Despite long-standing academic interest in Indigenous peoples and the Canadian state, there has been little study of Indigenous elected officials as representational actors. We ask: What are the distinctively Indigenous forms of representation practised by Indigenous elected officials in Canada? And how does clarifying the role of Indigenous elected officials as representatives both contribute to and enhance our overall understanding of Indigenous politics, governance and sovereignty? We draw on the existing literatures on substantive representation as well as original interviews conducted with current and former Indigenous elected officials to develop an original conceptualization of Indigenous representation. These actors differ in their perceptions of themselves and their roles as representatives, the representational behaviours they engage in and the outcomes they seek. Our conceptualization of Indigenous representation engages with four themes: Indigenous perspective, Indigenous advocacy, balance with other imperatives including constituency representation and party discipline, and Indigenous nationhood.

In 1974, Richard Simeon and David Elkins published an influential analysis of provincial political cultures. Nearly half a century later, their results still operate as the baseline against which new studies compare their own results. In this article, I re-examine their conclusions, combining five decades of Canadian public opinion survey data (1974–2019). The article replicates their analysis by focusing on three dimensions of political culture examined by Simeon and Elkins: political cynicism, internal political efficacy and external political efficacy. It also expands on their work by accounting for contextual factors that can potentially drive or hinder provincial differences in political culture. The results suggest that Simeon and Elkins’ interpretation of Canadian provincial political cultures needs to be updated, as the patterns they found differ markedly from those identified in this article.

Recent increases in the number of openly LGBTQ2+ candidates have not resulted in a corresponding rise in the number of LGBTQ2+ politicians elected to the Canadian House of Commons, reviving the hypothesis of the “sacrificial lamb” candidacies. Drawing upon Lovenduski and Norris’ work on political recruitment, we analyze the backgrounds and experiences of the 172 LGBTQ2+ candidates who ran in the 2015, 2019 and 2021 federal elections in Canada. Our approach is based on the idea that LGBTQ2+ candidacies are the new sacrificial lambs of Canadian politics, although some of them seem less likely to be sacrificed than others. Indeed, we highlight how the electoral opportunities (for example, district competitiveness) afforded to LGBTQ2+ cis men are more likely to result in success than those afforded to LGBTQ2+ cis women or gender minority candidates.

Cet article étudie les attitudes des Québécois à l’égard des personnes assistées sociales. Il s'intéresse à la variation du niveau d'aide mensuel que les Québécois sont prêts à leur accorder en fonction du profil de prestataires. L'article vise plus spécifiquement à étudier l'influence de l'aptitude au travail en tant qu'heuristique de mérite structurant l'opinion des Québécois. Nos résultats indiquent que les Québécois sont d'avis que les prestataires de l'assistance sociale devraient recevoir des soutiens mensuels inférieurs à ce qu'ils considèrent être le revenu minimum nécessaire pour couvrir les besoins de base. L'opinion des Québécois quant au niveau adéquat d'aide devant être offerte aux personnes assistées sociales est aussi fortement structurée par la question de l'aptitude au travail et par la perception que les individus sont en contrôle de leur situation. Finalement, la notion d'aptitude au travail se distingue clairement d'une variété d'autres caractéristiques individuelles pouvant influencer les opinions des Québécois.

Certaines études suggèrent que le projet de Charte des valeurs du PQ et la loi 21 ont nourri un sentiment d'exclusion chez les membres des religions minoritaires. Cependant, aucune étude ne permet à ce jour de comparer le sentiment d'appartenance des minorités religieuses avant et après la mise à l'agenda de ces projets législatifs. Ancrée dans la recherche sur les « événements focalisateurs » et reposant sur des données de trois sondages réalisés en 2012, 2014 et 2019, notre étude examine l'impact des débats sur laïcité sur le sentiment d'appartenance des immigrants racisés au Québec. Nos résultats démontrent qu'un déficit d'appartenance au Québec par rapport au Canada existait déjà en 2012, mais qu'il était circonscrit à certains groupes, notamment ceux de dénominations non chrétiennes et les non francophones. Nos analyses montrent aussi qu'avec les débats sur la laïcité, le déficit d'appartenance au Québec s'est étendu aux minorités non religieuses et aux francophones.

This article brings three decades of broadly consistent survey data on survey respondents’ feelings about the parties as evidence of affective polarization. It also presents evidence about policy differences among the parties and makes an explicit link between elite and mass data with multilevel modelling. The article shows that affective polarization is real and also demonstrates its connection to the ideological landscape. But it also shows that conceptual categories originating in the United States must be adapted to Canada's multiparty system and to the continuing contrasts between Quebec and the rest of Canada. It suggests that accounts of Canada's twentieth-century party system may not apply to the twenty-first century.

Since the #MeToo movement, several countries have taken steps to address sexual harassment in politics (for example, the United States, United Kingdom and Canada). While researchers have evaluated the electability of candidates accused of sexual harassment, less is known about what the public thinks should happen when elected officials engage in this behaviour. Utilizing an innovative module from the 2019 Canadian Election Study, we assess the steps voters believe legislatures should take when an MP sexually harasses someone. Our results demonstrate that a vast majority of the public believes that MPs should face consequences when they commit sexual harassment, including potential removal from office. We also find that women are more likely than men to believe MPs should be punished when they are accused of sexual harassment. These findings have relevance for legislatures globally, revealing the importance of transparent, independent processes to address harassment and violence in the political sphere.

The COVID-19 pandemic has seen opponents of public health mandates deploy a range of populist and anti-elite arguments. The 2021 Canadian federal election was an exceptional “pandemic election” in which the COVID-19 health crisis took centre stage. But the election campaign also saw the populist People's Party of Canada (PPC) rise to prominence by opposing pandemic-related public health restrictions. While the party failed to win a seat, it did manage to triple its vote share (1.6 per cent to 4.9 per cent). It is unclear, however, what factors led to the rise in support for the PPC. To explore this issue, we draw on an original post-election survey (n = 18,950) and focus on populist attitudes and opposition to COVID-19-related public health restrictions. Results from regression models and structural equation models (SEMs) indicate that opposition to public health restrictions was a much stronger factor than populism in shaping support for the PPC.

Much of political science rests on assumptions about how policy makers and citizens behave. However, questions remain about how public policy can improve the government–citizen relationship. In this research note, we present behavioural insights (BI) as one way to address this gap. First, we argue that BI can be strategically used both to alleviate administrative burdens and to enhance citizen experience. Second, we argue that BI interventions can assist in several stages of the policy process, strengthening causal inferences about policy efficacy. Third, we present original data from Canada's ongoing experimentation with BI across multiple jurisdictions and areas of public policy. We conclude by acknowledging the myriad pathways through which BI research can engage with public policy to support the enhancement of citizen-oriented service delivery.

We introduce new data resources to enable spatial and nonspatial research on Canadian elections, electoral history and political geography. These include a comprehensive set of distinct identification codes for every federal electoral district in Canada from 1867 to the present, a complete set of digital boundary files for these electoral districts, historical census data aggregated to federal electoral districts, and tools to connect our district identification codes to federal election results. After describing the construction and content of these new resources, we provide an example of their use in a comparative-historical analysis of district compactness in Canada and the United States. We find that, in contrast to the United States, postwar institutional changes to district boundary-drawing processes had little effect on district compactness in Canada.

Pretendianism is a problem in academia (and of whiteness). Its long-standing existence is well researched and analyzed in the academic record, and it has been brought to wider audiences through news and social media. In response, task forces, committees and advisory councils are being created in universities to determine stronger identity validation policies, with emphasis on engaging relationships with local Indigenous nations, communities, elders, and knowledge holders. Policy making, including processes and procedures of identity validation, will be a powerful apparatus going forward to administer indigeneity in universities. This approach will also lead to the intensification of Indigenous definition and regulation by predominantly non-Indigenous institutions. This article proposes a set of complementary extrapolicy practices addressing pretendianism worth exploring and that emerge from the everyday embodied vantage points of Indigenous academics. We must (continue to) name whiteness, model Indigenous relationality and learn from Indigenous women's leadership.

Les changements climatiques occupent une place centrale en gouvernance mondiale de l'environnement. Vu l'envergure des défis à résoudre, la plus récente Conférence des Parties (CdP) de la Convention-cadre des Nations Unies sur les changements climatiques (CCNUCC), la CdP-27, faisait face à de grandes attentes. Ce court article offre un bilan critique de la CdP-27. L'article présente une synthèse des résultats de cette CdP en étudiant quatre volets principaux, soit l'atténuation des émissions de gaz à effet de serre (GES), l'augmentation du financement climatique, l'adaptation aux changements climatiques et les pertes et préjudices. Il dresse ainsi un portait des résultats de la CdP-27 au regard des attentes qui avaient été établies au préalable par les parties prenantes. L'article se conclut par une analyse prospective des principaux enjeux à suivre d'ici la CdP-28 et au-delà. Il permet ainsi de faire le point sur les plus récents développements, d’éclairer les avancées à venir et de contribuer aux discussions sur la gouvernance mondiale du climat.

In December 2022, the Supreme Court of Canada heard arguments in a reference case about the constitutionality of An Act respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis children, youth and families (the Act). At issue is whether the Act infringes on provincial jurisdiction and changes the constitutional architecture by giving First Nations law governing child welfare the force of federal law. In this short Currents article, we argue that the Supreme Court's consideration of the Act marks a critical juncture in the ongoing relationship between Canadian and Indigenous law. Through an examination of the arguments made before the Supreme Court, we assert that it is essential that the Court move beyond its historical commitments to protecting the Constitution and umpiring jurisdictional disputes and toward a recognition of the failures of the constitutional framework to account for an expansive understanding of inherent rights and inherent jurisdiction, including child welfare.