This article examines statements issued by municipal governments, local organizations, and Indigenous communities that cancelled Canada Day celebrations in 2021, following news confirming physical evidence of unmarked graves at former residential schools. We argue that the statements reflect political logics of the past, present, and future, including dominant national narratives of liberal multiculturalism, residual logics of white nationalism, and emergent, transformative projects of Indigenous-defined reconciliation and resurgence. Through dominant narratives, the policy of cancelling Canada Day is presented as an expression of Canadian values, while settler-colonialism is obscured. Meanwhile, the residual white nationalism of the post-Confederation movement surfaces as statements tend to speak to an imagined normative Canadian subject who—only temporarily—suspends their celebration of the nation-state. Finally, the statements evidence emergent political forces, including Indigenous articulations of transformative reconciliation, resistance to settler-colonialism, and expressions of sovereignty, which signal the potential for major shifts in practices of national celebration in Canada.

Les élections municipales de 2021 à la Ville de Québec ont été marquées par une forte compétition entre cinq candidats et une saillance des enjeux concernant la construction d'un tramway et d'un troisième lien autoroutier entre Québec et sa Rive-Sud. Ainsi, cette élection représente un contexte idéal pour étudier le comportement électoral au niveau local et plus spécifiquement le vote sur enjeu qui a été très peu étudié dans le contexte municipal. Nous soutenons que ces deux enjeux ont acquis une valeur symbolique et ont été exploités comme enjeu de brèche par le candidat à la mairie Jean-François Gosselin. À l'aide d'une analyse multivariée, nous testons la relation entre l'appui aux deux projets de transport et l'intention de vote. Nos résultats montrent que les attitudes des électeurs envers ces deux enjeux sont fortement corrélées avec leur choix de vote et suggèrent une continuité entre le comportement électoral municipal, provincial et fédéral, du moins lorsqu'il est question de vote sur les enjeux.

The proliferation of agencies and arm's-length bodies provides opportunities for elected governments to reassert political control in a fragmented public service through staffing and board appointments. We have little basis to make systematic claims about the politicization of agencies in Canada. This study addresses this gap by drawing on the Government of Canada's Staffing and Non-Partisanship Survey (SNPS) micro data from 2018 and 2021, which surveys employees in departments and agencies with questions related to political impartiality in carrying out government duties. We ask: Do employees in agencies in the Government of Canada report a climate of less political impartiality than those working in conventional departments? The data reveals that those working in agencies are less likely to report their organizations acting impartially politically in carrying out their duties than those in conventional departments, though this is driven largely by particular types of agencies, namely those focused on enforcement.

According to the “miracle of aggregation” principle, in the absence of systematic biases, errors in individual judgments within a population should cancel each other out and lead to a correct decision at the aggregate level. This article explores potential individual- and group-level correlates of the accuracy of citizens’ electoral expectations and investigates how potential markers of political sophistication—namely, educational attainment and political interest—could be used to improve upon the raw aggregation of citizens’ forecasts using massive survey datasets collected during six Canadian national and provincial election campaigns between 2011 and 2022 (n = 279,003). We find that while educational attainment and interest increase the probability of a correct forecast at the individual level, delegating the forecasting task based on these variables does not necessarily lead to improvements in the accuracy of aggregate-level predictions. At the group level, we fail to uncover any evidence that sociological or informational diversity increases forecasting accuracy.

This article examines the effects of changes in 2018–19 to the Income Tax Act and Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) regulations that were ostensibly intended to facilitate public policy engagement by Canadian charities. The article examines a case study of charities in the international development sector through interviews with charity leaders and quantitative analysis of data from the Canada Revenue Agency, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying, and House of Commons Standing Committees. The article finds that the 2019 change in CRA regulations had very little effect on policy engagement by international development charities. Rather, a series of other factors continue to shape and constrain policy engagement by charities—including concerns about the future repoliticization of the CRA, misunderstandings of the regulations, difficulties fundraising for public policy work, fears of jeopardizing federal government funding, and a strategic preference for insider approaches to policy advocacy.

Depuis le lancement en 2016 du mégaprojet d'exploitation minière à ciel ouvert de l’« Arc minier de l'Orénoque » au Venezuela, plusieurs groupes armés appelés sindicatos ont pris possession de certains territoires d'extraction. En faisant nôtre la définition wéberienne de l’État, nous formons l'hypothèse selon laquelle le groupement politique du sindicato présent sur l'un de ces territoires, celui de Las Claritas, peut être qualifié d’État embryonnaire. Poursuivant alors les interrogations de Bourdieu sur l’émergence de l’État, nous cherchons à documenter le processus d’étatisation et à témoigner de la façon dont les « bandits » deviennent des « princes ». Basée sur une démarche ethnographique et documentaire, notre recherche nous conduit à mettre en avant quatre mécanismes participant au processus d’étatisation : l'institutionnalisation, la monopolisation, la légitimation et la démarcation.

Deliberative processes are an antidote to despair about the inadequacies of politics-as-usual, but the “deliberative wave” (OECD 2021) of these initiatives around the globe has the potential, in some contexts, to be the latest face of colonization. In Aotearoa New Zealand, one project has worked since 2019 to design a climate assembly that enacts Te Tiriti o Waitangi (1840) obligations to honour Māori political authority. This article outlines the project's three innovations to the citizens’ assembly design that centre Māori forms of governance and reflect Māori deliberative protocols, and highlights three important distinctions to how a group of tangata Tiriti (people of the Treaty) has worked in partnership with tangata whenua (people of the land). Each feature has been vital to becoming Te Tiriti-led despite a context of ongoing colonization, with this place-based assembly having major implications for deliberation theory and practice worldwide.

In federal states, immigration regulation is frequently shared with subnational levels of governance. In Canada, provinces even have immigration selection powers. This is significant, as an increasing proportion of new permanent residents (1) are now selected by a province, and (2) previously held a temporary residence permit. However, the ways in which the interaction between the federalization of immigration and two-step migration impacts migrants’ experiences is still not well understood. This article contributes to the literature by providing deeper insights into the effects of the federalization of immigration on migrants. Based on the case of Quebec, it analyzes how the federalization of two-step migration affects migrants’ transitions from temporary to permanent status, whereby immigrants become “included.” The article contends that rather than functioning as an administrative process of linear inclusion, the federalization of two-step migration produces an ambiguous process of inclusion which reflects contradictory federal-provincial political agendas and tensions.

Within contemporary feminism, perspectives on men being feminist range from those who are “viscerally opposed” to those who argue that engaging with men more systematically is “the most consequential move feminists can make.” While some feminist political scholars have called to expand the feminist agenda to include analyses of men as gendered, resistance to this expansion is significantly entrenched, and men who identify as feminist are frequently regarded with distrust. Yet, if feminist efforts are to transform deeply entrenched gendered power structures, there is good reason to engage fully with the many ways all conceptions and practices of gender work to maintain and/or challenge current power structures. This article offers a relational approach to feministing—that is, an approach grounded in becoming feminist through praxes centred on uncovering points of solidarity across and within gender identity categories, the pursuit of coalition-oriented politics and the prioritization of accountability through action not identity.

Local candidates seeking to personalize their campaigns and build affinity with target voters may highlight particular aspects of their identities within campaign communications. One such aspect they may reference is their class background. For example, campaign materials frequently mention a candidate's occupational or educational background in order to build rapport with the electorate and indicate shared status, interests or values. This article compares the self-presentation of class identity among political candidates in the 2022 Ontario and Québec provincial elections. We code 976 online candidate biographies to assess how class background is referenced and examine the impact of variables such as party affiliation and riding demographics on self-presentation of class status. We further compare campaign biographies with data on candidates’ class backgrounds separately sourced from news reports and social media (LinkedIn). This allows us to determine which elements of class identity candidates choose to highlight, downplay or embellish in their campaign biographies.

In Hot Mess: Mothering Through a Code Red Climate Emergency, Sarah Marie Wiebe delves into the important but often overlooked intersection of motherhood and the ongoing climate emergency. The book offers a thoughtful exploration of how new mothers experience the climate crisis and emphasizes the necessity of centring care in the discourse on environmental justice. Wiebe's main argument revolves around the need for pushing past individualism to truly centre care and community at the heart of climate crisis mitigation efforts. She draws from her own experiences as a new mother, as well as the experiences of other communities in Hawaii and rural settings across Canada, to illustrate the tangible impacts of climate change on maternal health and community well-being.