Coming in from the Cold: Canada’s National Housing Strategy, Homelessness, and the Right to Housing in a Transnational Perspective

Canada’s National Housing Strategy (NHS) commits the government to eliminating chronic homelessness and promises that realizing the right to housing is a key objective. In this article, we explore how the Canadian government could realize the right to housing in the context of eliminating chronic homelessness. We argue that it is helpful to look at how other jurisdictions have successfully reduced homelessness. In this article we examine Finland and Scotland’s approaches because they offer certain similarities in how homelessness is addressed, yet they also differ, most crucially in how they understand the right to housing. We argue that both of these jurisdictions offer important lessons for Canada to draw on as it seeks to reduce long-term homelessness.

Sam Hughes and Mobilization of Canadian Volunteers for War (August 1914 — October 1915)

The process of mobilization of Canadian volunteers, carried out by the Minister of Militia Sam Hughes during the First World War, is considered. The chronological framework is limited by the dates of Canada’s entry into the war (August 4, 1914) and the end of the active phase of the mobilization of Canadian volunteers (October 1915) in connection with the first symptoms of the army manning crisis. The relevance of the study is due to insufficient knowledge of the specifics of Canada's mobilization activity during the First World War. For the first time, ideas are formulated and the activities of the Minister of Militia S. Hughes in the process of mobilizing Canadian troops during the war years are analyzed. The sources for the study were Canadian historical and statistical collections, as well as a collection of official documents of the Canadian government and publications of the Canadian federal and provincial press for two military years (1914—1915). The article traces the views of S. Hughes on the issue of Canada's participation in the war and his activities in the field of recruiting the volunteer army (1914—1915). It is proved that the decisive character of S. Hughes and the authoritarian style of his leadership predetermined the nature of the Canadian mobilization. In fact, it got out of the control of the British authorities due to the minister's refusal from the official mobilization plan, which provided for a too slow pace of manning. Thus, the personal efforts of S. Hughes to organize the process of mobilization contributed to its complete success.

The Colonization Cost Theory of Anarchic Emergence

The paper describes the colonization cost theory of anarchic emergence. The theory states that when the state incurs high costs of directly colonizing land, it may be beneficial for it to allow anarchy to emerge and settle distant frontiers. Once enough land is settled by the anarchic community, the state can then use one of the two following strategies: 1) appropriate this land cheaply by a coercive takeover; 2) wait for the anarchic communities to assimilate into the state, given the state’s low time preference. The theory is empirically supported through two cases of Russian religious sects. The first case describes the Old Believers sect that was forced to escape state persecution to the Altai mountains in the 1740s. In 1791 these Old Believers were re-integrated into the Russian state after a series of violent military clashes. The second case describes the Doukhobors sect. This sect was incentivized to immigrate to Canada for the purpose of settling the distant prairies in Saskatchewan. The Canadian government expected the Doukhobors to assimilate after a few years of living under anarchy, but after seeing this approach fail, resorted to a coercive strategy and appropriated the colonized land.

Assimilation Tactics: Indigenous Women, the Politics of Birth, and the Colonization of Bodies on the Canadian Prairies During the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

Colonialism is a highly gendered process whose effects are disproportionately felt by women, and within the context of the settler state of Canada, by Indigenous women. The imposition of Euro-Canadian gender norms upon Indigenous Peoples by the settler Canadian government was driven by an explicit goal of assimilation. Consequently, Indigenous women have had their important positions within their communities as matriarchs, elders, midwives, healers, and other positions of significance undermined. While there are numerous dimensions to the Canadian government’s attempt to force Indigenous women into subservient gender roles, this paper is a historical analysis that focuses on the government’s attempt to exert control over the bodies and sexuality of Indigenous women, alongside restrictions placed upon Indigenous women that limited their ability to pursue midwifery following the introduction of the Indian Act in 1876.

“A Hard Strain on Imperialism”: South Asian Resistance to the British Honduras Scheme

In the fall and winter of 1908, the Canadian government attempted to relocate South Asians living in British Columbia to British Honduras for indentured labour. Those in favour of relocation claimed that most South Asians were unemployed, were unable to survive winter, and could not adapt to Canadian society because of their religious beliefs. South Asians who opposed relocation challenged many of these claims and formed a wide network across the British Empire to foil this relocation. This study discusses the overlooked subject of the Canadian state’s attempts to remove South Asians who had already settled in the country, as well as the agency of South Asians in early-twentieth-century Canada. The documents examined throughout this article show that the British Honduras Scheme failed when South Asians could not be convinced that it served their interests and found that they possessed the necessary resources to challenge deportation.

Representation and Ministerial Influence on Cabinet Committees in Canada

Cabinet committees are important sites of executive politics in Canada. This article examines the extent to which two representational attributes—gender and region—determine influence, as a function of cabinet committee structure. Employing a dataset of ministers under the three most recent prime ministers, I find that female ministers are less likely than male ministers to be influential in terms of connections to other ministers, to belong to the core of most influential ministers and to be represented on the most powerful committees or chairing committees. However, there is evidence of improvement over time. While regional representation is an imperative in cabinet making for Canadian prime ministers, its role in determining ministerial influence within committees is not evident: ministers from less-represented regions are no more likely to be influential than other ministers. This analysis highlights a neglected but central arena for social representation in Canadian government.