MA/PhD Core Course on Canadian Politics

Students will survey Canadian politics and government. They will explore Canada's political culture, its constitution, federalism, and relations with indigenous peoples, as well as its institutions of government, including the parliament, the crown, the prime minister, the cabinet, the bureaucracy, and the courts. Students will also investigate the mechanisms that help to mobilize citizens and link them to government, such as political parties, elections, interest groups and social movements. Students will thus acquire an enhanced command of their political environment, and an enriched understanding of dilemmas facing Canada as a diverse liberal-democratic community.

This course provides a survey of political issues in the Canadian context, with a primary focus on social struggles. Rather than focusing on 'Canadian politics,' the approach of this course is to learn about politics as they take place in Canada. That is, it begins from the assumption that most of the big political issue of our times are not neatly contained within the nation-state; more often, they can be understood either as localized instances of supra-national political issues, or as nationalizing issues that began far more locally. As such, 'Canada' is a container in which we can observe and study specific instances of political phenomena, while also considering how the actions of the Canadian state itself end up shaping those phenomena. In order to fulfill this goal, we'll be taking an issues-based approach wherein we'll consider specific political struggles week-by-week. This will allow us to historicize those struggles and place them in the local/global contexts that shape them. Importantly, while these are approached individually, we'll also be flagging how these issues intersect/overlap with one another. To that end, the course is divided into four sections, the first of which will provide theoretical/analytical lenses by which to understand a number of supranational structures of power. Section two studies the politics of land, considering such political movements as decolonization, secession, environmentalism, and housing justice. Section three studies labour struggles, including the state of the labour movement, migrant worker justice, and feminist struggles over unwaged and socially reproductive labour. Finally, in the third section, we consider both policing and the decline of the social welfare state as challenges for establishing security of person.

This course provides a survey of the core institutions of Canadian government, as well as how they relate to the society/societies they govern. Famously, Senator Eugene Forsey suggested that Canadian government rests on three core institutional frameworks: (i) constitutional monarchy, (ii) parliamentary democracy, and (iii) federalism. While an important trifecta, he neglected to mention the base upon which all these institutional structures were built: (iv) colonialism. Through a historically informed account of state development in Canada, we will develop our understanding of how core institutions—such as the Parliament, the Cabinet, the Judiciary, etc.—operate on their own and interact with one another. In doing so, we will also seek to understand that government is not outside of, or apart, from society, but rather reflects a relative balance of power amongst competing social forces. Institutions of government being one way amongst many that dominant groups seek to reproduce their interests in relatively stable ways.

This paper is on Canadian Studies Courses.

Why did the Canadian economy develop as it did, with heavy reliance on exporting raw primary products or staples – cod fish, beaver pelts, wheat, and oil and gas – and a poorly developed manufacturing sector? How did this ‘staples trap’ affect the distribution of wealth in Canada? How did it undermine the development of Canadian political institutions and policies to counteract the negative effects of that distribution of wealth? This course aims to answer these questions through a critical engagement with the Canadian political economy tradition. Students will work together to assess the relevance of the tradition’s understanding of the state, society, and power in Canada to issues of current concerns such as Indigenous sovereignty, climate change, income and gender inequality, and the future of higher education. The course is reading-intensive. Assigned readings are dense and analytical, and employ concepts and terminology from various disciplines; many are old enough that references to newsworthy events and prominent figures are cryptic. Students will be coached in effective reading strategies for difficult texts on unfamiliar subjects, and will receive constructive feedback on their interpretation of texts in seminars and on assignments.

Topic: Using examples from the course, discuss the relationship of representation, citizenship and identity in Canada. In your answer, address the different meanings or aspects of representation discussed in class (voice/image) and the ways in which the intersectionality of gender, race, class and sexuality impacts the quality and quantity of representation we achieve.

This course surveys the historical development and contemporary patterning of public policies in Canada. We begin by exploring the context of public policy-making in Canada, focusing on institutions (parliamentary government, federalism, the courts), actors (citizens, parties, advocacy groups) and ideas/ideologies (liberalism, conservatism, socialism, etc.). We go on to examine policy-making in several issue areas, including: macroeconomic development, social welfare, health, urban affairs, immigration and citizenship, multiculturalism, and Aboriginal policy.

Indigenizing Introductory Political Science at the University of Ottawa, 2022

This paper is the first work of mine being shared publicly. Since I began writing it in 2019 with the guidance of a professor, I have learned so much, experienced so much, and changed so much. I am grateful to have so much support from everyone in my life to continue my education and graduate my program. I want to recognize that the University of Ottawa has since made progress in some of the area's I mention in this paper. I would love to see Indigenous Politics become it's own sub-field within the larger field of Politics as an academic discipline. "The intent of this brief is to critically reflect on the ways in which colonial violence is perpetuated through political science education at the University of Ottawa. It highlights the harmful consequences that Indigenous students and people suffer at the hands of colonial institutions through assimilation and provides specific recommendations to improve introductory political science course delivery for all students, to contribute to a more just society."

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