Browse "Politics & Law"

ACADEMIC SCHOLARS are often loathe to admit to the large role chance plays in history, let alone in their own work. But Shelagh Grant makes no bones about literally stumbling over a remarkable episode in Canada's Arctic past.

This article was originally published in Maclean’s magazine on October 9, 1995. Partner content is not updated.

See No Evil By Isabel Vincent (Reed Books Canada, 212 pages, $19.

The Boot and Shoe Workers Union was established in Boston 1895 and incorporated the militant Boot and Shoe Workers International Union (founded 1889), which had led a Toronto shoemakers' strike in 1890. The BSWU, led by Guelph-born John Tobin, was committed to resisting mechanization.

Quebec’s Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences (Commission de consultation sur les pratiques d'accommodement reliées aux différences culturelles) was launched by Liberal premier  Jean Charest on 8 February 2007. It was called in response to heightened public tensions concerning the reasonable accommodation of ethno-cultural and religious minority groups, mainly of Muslims, Sikhs and Jews by the historically Catholic French-Canadian majority population in the province. The commission was co-chaired by Université du Québec à Chicoutimi professor  Gérard Bouchard and McGill University professor emeritus Charles Taylor. It subsequently came to be known as the Bouchard-Taylor Commission.

The political boundaries that are of concern to Canada today are the international boundaries primarily with the US and Greenland and, because they are of more than local importance, the boundaries of the provinces and territories. The evolution of both types involved 2 distinct stages. After political decisions were made on the allocation of territory, such territories were delimited and the boundaries described in state documents. Then, usually some time later, the boundaries were surveyed and marked on the ground (the process of demarcation).

The Boundary Waters Treaty, 11 January 1909, between Canada and the US, resulted from a need to settle and prevent disputes regarding the uses and apportionment of waters along the international boundary.

Bourgeois, according to an 18th-century writer, were not nobles, ecclesiastics or magistrates, but city dwellers who "nevertheless by their properties, by their riches, by the honorable employments which adorn them and by their commerce are above the artisans and what is called the people.

Parliamentary Procedure and Practice with an Introductory Account of the Origin and Growth of Parliamentary Institutions in the Dominion of Canada, by Sir John George Bourinot, Clerk of the Canadian House of Commons, was published in 1884, with 3 later editions in 1892, 1903 and 1916.

Brandy Parliament, an assembly of 20 notables of New France, who on 10 October 1678 were asked their opinion of the sale of brandy to the Indigenous peoples. The title was bestowed in 1921 by historian W.B. Munro.

JENNIFER STODDART IS A DEDICATED public servant who has spent years - first working for the province of Quebec, and since 2003 as the federal privacy commissioner - trying to protect Canadians' personal information from prying governments and greedy businesses.

​The first Bread and Roses March, an initiative of the Fédération des femmes du Québec, began on 26 May 1995.

The colony of British Columbia was founded in 1858 in response to the Fraser River Gold Rush. (See also The Fraser River Gold Rush and the Founding of British Columbia.) The colony established representative government in 1864 and merged with the colony of Vancouver Island in 1866. In May 1868, Amor De Cosmos formed the Confederation League to bring responsible government to BC and to join Confederation. In September 1868, the Confederation League passed 37 resolutions outlining the terms for a union with the Dominion of Canada. The terms were passed by both the BC assembly and the federal Parliament in 1871. The colony joined Canada as the country’s sixth province on 20 July 1871. The threat of American annexation, embodied by the Alaska purchase of 1867, and the promise of a railway linking BC to the rest of Canada, were decisive factors.

British Columbia Provincial Police had its origin in the police forces established in the colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia in 1858 to provide law and order following an influx of gold miners and settlers.

British Columbia Research Council, formerly a nonprofit society incorporated in 1944 to provide facilities for technological research and industrial development in BC. BC Research, a technical wing of the council, comprised scientific, engineering and technical laboratory facilities.

British Columbia Woodworkers' Strike, 15 May - 20 June 1946, the first strike of BC District 1 of the International Woodworkers of America (IWA) after coast-wide bargaining rights were won in 1943.

Canada's federal and provincial governments follow a budgetary process, designed to ensure control, accountability and planning in the spending of public money.

Bureaucracy may be defined as a formal organizational arrangement characterized by division of labour, specialization of functions, a hierarchy of authority and a system of rules, regulations and record keeping. In common usage, it refers to the administrative branch of government.

The term bureaucracy is traditionally associated with the administration of government and its various agencies.