Which Canadian Members of Parliament (MPs) are on Bluesky and what types of content do they share? Taking up calls for more mere description of how emerging social media platforms are used in their initial period of operation, this research note describes how many MPs are using Bluesky and what types of content they share. Of the 123 MPs already on Bluesky, we find that they apply the same logic and understanding of platform affordances from Twitter (now X), with posts most frequently discussing policy, the Ottawa bubble and their constituency. This research note contributes to our understanding of how MPs use Bluesky to communicate with the public in a high-choice media environment.

Comparative research documents substantial education- and income-based class gaps in parent spending on children’s education, with important repercussions for the perpetuation of intergenerational (dis)advantage. Spurred by higher levels of income inequality and associated economic transformations, some speculate these gaps may have widened, as parents feel intensified pressure to best position their children in increasingly competitive labour markets. We examine the size and evolution—over time and in response to higher inequality—of these class gaps in the Canadian provinces, a context where we propose competitive pressures may be muted by the country’s relatively unstratified post-secondary education system. Exploiting provincial and temporal variation in Statistics Canada’s Survey of Household Spending (2006–2019), we show that more highly educated parents, and to a lesser extent high-income ones, place distinct emphasis on education spending. However, we find limited evidence of changes in these spending patterns in response to income inequality or over time.

Depuis plus d’une décennie, le Mali est confronté à une crise sécuritaire complexe ayant conduit au déploiement de plusieurs missions internationales de paix, dont la Minusma. Si cette dernière avait pour objectif de soutenir la stabilisation du pays, elle a progressivement fait l’objet de critiques croissantes au sein de la population.

Cet article propose d’analyser les attentes des Maliens à l’égard de la Minusma et d’examiner comment leurs perceptions ont influencé son acceptabilité ainsi que l’évaluation de son efficacité. En mobilisant l’approche de l’évaluation qualitative des politiques publiques, l’étude considère cette mission comme une politique publique internationale de paix. L’analyse repose sur une enquête qualitative réalisée à Bamako en 2020 et 2021. Elle révèle un décalage entre les attentes locales et le cadre de référence de la mission ainsi que l’importance de la légitimité locale dans la conduite, voire la poursuite, des opérations de paix.

This study examines the absence and presence of race- and anti-Black-related issues in Canadian political science. This research employs a six-pronged mixed methods approach, combining quantitative data analysis with qualitative examinations of race debates within the discipline. It investigates introductory textbooks, Black Studies programs, graduate courses, comprehensive examination reading lists, the Canadian Journal of Political Science and academic awards. The findings reveal that Canadianists are not exempt from the effects of racism. The results highlight significant challenges in decolonizing Canadian political science, such as incorporating race into university curriculum and providing diversity training for editorial committees at major academic presses. This study underscores the pervasive reach of racism and anti-Blackness in the country and calls for adopting relational approaches to studying Black people in Canada. It contributes to the growing discourse on anti-Blackness, addressing crucial gaps in the discipline.

Despite extensive research on issue engagement, much remains to be learned. This article advances our understanding of issue competition in three ways. First, it examines whether political parties focus on the same issues in a setting with high electoral volatility, studying four Quebec elections from 2012 to 2022. Second, it assesses whether this trend is evident in both press releases and tweets. Third, it investigates why parties converge on the same issues. Findings reveal convergence levels in Quebec match other democracies and remain consistent across platforms. Ideologically similar parties are more likely to address the same issues. Two issue types are identified: peripheral, less visible issues and governance issues, consistently highlighted by all parties within a jurisdiction, reflecting a stable electoral agenda. These findings align with growing evidence that engagement dominates issue competition while demonstrating that convergence and divergence can occur around few key issues that remain relatively stable over time.

Les partis politiques adoptent des techniques de marketing dans l’élaboration et le déploiement de leurs campagnes électorales. Parmi elles, on note le recours au microciblage politique. En contexte canadien, cette approche n’a pas été étudiée au palier municipal. Cet article vise à combler cette lacune. Des entretiens semi-dirigés ont été réalisés auprès de 17 stratèges actifs dans quatre grandes villes québécoises lors des élections municipales de 2021. L’analyse de leurs récits montre qu’en dépit de la présence de réflexions et de comportements apparentés à une logique de marketing politique, les campagnes étudiées n’ont pas recours au microciblage. Elles se concentrent plutôt principalement sur le pointage et la mobilisation électorale, sans mettre à profit les données collectées sur l’électorat. Cette situation pourrait toutefois évoluer advenant une professionnalisation des campagnes dans les cycles électoraux à venir.

This research note introduces a new publicly available dataset identifying which federal candidates are out as LGBTQ2S+. The dataset comprises 4,201 candidates who ran in 2015, 2019 and 2021 for the five parties that won seats in the House of Commons. In this research note, we describe the replicable procedure we followed to identify out LGBTQ2S+ candidates, which involved systematic individual candidate searches. This procedure identified 176 LGBTQ2S+ candidates in total, which is more than in previous datasets. We illustrate how the data can be used by documenting how LGBTQ2S+ candidates changed over time relative to straight cisgender candidates. This dataset will allow researchers to examine a range of questions about LGBTQ2S+ representation as well as conduct intersectional analyses.

This article advances the concept of deliberative campaigns as a structured, cyclical and party-integrated process to reinvigorate democratic systems under strain from exclusion, polarization and disengagement. Deliberative campaigns embed ongoing, reciprocal deliberation between citizens and representatives throughout and beyond election cycles, making party platform creation a continuous, participatory endeavor. Drawing on the systemic approach to democracy, the article argues that deliberative campaigns uniquely combine deliberation, representation and voting to better address empowered inclusion, collective will formation and collective decision-making. Unlike conventional campaigns, which tend toward elite-driven, one-sided communication and microtargeting, deliberative campaigns foster informed, inclusive dialogue that can rebuild trust, reduce polarization and enhance accountability. The approach offers both theoretical and practical contributions to democratic systems scholarship by showing how institutionalizing citizen–representative dialogue can create platforms that more faithfully represent collective priorities and strengthen responsiveness in partisan democratic politics.

Liberal and Conservative federal governments engage in nation-building within official languages governance, seeking to align social and political norms with partisan principles. This article compares the Chrétien, Harper and Justin Trudeau governments’ instrumentalization of Canadian identity in the five action plans and roadmaps for official languages developed since 2003. These documents are comprehensive five-year outlines of the governments’ approach to official languages, interspersed with priorities, funding commitments and minister statements. This analysis is facilitated by a novel interpretive framework, drawing attention to the use of a national narrative, values and affect. Our analysis reveals the Chrétien government to have translated the Liberal, civics-based depiction of Canadian identity to suit an international focus. The Harper government portrayed Canadian identity as true to settler roots, rebuking the Liberal model. Finally, the Trudeau government established a pluralist Canadian narrative to justify Liberal civics as a means for protecting and promoting equity and diversity.

Since its establishment in 1979, the Women’s Caucus of the Canadian Political Science Association (CPSA) has served an important networking, mentoring and advocacy role for women political scientists. While small and informal in its early days, over time the Caucus has become increasingly more formalized and structured in the support it provides to women within the discipline. Drawing on CPSA documents, scholarship on women in the discipline and interviews with several caucus participants, this article identifies the factors leading to the establishment of the CPSA’s Women’s Caucus and traces its development and history over the past five decades. It identifies four distinct periods within the Caucus’s history (1970–1979, 1980–1992, 1993–2005 and 2006 to the present) and argues that as women’s role in the academy has changed, the Caucus has taken on a wider range of priorities and tasks, reflecting the changing composition of the discipline.

This article reconceptualizes the “rural problematique” in Canada through the contemporary “problem” of the rural migrant. Utilizing critical historical institutional theory, we argue that the challenges newcomers face in rural spaces not only reveal the stagnation of settlement policies but also demonstrate the long-lasting, integrative and harmful impacts of policy inertia. While newcomers experience the implications of inadequate and exclusionary social policies particularly acutely, the obstacles they face cannot be solved through changes to migration policy alone. Rather, we show how these barriers are the result of the historical, specific role that rural Canada plays within the political economy of the country, which relies upon the delineation between rural and urban, and the persistence of the rural as problematic. Thus, an analysis of the contemporary “problem” of the rural migrant demonstrates how the context can change, but the outcomes, which are consistent with the broader rural dynamic, remain the same.