University of Northern British Columbia: Open Journal Systems
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Meaningful Participation? The Judicialization of Electoral Reform in Canada Post-Figueroa v. Canada
Get PDFDespite pressure for reform and the concomitant benefits of more inclusive and participatory electoral systems, major electoral reform in Canada rarely takes place through legislative or public deliberative processes. As a result, citizens demanding electoral reform have turned to other venues to pursue their claims for democratic change. This article considers such venue shifting efforts through the use of the courts to pursue electoral reform in Canada. Using precedent tracing and content analysis approaches, it considers all the final judicial decisions citing the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision on democratic rights in Figueroa v. Canada. It finds that courts were willing to intervene in some cases involving technical aspects of the exercise of democratic rights, but tend not to entertain more major systemic based reforms. As such, the article concludes that such pursuits for democratic reform through judicialization are likely to fail
The Local Underpinnings of Electoral Competition in Canada, 1979-2008
Get PDFIn this paper we explore the capacity of political parties to contest general elections by examining the patterns of candidate spending in individual electoral districts. The data allows us to compare and assess differences across national political parties, over time (including both third and post-third party system periods), and during different electoral finance regimes
Enlightened Feminism and Charles Adler: The New Backlash?
Get PDFFor many young women, feminism is no longer a salient issue. Indeed, women, particularly young women are regularly told in the media that they are doing just fine and that the goals of gender equality have been reached. This paper examines the construction of feminism and more specifically, the backlash against feminism in talk radio. It explores the construction of gender found in the Charles Adler radio program, broadcast across Canada on Corus radio. The paper argues that the way that Alder represents the issues of women’s equality is important. It is evident that he employs a language of “backlash” to suggest that equality and rights-based discourse are anti-men and that feminist views are not supported by mainstream Canadians. In doing so, Adler endorses the moves by the current Conservative government to dismantle advocacy programs that support women’s rights
Design Principles for Renewable Energy Programs in Developing Countries
Get PDFThis article introduces readers to the concept of energy poverty and the types of renewable energy technologies that can overcome it. It discusses the benefits of solar home systems, residential wind turbines, biogas digesters and gasifiers, microhydro dams, and improved cookstoves and the various mechanisms planners and policymakers have utilized to disseminate these technologies. Then, based on four years of field research studying programs in Bangladesh, China, Laos, Mongolia, Nepal, Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Papua New Guinea, the article presents twelve lessons for how policymakers and development planners can improve future renewable energy projects. These lessons include selecting appropriate technology matched in scale and quality to the energy services communities desire, emphasizing affordability rather than installed capacity, and viewing communities and end-users as active participants in energy production and use rather than passive consumers
Breaking the Peace: The Wildrose Alliance in Alberta Politics
Get PDFParty politics in Alberta can seem dull. Election after election the Conservative party is returned to power with a comfortable majority and campaigns are marked by little in the way of suspense (see Bell et al, 2007 and Stewart and Archer, 2000). The last time government changed hands in Alberta was 1971 when the Peter Lougheed led Progressive Conservatives eked out a narrow win over the Social Credit dynasty. Lougheed and the Conservatives positioned them- selves as safe, conservative change. This was also the case when the Progressive Conservatives faced their most serious challenge to date, in 1993. The Liberals, led by former Edmonton mayor Laurence Decore, launched a fiscal attack on the Conservatives, presenting themselves as the safe, conservative alternative (Stewart, 1995). The Ralph Klein Conservatives beat back that challenge and the party has easily carried each subsequent election
The hidden rise of new women candidates seeking election to the House of Commons, 2000 – 2008
Get PDFWomen’s candidacy and election are tracked over four Canadian national elections from 2000 to 2008. These elections brought a dramatic expansion in women candi-dates, but only a small increase in the number elected. Simu-lations of alternative electoral outcomes indicate only minor impact due to the shift from Liberal to Conservative gov-ernments. Women candidates from all major parties are found to have been similarly successful as men with the same party and incumbency status. Analysis of the candi-date-pool composition reveals that there were too few new women candidates in 2000 even to maintain the status quo in the House. Increases in 2004 and 2006 brought candida-cies into balance with the House composition. In 2008 the recruitment rate exceeded the House proportion meaning-fully. Since the Conservatives caught up part-way to the other parties in nominating new women candidates in 2008, the gender composition of the House became far less sensi-tive to voters’ partisan preferences than was the case earlier. The results show that the flat numbers elected arose not from stagnation in recruitment of new women candidates, but rather from two relatively large fluctuations: a cross-party collapse in 2000, followed by a cross-party resurgence. Women’s share of non-incumbent major-party candidacies and turned-over seats nearly doubled over the eight-year period, both reaching the one-third mark for the first time in 2008. This cross-party resurgence is shown to have carried over to the 2011 election
Animals and the Irish Mouth in Edna O’Brien’s Fiction
Get PDFFrom Edna O’Brien’s earliest novels, many commentators have noted that desire is at the core of the narratives. The true irony in such observations lies in their frequently blinkered understanding of what comprises that desire, reducing it to a heteronormative, Barbara-Cartland-style pursuit of “romance.” While the characters themselves may think this is what they hunger for, the text inevitably opens up vaster sources of insatiable longing. As Mary Douglas has established, “the body is capable of furnishing a natural system of symbols” (xxxii), and in O’Brien’s texts the human mouth, especially when at its most “animal,” metonymizes numerous desires, most often balked and even impossible ones, including those that actuate the scene of writing. Mouths are everywhere in O’Brien’s novels, licking, yawning, weeping, swallowing, keening, grimacing, biting, shrieking, chewing, singing, speaking, and opening in silence. These mouths give voice to the immaterial, and even animate the inorganic, which, for all of its immateriality, can yet resist manipulation. The inscrutable “inhuman” voice that emerges ultimately reveals “that words themselves are sphinxes, hybrids of the animal, the human, and the inorganic” (Ellmann 77)