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Challenges, choices, visions and solutions: Quebec electoral campaign debriefing

Published: 6 June 2003

Who is winning and why

Quebec, between nation-state and region-state
Political scientist Alain-G. Gagnon (514-398-8965/3960), professor with the ¿´Æ¬ÊÓƵ Department of Political Science and director of ¿´Æ¬ÊÓƵ's Quebec Studies Program, pursues a broad range of research interests concerned with Quebec, as well as Canadian and comparative politics with emphasis on social movements, intellectuals, constitutional politics, federalism, political sociology and Canadian political economy. He recently co-authored two books: Ties That Bind: Parties and Voters in Canada, by James Bickerton, A.-G. Gagnon and Patrick Smith, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1999, 251 pages (currently being translated through Les Éditions Boréal by Alain-G. Gagnon and Hugh Segal [edited and introduced by]), and The Canadian Social Union Without Quebec: 8 Critical Analyses, Montreal: Institute for Research on Public Policy, 2000, 260 pages (translation of L'Union sociale canadienne sans le Québec, Montreal: Les Éditions Saint-Martin, 2000, 277 pages). "More specifically, since the early '80s, although failing to achieve its nation-state project, Quebec did nevertheless gain region-state status with its economic and political partners," Alain-G. Gagnon wrote in Le Devoir (July 25, 2002).

Kaleidoscopic federalism
Roderick A. Macdonald (514-398-8914), F.R. Scott Professor of Constitutional and Public Law with the ¿´Æ¬ÊÓƵ Faculty of Law, teaches and publishes in the fields of civil law, commercial law, administrative law, constitutional law and jurisprudence. He was dean of the Law faculty from 1984 to 1989. He chaired the Task Force on Access to Justice of the Ministère de la Justice du Québec and served as consultant to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the Ontario Civil Justice Review and the federal Department of Justice with respect to the effect of the Quebec Civil Code on federal law. From 1997 to 2000, he was founding president of the Law Commission of Canada. This entry is titled after the paper that Professor Macdonald delivered at the International Colloquium on Federalism, staged last November by the ¿´Æ¬ÊÓƵ Faculty of Law. In his words, "Kaleidoscopic federalism keeps contingent the interplay of agency and structure in the self-construction of citizens, and is the image of a pluralistic Dionysian actor resisting a monistic Apollonian political order." See online.

The Quebec model

"Like Aphrodite, the Quebec model was born adult"
We owe this description of the Quebec model of governance to Law professor Julius Grey (514-288-6180) speaking at UQAM's "Avenir du Québec" colloquium this past March. Professor Grey, a noted authority on immigration and recent ¿´Æ¬ÊÓƵ retiree, has published extensively. He has advocated for numerous high-profile cases in the fields of constitutional law, administrative law, federal law and criminal law. He is a frequent contributor to the Canadian media, penning articles that seek to broaden general knowledge of public policy issues, especially language laws, constitutional law and free trade.

Quebecers? French Americans!
Is the sale of the Canadiens hockey club to American George Gillet surefire evidence that Quebecers are on the fast track to Americanization? "Yes," ¿´Æ¬ÊÓƵ historian Yvan Lamonde answered André Pratte of La Presse (February 1, 2001). "We are all Americans. This is one further sign that Quebec's economic and cultural integration into North America is a growing, multifaceted phenomenon." In his books Histoire des idées au Québec, 1760-1896 and Allégeances et dépendances, Histoire d'une ambivalence identitaire, Professor Lamonde shows that the United States has long been an integral part of the Québécois mindset.

Language rights and political theory
So goes the title of a book soon to be published (Oxford University Press) by political scientist Alan Patten (514-398-8971), professor with the ¿´Æ¬ÊÓƵ Department of Political Science, in collaboration with colleague Will Kimlicka of Queen's University. Professor Patten, an expert on Hegelian political philosophy, published Hegel's Idea of Freedom in 1999. He has a long-standing interest in the relationships between liberalism and nationalism and has written numerous articles dealing with secession and self-determination, the foundations of cultural rights in liberal egalitarian thought, and the link between citizenship and national identity.

Reconciling work and family responsibilities

Mothers: family life, work schedule...and advancement
The current research interests of Professor Mary Dean Lee (514-398-4034) bear upon professional and management careers, the changing nature of work, work and family, and corporate learning. She is heading a project titled "Managing Professionals in the 21st Century: the Evolution and Institutionalization of New Work Forms." This study follows up Professor Lee's 1996-1999 exploration (together with a colleague from Purdue University) of reduced-load and reduced-wage work arrangements among senior executives and managers in 45 companies across various industries.

Fathers: advancement, work schedule...and family life
"The workplace balks at the idea of male employees taking leave to tend to their children," says sociologist Germain Dulac (514-398-1025), of the ¿´Æ¬ÊÓƵ Centre for Applied Family Studies, School of Social Work. He came to this conclusion after surveying some 400 studies on the subject. His full findings are written up as Paternité, travail et société; les obstacles organisationnels et socioculturels qui empêchent les pères de concilier leurs responsabilités familiales et le travail [Paternity, work and society: organizational and sociocultural obstacles to work-family reconciliation among fathers], published by the ¿´Æ¬ÊÓƵ Centre for Applied Family Studies.

Employment policy and unemployment in Quebec
The research interests of Professor Daniel Parent (514-398-4846), an authority on the labour economy and applied econometrics, lie with the specificity of the knowledge industry, the impact of private-sector formation, school-to-work transition, bonuses as a wage factor, and the determinants of compensation schemes.

A guaranteed future for the Quebec welfare state?

The impact of population aging on public-health spending in Quebec
At the behest of the Conseil de la santé et du bien-être du Québec, Professor Lee Soderstrom (514-398-4842), with the ¿´Æ¬ÊÓƵ Department of Economics, investigated the impact of population aging on public-health spending in Quebec. One finding points to increased drug use and costs as the primary factor in our rising health bill.

Quebec's drug insurance plan: a clear example of private-public health sector partnership
Marie-Claude Prémont (514-398-4670), professor with the ¿´Æ¬ÊÓƵ Faculty of Law, is exploring the relationship between legal discourse and its impact on society. Her research and teaching interests in the civil law of ownership and obligations provide fertile ground for those studies. Professor Prémont is an authority on ownership and obligations in civil law, civil liability in civil and common law, local tax law, protection of personal information and access to information, new information technologies and health systems, linguistics and law, workers' compensation, and occupational diseases.

Which Clair and Romanow recommendations did the outgoing government favour?
Antonia Maioni (514-398-8346/4815), director of the ¿´Æ¬ÊÓƵ Institute for the Study of Canada, has published extensively in the field of comparative politics, with emphasis on health policy. She is the author of Parting at the Crossroads: The Emergence of Health Insurance in the United States and Canada (Princeton University Press, 1998) and has written on a number of related topics, such as market incentives and public opinion in health care reform, federalism and social policy making, and the Canadian welfare state.

What's the status of our pension funds?
Management professor Susan Christoffersen (514-398-4012) teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on capital markets and financial institutions. Other teaching and research interests include corporate finance, futures and options markets, and international banking. Besides earning a PhD from the Wharton School of Business, Professor Christoffersen spent a year studying international banking at Belgium's Université catholique de Louvain (CORE Institute).

The James Bay Agreements 26 years later
The White Man's Gonna Getcha, The Colonial Challenge to the Crees in Quebec by Toby Morantz (514-398-8920), professor with the ¿´Æ¬ÊÓƵ Department of Anthropology, was published in June 2002 (¿´Æ¬ÊÓƵ-Queen's Press). This work scrutinizes Canadian colonialism in the twentieth century and describes how one First Nation stood its ground.

Education

Religion in Quebec: From kindergarten to university
Ethicist Spencer Boudreau (514-398-7046), director of the Office of Student Teaching of the ¿´Æ¬ÊÓƵ Faculty of Education and author of Catholic Education: The Quebec Experience, holds that "religious instruction in the public schools is meant to help students better grasp the world in which they live." Professor Boudreau was among the 13 members of the advisory committee on religious issues which Minister François Legault established in 2001 to replace the government's Protestant and Catholic confessional committees. "The Religious Quest," the very popular annual summer course given by Professor Boudreau (May 6 - June 17 this year) is "a means of broaching religious experience as manifested through the major religious traditions of humanity -- Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism." The course includes guided tours of Montreal churches, synagogues, mosques and temples.

Social radar: Montreal's multilingual children have it!
Since the time of her linguistics studies at the Université de Montréal, Mary Maguire (514-398-7039), associate dean of the ¿´Æ¬ÊÓƵ Faculty of Education, has been exploring second-language acquisition by the children of Montreal's minority language communities. "Most of these children go to school on Saturday mornings to learn reading and writing in their mother tongue. At the same time, they are learning French in their neighbourhood schools, which cater to many immigrant children who speak English. How do those multilingual children instinctively and unerringly know which language to use in speaking to different people? It's plainly and simply a matter of social radar."

Demerging: No more "one island, one city"?
Raphaël Fischler (514-398-4076), professor with the School of Urban Planning of the ¿´Æ¬ÊÓƵ Faculty of Engineering, is focused on metropolitan development and governance, physical planning and project development, neighbourhood planning, university-community partnerships, and the history and theory of planning. Together with Professor Jeanne Wolfe, then director of ¿´Æ¬ÊÓƵ's School of Urban Planning, he published an article on the restructuring of Montreal (see Fischler, Raphaël and J.W. Wolfe, "Regional Restructuring in Montreal: an Historical Analysis," Canadian Journal of Regional Science / Revue canadienne des sciences régionales, XXIII(1): 89-114, Spring/printemps 2000).

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