This presidential address on Canada and the study of territorial politics makes four main arguments. The first is that territory is a central component of politics, especially of Canadian politics, and that it should remain a focal point of specialists of Canadian and comparative politics. The second is that territory matters in contemporary politics because it serves as grounding for political communities, their claims, and their politics. The third is that not “identifying” parts of Canadian politics as “territorial politics” risks overlooking the importance of territory in the theorizing of federalism, nationalism and regionalism. The fourth is that, through the case of Canada, political scientists have made significant contributions to the study of comparative territorial politics.

Cinquante ans après la Conférence de Stockholm de 1972, la littérature est appelée à offrir un compte rendu sur le passé et informer les décisions à venir. Dans ce contexte, le présent essai critique propose une revue historique de la gouvernance mondiale de l'environnement, couvrant la période de 1945 à 2022. Pour ce faire, il réunit les processus et évènements marquants des dernières décennies et distingue les moments clés ayant façonné la gouvernance mondiale de l'environnement. Informé par la littérature scientifique et des documents officiels, l'article expose l’émergence, la mise à l'agenda et l'institutionnalisation de plusieurs enjeux environnementaux. Il contribue ainsi à situer les développements qu'a connus la gouvernance mondiale de l'environnement et contextualiser les processus en cours. La conclusion de l’étude invite à accorder une plus grande attention aux enjeux environnementaux et à repenser la gouvernance mondiale de l'environnement au-delà des frontières, tant étatiques que disciplinaires.

Prime ministers in parliamentary systems confront a challenging agency problem in leading cabinets toward cross-government priorities: ministers tend to prioritize departmental interests and may lack incentives and/or information enabling co-ordinated effort. In Canada, a novel mechanism for both increasing incentives and information provision has been developed in recent decades: the mandate letter. These letters are issued by Canadian prime ministers to their ministers, reinforcing government priorities, each minister's responsibilities, and specific policy expectations. This article examines mandate letters as mechanisms inducing interministerial policy co-ordination, focusing on the 2015–2021 period, under Justin Trudeau, as the first Canadian prime minister to release these letters publicly. Using topic modelling and social network analysis, I find that Trudeau has increasingly sought to strengthen ministerial co-ordination and ministers’ focus on crosscutting policy priorities. This case study contributes to our understanding of intraexecutive co-ordination and the agency problem in cabinet government.

Canadian election campaigns often see a proliferation of political signs at the start of an election, but are they worth the effort? We examined official results at the poll level (N = 785) from elections agencies and the quantities of household signs recorded in internal political party databases (Green Parties of Canada, Manitoba, and Ontario). Overall, the results suggest that the use of household signs is an effective form of political campaigning in Canada for nongoverning parties. Analyses suggest that every sign placed per 100 registered electors is associated with an increase of 0.5–1.5 per cent vote share. The presence of household signs was associated with an increase of 1.5–3.4 per cent vote share. Further, preliminary evidence also suggests a possible diminishing returns trend: the per-sign rate of increase in vote share may slow down at higher densities. We discuss the implications of the results, including the possible curvilinear trend.

What determines how Members of Parliament (MPs) and their staff frame their communications with all constituents in their electoral district? Prior research has suggested that constituency operations are one of the last bastions of freedom that MPs have from the full grasp of party discipline in Canada. If this remains true, MP communications with their constituents should reflect the MPs’ background or the constituency context and not their political partisanship. We collected a sample of published newsletters (“householders”) that Canadian MPs’ offices sent to all households in their electoral districts during the COVID-19 pandemic. We supplement our analysis with original insights about householders from a selection of MPs and their staff. Our results suggest that in a system of strict party discipline, the most important predictor of what MPs include in their constituent communications is indeed partisanship. The results inform our understanding of democratic representation, centralized co-ordination and political communication, and the pervasiveness of partisan messaging in Canada.

Several scholars have noted that many types of news coverage (including political news) are increasingly characterized by an “infotainment” style—defined roughly as the communication of politically relevant information using styles and formats more commonly associated with entertainment-oriented programming. Despite this growing trend and the many findings surrounding its impact on politics and political discourse, very little research has been done on the nature and dynamics of infotainment within the Canadian context. In response, this article seeks to measure and evaluate the scope and nature of infotainment in Canadian political news coverage by (1) outlining a comprehensive conceptual definition of (and rigorous method of studying) infotainment and (2) sharing the results of our mixed-methods discourse analysis of infotainment characteristics within 969 hard news articles published in Canadian English-language newspapers that covered the 2019 Canadian federal election. Our findings demonstrate that there was a substantial presence of infotainment characteristics in this coverage. We discuss the detailed nature of these characteristics and the relationship between the presence of infotainment characteristics and those of the quintessentially “Golden Age” reporting style (often viewed as infotainment's polar opposite), while outlining a variety of broader implications and further research questions raised by these findings.

Dans cet article, je propose une analyse critique de la réponse des trois principaux théoriciens de l'interculturalisme majoritariste – Gérard Bouchard, Jérôme Gosselin-Tapp et Michel Seymour – à la question des minorités internes. Cette question est de savoir comment protéger le droit des minorités religieuses de pratiquer leur religion (tel que créé ou facilité par le multiculturalisme ou l'interculturalisme) sans violer le droit des femmes en leur sein de mener une vie exempte d'oppression (tel que défendu par le féminisme). Je soutiens que la réponse de ces auteurs est ambiguë, en ce sens qu'elle embrasse simultanément deux postures – la fermeté et la flexibilité – qui, lorsque considérées ensemble, sont contradictoires et, lorsque considérées séparément, présentent des problèmes spécifiques. Si dans le cas particulier du foulard islamique, ces auteurs élargissent momentanément leur perspective, leurs arguments à ce chapitre commandent des nuances importantes pour le moment absentes de leur raisonnement.

This article offers a re-evaluation of Louis Riel's political, philosophical and religious writings by reconstructing these writings along utopian lines. In so doing, it supplements the existing literature on Riel's writings that tends to see Riel as either a prophetic figure or a practical man of action, but rarely, if ever, both. In its reconstruction of Riel's utopian vision, this article focuses on three aspects of his writings. First, it addresses his critical conception of Métis self-government before Confederation. Second, it examines his proposals for the overthrow of what he perceived as Anglo-Canadian tyranny in the North-West. Third, it considers his visions of an ideal—that is, utopian—society in the North-West. The article concludes by examining the implications of this reading of Riel's utopian vision for his legacy in Canadian political science.

Indigenous peoples continue to challenge Canadian colonial policies through nonroutine acts of resistance. Sustained scholarly attention on the frequency and characteristics of Indigenous resistance has dropped precipitously, with the time span of this scholarship typically ending by the early 2000s. Research on more recent acts of resistance is directed to small-n case studies. This research note examines Indigenous resistance in Canada between 2010 and 2020 as reported by news articles from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) to identify key characteristics of salient Indigenous resistance: What issue areas were the subject of resistance movements? Which Indigenous communities or groups contributed to acts of resistance? What strategies were employed? The research note's findings suggest that salient acts of resistance rarely result in immediate policy change from the state; instead, resistance has transformative potential to develop Indigenous governance that departs from settler-colonial state processes.

S'intéressant au débat public québécois concernant l'affaire du mot en « n », survenue en 2020 à l'Université d'Ottawa, cet article vise à déterminer comment les discours de déni du racisme produits par les membres des groupes dominants se maintiennent au sein de l'espace public, malgré les critiques anti-racistes produites par les membres des groupes dominés. En combinant la théorie critique de la race, la théorie de l'injustice et l'ignorance épistémiques et la théorie des actes de discours, cet article propose une analyse critique du discours médiatique québécois sur l'affaire du mot en « n ». Il retrace ainsi les positions dénonçant l'utilisation du mot en « n » comme une insulte raciale et une manifestation du racisme systémique et celles justifiant la nécessité de protéger la liberté universitaire et la liberté d'expression face à une culture de l'annulation menaçant de les censurer. L'analyse du cas québécois révèle que le déni public du racisme reproduit des injustices herméneutiques à l’égard des critiques anti-racistes, particulièrement celles formulées par les communautés noires, et cela à travers un nouveau mécanisme linguistique que je nomme les « déviations illocutoires ».

This article provides an empirical overview of federal lobbying in Canada, examining lobbying contacts by field and sector from 2011 to 2022. We track shifts in lobbying representation over this period, including across Harper Conservative and Trudeau Liberal administrations. The study reveals the dominance of business interests in lobbying in Canada and a high level of lobbying concentration. By sector, export-oriented industries with high environmental and climatic impacts—namely, agriculture, fossil fuel and manufacturing industries—predominate. With the transition to Trudeau, we find a significant increase in overall rates of lobbying and a modest increase in the ratio of public interest representation. Overall, the lobbying industry is characterized by greater access but unequal voice.