Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper aims to discuss the impact of the recent Canadian statements on national security and foreign policy on the cooperation in the field of non-military security between Canada and the United States of America. We will start by analyzing comparatively the new statement from april 2005 and the former White Book from 1995 and than we will try to see what changes have already been made on the ground - at Canada-US border for instance - and what could be the consequences at mid- and long-term. A research variable will be the question of Canadian values, which are partially common and partially different from the US ones.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This research examines the marginalization of non-citizens in Canada and the United States. The project is comparative in nature, and extends research on recent shifts in US immigration policy. The 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act cut the welfare benefits of US citizens and immigrants, reduced benefits that non-citizens could claim, gave state and local governments the authority to determine eligibility for public benefits, and facilitated the criminalization, deportation and expedited removal of non-US citizens. The Act represented a convergence of crime and immigration policies. These polices were extended in 2001 with the passage of the USA Patriot Act which confers to the government broad authority to detect, exclude, prosecute and detain undesirable foreigners in the investigation of terrorism. Again, those experiencing the full force of these measures were non-citizens. Both the mass incarceration of criminal offenders and the broader detention of immigrants emerge from negative perceptions of the welfare system, racial prejudice, hysteria about people seeming inassimilable, and economic expedience. Increasingly, the immigration system functions to socially control through confinement and deportation of the unpopular, the different and the powerless (see Kanstroom, 2005; Miller, 2002; Cole, 2002). Recent research (Pratt, 2005) and policy developments (Bill C-11 and Bill C-36) in Canada indicate a similar trend. Non-citizens have become the principle targets of enhanced security measures, and the association between crime (and terrorism) and new immigrants and refugees has become entrenched. This research compares the evolution of this trend and assesses its implications for Canada and the United States.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Under the recent Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA) (2003), Parliament developed a new set of “intermediate” responses to deal with youth engaged in non-serious offences. Extrajudicial measures - including taking no action, warnings, cautions, and referrals - represent a new ethos of responding to youth pre-charge, in a way that is meant to accomplish accountability, is proportionate to the harm caused, and deals with them outside of the formal judicial process. The “intermediate” sanctions continuum has shifted and lengthened within youth legislation, from a warning to imprisonment. One may assume, then, that police have shifted their thinking about applying the extrajudicial measures provisions in relatively non-serious cases as substitutes for charging youth. The study includes survey data and qualitative interviews with police from 5 jurisdictions within Ontario. The data demonstrate that youths' past offending record and past dispositions influence a police officer's willingness to impose an extrajudicial measure, even if the current offence is relatively non-serious. Although statistics show that the proportion of cases going to youth court has been reduced since the introduction of the YCJA, police thinking about a youth's past record of offending and the subsequent deservedness and risk of providing an EJM must continue to shift to be congruent with the principles of the YCJA. `Intermediate' sanctions are not always perceived in the spirit that they were intended under the YCJA. The findings are analysed in the context of the law and intermediate sanctions literature.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: One of the factors to be considered in questionnaire design is format. This factor is particularly important in self-administered interviews. Two types of self-administered questionnaires are used in Canada’s Census of Population: a short form (80 percent of the population) and a long form (20 percent of the population). In the 2006 Census, optical scanning and character recognition will be used to capture data. However, such techniques cannot be used on the current long form, mainly because the response spaces for open questions cannot be readily scanned. A number of qualitative surveys have been conducted in the last few years with the aim of improving the long form so that the data can be scanned in. Another aim was to find out from small samples of respondents what would be the best questionnaire format. Those surveys were followed in April 2002 by a quantitative survey whose aim was to recommend the best questionnaire format based on certain criteria. The format had to be such that the data could be scanned and would be of acceptable quality. The survey involved testing four different questionnaire formats on four independent samples of households. The survey included matrix formats and sequential formats. Following the survey, a detailed analysis was carried out to determine which format was best on the basis of criteria such as data quality, collection costs and response burden. The presentation will focus on the criteria used to determine the best format and the key findings of the analysis.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Keynes' General Theory (1936) is arguably one of the most important books of the twentieth century. His ideas for stabilizing the aggregate economy have profoundly influenced economic theory as well as popular opinion about what governments can and should do with respect to the business cycle. On the other hand, whether Keynesian theory has substantially altered the course of public policy remains an open question. In this paper we identify the elements required for any investigation of the impact of Keynes' ideas on policy choices and then conduct our own 'search for Keynes', applying an intertemporal spatial voting framework to study the fiscal history of the Government of Canada from 1870 to 2000. The long time series allows the construction of a counterfactual - one of several essential elements - showing what governments would have planned to do 'after Keynes', if Keynes' ideas had not in fact been present. Our results suggest that textbook Keynesianism is identifiable in the Canadian data.