boyd

“CANADA LAGS far behind the United States, the European Union, and Australia in enacting, implementing, and enforcing key laws and policies to prevent environmental impacts on health. Laws and regulations governing air quality, drinking water safety, pesticides, toxic substances, climate change, and biodiversity are weaker than in comparable wealthy nations. Unlike the United States, European Union, and Australia, Canada has no legally binding national standards for air quality or drinking water safety. Instead, Canada has voluntary guidelines…Despite their voluntary status, Canada’s air quality guidelines set weaker targets than the legally binding American, European, and Australian standards for five out of six air pollutants…National guidelines for Canadian drinking water are not only voluntary but also numerically weaker and less comprehensive than the legally binding standards in other jurisdictions.”

David R. Boyd, Cleaner, Greener, Healthier: A Prescription for Stronger Canadian Environmental Laws and Policies, from the conclusion (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2015).


 

bibeau

« PEU IMPORTE LE LIEU et l’Ă©poque, les sociĂ©tĂ©s — quelles que soient les croyances en cause — n’ont jamais pu annuler les potentiels de destruction Ă  l’Ĺ“uvre dans l’humanitĂ© ; aucune sociĂ©tĂ© n’a pu en finir avec la domination des privilĂ©giĂ©s sur les groupes situĂ©s plus bas dans la hiĂ©rarchie sociale. Par contre, il faut reconnaĂ®tre que nulle sociĂ©tĂ© n’a jamais vĂ©cu dans l’illusion qu’elle pourrait dĂ©finitivement mettre fin au dĂ©chaĂ®nement de la violence. PlutĂ´t que de simplement faire de la morale autour de la question de la violence lĂ©gitime et de la guerre juste, il faut nous atteler a dĂ©monter les mĂ©canismes de la violence, dĂ©busquer ses dĂ©bordements dans le champ du politique et interroger les limites de l’Ă©thique, du droit et de la religion, qui se sont mis ensemble, pour essayer de la baliser sans jamais basculer dans l’illusoire prĂ©tention de pouvoir en Ă©liminer les sources ou mĂŞme d’en contrĂ´ler toutes les dĂ©rives destructrices. »

Gilles Bibeau, GĂ©nĂ©alogie de la violence — Le terrorisme : piège pour la pensĂ©e (MontrĂ©al, MĂ©moire d’encrier, 2015, p. 34).


 

poelzer

“CANADIANS NEED to get serious about being treaty peoples and realize that the responsibility for doing so lies with everyone, not just with governments and the courts. Beyond legal and contractual requirements, beyond the complex negotiation of land claims and self-government agreements, Canadians must treat Aboriginal people with respect and understanding. The treaty system in Canada is first and foremost a pact between cultures and peoples and only secondarily a set of legal documents defining relationships between governments and First Nations. In the spirit of moving Canada along a new path, we offer Canadians a road map for change. This book is our attempt to break the logjam, to move beyond rhetoric and finger pointing, and to delve into the art of the possible. Canada can and must do better. Aboriginal governments and peoples can and must do better, even if the weight of history falls disproportionately on their shoulders. Canada needs new ideas and a new level of commitment.

Greg Poelzer and Ken S. Coates, From Treaty Peoples to Treaty Nation, from the preface (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2015).


 

pearson

“WHILE THE REALITY OF INDIGENOUS filmmaking is complex…there remains some basic truth to the notion that, for most of the twentieth century, Indigenous peoples were situated in front of, not behind, the lens. We have called this anthology Reverse Shots as a way of bringing to bear several observations about Indigenous cinemas, including that the ways in which Indigenous filmmaking reverses or modifies the relationship between camera and subject are commonly reflected in titles of books about Indigenous films: Beverly R. Singer’s Wiping the War Paint off the Lens, Kerstin Knopf’s Decolonizing the Lens of Power, Corinn Columpar’s Unsettling Sights. Titles like these emphasize how Indigenous peoples in many different regions around the globe have seized control of the camera…to create “reverse” representations as projects of unsettling and decolonizing settler-colonial cultures.”

Wendy Gay Pearson and Susan Knabe, eds., Reverse Shots: Indigenous Film and Media in an International Context, from the introduction (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2015).


 

keren

“WHILE THE AUTHORS IN THIS VOLUME do comment upon the social role of the public intellectual, their main concern is with fundamental questions about the basic concepts of truth, knowledge, and power in the contemporary public sphere. Technology is not regarded merely as an enabler of communication but as yet another embodiment of powers that seek to shape and mobilize public opinion to various ends. Much as intellectual life is no guarantor of virtue, neither is access to the public sphere through new technology a guarantor of independence or objectivity, much less veracity. Thus, the authors are concerned less with what public intellectuals are or what they say than with what underpins the credibility of interveners in the public sphere who seek to influence issues of the day with appeals to symbols and ideas.”

Michael Keren and Richard Hawkins, eds., Speaking Power to Truth: Digital Discourse and the Public Intellectual, from the introduction (Edmonton: Athabasca University Press, forthcoming).


 

david

« LES CONSEILLERS pour la sĂ©curitĂ© nationale ont progressivement acquis un statut inĂ©galĂ© et une influence considĂ©rable, contrastant ainsi avec la lettre et l’esprit du National Security Act de 1947. Jamais ses fondateurs n’avaient envisagĂ© une telle Ă©volution. Toutefois, aucune loi ne pouvait vĂ©ritablement encadrer l’Ă©volution du contexte international et les besoins croissants du prĂ©sident. DĂ©sormais, un conseiller influent paraĂ®t ĂŞtre la clĂ© de voĂ»te d’une politique Ă©trangère rĂ©ussie, tout en sachant que l’influence trop grande du conseiller pour la sĂ©curitĂ© nationale est susceptible de faire subir Ă  la diplomatie amĂ©ricaine les contrecoups d’une marginalisation excessive des acteurs traditionnels de la prise de dĂ©cision. Le prĂ©sident doit donc trouver un juste Ă©quilibre et, pour ce faire, choisir son conseiller avec soin, entre dirigisme et effacement excessif. »

Charles-Philippe David, Au sein de la Maison-Blanche — De Truman Ă  Obama : la formulation (imprĂ©visible) de la politique Ă©trangère des États-Unis (Presses de l’UniversitĂ© Laval, 2015, p. 999).


 

lacroix

« LES UNIVERSITÉS CANADIENNES se dĂ©marquent pourtant sur le plan international, nous l’avons Ă©tabli, par l’importance relative de la part de la recherche nationale exĂ©cutĂ©e en milieu universitaire. Dans aucun autre pays de l’OCDE ne trouve-t-on une part aussi importante des dĂ©penses nationales pour la recherche universitaire. Cet avantage ne semble malheureusement pas se traduire en un rendement plus exceptionnel du taux annuel de la diplomation doctorale Ă  laquelle contribuent bon an mal an les universitĂ©s canadiennes.

De plus, de tous les pays de l’OCDE, le Canada est celui oĂą l’on trouve au tournant du siècle la proportion la plus Ă©levĂ©e d’Ă©trangers parmi tous ses dĂ©tenteurs de doctorat. Il est le seul pays oĂą plus d’un docteur sur deux est Ă©tranger. »

Robert Lacroix et Louis Maheu, Les grandes universitĂ©s de recherche : institutions autonomes dans un environnement concurrentiel (Les Presses de l’UniversitĂ© de MontrĂ©al, 2015, p. 306).


 

doern

“THE HARPER ERA started, via its 2006 Accountability Act, as a self-proclaimed accountability government but it has morphed into something quite different…Chapter 2 shows the continuing secrecy and non-accountable practices regarding public service cuts. The…assessment in chapter 3 of the first five years of the parliamentary budget officer (PBO) also draws attention to similar barriers and also to the failure of the government to make the PBO into a true parliamentary office…when Harper and PCO officials had instead lodged it within the Parliamentary Library. And most telling of all is the Harper era’s concerted effort to muzzle federal scientists and related policy evidence both as an aspect of its hyper attack politics and continuous campaigning strategy and the nature of its science budget and program cuts.”

Bruce Doern and Christopher Stoney, eds., How Ottawa Spends, 2014-15: The Harper Government — Good to Go? (Published for the School of Public Policy and Administration, Carleton University, by McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014, 19.)


 

boothe

“THIS BOOK EXPLAINS why Canada lacks a broad, nationwide program for the public provision of pharmaceuticals by comparing Canadian policy development to that of the United Kingdom and Australia, both of which have national, universal pharmaceutical programs…It offers an explanation based on the pace of change  — whether countries develop their health systems all at once, in a radical “big bang” approach to policy, or take a slower, incremental approach and adopt one health service at a time. It argues that the pace of change has a crucial influence on the way political elites and the public think about health policy, and… these ideas in turn can act as a significant barrier to later policy development and change.”

Katherine Boothe, Ideas and the Pace of Change: National Pharmaceutical Insurance in Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015, 4).


 

mc andrew

« LA VALORISATION de la maĂ®trise et de l’usage du français chez les Ă©lèves issus de l’immigration doit cependant ĂŞtre menĂ©e en complĂ©mentaritĂ©, et non en opposition, avec les autres ressources langagières et culturelles qui font partie du bagage de ces jeunes. Dans l’ensemble de l’ouvrage, les tĂ©moignages du lien nĂ©cessaire et pertinent entre la langue d’origine et la langue de scolarisation abondent. Ces rĂ©sultats positifs doivent ĂŞtre mieux connus par l’ensemble des dĂ©cideurs et des intervenants scolaires, et mĂŞme par les parents immigrants et les organismes qui les soutiennent, dans un contexte oĂą une vision soustractive du rapport entre les langues est encore frĂ©quemment rĂ©pandue. »

Marie Mc Andrew et l’Ă©quipe du GRIÉS, La rĂ©ussite Ă©ducative des Ă©lèves issus de l’immigration : dix ans de recherche et d’intervention au QuĂ©bec (Les Presses de l’UniversitĂ© de MontrĂ©al, 2015, p. 292-293).


 

hayden

“THE SET OF ALTERNATIVES I explore with greatest interest are those that embody ideas of sufficiency, and which question the necessity and desirability of infinitely growing production and consumption… One early voice of sufficiency was economist John Kenneth Galbraith…who asked “How much should a country consume?”: “If we are concerned about our great appetite for materials, it is plausible to decrease waste, to make better use of stocks available, and to develop substitutes. But what about the appetite itself? Surely this is the ultimate source of the problem. If it continues on its geometric course, will it not one day have to be restrained? Yet in the literature of the resource problem this is the forbidden question.”

Anders Hayden, When Green Growth Is Not Enough: Climate Change, Ecological Modernization, and Sufficiency, from the introduction (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015).


 

geist

“THE CHAPTER EXAMINES the phenomenon of Canada-to-US-to-Canada boomerang traffic, focusing specifically on the privacy and related risks associated with the NSA surveillance as well as the policy implications and remedial responses… [We]show how surveillance capabilities can be built into relatively few “choke points” yet capture the great bulk of Internet traffic. In contradistinction to the common metaphor of the Internet as a spaceless, featureless “cloud,” we demonstrate that, with interception points in under twenty major cities, the NSA is capable of intercepting a large proportion of US Internet traffic. We turn then to Canadian Internet routing patterns, showing that boomerang routing is commonplace, that such routing exposes Canadians’ data to NSA surveillance, and that Internet users across Canada conducting a wide range of everyday communications are subject to it.”

Michael Geist, ed., Law, Privacy and Surveillance in Canada in the Post-Snowden Era, from the introduction (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2015).


 

gotzsche

« PRESQUE TOUTE LA SCIENCE fondamentale qui soutient le progrès de la mĂ©decine moderne se dĂ©veloppe dans le secteur Ă  but non lucratif, dans les universitĂ©s, les instituts de recherche et les laboratoires gouvernementaux. Un rapport du Congrès des États-Unis de l’an 2000 soulignait que “des 21 mĂ©dicaments les plus importants lancĂ©s entre 1965 et 1992, 15 avaient Ă©tĂ© mis au point Ă  partir de connaissances et de techniques provenant de la recherche financĂ©e par le gouvernement fĂ©dĂ©ral”. D’autres Ă©tudes arrivent Ă  des conclusions similaires, par exemple qu’au moins 80 % de 35 mĂ©dicaments majeurs Ă©taient fondĂ©s sur des dĂ©couvertes rĂ©alisĂ©es par la recherche d’organismes du secteur public. »

Peter C. Gøtzsche, Remèdes mortels et crimĂ© organisĂ© : comment l’industrie pharmaceutique a corrompu les services de santĂ© (Presses de l’UniversitĂ© Laval, 2015, p. 354-355).


 

guirguis-younger

“[H]OMELESSNESS has been increasingly characterized as Canada’s most significant public health challenge…and yet no book or edited collection has unpacked the relationship between homelessness and health to identify potential solutions. This book seeks to remedy this by bringing together, for the first time, contributions by leading and emerging Canadian researchers exploring the relationship between homelessness and health. While fully accounting for the impact of homelessness on health lies beyond the scope of any one project, this book disentangles many important dimensions of this relationship. Accordingly, it has considerable potential to inform the response to one of Canada’s enduring social challenges and, to that end, contributors have linked their chapters to policy and practice recommendations.”

Manal Guirguis-Younger, Ryan McNeil and Stephen W. Hwang, eds., Homelessness and Health in Canada, from the introduction (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2014).


 

bailey

“AS WE PROCEEDED through the various phases of the eGirls Project, we were struck by how often decontextualized, individualistic accounts of technology and of girls surfaced. These narrow accounts seemed predestined to breed the kinds of unidimensional utopian/dystopian descriptions of and predictions about the impact of digital communications technologies on lived equality for girls and young women that had inspired the eGirls Project in the first place… We imagined developing an approach grounded in the voices and experiences of girls and young women that sought neither to infantilize them nor to responsibilize them, but rather to respond to their own perceptions of their seamlessly integrated online/offline existences in a supportive, empathetic way. We hoped this approach could help to break policy free from abstract, objectified narratives and instead ground new reforms premised on girls’ and young women’s situated knowledge and experiences.”

Jane Bailey and Valerie Steeves, eds., eGirls, eCitizens, from the introduction (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2015)


 

derriennic

« L’AMPLITUDE DES INÉGALITÉS Ă©conomiques internationales est aujourd’hui bien plus grande qu’entre les citoyens d’un mĂŞme pays. Ces inĂ©galitĂ©s sont un obstacle majeur Ă  la mise en place de lois mondiales efficaces dans des domaines oĂą celles-ci sont devenues indispensables. Par exemple, la rĂ©glementation des migrations peut assez facilement ĂŞtre Ă  la fois libĂ©rale et juste pour la circulation des personnes entre les pays qui ont Ă  peu près le mĂŞme niveau de revenu par habitant, mais elle crĂ©e plus de contraintes et beaucoup plus d’injustices quand ces pays sont Ă©conomiquement très inĂ©gaux. Des lois efficaces pour limiter la pollution de l’atmosphère n’auraient pas les mĂŞmes consĂ©quences pour ceux qui font prĂ©sentement leur rĂ©volution industrielle et pour ceux qui vivent dans des pays oĂą elle a Ă©tĂ© faite il y a plus d’un siècle. »

Jean-Pierre Derriennic, Essai sur les injustices (Presses de l’UniversitĂ© Laval, 2015, p. 304-305).


 

savoie

“I SET OUT to answer a number of questions, all designed to help us understand better what government is good at. How do national political institutions define the common interest? Has it been possible to reconcile governing from the centre and blame-avoidance with new public management measures? Have efforts to make the public sector look like the private sector been successful? How have governments been able to reconcile New Public Management measures with new accountability and oversight requirements? How can we explain the growth of citizen disenchantment with government over the past thirty years? Is the disenchantment tied to failing government performance? How do governments know if their activities have been successful? Were governments in Western democracies better at getting things done fifty years ago than they are today? If so, why?”

Donald J. Savoie, What Is Government Good At? A Canadian Answer, from the introduction (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015).


 

marcil

« PRIVATISER LE CONTRAT SOCIAL en s’en remettant aux rĂ©gimes privĂ©s individuels (ou collectifs, mais Ă  cotisation dĂ©terminĂ©e, et de plus en plus sans participation de l’employeur) Ă©rode le lien de solidaritĂ© sociale qui prĂ©suppose l’interdĂ©pendance de tous envers chacun. L’individualisation de l’Ă©pargne-retraite renie ce principe et nous Ă©loigne d’une sociĂ©tĂ© juste.

Ă€ l’heure du tout au marchĂ©, de l’individualisme dĂ©bridĂ© et du peu de soucis qu’on se fait pour notre avenir collectif (Ă  tous les niveaux), les rĂ©gimes publics de retraite, avant tous les autres, ne constituent pas uniquement des outils financiers pour assurer la sĂ©curitĂ© Ă©conomique des citoyens : ils participent d’un vĂ©ritable projet politique. »

Ianik Marcil, « ProtĂ©ger le bien commun », dans Normand Baillargeon (dir.), L’assaut contre les retraites : discours catastrophistes, rĂ©formes rĂ©actionnaires et droit Ă  une retraite dĂ©cente (M Éditeur, 2015, p. 24-25).

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