Cet article examine l’important rôle du Canada dans le développement du mécanisme de règlement des différends de l’Accord général sur les tarifs douaniers et le commerce, puis de l’Organisation mondiale de commerce. Face à un système initialement bloqué par le consensus, le Canada a œuvré dès les années 1980 à sa transformation en un cadre plus contraignant, transparent et juridictionnalisé. Ses propositions ont influencé les réformes du cycle de Tokyo, la réforme intérimaire de 1989, et ont été intégrées aux négociations du cycle d’Uruguay. Le Canada a notamment été moteur dans la juridictionnalisation de la procédure de règlement des différends, dans l’instauration du consensus inversé et dans la création d’un organe d’appel. Depuis 1995, le Canada demeure un acteur actif de l’Organe de règlement des différends par sa participation à de nombreux différends et par la présence d’experts canadiens dans les panels et à l’Organe d’appel. Face à la paralysie actuelle de ce dernier, le Canada a initié des solutions provisoires telles que l’Arrangement multipartite pour une procédure arbitrale d’appel provisoire et il continue de jouer un rôle moteur dans les négociations en cours sur la réforme du mécanisme, combinant attachement au multilatéralisme et pragmatisme. Son engagement illustre une volonté constante de défendre un système commercial multilatéral fondé sur la règle de droit et prévisible.

Research on administrative burdens has highlighted how policy design and implementation shape citizens’ experiences of the state. Little attention has been paid to how conflicts between target populations can also generate administrative burdens. Using the case of gamete donation policies in Canada, this article argues that target populations can shape administrative burdens for one another through competition within policy arenas, with winners experiencing less costly policy implementation at the expense of other target populations. In doing so, it positions citizens as agents who both experience and produce the costs of policy implementation. To capture these dynamics, the article introduces the concept of consequent populations to identify distinct groups disadvantaged by the outcomes of target group competition, and consequent costs to specify the sub-category of administrative burden borne by this group.

Cet essai critique s’adresse aux coopérants volontaires potentiels et poursuit principalement un objectif didactique. Rédigé dans un langage accessible, il synthétise des réflexions critiques élaborées par l’auteur sur plusieurs décennies, en rapport avec le développement international tel qu’il est perçu depuis le Canada, et la coopération volontaire en particulier, en examinant leurs discours, intentions et leurs non-dits. L’auteur, anthropologue social spécialiste des populations marginales des hauteurs asiatiques, propose aux futurs coopérants une réflexion appuyée qui transcende les utopies intéressées promues par l’État et l’industrie du développement, ainsi que par son idéologie, le développementisme.

Tamil immigrants in Canada face high rates of Type II Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) and significant barriers in accessing T2DM-related services. These barriers are often amplified for older adults, whose age-related needs intersect with cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic factors. This study explored the lived experiences of Tamil older adults accessing T2DM-related health care services in the Greater Toronto Area. A qualitative interpretive description approach was used, involving in-depth semi-structured interviews with nine Tamil older adults. Participants were recruited through purposive and snowball sampling. Thematic analysis was applied, with findings organized using Levesque et al.’s framework (2013). Five key themes were identified: (1) timely and informed diabetes management, (2) reliance on trusted health service providers, (3) reliance on others for transportation, (4) financial factors, and (5) navigating health care through cultural and communication factors. Identified themes can inform potential solutions to improve access including centralized resource hubs, culturally tailored education programs, affordable transportation options, and an integrated health care approach.

Psychedelic medicines hold the promise of therapeutic benefit for many suffering from serious unmet mental health needs, leading to substantial demand even before these drugs receive FDA approval based on demonstrated safety and effectiveness for particular conditions. Recognizing FDA approval as the ideal path for psychedelics intended for medical use and drawing on lessons from medical marijuana, we encourage policymakers to balance the need for evidence, the importance of patient safeguards, and the desire for speed. They should increase support for psychedelic research, reject approaches that could inhibit that research, explore improvements to FDA’s existing pre-approval access pathway, and avoid politically motivated FDA approval of psychedelic medicines.

The opioid overdose crisis has become a global public health emergency, claiming more than 100,000 lives each year. In North America, shifting opioid prescribing practices in response to the crisis have profoundly affected people living with chronic pain, who now face reduced access to prescription opioids. Against this backdrop, pain stakeholders have become increasingly active in policymaking arenas to shape how opioids and pain are understood. This study examines the Canadian Pain Task Force (CPTF) — a federal advisory body charged with creating a national pain strategy — by analyzing its reports, public and patient consultations, and internal documents. Through qualitative framing analysis, we find that stakeholders overwhelmingly depicted the overdose crisis as the result of illicit and irresponsible opioid use, while positioning stigma as both a driver and consequence of the crisis that compounded the challenges faced by people with chronic pain. From these problem definitions flowed policy proposals centered on expanding opioid access, reducing stigma, and advancing patient-centered care. These findings demonstrate how pain stakeholders shape, and are simultaneously shaped by, opioid policy debates — with consequences for both overdose prevention and chronic pain management.

Voter turnout has declined across established democracies, which has been accompanied by an increase in turnout disparities along class lines. In contrast to most advanced democracies, class voting has largely been neglected in Canada. Using the entire series of the Canadian Election Study (1965–2021), this article examines the turnout gap in Canada over time by class, education, and income, and whether the offerings of political parties impact these relationships. Results find major class-based participatory inequalities, which have worsened over time. The magnitude of the turnout gap between lower and higher socio-economic status (SES) individuals has mainly been driven by the demobilization of lower-SES individuals and a significant factor is the reduced saliency of economic issues in the party system. The findings contribute to our understanding of how economic inequalities translate into political inequalities and show that rising turnout inequality between politically relevant cleavages, represents a deterioration of democratic representation.

The 2007 adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) marked a critical juncture in the area of Indigenous rights. As a nonbinding agreement, its adoption is at the discretion of each state, resulting in significant state-level variation. Importantly, within-state variations remain underexplored. These differences are potentially significant in federal, decentralized countries such as Canada. This article examines why some provinces and territories lead in implementing the key principles embedded in UNDRIP, whereas others have dragged their feet. We collected 230 Canadian regulations introduced at the subnational level between 2007 and 2023, and assessed the impact of three key variables (i.e. political ideology, resource politics and issue voting). We found that none of these variables explained within-state variations on their own. To further explore the role of these variables, we subsequently compared two provinces at different stages of the UNDRIP implementation spectrum (Québec and British Columbia).

This article examines the Canada-United States Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) in relation to a growing literature on bureaucrats’ role in immigration policy making, while challenging interpretations of the agreement as a “Europeanization” of Canadian policy. Canada is a prototypical liberal “migration state” that balances economic considerations, national security, rights and broader cultural concerns through its immigration regime. We open the “black box” of the state to examine how bureaucratic decision making informed the development of Canada’s asylum system. Drawing on interviews, archival materials and government documents, we show bureaucrats simultaneously sought to manage asylum backlogs and ensure compliance with international obligations while countering advocacy group opposition. The STCA reflects a uniquely Canadian approach to balancing competing imperatives in refugee policy, highlighting the role of bureaucrats in shaping immigration policy within domestic and international constraints. This research contributes to understanding the historical development of migration control policies in liberal democracies.

Research demonstrates that English- and French-speaking Canadians differ in a wide range of attitudes, including their political preferences, their vision of the Canadian federation and their national identity. In this article, we ask whether individual bilingualism is associated with a decrease in the attitudinal differences between anglophones and francophones. Using survey data collected in the summer of 2023, we attempt to determine whether knowledge of the French language is related to an increase in the responsiveness of English-speaking citizens toward issues that typically preoccupy French-speaking Canadians. Our analyses suggest that knowledge of French as a second language is strongly linked to the political preferences of Canadian citizens but does not bridge the attitudinal gap between Canada’s two main language groups. These results highlight the relevance of considering the different languages that people speak—and not just their mother tongue—to understand their political attitudes.

Affective polarization is often blamed on the rise of partisan news. However, self-reported measures of news consumption suffer serious flaws. We often have limited ability to characterize partisan media audiences outside of the United States. I use a behavioural data set of 728 respondents whose online behaviour was tracked over four weeks during the 2019 Canadian federal election. These data were paired to a survey for a subset of respondents. I find that audiences for partisan media are small, and web traffic is driven by an even smaller share of the population. There are few major partisan differences in news media use, and partisan news exposure is higher among highly attentive, sophisticated news consumers, rather than those with strong political commitments.