Theories of toleration maintain that people sometimes have good reasons not to act on their convictions, however strong. Theories of latitude maintain that one should doubt the strength of one's convictions. While toleration has often been taken to be foundational for the liberal tradition, another view (made fully explicit by Brian Barry's Justice as Impartiality) is that we should look, rather, to the idea of latitude, as exemplified in late seventeenth-century Anglican writings. Taking these writings as its initial point of reference, the article maintains that toleration, rather than latitude, should be seen as foundational for the liberal tradition, which is better understood in terms of what one person owes to another than in terms of the relative validity of their beliefs.

The liberal justification for censorship equates the harm in hate speech with the sort of tangible injury that would justify state intervention under J.S. Mill's harm principle. Recently, Jeremy Waldron has suggested that the real harm perpetuated by hate speech is less tangible, taking it to be a variety of moral pollution which undermines both the public good of inclusiveness and the minority's assurance of personal dignity. This paper scrutinizes Waldron's conception of the harm in hate speech, arguing that it lacks the specificity and gravity Mill's principle requires in order to justify censorship. The paper also questions the categorical distinction between hate speech and speech that is “merely offensive,” arguing that Waldron's reasons for censoring the one also apply to the other. The result is a censorship regime that liberals ought not to accept.

We provide the first wide-scale analysis of the factors that influence voter turnout in Canadian local elections. Drawing on original data from 300 municipal elections conducted from 2004 to 2014, we use ordinary least squares regression with panel-corrected standard errors for time series cross-sections to test explanatory hypotheses related to differences in institutional design, the social-spatial context of these elections, and local competitiveness. Our results show that, although institutional and sociospatial factors influence local turnout, the competitiveness of elections exercises the greatest influence on local electoral participation.

Using official electoral results from provincial elections since 1973, we evaluate the incumbency effect in Quebec by measuring the impact of a combination of characteristics related to candidates and political parties. We verify whether the presence of an incumbent candidate is necessary to ensure that the incumbent party benefits from an electoral advantage. We also compare the magnitude of the incumbency effect between governing and opposition parties. Making use of parametric multivariate statistical tools, we conclude that political parties benefit from an electoral advantage in Quebec. Except for ministers who make a small difference, simple Members of the National Assembly (MNAs) do not improve their electoral performance, while in some cases new candidates with incumbent parties perform better.

Drawing upon Walter Benjamin's “principle of montage,” this article excavates the political salience of what is referred to herein as the residential school system's “pan-territorial ideal.” The pan-territorial ideal materialized in 1930 with the opening of the Shubenacadie Residential School in the Maritimes, the system's final frontier. It was envisioned, forged and secured, in part, with the overt understanding that so called Indian education could be used as a vector of violence to control Indigenous peoples and their lands. This history clashes with dominant narratives that interpret residential school system violence as the product of mismanagement and neglect. From the early days of Confederation to its almost full legal autonomy from Britain in the early twentieth century and beyond, the Dominion's pursuit of the pan-territorial vision involved the selective harnessing of the residential school system as a field of state-sanctioned force to quell Indigenous resistance. In this, residential school violence cannot be reduced to a deviation from the norm. In crucial respects, it was an inherent feature of the system and Canadian modern statehood itself.

Do Canadians’ preferences for Canada's role in the world depend on who Canada acts with and not just what Canada does? This question is particularly important in the context of overseas military intervention, which Canada never undertakes on its own. This paper presents a survey experiment measuring how support for a hypothetical peace operation changes with the leader of the mission. Missions led by the United Nations and by Canada's European allies receive more support than American-led missions do, especially among respondents who also favour peace operations for substantive reasons. The finding suggests that the UN and the European connection are alternative ways for a mission to benefit from a preference for multilateralism. While the results confirm some tension between American-led missions and internationalism, European partnerships may offer a way of reconciling an interest in alliances with the internationalist Canadian public.

Il est un paradoxe démocratique régulièrement mis en avant : les peuples qui ne connaissent pas la démocratie l'appellent de leurs vœux, alors que, là où elle existe, la démocratie est fortement critiquée. Cela ne signifie pas que les citoyens qui vivent sous la démocratie veulent s'en débarrasser, mais que leur confiance dans le fonctionnement du système démocratique est fortement érodée. Cet article étudie le soutien démocratique en s'interrogeant sur sa mesure, à partir d'une enquête sur un échantillon représentatif de la population wallonne en Belgique. Pour ce faire, il compare deux méthodes de classification des citoyens : la méthode dite « a priori », classiquement utilisée dans la littérature, et une méthode dite « inductive », inspirée de la psychologie sociale. Trois profils, dont les contours varient partiellement selon la méthode, émergent –les « non-démocrates », les « démocrates satisfaits » et les « démocrates insatisfaits »– et sont analysés au travers de quatre approches théoriques : les ressources, la modernisation, l'idéologie et l'identification nationale.

The influence of party connection on the selection of judges has long been an issue in Canada This article considers whether such connections adversely affect the appointment of women judges to federally appointed courts. The answer appears to be yes. Using political donations as a proxy for party connection, the data analyzed here suggest that as the number of appointees with connections to the government rises, the number of women appointees falls. However, for appointments to provincial courts by the government of Ontario, the prevalence of political connections among judicial appointees is less prominent, suggesting that different systems of judicial appointment may help to lessen these effects.

This paper describes the digitization and enrichment of the Canadian House of Commons English Debates from 1901 to present. We start by laying out the general framework in which this project took place and then present the structure of the database and provide guidelines to prospective users. The paper concludes with the introduction of www.lipad.ca, an online platform designed as a hub for archiving Canadian political data, with the parliamentary proceedings at the centre of its architecture.