants' reasoning about whether LDTs would change their own clinical practice (3–10 out of 10). Participation was proportionate in at least four of the six deliberations, where no deliberant took more than 20% of total turns and contributed equal to, or less than 20% of total words. Conclusion: The quality assessment we performed demonstrates high informational value and perceived fairness of two deliberative stakeholder consultations involving pediatric palliative care and oncology teams in Canada. Quality assessments can reveal how the process of deliberation unfolds, whether deliberative outputs are the result of equitable participation among deliberants and what, if any, stakeholder voices may be missing. Such assessments should be routinely reported as a condition of methodological rigor and trustworthiness of deliberative stakeholder engagement research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The scholarship on state-building has devoted a significant amount of attention to the role of taxation in building state institutions and capacities. It has also emphasised the crucial role of taxation in driving state-society relations. Scholars have argued that the linkage between taxation and state building also applies to the area of social policy. In this paper, we draw on a fiscal-centred perspective on welfare state development that highlights the fiscal policy role of social insurance as a revenue raising institution to study the fiscal relationship between social insurance and state-building in Israel and Canada – two 'most dissimilar cases' that nonetheless feature strikingly similar patterns with regard to this relationship. As our findings show, in both cases, social insurance programmes were introduced, designed, and utilized to advance fiscal and economic policy capacity and thereby promote state building. Using these programmes and the commitments they created, political actors could legitimize the generation of revenues, build institutional infrastructure for tax collection, and create capital reserves for investing in the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender norms, roles and relations differentially affect women, men, and non-binary individuals' vulnerability to disease. Outbreak response measures also have immediate and long-term gendered effects. However, gender-based analysis of outbreaks and responses is limited by lack of data and little integration of feminist analysis within global health scholarship. Recognising these barriers, this paper applies a gender matrix methodology, grounded in feminist political economy approaches, to evaluate the gendered effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and response in four case studies: China, Hong Kong, Canada, and the UK. Through a rapid scoping of documentation of the gendered effects of the outbreak, it applies the matrix framework to analyse findings, identifying common themes across the case studies: financial discrimination, crisis in care, and unequal risks and secondary effects. Results point to transnational structural conditions which put women on the front lines of the pandemic at work and at home while denying them health, economic and personal security – effects that are exacerbated where racism and other forms of discrimination intersect with gender inequities. Given that women and people living at the intersections of multiple inequities are made additionally vulnerable by pandemic responses, intersectional feminist responses should be prioritised at the beginning of any crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Canada Health Act 1984 (CHA) is considered foundational to Canada's publicly funded health care system (known as Medicare). The CHA provides for the federal transfer of funding to the provinces/territories, in exchange for provincial/territorial adherence to Medicare's key principles of universality; comprehensiveness; portability; accessibility; and, public administration. Medicare is a decentralized health care system, managed independently by Canada's 10 provincial and three territorial governments, allowing for regional adaptations to fit varying degrees of urbanity, remoteness and needs. The Act is silent on its relationship to the Indigenous health care system - what some have described as Canada's 14th health care system. The CHA has not kept pace with Indigenous self-government activities that have since spread across Canada. It has unfortunately crystallized the federal/provincial/territorial/Indigenous jurisdictional fragmentation that perpetuates health inequities and has failed to clarify these jurisdictions' obligations towards Indigenous peoples. As a result of these omissions, access to health services remains a concern for many Indigenous Canadians, resulting in poorer outcomes and premature mortality. In this paper, I argue that Medicare renewal must: make an explicit commitment to Indigenous health equity; clarify jurisdictional obligations; establish effective mechanisms for addressing areas of jurisdictional dispute and/or confusion; and explicitly recognize First Nations and Inuit health care services as integral yet distinct systems, that nevertheless must be welcomed to seamlessly work with provincial health care systems to ensure continuity of care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary cities are witnessing momentous shifts in how institutions and individuals produce and circulate data. Despite recent trends claiming that anyone can create and use data, cities remain marked by persistently uneven access and usage of digital technologies. This is the case as well within the emergent phenomenon of the 'smart city,' where open data are a key strategy for achieving 'smartness,' and increasingly constitute a fundamental dimension of urban life, governance, economic activity, and epistemology. The digital ethnography has extended traditional ethnographic research practices into such digital realms, yet its applicability within open data and smart cities is unclear. The method has tended to overlook the important roles of particular digital artifacts such as the database in structuring and producing knowledge. In this paper, we develop the database ethnography as a rich methodological resource for open data research. This approach centers the database as a key site for the production and materialization of social meaning. The database ethnography draws attention to the ways digital choices and practices—around database design, schema, data models, and so on—leave traces through time. From these traces, we may infer lessons about how phenomena come to be encoded as data and acted upon in urban contexts. Open databases are, in other words, key ways in which knowledges about the smart city are framed, delimited, and represented. More specifically, we argue that open databases limit data types, categorize and classify data to align with technical specifications, reflect the database designer's episteme, and (re)produce conceptions of the world. We substantiate these claims through a database ethnography of the open data portal for the city of Calgary, in Western Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Job insecurity is a widespread workplace stressor that has been extensively investigated using quantitative approaches. With the use of a critical organisational psychology framework, we conducted a meta‐synthesis of 20 qualitative studies to investigate the experience of job insecurity among vulnerable employee groups (i.e., women and immigrants). The qualitative meta‐synthesis results suggest that there are meaningful differences. Specifically, whereas women were more concerned with and exposed to deteriorating working conditions, men experienced job insecurity as a threat to their identity. Among immigrants, the experience of job insecurity is viewed as largely intersecting with the legal system, impacting their ability to remain in their country and making them feel powerless. Thematic evidence also emerged regarding individual actions that participants use to attain security in contrast to corporate strategies that enhance job insecurity. We contribute to the critical organisational psychology literature by discussing how these results test common academic theories and neoliberal assumptions pervasive within the job insecurity literature: We highlight how organisations manufacture job insecurity, question the existence of harmonious social exchanges, discuss the use of job insecurity as a form of worker control, consider the role of the legal context in aiding worker exploitation and argue for an intersectional view of job insecurity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Foreign Policy Journal (CFPJ) is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Positive ageing discourses have proliferated in Western nations, forming key aspects of structured mandates for how to think about, and act towards, ageing bodies. As interpretive resources, positive ageing discourses shape how adults growing older think about themselves, their bodies and the bodies of others in relation to the process of ageing and the imperative to 'age well'. Informed by governmentality, this paper considers how positive ageing discourses function as technologies of government to inform and direct conduct. Drawing on in-depth narrative data, this analysis traces how ageing citizens take up and negotiate positive ageing discourses in their everyday lives, drawing attention to the intensive work, inexorable focus on the body and numerous resources that the enactment of positive ageing requires. Specifically, this analysis illuminates the interplay between the lived experiences of ageing and the socio-culturally structured mandates that shape how ageing and ageing bodies are conceptualised and approached, and draws attention to the moments of tension that arise out of such interplay. We suggest that these moments of tension highlight how the bodywork practices that older adults rigorously and continuously engage in are not so much directed towards the pursuit of ageless ageing, but rather are a response to the inescapable threat of dependency, decline and loss of agency, and thus operate to affirm ageist underpinnings of positive ageing discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this pa per, we argue for the importance of unsettling dominant narratives in the current terrain of harm-reduction policy, practice and research. To accomplish this, we trace the historical developments regarding the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), the Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) and harm-reduction policies and practice. We argue that multiple historical junctures rather than single causes of social exclusion engender the processes of marginalisation, propelled by social movements, institutional interests, state legislation, community practices, neo-liberalism and governmentality techniques. We analyse interests (activist, lay expert, institutional and state) in the harm-reduction field, and consider conceptualisations of risk, pleasure, stigma, social control and exclusionary moral identities. Based on our review of the literature, this paper provides recommendations for social workers and others delivering health and social care interested in the fields of substance use, HIV prevention and harm reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This study contributes to the ongoing efforts to address systemic inequality within social work by examining Canadian social workers' attitudes toward immigrants who are permanent residents (PR), refugees, temporary residents (TR), or undocumented immigrants. Using a cross-sectional design with a convenience sample (n = 653), we explore how social workers' attitudes toward immigrants vary in relation to (a) respondents' demographics, (b) contact with immigrants, (c) perceptions of equal opportunities among immigrants, (d) perceptions of deservingness for immigrants with different legal statuses, and (e) the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on these attitudes. Findings: While Canadian social workers generally express positive attitudes toward immigrants, there is a slightly stronger endorsement for PR and refugees to access public services compared to nonstatus (NS) immigrants and TR. Social workers who identify as conservative or have limited contact with immigrants are more likely to perceive NS immigrants as potential criminal threats or burdens on the healthcare system. Significantly, a majority of respondents feel that their social work training inadequately prepares them to work effectively with immigrants. Applications: Canadian social workers advocate for principles of diversity, inclusion, and commitment to social justice. However, perceptions regarding which immigrants deserve access to social services vary based on legal status, suggesting a limitation in social workers' professional mandate. The study discusses implications for social work education and training, emphasizing the need to address and unsettle systemic racism within the profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 has imposed numerous challenges onto Canadians including income insecurity, reduced access to healthcare, and last-minute workplace adaptations. Although these obstacles have altered the lives of thousands, many people in the disability community have been struggling with these challenges for years. This paper outlines how Canada's response to the COVID-19 pandemic uncovers the pervasive ableist attitudes that are present at both the government and societal levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A bibliography on the subject of health politics, law, and policy is presented which includes the books "Explorations in the Economics of Aging," edited by David A. Wise, "Better Doctors, Better Patients, Better Decisions: Envisioning Health Care 2020," edited by Gerd Gigerenzer and J. A. Miur Gray, and "The Bleeding Disease: Hemophilia and the Unintended Consequences of Medical Progress," by Stephen Pemberton.

Though Canadian universities are legally required to accommodate disabled employees, disabled faculty still experience difficulties navigating neoliberal performance standards and medicalized conceptualizations of disability. Drawing on data from a qualitative study with Canadian university faculty, this paper explores the experiences of five disabled academics. Our analysis draws on post-structural understandings of neoliberalism, discourse, disciplinary power, and governmentality, as well as Rosemarie Garland-Thomson's concepts of the fit and misfit. Though the sample is small, this analysis suggests universities pose disabling contexts for academics. Disability is cast as individual responsibility, leaving disabled academics navigating accommodations without institutional support. The normative academic constructed through a discourse of efficiency and productivity is the measure against which disabled academics are evaluated, requiring self-governance to produce themselves as 'good enough' academics. Although higher education environments are increasingly diverse, disabled academics are still having to prove their right to exist in academia, hindering their abilities to participate fully. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This qualitative study was informed by critical race feminism and sought to examine Canadian Black women's motivations for participating in the research study that explored their experiences with the police in the context of intimate partner violence (IPV), and the key factors that complicated their decisions. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 25 self-identified women over the age of 18. Findings indicated that Black women's experiences of anti-Black racism and various forms of systemic barriers influenced their decisions to disclose their experiences of IPV. Key themes included the invisibility of Black women's narratives, fostering political change, and the impact of racialized and gendered insider positionality. Given these findings, positioning Black women's narratives at the centre of IPV research creates opportunities for Black women to share their experiences of IPV, recognizes them as experts of their own experiences, identifies their differential experiences accessing services and supports and the barriers that impact their participation in research studies. The study provides strategies on how to increase Black women's participation and engagement in IPV research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changing political, social and economic circumstances operating across a variety of scales are transforming the socio-spatial landscapes for Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans and Queer (LGBTQ) people in Toronto. While the established gay village continues to be the imagined and material centre of political and social life for the LGBTQ community, various groups are increasingly utilizing other locations in the downtown core but outside the Village, particularly an area know colloquially as 'Queer West.' This paper argues that for some queer women/gender queers individuals, the Village is not viewed as a desirable location for social or political organising given perceptions the area is dominated by largely white, middle class, gay men. Further, the possibilities, potentials and limitations for queer women/genderqueer individuals to take up alternative locations are constituted through complex social relations and include notions of what 'queered' and 'queering' space entails and participants' own imagined sense of place and reflecting aspects of their own classed, racialized and gendered positioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are alternative development models relevant in the context of revitalization of disadvantaged communities without the visible role of the state in building development strategies? In some reasonable conditions, the state has to carry out specific tasks which would guarantee marginalized communities to become a relevant partner in creating and establishing participatory development approaches. In many developed countries the inclusion schema is usually established but power relations are not reconstructed properly in a sense of a more fair cooperation between the state and disadvantaged communities. The main goal of the present paper is to problematise development policies according to marginalized communities in Slovenia and Canada and to show which development principles from Canadian socio-economic praxis are revenant for Slovenian reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalized labour mobility has led to questions regarding the degree to which social work education in one country can be applicable to practice in another. This paper examines social work education programmes and practice contexts in South Africa, England and Canada as examples through which to examine this question. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores why Canadian government policies, particularly those related to obesity, are ‘stuck’ at promoting individual lifestyle change. Key concepts within complexity and critical theories are considered a basis for understanding the continued emphasis on lifestyle factors in spite of strong evidence indicating that a change in the environment and conditions of poverty isare needed to tackle obesity. Opportunities to get ‘unstuck’ from individual-level lifestyle interventions are also suggested by critical concepts found within these two theories, although getting ‘unstuck’ will also require cross-sectoral collective action. Our discussion focuses on the Canadian context but will undoubtedly be relevant to other countries, where health promoters and others engage in similar struggles for fundamental government policy change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I apply the work of Abrams and Iossifov (Public Choice 129:249–262, ) to monetary policy in Canada to see if same political party affiliation is needed to produce evidence of political opportunism. After modifying their analysis to maintain the time-series consistency of their variables for Canada, I find that both an error correction model and a Taylor rule reformulation of their test generate evidence consistent with same party political opportunism, but only weakly so. On the other hand, I also find the presence of more traditional indicators of political influence. In particular, the data suggest that the election of a Liberal party government, a decrease in the degree of political competition, and to a lesser extent, the election of a minority government all positively influence the expansiveness of Canadian monetary policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the advocacy of mothers and intended mothers in the fields of autism and infertility. Mothers and intended mothers have developed a special competence in dealing with professionals, and in negotiating the delicate balance between expert medical discourses and expertise grounded in their situated knowledge and experiences. Drawing on the social movement and public policy literature, we seek to disrupt taken-for-granted assumptions about the gendered role of women and mothers in these complex and emotionally charged policy fields. We argue that (intended) mothers are far more likely than other women to take on the major advocacy role considering their need to respond to bodily, social, and/or cultural 'failures' imposed on them by the medical establishment. Issues of access to fertility treatments and care for autistic children not only provide a vantage point from which to study their experience in the policy arena, but also to ask broader questions about the role of the welfare state and the shifting authority of experts in policy processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzing data obtained from the literature and our own calculations, significant differences were found among countries in their levels of class voting. The Scandinavian countries had the highest and Canada and the USA the lowest levels of class voting. Since the 1950s, there was a decline in almost all countries in the level of class voting. In this article, several hypotheses were deduced from a limited number of individual assumptions, each purporting to explain the differences among and declining trends within countries. Testing these hypotheses with multilevel techniques revealed that differences among countries can best be explained by their population's religious-ethnic-linguistic diversity, and by the union density within countries. The decline in most countries can best be explained by the rise in their standard of living. Furthermore, a rise in the percentage of union members, especially among the nonmanual classes, accelerated the decline in the level of class voting in some countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the global rates of intimate partner violence (IPV) for Indigenous women have been acknowledged as substantial, few studies have incorporated an analysis of the impacts of colonization in the context of IPV. This secondary mixed-methods analysis explored the experiences of 40 Indigenous women from the Canadian prairie provinces who were abused by their intimate partners. The women discussed the impact of colonization, including the use of residential schools, to break down family life, spiritual beliefs, and languages, at times linking this to IPV. Of the 40 women, 38 described male partners as the abusers and two identified female abusive partners. Consistent with the literature, many of the male partners physically assaulted the respondents so severely that the women were injured and were at risk of death. Almost half of the men (47.4%) used sexually coercive strategies and/or sexually assaulted the women. Implications include the importance of professionals considering the broader historical experiences and possible trauma of Indigenous women who seek assistance for IPV from abusive partners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethno-cultural disparities in blood and tissue donation patterns have been described as an emergent challenge in the context of the transfusion medicine literature (Boulware et al. in Med Care 40(2):85-95, ; Molzahn et al. in Nephrol Nurs J 30(1):17-26, , Can J Nurs Res 36(4):110-128, ). In the North American context, much has been written about blood and tissue donation patterns among different religious and cultural groups within the United States. However, there are few available statistics or descriptive research that discusses blood donation decisions among Aboriginal Canadians. In 2001, Aboriginal Canadians represented approximately 4.1 % of the total Canadian population, or 1.1 million persons (Birn et al., in Textbook of international health: global health in a dynamic world. Oxford University Press, New York, NY, ). Comparatively, Canada Blood Services reports that Aboriginal Canadians represent only 0.9% of registered donors (Canadian Blood Services ). These low donation patterns suggest that blood donation choice among Aboriginal Canadians requires better understanding. This paper discusses several factors that may influence Aboriginal health choices, specifically those associated with blood donation decision-making. Several influential factors will be discussed, including: the meaning of the body and its parts in relationship to the interconnectedness of all things (religio-cultural), the reflexivity of choice and control (political), and relationships with others (social). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Personalisation has now become centre-stage in adult social care and continues to have an enduring level of political commitment and on-going appeal for many disabled people. And yet its roll-out has taken place during a time of austerity where central governments in many neo-liberal countries are re-imagining (read: shrinking) their role in social care provision. This paper reports on findings from an empirical study of relevant government officials from different countries which have advanced personalisation: Canada, England and the US. It reports on their views on personalisation and the remaking of adult social care, and managing expectations for change. Despite the relative success of personalisation, the findings reveal a tempered, cautious account, with respondents aware of the pitfalls and risks inherent in self-led support, government limitations in changing systems and an end to the primary involvement by the state in the creation of a social care market. With this in mind, the study's findings make a strong case for forms of ‘progressive localism’, as imagined by Featherstone et al. (2012), in galvanising local community resources alongside more radical politics in order to make self-led support achieve its desired outcomes on the ground. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Ottawa Law Review is the property of University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In the last two decades, emergency food provision (e.g., food banks, meal programmes) has become an increasingly institutionalized form of hunger relief. Critiques of the emergency food system, as articulated by Poppendieck’s 1998 book Sweet Charity?, suggest that such programmes are unable to cope with growing hunger in a meaningful, stable, efficient, or culturally appropriate way, and that they may facilitate government retrenchment. Meanwhile, popular attention has increasingly focused on the environmental and social costs of our globalized industrial food system, and efforts to challenge it (e.g., urban fruit gleaning, chicken rearing) are becoming widespread. These efforts have drawn new kinds of organizations into the world of food (in)security. Drawing on organizational documents and key informant interviews, this paper examines how emergency food provision is changing because of the rise of ‘community food security’ discourse and practice in the period since Sweet Charity? Findings suggest that emergency food providers have responded to critiques in partial and incongruent ways. Organizations face structural constraints that curtail their ability to reorganize, while new kinds of organizations are engaging in community food security projects, both challenging and reinforcing the charity food model in ways that have relevance for progressive (food) organizing more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper explores in brief the nature of ice hockey in Canada, its impact on the national identity, and its origins and legacies. The authors also refer to hockey's relation to politics and business and its growing popularity in these fields. By studying the impact of ice hockey in Canada, the authors have discovered that hockey allows researchers to get an insight into the political life in Canada and the nature of Canadian national identity, and that it has also become a profitable business. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the social justice initiative of the Canadian Nurses Association (CNA). It focuses mainly on the two editions of the CNA's discussion document on social justice, and particularly on its emphasis on the principle of equity. The paper considers whether a coherent justification can be made for the CNA's espousal of equity, and the discussion focuses in turn on the principle of equity itself and on the CNA's position in relation to equity. A body of arguments supporting an active moral role for professions, generally known as civic professionalism, provides a framework for exploring the CNA's role in this respect. Justifications for equity are explored in relation to the liberal-contextualist spectrum, and civic professional arguments are subjected to the same structure of analysis. This is in turn related to evidence from the literature concerning nursing perceptions of equity. The paper concludes that contextualist justifications of equity and civic professionalism support one another more robustly than liberal justifications in relation to the CNA's initiative; and that they also sit more comfortably with the realities of the CNA's role in relation to nursing, and to the Canadian health care system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines narratives of women from the Indian subcontinent, including Canadian refugee claimants, emerging from the conflict regions of Pakistan, Punjab, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, who have presented suicidal ideation or attempts or died by suicide. The focus is on the relationship of suicide and suicide behavior to particular systemic stressors related to familial, social, and group agendas. The vulnerability of individual women is presented in the context of gender issues, deeply embedded group trauma, historical legacies, and intragenerational dynamics, as well as acute stressors that contribute to the underlying distress of these women. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Public--private partnerships (P3s) with the for-profit private sector are increasingly used in Canada to deliver public infrastructure and support services within the health care sector (e.g., hospitals, clinics, community health centres). This paper examines the emergence and legacy of P3s in the Canadian health care sector, classifying them as a form of neoliberal accumulation by dispossession and discussing their inability to live up to proponents' promises. Economic and social costs are examined, and examples are drawn from operational P3 hospitals in Canada. The article also briefly examines how P3s have been affected by the recent global financial crisis, arguing that despite serious problems with the private finance component of these projects, ultimately the policy is poised to weather the storm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite recent critiques of contemporary obesity discourses that link 'modern Western lifestyles' to an 'obesity epidemic', the population's weight remains a central concern of current dietary guidelines. Food choices that are considered beneficial to maintaining a certain weight are understood to play a key role in one's health. This concern reflects medico-moral assumptions about the properties of food and what people should eat. However, the impact of obesity discourses on different individuals and social groups is rarely considered, although there is some evidence that people do generate, reflect and resist the norms and standards set for them, including those that relate to food/weight. In this paper, we will examine the perspectives on fatness and food choice amongst Black and White women and men living in Vancouver and Halifax, Canada. With this examination, we will challenge conventional assumptions about the singular 'modern Western lifestyle' that leads to obesity concerns by teasing out some of the social, cultural and political contexts within which people conceptualise issues regarding weight and make their food choices. By examining the experiences of both women and men we will also provide important insights into the gendered ways in which people engage with obesity discourses and the injunction to 'eat healthily' as a form of weight management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper explores the promise and paradox of federalism in Iraq, Sri Lanka and Quebec and Canada. The author has doubts as to whether the paradox can be effectively resolved with institutional fine-tuning. Rather, for him, questions of political justice prevail when exploring whether federalism leads to or calms secessionism. The challenge then is not institutional but pre-institutional—things that must be agreed upon before normal politics can operate. While it is comparatively easy to adjust institutions, it is more difficult to adjust—let alone bring about—these pre-institutional features. Despite the risks inherent in the institutional set-up of federalism, there might be little else on the table to keep divided societies together in a liberal democratic system that respects the basic demands of justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to place Canadian public policy programs in a comparative context and to provide an overview that identifies the status of the Canadian public policy analysis profession and policy analysis/policy studies instruction in light of domestic and global developments. The authors acknowledge that instruction plays a crucial role in the training as well as in the future approach and orientation of policy analysts and they analyze shifts in the perspective of policy analysis studies and policy analysis instruction. This preliminary comparative paper primarily discusses the characteristics and training needs of policy studies/analysis by tracking the needs of the profession; the development of the field to date; orientations arising from conceptual and historical developments in Canada, the United States, and Europe, and shaping particular public policy programs, curriculum orientations, and practices; and implications of and lessons drawn from the various contexts in comparison to Canada. Throughout the paper the terms policy analysis and policy studies are used interchangeably, because in the various traditions highlighted in this paper, programs of policy studies, rather than policy analysis, are prevalent. Policy analysis skills are promoted, albeit with various degrees of emphasis, within these programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]