Canadian courts have been torn between two constitutionalisms in their interpretation of the application provisions of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The traditional, liberal constitutionalist approach establishes a distinction between public and private realms and between state action and inaction, limiting the Charter's application to the public, governmental sphere of positive legislation and executive conduct. However, the courts have oscillated between this and a postliberal constitutionalism according to which distinctions between public and private and state action and inaction are arbitrary and artificial. This article argues that this clash of constitutionalisms is responsible in large part for the courts' inconsistent and confusing record in interpreting sections 32 and 52 of the Constitution Act, 1982.

Recent research has identified three factors as significant determinants of sovereignty support in Quebec: national identity, assessments of the likely impact of sovereignty on Quebec's economy and perceptions of the impact of sovereignty on the French language in Quebec. Drawing on data from the 1992–1993 Canadian Referendum and Election Survey, the article suggests that the latter two factors may not be genuine causes of sovereignty support, but rather rationalizations of other, deeply embedded sentiments. National identity and sovereignty support itself, it is argued, are important determinants of people's expectations concerning the economic and linguistic impacts of sovereignty. However, this may not be equally true across the board. Instead, the influence of economic and language considerations seems to be differentially distributed across the spectrum of national identity. Thus, the rational evaluation of economic and linguistic considerations probably has less leverage over sovereignty support than is usually assumed, and its influence, such as it is, is concentrated in certain sections of the population only.

Eric Voegelin's master work is Order and History, published over a period of three decades with the fifth and final volume appearing posthumously in 1987. The focus of attention here is on the first of these volumes, Israel and Revelation (1956), which may be regarded as intellectually the sequel of volumes two and three, since the writing of those volumes (published in 1957) antedates composition of the study of Israel. From the outset, Voegelin makes clear that his concern is with a philosophy of order historically grounded as the primary means of combating the contemporary crisis of human existence, which he identifies with pervasive deformation of consciousness by ideology and the threat of civilization's extinction through totalitarian mass movements. Thus the task is to regain reality through a recovery of the principal experiences upon which man's historical existence is dependent, with both diagnostic and therapeutic intentions. The attention to the historical record is a means of anamnetically overcoming the social amnesia that threatens to extinguish human existence as it has emerged over millennia back to the Stone Age. Diagnosis and therapy are intended to go hand in hand, since the eclipse of reality, and especially of its highest and hegemonic dimension, the divine Ground of being, in favour of various substitute grounds, is the principal danger to be understood and addressed. The enduring experience of open existence in history is glimpsed, in man's continual Exodus in loving partnership with God, in tension toward the mystery symbolized in eschatological fulfillment.

In 1996 the Alberta Court of Appeal struck down election spending limits for individuals, interest groups, corporations and unions for violating the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. These spending restrictions were part of a complex regulatory regime which sought to promote fairness by controlling the election spending of candidates and parties. Although this decision was not appealed to the nation's highest court, the Supreme Court disapproved the Alberta ruling in an unrelated decision. This suggests that spending limits are justifiable under the Charter. Yet if new legislation is not introduced, the Alberta decision will continue to govern election conduct throughout the country and could undermine the democratic ideal of citizens participating in fair terms in the act of self-governance.

This article underlines three principles of reference that renew discourse on and comprehension of the role of the state in social protection towards unemployed people. At a certain level of abstraction, those principles of reference are present in many countries. They lead to label and to understand situations in different terms of which we were familiar during the Welfare State apogee. At the same time, they permit and open up to various political orientations and mechanisms of implementation. This dualism is emphasized. Four countries are referenced for this discussion: Canada, France, Germany and Sweden. The study considers the way in which problems are stated in their principles and the implementation of programmes. Policies and programmes implemented reveal logics of intervention which suggest different ways to consider the articulation between the « integrated area » and the « excluded area » of the society.

This article reconsiders findings that emphasize the importance of governments' abilities to impose losses on powerful groups, while arguing that loss imposition is more problematic under separation of powers systems. The author argues that empirical evidence to this effect is thin, that more leverage can be obtained by comparing the policy decisions of subnational jurisdictions in the United States and Canada and that automobile insurance reform is an especially appropriate issue to study. Drawing on both aggregate analysis and case studies, the author presents findings suggesting that the Westminster-style parliamentary system in Canada indeed makes loss imposition easier than does the separation of powers system in the United States.