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The constitution in a hall of mirrors : Canada at 150
\"Whether it's the first-past-the-post electoral system or partisan government appointees to the Senate, Canadians want better representation and accountability from the federal government. Before reforms can be enacted, however, it is important to explore and clarify the relationships among Canada's three parliamentary institutions: Crown, Senate, and Commons. In The Constitution in a Hall of Mirrors, David E. Smith presents a learned but accessible analysis of the interconnectedness of Canada's parliamentary institutions. Smith argues that Parliament is a unity comprised of three parts and any reforms made to one branch will, whether intended or not, affect the other branches. Through a timely, nuanced, and comprehensive examination of parliamentary debates, committee reports, legal scholarship, and comparative analysis of developments in the United Kingdom, Smith uncovers the substantial degree of ambiguity that exists among Canadians and their calls for structural and operational reforms. By illuminating the symbiotic relationship between the Crown, Senate, and Commons, The Constitution in a Hall of Mirrors brings government reform closer to reality.\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Canada's Governors General, 1847-1878
Oft-ignored in the study of Canadian history or dismissed as a vestige of colonial status, the governor general's office provides essential historical insight into Canada's constitutional evolution. In the nineteenth century, as today, individual governors general exercised considerable scope in interpreting their approach to the office. The era 1847-1878 witnessed profound changes in Canada's relationship with Britain, and in this new book, Barbara J. Messamore explores the nature of these changes through an examination of the role of the governor general.
Guided by outmoded instructions and constitutional conventions that were not yet firmly established, the governors general of the time - Lord Elgin, Sir Edmund Head, Lord Monck, Lord Lisgar, and Lord Dufferin - all wrestled with the implications of colonial self government. The imprecision of the viceregal role made the character of the appointee especially important and biographical details are thus essential to an understanding of how the new experiment of colonial self-government was put into practice. Messamore's book marries constitutional history and biography, providing illumination on some of the key figures of nineteenth-century Canadian politics.
eBook
Money, Politics, and Democracy
This revealing volume examines the role of party finance reforms in shaping a period, since 2004, of political instability and successive minority governments in Canada.
eBook
Democracy in Canada : the disintegration of our institutions
\"Canada's representative democracy is confronting important challenges. At the top of the list is the growing inability of the national government to perform its most important roles: namely mapping out collective actions that resonate in all regions as well as enforcing these measures. Others include Parliament's failure to carry out important responsibilities, an activist judiciary, incessant calls for greater transparency, the media's rapidly changing role, and a federal government bureaucracy that has lost both its way and its standing. Arguing that Canadians must reconsider the origins of their country in order to understand why change is difficult and why they continue to embrace regional identities, Democracy in Canada explains how Canada's national institutions were shaped by British historical experiences, and why there was little effort to bring Canadian realities into the mix. As a result, the scope and size of government and Canadian federalism have taken on new forms largely outside the Constitution. Parliament and now even Cabinet have been pushed aside so that policy makers can design and manage the modern state. This also accounts for the average citizen's belief that national institutions cater to economic elites, to their own members, and to interest groups at their own expense. A masterwork analysis, Democracy in Canada investigates the forces shaping the workings of Canadian federalism and the country's national political and bureaucratic institutions.\"-- Provided by publisher.
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Fixing the Future
Bruce Little explains the CPP overhaul and shows why it stands as one of Canada's most significant public policy success stories, in part because it demanded an almost unparalleled degree of federal-provincial co-operation.
eBook
Sketches from a Young Country
The Canadian political and social discussion of the late nineteenth century owed a great deal to Grip , the satirical magazine that kept a vigilant eye on national affairs from 1873 to 1894. Illustrated and edited by an energetic, talented young reformer named John W. Bengough, Grip featured sketches, poetry, and political invective. Bengough's caricatures of dignitaries and cartoons of political situations were supplemented in at least two periods by the acerbic commentary of socialist pioneer T. Phillips Thompson. Together, the two men provided a running account and critique of the era's attitudes on class, sex, race, and public policy. Bengough was part of a broad progressive alliance that linked farm and labour agitators with Christian intellectuals, alarmed about the worst excesses of turn-of-the-century capitalism. Grip was an early, and righteous, crusader for this liberal, Protestant, reformist view.
Sketches from a Young Country is the first comprehensive study to evaluate this historically important magazine, assess the motivations of its authors, and set both in social and political context. The author begins by discussing the magazine's visual contribution to its time, then explores its relationship with the federal and Ontario reform parties and its anti-Tory bias. Later chapters examine Grip's response to Western development, its descent into 'race and creed' propaganda in the late 1880s, its anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist leanings under Thompson's influence, and its stance on such social issues as women's rights, aboriginal issues, and law and order.
Containing over a hundred of Bengough's cartoons, with captions to clarify contemporary references, and offering an assessment of Grip in relation to its British and American counterparts, Sketches from a Young Country makes an exciting contribution to popular history, Canadian politics, and the history of journalism.
eBook
Lived fictions : unity and exclusion in Canadian politics
\"The idea of political unity contains its own opposite, because a political community can never guarantee the equal status of all its members. The price of belonging is an entrenched social stratification within the political unit itself. This book explores how the desire for political unity generates a collective commitment to certain lived fictions--the citizen-state, the market economy, and so forth--that shape our understanding of political legitimacy and responsibility. Canada promises unity through democratic politics, reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, a welfare state, and a multicultural approach to cultural relations. This book documents the historical failure of these promises, elaborating the radical institutional and intellectual changes needed to overcome our lived fictions.\"-- Provided by publisher.
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The Roles of Public Opinion Research in Canadian Government
It is a common assumption that governments use public opinion research primarily to help them make popular decisions about major policy issues but few scholars have ever looked beyond this assumption to investigate its veracity. InThe Roles of Public Opinion Research in Canadian Government, Christopher Page pulls back the curtain on the uses of polls and focus groups.
Stressing public opinion on policy rather than on support for parties, Page explores the relationships between government officials and pollsters, and the contributions of public opinion research to the policy process. Three high-profile policies are considered in depth: the patriation of the constitution and the establishment of the Charter of Rights by the Trudeau government, the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax by the Mulroney government, and the controversial strengthening of gun control by the Chrétien government.
The Roles of Public Opinion Research in Canadian Governmentdemonstrates that opinion research has a greater variety of roles than is often recognized, and that, despite conventional wisdom, its foremost impact is to help governments determine how to communicate with citizens. It is an essential contribution to the study of Canadian politics, filling a major gap in the scholarship.
eBook