National Network for Equitable Library Service

Achieving socio-political cohesion in a community with significant ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity is a challenge in contemporary liberal democracies. Public policies and institutions shaped by the needs of the majority can inadvertently marginalize minority interests. Intercultural Deliberation and the Politics of Minority Rights articulates a type of political deliberation designed to mitigate this problem. Instead of asking what the liberal state can tolerate, R.E.

A book about tax history that’s a real page-turner? Give and Take is full of surprises. A Canadian millionaire who embraced the new federal income tax in 1917. A socialist hero who deplored the burden of big government. Most surprising, twentieth-century taxes have made us richer, in political engagement and more. Taxes make the power of the state obvious, and Canadians often resisted that power. But this is not simply a tale of tax rebels. Tillotson argues that Canadians also made real contributions to democracy when they taxed wisely and paid willingly.

Every year, over 1.3 million people apply to visit, work, or settle in Canada and discover that their future rests in visa officers’ hands. How do these officers decide who gets in? Seeking answers to this question, Vic Satzewich gained access to eleven overseas visa offices. Points of Entry reveals immigration officers in action as they determine credibility and risk. Contrary to popular opinion, individual bias rarely enters into their decisions.

It is hard to imagine a person who embodied the ideals of postwar Canadian foreign policy more than John Wendell Holmes. Holmes joined the foreign service in 1943, headed the Canadian Institute of International Affairs from 1960 to 1973, and, as a professor of international relations, mentored a generation of students and scholars. This book charts the life of a diplomat and public intellectual who influenced both how scholars and statespeople abroad viewed Canada and how Canadians saw themselves on the world stage.

The rationalist ideal has been met with cynicism in progressive circles for undermining the role of emotion and passion in the public realm. By exploring the social and political implications of the emotions in the history of ideas, contributors examine new paradigms for liberalism and offer new appreciations of the potential for passion in political philosophy and practice.

Growing inequality within Chinese society has led to public indignation, petitions to Party and state agencies, strikes, and large-scale protests. This book examines the intersection between the Chinese government’s preoccupation with the “protection of social stability” (weiwen), and its legal commitments to protect human rights. Drawing on case studies, Sarah Biddulph examines China’s response to labour unrest, medical disputes, and public anger over forced housing demolition.

Both lionized and vilified, Claire L’Heureux-Dubé has shaped the Canadian legal landscape – and in particular its highest court. Only the second woman on the Supreme Court of Canada, L’Heureux-Dubé anchored her approach to cases in their social, economic, and political context. This compelling biography takes a similar tack, tracing the experience of a francophone woman within the male-dominated Quebec legal profession – and within the primarily anglophone world of the Supreme Court.

Canada is at a critical juncture in the evolution of its communications policy. Will our information and communications technologies continue in a market-oriented, neoliberal direction, or will they preserve and strengthen broader democratic values? Media Divides offers a comprehensive, up-to-date audit of communications law and policy.

Canada is often held up as an example of a healthy democracy. However, the Canadian public is less enthusiastic about the way our democracy works. This first-of-a-kind book approaches the “democratic deficit” from the perspective of everyday Canadians and assesses the performance of Parliament and the media in light of their perceptions and expectations. In doing so, a number of chapters highlight the disjuncture between perceptions and performance.

When it comes to upholding human rights both at home and abroad, many Canadians believe that we have always been “on the side of the angels.” This book tells the story of Canada’s contributions – both good and bad – to the development and advancement of international human rights law at the Commission on Human Rights from 1946 to 2006. In it, Canada’s reputation is examined through its involvement in a number of contentious human rights issues – political, civil, racial, women’s, and Indigenous.