The COVID-19 pandemic has necessarily affected the operation of Canada's Parliament and, thus, the activities of Members of Parliament (MPs) (Malloy, 2020; Rayment and VandenBeukel, 2020). Here, we explore how the pandemic has affected the representational activities of individual MPs.

Partisan and affective polarization should have observable consequences in Canada, such as bias in political information search and processing. This article presents the results of three studies that test for partisan and ideological bias using the Digital Democracy Project's study of the 2019 Canadian election. Study 1 uses a conjoint experiment where respondents choose from pairs of hypothetical news stories where the slant of the source and headline are both randomized. Study 2 tests for partisan-motivated responsiveness to elite cues with a policy vignette that manipulates the presence of party elite cues and a motivational prime. Study 3 requires respondents to solve a randomly assigned numeracy task that is either political or nonpolitical in nature. Results suggest that Canadians (1) select politically congenial information, though not sources of such information, (2) follow elite cues when partisan motivation is primed and (3) evaluate evidence in ways that are biased by their ideological beliefs.

This article examines the 1992 Progressive Conservative leadership election in Alberta, Canada, and assesses the degree to which this universal ballot produced a leadership electorate distinctive from that enfranchised at the previous convention. The universal ballot electorate possessed a limited background in the party, was not heavily involved in the campaign but included a much higher proportion of women and substantially more elderly voters. Participation remained essentially a middle-class endeavour. Although many of the concerns raised by critics of the universal ballot are confirmed by the Alberta experiment, there are positive features to the Alberta model and the move to universal balloting is not without its merits.

This article explores the relevance of studies of judicial policy-making in the United States to the decision-making of the Supreme Court of Canada under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The article suggests that literature concerning the political legitimacy of judicial policy-making is minimally relevant, since a broad form of judicial review appears to be well established in Charter jurisprudence. The literature on institutional decision-making capacity has greater relevance, since the Canadian Court faces the same information-processing constraints as its American counterpart. The article concludes by suggesting that attempts to overcome problems of institutional capacity may produce additional questions of political legitimacy.

The rash of conflict of interest incidents involving cabinet ministers in Canada in 1986, 1987 and early 1988 can in part be explained by the fact that no clear connection exists in most of the conflict of interest rules between the substance of the rules and basic constitutional principles. Unless ministers understand the reasons for the increasingly complex rules, a high degree of compliance with them is unrealistic. The article explores the connection between the rule of law, social equality, the principle of ministerial impartiality and conflict of interest legislation and guidelines. The conflict of interest rules have usually been drafted hastily in reaction to scandals, with little thought given to their constitutional basis. Thirty-five recent conflict of interest incidents are classified and analyzed. Many might have been avoided if the constitutional reasons for the rules had been better understood. Nevertheless, with regard to the overlap between conflicts of interest and political patronage, the Canadian political system has not developed a clear set of expectations for ministerial behaviour in all circumstances.

Short-term factors played a greater than usual role in the 1984 national election. Media coverage of the campaign therefore had a crucial impact. This study documents the coverage of leaders, parties and substantive issues by the major television and radio networks and 18 newspapers selected by region and language. A major finding is that the media reported results of public opinion polls to an unprecedented degree. This was one facet of the featuring of “horserace” issues over more substantive socio-economic ones. The data lend credence to the fears of those who feel that essential democratic goals of the electoral process are being undermined. The study also suggests rethinking the “no effects” theory of polling and electoral behaviour.

In view of the robust link often inferred between autonomous journalism and the strength of a society's democratic institutions, and against the background of current challenges to journalists’ traditional roles as purveyors of timely and independent information, we interviewed 352 Canadian journalists about their social and political roles and the influences on their news choices. Comparison of their responses against an international data set (N = 27,567) suggests that Canadian journalists place greater value on detached monitorial roles and claim relatively greater autonomy from commercial and other influences on their work. Further, in comparing these findings to an influential panel study from 1996 to 2003, we conclude that the Canadian journalists’ “credo,” focused on neutral reporting and oriented more to perceived public interest than to business or audience interests, remains surprisingly intact despite contemporary pressures on news forms and business models. This professed neutrality is mitigated by a desire to promote diversity and tolerance.

Institutionalized homophobia in England has been intensified over the last decade, linked to concerns about “permissiveness” so prominent within the lower middle classes so courted by the modern Conservative party. However, anti-gay norms have long been embedded in working-class and middle-class cultures, more than in continental European and North American societies. Moralistic crusades against homosexuality have been common in England, and are still reinforced by the police, the courts and especially the tabloid press. Opposition has been roused within Labour party and Liberal/Liberal Democratic circles, but often reluctantly, and framed by a limited form of tolerance.

The volume and variety of published works on voting in Canada suggest to us it is time to take stock of where we have been and where we should go. It is our belief that developments have not matched the rosy prognosis implicit in Donald Smiley's 1967 statement that “undoubtedly the most extensive developments in Canadian political science in the past two decades have been in the field of studies of voting behaviour and political parties.” To be sure, the body of literature has expanded considerably, but we are struck by major gaps in its coverage and by certain conceptual and technical shortcomings.

Traditionally review articles have treated a limited number of works in detail or have attempted an overview of an entire body of literature. We have eschewed the former approach since it presupposes the existence of a few outstanding works, comprehensive in nature, which can be fruitfully compared because of the diversity of approaches or interpretations they present. Such a situation does not yet obtain in the field of Canadian voting behaviour. The latter approach is less necessary since the recent appearance of a propositional inventory by John Terry and Richard Schultz, and a long summary chapter by Mildred Schwartz.

Therefore, we propose to outline major trends in the last decade or so and to suggest new directions.

Toward the end of Louis Hémon's novel Maria Chapdelaine, which is perhaps the work most representative of traditional French Canadianism, one finds this lyrical passage: “… in the country of Quebec, nothing has changed. Nothing will change, because we are a testimony.” This was written in 1916, but evidently many things have changed since that time. Economic evolution, urbanization, spread of knowledge, technical progress have greatly modified individual and family life as well as social environment. And these transformations have affected the very core of both French-Canadian society and French-Canadian individuals. As a matter of fact, they have burst the old framework of self-sufficient social life and they have transformed the most fundamental motivations of the individual and of conjugal behaviour. Even in the observance of formal moral rules their impact has been felt. It is not surprising that such changes have affected the demographic pattern to a large extent. Most French-Canadian scholars, social philosophers, and political leaders, who are specially interested in the French-Canadian ethnic group, are relatively unaware of the extent of this demographic change and some would not readily admit it. In this paper, I would like to try to throw some light on the main demographic facts and problems of this evolution or, as one might be tempted to name it, revolution.

Since the appearance of annual estimates of gross national expenditure and its components, their use has dominated the analysis of Canadian business fluctuations. They provide the most comprehensive picture of the value and volume of those goods and services, currently produced and consumed, which have passed through the market place. The national accounts have been adapted to analyses of the relationship between the Canadian economy and the economies of the United Kingdom and the United States, particularly of the latter. Interest in these relationships existed for many years before national income accounting became available, but its development certainly gave the problem new focus.

The use of national accounts for cyclical analysis has given rise to two problems. The first is that attention in Canada has focused on the period since 1926. There has been great emphasis accordingly on the Great Depression, its transmission to and impact on the economy. This cyclical experience has dominated the recent thinking of Canadian economists quite apart from the crises and misery which it brought. After all it is the one cyclical movement which stands out clearly in the national accounts. Furthermore, the experience of 1929-32 presented an unusual combination of circumstances. Nothing like it in duration or extent had occurred since the 1870’s. To base much of the analysis of Canadian business cycles on this one downturn, however major it might have been, and to draw implications for policy therefrom, could easily put public and private decision-making on an inadequate and misleading foundation.

This paper is a preliminary report of a study of post-war patterns of aggregate consumption in Canada. The data consist of the eight gross categories of personal consumption recorded in the official statistics, and the corresponding price indicators. A fifteen-yeai time-series spanning the years 1949 to 1963 has been used to fit a complete system of consumer demand equations for the eight categories using a method more fully reported elsewhere. Basically, this method makes the simplest plausible assumption about the form of the utility function, namely, that of “directly additive preferences,” and utilizes the consequent dependence between substitution and income effects to sharpen the specification of the model. In the absence of such specifying restrictions, analysis of short time series is not likely to prove very fruitful.

It is not claimed that “directly additive preferences” provides the optimum set of restrictions (though it certainly provides the simplest). More sophisticated utility schemes, such as Mr. Barten's “almost-additive” preference concept, are likely to yield more reliable results. In this sense, the present report is preliminary. There are also other areas even within the framework of additive preferences in which further improvements could be sought; some of these are indicated later. Finally, the available arbitrary classification of consumption expenditure is in no sense ideal.

According to Marxism-Leninism the “socialist reconstruction of agriculture,” or collectivization, is a necessary step in the process of building socialism and, subsequently, communism. The communists realize, however, that in a country where the peasantry constitutes the overwhelming majority of the population the process may require some time and they admit that in such cases “the socialist reconstruction of agriculture is, after the seizure of power by the working class, the most difficult task of the revolution.”

Lenin was aware of the danger inherent in collectivization and he was planning it as a gradual process. The communist leaders in Eastern Europe and in China, keeping in mind the catastrophic results of the Soviet collectivization drive in the years 1928–33, were even more convinced that they should proceed slowly, gradually, and carefully, without antagonizing the majority of peasants. They tried, as the Bolsheviks had done during the 1920's, to reduce the power of the “kulaks” (the better-off peasants who were still rather poor by Western standards) and to enlist against them the support of the poor peasants and of the rest of the society. Neither the Bolsheviks in the late 1920's nor the communists in Eastern Europe in the late 1940's and in China in the 1950's could tolerate independent producers who represented a political menace and created economic complications for the administrators and the planners. Moreover, the land reforms, which were introduced by the communists for tactical reasons although regarded by them as a retrogressive step, increased the number of small holdings below the optimum size and destroyed larger farms which had been producing the majority of marketable output. The “class struggle in the countryside” had adverse effects on productivity, even when it was limited to discrimination in taxation, in delivery quotas, in availability of credit and producers' goods, and the administrative pressure and chicanery. In many instances it went, however, far beyond these measures.

The electoral surge of the National Front (NF) in the 2002 French presidential election was unprecedented. It marked the first time that a far–right candidate reached the second round of voting in a presidential election: Jean–Marie Le Pen, leader of the NF party, passed the first round on April 21, 2002, beating 16 other candidates with 16.86 per cent of the vote against 19.88 per cent for the incumbent President Jacques Chirac (Rassemblement pour la République RPR) and 16.18 per cent for the incumbent Prime Minister Lionel Jospin (Parti Socialiste PS).

Canada has taken part in six wars since 1945, all of which have been conducted under US leadership. Despite such military interventionism, there have been no systematic comparative analyses of Canada's decisions to take part in US-led wars. The objective of this article is to develop and test a theoretical framework about why Canada goes to war. More specifically, it seeks to account for variations in Canada's provision of combat forces to multinational interventions led by the United States. It assesses leading theoretical explanations by examining five post–Cold War cases: the wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Libya; the war against ISIS; and the refusal to take part in the invasion of Iraq. The article concludes that Canada's willingness to go to war is shaped primarily by a desire to maintain transatlantic alliance unity and enhance Canada's alliance credibility. Threats to national security, the legitimacy of the intervention, government ideology and public opinion are not found to consistently or meaningfully shape Canadian decisions to take part in US-led wars.

It is my impression that, while we are reasonably fortunate in having in Canada a considerable literature in the history and law of the constitution, we have not, as yet, achieved a comparable product on the humbler level of constitutional practice and procedure. There have been notable exceptions but, in the main, this is true. It may, of course, be due to the taciturnity of those who are engaged professionally in the business of government. In any event, because of this lack I have been encouraged to attempt this mechanic's view of the mechanism of executive government in motion—in the hope that it may assist others in more scholarly endeavours.

Ghana is the first truly African state to emerge from colonial status. Her attitude towards and relations with the Western powers and the Communist bloc are, therefore, of considerable importance both in themselves and as indications of the policies other independent African nations are likely to pursue. While Ghana’s foreign policy is still not fully defined, the broad pattern which is emerging is sufficiently discernible to merit discussion.

The present position was defined by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah on the eve of Independence. “We of Ghana feel,” the Prime Minister declared, and has since repeated,

that at this stage our country should not be committed in any aspect of its foreign policy and that it should not be aligned with any particular group of powers or political bloc. At the same time, our new state does not intend to follow a neutralist policy in its foreign policy. It is our intention to preserve our independence and to act as we see best at any particular time.

The same view was expressed more succinctly in June, when it was stated that “Ghana will neither join any power bloc nor maintain a blind policy of neutrality and non-alignment.” These formulations of Ghanaian policy are deliberately vague. They do, however, admirably fulfil the pressing need which every country feels of having a foreign policy of its own, and at the same time they leave the Government free to pursue almost any particular course of action it might later choose.

Two of the new states of interwar Europe were Estonia and Finland. Both arose out of the Russian Empire and both were literate, Protestant nations. Yet democracy broke down in Estonia but survived in Finland. These outcomes would seem ironic, given that Finnish independence involved a brutal civil war and Finland was linguistically divided—factors not present in Estonia. This study, however, examines not just the nature of independence but also the constitutional structures, party politics and regime crises of these two neighbouring cases. In terms of the factors commonly cited as favouring stable democracy, the Estonian-Finnish contrast shows the particular explanatory importance of political culture, the speed of democratization, the views of elites and the nature of the party system. What happened in Finland also implies that a presidential, or at least a balanced semipresidential, system cannot be considered as inherently dangerous for democratic stability.