Abstract. Conventional measures of political tolerance have tended to assume that people see all forms of speech as equally legitimate (or equally illegitimate). This article develops an alternative view, and measure, of political tolerance to account for individual distinctions across types of speech. Political tolerance is conceptualized using three individual-level dispositions. The intolerant reject speech rights for all objectionable groups; absolute tolerators endorse speech rights for all groups viewed as objectionable; and multicultural tolerators support free speech except when such freedoms are used to target racial and ethnic minorities. Survey data from close to 10,000 youth in Canada and Belgium show that multicultural tolerance reflects civil liberties attitudes among many young citizens. These youth do see exclusionary speech as a special category of “intolerable” speech, consistent with legal restrictions on hate speech in many industrialized democracies. Such target group distinctions are an under-studied and under-specified component of contemporary political tolerance judgments.

Résumé. Les mesures conventionnelles de la tolérance politique tendent à présumer que les gens perçoivent tous les discours comme étant également légitimes (ou également illégitimes). Cet article développe une perspective différente et une mesure plus nuancée de la tolérance politique en relevant des distinctions entre les types de propos. On distingue trois dispositions individuelles en matière de tolérance politique. Les intolérants rejettent la liberté d'expression pour tous les groupes ou propos perçus comme importuns; les gens absolument tolérants appuient la liberté d'expression pour tous les groupes ou propos perçus comme importuns; et les adhérents de la tolérance multiculturelle appuient la libre expression publique des idées, sauf quand celle-ci sert à bafouer les minorités ethniques et raciales. Les résultats d'une enquête menée auprès d'environ 10 000 jeunes au Canada et en Belgique indiquent qu'un grand nombre de jeunes citoyens pratiquent la tolérance multiculturelle. Ces derniers considèrent les propos empreints d'exclusion comme une catégorie spéciale de propos «intolérables», conformément aux lois contre la propagande haineuse adoptées dans la plupart des pays développés. Les distinctions de ce genre sont des facteurs négligés dans notre compréhension des jugements contemporains sur la tolérance politique.

This article presents evidence concerning women's representation in Canada's provincial legislative assemblies over a 20-year period (1975–1994). Data from 3,755 elections and over 11,000 candidates are analyzed to inspect trends in representation. The authors find there has been a gradual increase in both female candidates and legislators. The New Democratic party has clearly been the leader in putting women on the ballot and into legislatures at the provincial level. In addition, hypotheses are tested to see if there are differences across provinces in parties' willingness to nominate and elect women, and whether women are more likely to be nominated primarily in districts where a party does not expect to win. The study finds that the Atlantic provinces lagged behind the rest of Canada as representation increased markedly everywhere else in the late 1980s and the 1990s. There is also evidence that the major parties nominated female challengers in ridings that were inferior to the ridings where the party's male challengers ran in the mid- to late-1970s. By the mid-1980s, however, evidence that women were treated as sacrificial lambs had disappeared.

This article seeks to measure and explain interprovincial differences in inequality and poverty reduction since the 1980s for non-elderly Canadian families. These variations are compared with dissimilarities among the advanced capitalist welfare states, where they are large. Interprovincial discrepancies are shown to be ample by this international standard. The article also finds that power resources theory, which draws attention to the role of union strength and partisan incumbency in explaining welfare state variations, accounts for an important part of these interprovincial differences. These findings suggest that sub-national jurisdictions can be more consequential for welfare state outcomes than comparative research has acknowledged, and that power resources accounts deserve more attention in Canadian social policy scholarship.

Adam Smith argued that division of labour was the basis of wealth: the greater the division of labour the greater the wealth. He also held that the extent of the division of labour was determined by the opportunity to exchange, or by the size of the market. Although Smith understood market exchange to be constrained by distance and natural impediments, he insisted that public policy should not add additional artificial obstacles to market exchange. Thus, in general, he argued that governments should be committed to “free trade.”

The constitution and constitutional discourse have loomed large on the agenda of Canadian political science since the 1960s. Over time, political scientists have approached the constitution and its role in society from a number of angles reflecting perceived primary axes of power and dominant cleavages within Canadian society. Thus, federalism, regionalism and British-French dualism have been prominent in explorations of constitutional politics, while such questions as the relation of the constitution to class or gender have been less central.

Case studies of municipal elections hold little appeal for students of local government. Recent scholarship for the most part has focused on gender or the election of councillors, but studies of mayoral contests are virtually non–existent. This is somewhat surprising, considering the constituent size of several large Canadian municipalities where local government leaders are directly elected. If indeed local government is the level closest to the people, a study of municipal electoral behaviour in large cities can provide insights about the relationship between local politicians and the electorate.

Political parties have long been identified as critical players in Canadian democracy. In this address I focus on the activities of parties at the constituency level arguing that this is crucial to fully understanding many important questions in Canadian political science. By way of example, using data relating to the 2015 federal election, I argue that examining the relative vitality of local party associations in the period between election campaigns assists in a fuller understanding of election outcomes and that examining local party nomination dynamics is key to understanding the underrepresentation of women in the candidate pool and ultimately in the House of Commons.

This paper examines judicial reasoning in the area of Aboriginal title, paying particular attention to the Supreme Court of Canada's Tsilhqot'in Nation (2014) decision. While the decision has been heralded as a ‘game-changer’ within media circles and legal commentaries for its recognition of a claim to title under section 35(1) of the Constitution Act, 1982, the authors argue that the decision does not depart substantially from prior judicial logics predicated upon the production of Crown sovereignty and the denial of Indigenous legal orders. In fact, the authors argue that the decision displays a clear judicial orientation towards the present jurisdictional divisions of Canadian federalism which not only serves to eliminate Indigenous legal orders and territorial responsibilities, but also provides federal and provincial governments with enhanced powers of ‘incursion’ into Aboriginal title lands.

Do we need a code of conduct for politicians, or are the existing unwritten rules a sufficient safeguard against acts of political malfeasance? Based on interviews with 84 backbench MPs, this article examines politicians' informal codes of conduct. The study reveals considerable disagreement in assessments of particular acts, notably those involving conflicts of interest and constituency service. Differences among MPs are related to a number of factors including partisanship, political experience and spatial cleavages. Such divisions of opinion belie the presence of a single elite political culture of corruption and underline the need for a code of conduct to clarify and augment such unwritten rules as presently exist.

This article uses the case of toxic substance regulation to examine the process of governmental agenda-setting. Two kinds of comparisons are employed: across-national comparison of Canada and the United States, and a comparison of two toxic substance controversies. In the case of dioxins from pulp mills, the issue emerged on the two Countries' agendas at approximately the same time. In contrast, the issue of indoor air pollution from radon reached the US regulatory agenda in 1986, but as of mid-1990 had yet to emerge as a significant regulatory issue in Canada. The comparative case analysis yields four major conclusions: (1) changes in science and technology can be important driving forces behind the emergence of an issue, but as necessary, not sufficient conditions for agenda-setting; (2) the interdependence of the two countries produces an interdependence of their regulatory agendas; (3) policy entrepreneurs play a fundamental role in forcing issues onto the governmental agenda; and (4) the incentives and influence of policy entrepreneurs is shaped by the institutional structures and political cultures of the two countries.

Ken Lertzman, Jeremy Rayner and Jeremy Wilson provide an idea-based approach to explaining changes in British Columbia's forest policy by applying the concept of learning developed by Paul Sabatier as part of his “advocacy coalition framework.” This effort to highlight the importance of ideas and learning is a welcome development in Canadian policy studies. But a word of caution is in order as well, because the article has some indications of slipping into a disconcerting pattern in the development of our discipline. For periods of time we seem to single out one significant variable and pay an inordinate amount of attention to it, the most striking examples being interest groups in the 1950s and 1960s and institutions in the 1980s. As we seize upon the new variable, we discredit the previous generation of scholars who we claim (sometimes misleadingly) ignored it.

The apparent defeat of the medical profession on the issue of extra-billing presents an anomaly, in light of the historical and comparative literature on the political power of medicine and the more general interest group literature regarding the disproportionate political influence of concentrated interests. On closer examination, the extra-billing episode suggests some modifications to theories of the political advantage of concentrated interests, but does not present a deviant case. It rather provides an example of the political vulnerability of concentrated interests on issues of broad symbolic appeal; it illustrates the ability of a concentrated group to use its traditional advantages in processes of negotiation and accommodation with policy-makers to achieve tangible and positional gains in compensation for symbolic losses; and (in the case of the conflict in Ontario) it demonstrates the susceptibility of such negotiations over symbolic values to problems of misperception, miscalculation and “face.” In longer-term perspective, moreover, the extra-billing issue is best understood as an episode of conflict in a long history of accommodation between medicine and the state under comprehensive medicare.

In this article, it is argued that Canada's relatively low rate of political participation is related to its electoral system being nonproportional, but that a complementary factor is to be found in its political institutions being discontinuous. Discontinuous institutions are manifested in relatively weak links between political organizations active municipally, regionally (provincially) and nationally. While the relationship between proportional representation (PR) and high turnout has been well established in the literature, there is still a puzzle surrounding the theoretical explanation for it. The author argues that the key to the solution to this puzzle lies less in the additional potential benefits to the voter in a PR system than in the reduction of costs, specifically information costs under such a system. PR is seen to frame incentives and disincentives for political actors in such a manner as to result in a reduction of the cost of political information. This is especially the case when PR is embedded in integrated (non-discontinuous) political institutional arrangements. The most salient manifestation of this effect is seen in comparative turnout levels in municipal elections.

Abstract. The creation of an autonomous region of Nunavik within the province of Quebec would constitute a new phase in the development of Canadian federalism. Although there is no existing domestic model for such a political arrangement, the system of nested federalism in the Russian Federation offers a useful comparative tool for examining the internal and external features of the emerging system of government in Nunavik, as well as the challenges of operationalizing and embedding such a system within the Canadian federal structure. This article outlines the basic principles of nested federalism and considers them in light of recent developments in the region of Nunavik, including the initialing of an “Agreement in Principle concerning the amalgamation of certain public institutions and the creation of the Nunavik Regional Government” between the regional, provincial and federal governments in August 2007. The article concludes that although the Agreement in Principle does not entrench the types of intergovernmental mechanisms and jurisdictional powers that were recommended by the 2001 Report of the Nunavik Commission and that are necessary to the proper functioning of a nested federal arrangement, the political amalgamation outlined in this document represents a significant step forward in terms of creating an institutional framework for an autonomous, nested region in Nunavik.

Résumé. La création d'une région autonome du Nunavik à l'intérieur de la province du Québec constituerait une nouvelle phase dans le développement du fédéralisme canadien. Bien qu'il n'y ait aucun modèle domestique existant d'un tel arrangement politique le système de fédéralisme “encastré” dans la Fédération Russe offre un outil comparatif utile pour examiner les caractéristiques internes et externes du système de gouvernement émergeant au Nunavik. L'exemple russe démontre aussi les défis fonctionnels liés à l'établissement d'un tel système à l'intérieur de la structure fédérale existante au Canada. Cet article développe les principes de base d'un “fédéralisme encastré” et les considère en vue des développements récents dans la région du Nunavik, incluant les négociations pour un “Entente de principe sur la fusion de certaines institutions publiques et la création du gouvernement régional du Nunavik” entre les différents gouvernements régional, provincial et fédéral en août 2007. L'article conclut que bien que l'Accord de Principe n'inclut pas les types de mécanismes intergouvernementaux et les pouvoirs juridictionnels qui étaient recommandés dans le Rapport de 2001 de la Commission de Nunavik et qui sont nécessaires au bon fonctionnement d'un arrangement fédéral “encastré,” le fusionnement politique développé dans ce document représente un pas en avant significatif dans la construction institutionnelle d'un Nunavik autonome à l'intérieur du Québec.

Abstract. One of the most frequently mentioned, yet seriously understudied, changes brought to Canadian society by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is its influence on political debate and how citizens understand and treat rights. This empirical lacuna is significant because several scholars of Canadian politics have suggested that “rights talk” can have negative implications for political discourse, given that rights are too often presented in absolute, uncompromising terms. This article represents a first attempt to investigate this phenomenon. It presents a content analysis of the media's presentation of rights issues, and evaluates how rights are portrayed during coverage of Supreme Court Charter decisions.

Résumé. L'un des changements les plus notables apportés à la société canadienne par l'adoption de la Charte des droits et libertés est son influence sur les débats politiques et, plus particulièrement, sur la manière dont les citoyens interprètent leurs droits. Ce changement important est toutefois très peu étudié. Cette lacune empirique est significative puisque plusieurs politologues canadiens ont suggéré que le «langage des droits» a des répercussions négatives sur les débats politiques, étant donné que les droits sont souvent décrits en termes absolus et définitifs. Cet article représente une première tentative d'exploration de ce phénomène. Il présente une analyse du contenu médiatique et évalue comment les médias dépeignent les droits dans leur couverture des décisions de la Cour suprême portant sur la Charte.

Using a new measure of urbanity for every federal electoral district in Canada from 1896 to the present, this article describes the long-term development of the urban-rural divide in Canadian federal elections. We focus on three questions: (1) when the urban-rural divide has existed in Canada, identifying three main periods—the 1920s, the 1960s and 1993–present—in which the urban-rural cleavage has been especially important in federal elections; (2) where the urban-rural divide has existed, finding that in the postwar period the urban-rural cleavage is a pan-Canadian phenomenon; and (3) how well urbanity predicts district-level election outcomes. We argue that the urban-rural divide is important for understanding election outcomes during several periods of Canadian political development, and never more so than in recent decades. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for research on urban-rural cleavages, Canadian electoral politics and Canadian political development.

Canada has often been seen as immune from the powerful backlash against globalization and immigration that has driven political shifts elsewhere. This article challenges this belief, at least in part, by tracing the evolution of public attitudes toward immigration and analyzing the factors that have shaped the trajectory for over three decades. Drawing on nearly forty years of Environics Focus Canada surveys, combined with annual data on macro-economics and immigration flows, findings here suggest that Canadians’ tolerance toward immigration responds to immigration flows and is heavily influenced by macro-economic conditions.