Canadian political scientists have often taken a normative approach to political institutions like the constitution, the electoral system, and Parliament. An assumption that institutional reform can itself be a solution to political problems is also reflected in general public commentary and at times has been openly encouraged and supported by the Canadian state itself. This approach has many strengths but also deficiencies, particularly the degree to which it replicates existing understandings of the state, focused on the distribution of power among white men. The study of political institutions in Canada must continue growing to incorporate and integrate a greater diversity of perspectives, including interrogating and challenging their very foundations.

Securitization scholars in Canada have investigated how settler-colonial governments discursively construct extractive infrastructure and policing on Indigenous lands as “critical” for Canada’s economic security. Less literature exists about how Indigenous activists through provincial institutions counter colonial securitization discourse and legislation. This article interrogates discourse in the Manitoba Legislature pertaining to three “critical infrastructure” bills presented by the PC government during the fall 2020 and winter 2021 sessions: Protection of Critical Infrastructure Act (Bill 57), Animal Diseases Amendment Act (Bill 62), and The Petty Trespassers Amendment and Occupiers’ Liability Amendment Act (Bill 63). The study combines an analysis of the bills’ debates, drawn from Hansard, with an interview with then-official opposition house leader, Nahanni Fontaine, to explore the interactions between securitization and counter-securitization discourse(s) and defeat of Bill 57. The study hypothesizes that Indigenous MLAs’ counter-securitization discourse reconstructed the bills as attacks on Indigenous ontological, environmental, and physical security.

Australia, Canada and the United States are settler-colonial federations comprising two types of federal units. The first are states/provinces: full, permanent federal partners, securely settler controlled. The second are territories. Historically, territories were “partners in waiting,” slated for federal incorporation once settlers achieved control of the jurisdiction, outnumbering and disempowering Indigenous peoples. The “rights revolution” made achieving control by force less acceptable. Meanwhile, in Australia, Canada and the US, there remain several territories where Indigenous peoples hold significant power. I find today’s remaining territories experience a new way settlers target Indigenous power, not through force but through rights-challenges. Further, I show these rights-challenges provoke “constitutive contests,” the outcome of which are consequential, potentially “re-constituting” territories in a manner fostering settler control. Finally, I explore why territories might be especially vulnerable to re-constitution through settler-rights challenges.

Voter turnout has declined across established democracies, which has been accompanied by an increase in turnout disparities along class lines. In contrast to most advanced democracies, class voting has largely been neglected in Canada. Using the entire series of the Canadian Election Study (1965–2021), this article examines the turnout gap in Canada over time by class, education, and income, and whether the offerings of political parties impact these relationships. Results find major class-based participatory inequalities, which have worsened over time. The magnitude of the turnout gap between lower and higher socio-economic status (SES) individuals has mainly been driven by the demobilization of lower-SES individuals and a significant factor is the reduced saliency of economic issues in the party system. The findings contribute to our understanding of how economic inequalities translate into political inequalities and show that rising turnout inequality between politically relevant cleavages, represents a deterioration of democratic representation.

This article examines the Canada-United States Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) in relation to a growing literature on bureaucrats’ role in immigration policy making, while challenging interpretations of the agreement as a “Europeanization” of Canadian policy. Canada is a prototypical liberal “migration state” that balances economic considerations, national security, rights and broader cultural concerns through its immigration regime. We open the “black box” of the state to examine how bureaucratic decision making informed the development of Canada’s asylum system. Drawing on interviews, archival materials and government documents, we show bureaucrats simultaneously sought to manage asylum backlogs and ensure compliance with international obligations while countering advocacy group opposition. The STCA reflects a uniquely Canadian approach to balancing competing imperatives in refugee policy, highlighting the role of bureaucrats in shaping immigration policy within domestic and international constraints. This research contributes to understanding the historical development of migration control policies in liberal democracies.

Créé par l’Institut Fraser et l’Institut économique de Montréal au début du siècle, le palmarès des écoles secondaires du Québec constitue une stratégie d’influence visant à réformer le système scolaire en offrant aux familles de l’information afin d’amplifier les comportements de marché en éducation. Cette étude portant sur 108 écoles de Montréal et de Laval montre que, de 2000 à 2020, les écoles faiblement cotées dans les palmarès et celles ayant décliné d’un écart-type ou plus ont connu une baisse de leur population comme le voulait la théorie économique de l’éducation sur laquelle reposent ces classements. Or, les données recueillies montrent que, sur vingt ans, les scores des écoles sont davantage influencés par des facteurs socio-économiques se traduisant par une amplification de la ségrégation scolaire générée par une concentration accrue des élèves présentant des difficultés ou provenant de milieux défavorisés dans les établissements figurant au bas des classements.

The 2007 adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) marked a critical juncture in the area of Indigenous rights. As a nonbinding agreement, its adoption is at the discretion of each state, resulting in significant state-level variation. Importantly, within-state variations remain underexplored. These differences are potentially significant in federal, decentralized countries such as Canada. This article examines why some provinces and territories lead in implementing the key principles embedded in UNDRIP, whereas others have dragged their feet. We collected 230 Canadian regulations introduced at the subnational level between 2007 and 2023, and assessed the impact of three key variables (i.e. political ideology, resource politics and issue voting). We found that none of these variables explained within-state variations on their own. To further explore the role of these variables, we subsequently compared two provinces at different stages of the UNDRIP implementation spectrum (Québec and British Columbia).

Research demonstrates that English- and French-speaking Canadians differ in a wide range of attitudes, including their political preferences, their vision of the Canadian federation and their national identity. In this article, we ask whether individual bilingualism is associated with a decrease in the attitudinal differences between anglophones and francophones. Using survey data collected in the summer of 2023, we attempt to determine whether knowledge of the French language is related to an increase in the responsiveness of English-speaking citizens toward issues that typically preoccupy French-speaking Canadians. Our analyses suggest that knowledge of French as a second language is strongly linked to the political preferences of Canadian citizens but does not bridge the attitudinal gap between Canada’s two main language groups. These results highlight the relevance of considering the different languages that people speak—and not just their mother tongue—to understand their political attitudes.

Cette note de recherche examine le nationalisme identitaire de la Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) depuis son arrivée au pouvoir, à travers une analyse qualitative des débats parlementaires à l’Assemblée nationale du Québec (2018–2023). En s’appuyant sur les discours des élus caquistes, elle explore comment la CAQ définit et met en oeuvre son nationalisme identitaire, caractérisé par un interventionnisme fort en matière d’immigration, de laïcité et de protection de la langue française. Il s’agit de montrer que, face à une réforme du fédéralisme bloquée et au refus de la souveraineté à deux reprises par la population, la CAQ substitue aux aspirations déchues de souveraineté du Québec et aux tentatives de réforme de la fédération une affirmation franche des « frontières imaginées » de la nation québécoise, c’est-à-dire des marqueurs qui définiraient « un vrai Québécois ». Grâce à un large corpus de débats parlementaires et à un codage thématique qualitatif, l’analyse met en évidence l’ubiquité du discours identitaire dans l’action gouvernementale de la CAQ. Enfin, cette note de recherche souligne le potentiel heuristique de l’analyse des discours parlementaires pour mieux comprendre les transformations contemporaines du nationalisme québécois.

Governments are the most frequent interveners at the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC). However, we know little about government interventions, with the last substantive study only providing coverage of Charter cases up to 2007. To update this body of research, we provide an analysis of government interventions across all constitutional cases decided by the SCC between 2013 and 2023. Building upon earlier work by Hennigar (2010) and Radmilovic (2013), our study shows that despite changes to the intervener landscape in the past decade, governments continue to primarily intervene defensively in Charter cases. Importantly, however, our findings reveal complexity in how governments intervene across various constitutional cases, with distinct intervening behaviour in division of power disputes and reference cases.

Le régime québécois d’encadrement du lobbyisme exclut actuellement de son champ d’application les lobbyistes travaillant au sein d’organismes à but non lucratif (OBNL). Cette exception fait l’objet de critiques de la part de plusieurs acteurs du milieu. Le Commissaire au lobbyisme du Québec suggère d’ailleurs au législateur de modifier la loi afin d’inclure plus de lobbyistes dans son champ d’application, ce à quoi s’opposent plusieurs OBNL. La récente initiative médiatique du Commissaire au lobbyisme visant à promouvoir le droit à la transparence et à proposer une réforme de l’encadrement du lobbyisme au Québec constitue une occasion propice pour analyser l’idée d’assujettir tous les OBNL à la Loi sur la transparence et l’éthique en matière de lobbyisme. Pour éclairer cet enjeu, l’analyse vise à déterminer les impacts potentiels d’une modification législative sur la légitimité des OBNL en tant que groupes d’intérêt. L’article offre ainsi une nouvelle perspective sur le débat relatif à l’inclusion des lobbyistes travaillant au sein d’OBNL dans le champ d’application du régime québécois d’encadrement du lobbyisme.