How did the Fathers of Canadian Confederation understand United States federalism? What lessons did they presume to draw from it and how did they apply them to the Confederation project? In this article, James Madison's comprehensive test of federalism, as set out in the thirty-ninth paper of The Federalist, is used as a tool to examine the Canadians' views of American federalism, particularly in relation to the questions of state sovereignty and the role of an upper chamber. The article suggests that their preoccupation with the threat of state sovereignty led them to concentrate on division of powers issues and, as a result, to pay little attention to the federal possibilities of a second chamber. And it concludes that, because they were working with a parliamentary model of government, not a republican one, these possibilities were not—and are not now—as promising as some political scientists suggest.

The article is an effort to think through the relation between the language of values, values education, and technology. It links Nietzsche's account of nihilism as the cognitive effort to create the illusion of adaptation and mastery of what is contingent and spontaneous and the process by which these life-denying values cause themselves to be devalued with a consideration of how psychology is turned to adjusting individuals and populations to the efficient securing of technological processes. George Grant's writings are employed as the vehicle of access to these reflections.

The discovery of important oil fields in the southeast of Mexico in 1972 transformed totally the petroleum industry. That transformation, which was a part of a more general policy of industrial decentralization, induced a considerable interurban population migration. The object of this article is to discuss the migration in detail and to analyze the new link between the population and the territory, the population trying to establish itself in a buffer region against Central America. This link can be understood from the kind of political and social mobilization that characterizes the populist political system of Mexico. However, the tie to that specific social mobilization was not so strong as the centripetal movement of rent-transfer was reinforced, throwing a light on some crisis components of Mexico's system.

In July 1986, the Social Credit party of British Columbia held only the second leadership convention in its history. This article uses data from a survey of delegates to the convention to describe the divisions within the party, to assess disenchantment with the Bennett government and to estimate the effects of these and other factors on the final outcome of the convention. Analysis of a large number of policy and opinion items reveals a party largely united on economic policy but divided on social policy and issues of party organization and direction. However, leadership aspirants appeared unwilling to exploit these differences. The struggle for succession became one of “insiders” versus “outsiders,” between party professionals and the grass roots, between non-populists and populists, and the latter gave William Vander Zalm his victory.

Regional ministers, it is said, have declined in importance over the past three decades. While granting the disappearance of figures whose influence spanned broad regions, this article argues that in the last cabinet of Pierre Trudeau (1980–1984) the regional minister system was to a degree revived and formalized within the context of cabinet decision-making. The impact of this system is examined with respect to regional development and employment creation programmes. To account for the renewed influence of regional ministers, attention is focussed on changes in the machinery of government and on the political and economic climate of the time. The case of one minister in particular, Lloyd Axworthy, suggests that a contemporary regional minister's success is dependent primarily on the ability to mobilize the resources of the administrative state.

Identifying the effect of macro-economic performance on levels of partisan support in Canada has attracted considerable attention. Findings in Canada, as elsewhere, often diverge depending upon whether aggregate or individual-level data are used. This study employs individual-level data from 1974 to 1984 to examine the effect of changes in unemployment and inflation on support for the various parties. Controlling for partisan and leader effects, we find that the electoral effect of inflation and unemployment is highly variable over time, and is in an unstable partisan direction. Indeed, at times the partisan effect was perverse.

Samuel LaSelva has challenged the argument that mandatory retirement is a form of age discrimination and, as such, is unjust and unconstitutional. However, the alternative view that justice requires mandatory retirement seems incompatible with a liberal conception of justice. Moreover, the argument that liberal justice permits mandatory retirement, because of a conflict between rights of different generations, requires a balancing of those rights against one another, and hence against the consequences of their infringement. Such an assessment leads to the conclusion that mandatory retirement is neither constitutional nor just.

Professor Drummond has raised so many objections to my study of mandatory retirement that I cannot reply to all of them without taxing the patience of readers of this JOURNAL. But one of his criticisms articulates a conception of liberal justice under the Charter, and it is to this important issue that I shall confine my reply.