This thesis examines recent transformations in international political economy, particularly the role of the nation-state in responding to the challenge of competitiveness within a new world economy characterized by globalization and technological innovation. Developing a typology of competitiveness from a survey of four leading new theories of economic competitiveness, the thesis presents a hypothesis that an evolving, post-fordist regime of accumulation shaping the new world economy requires new means of state intervention in trade, foreign investment, innovation promotion and other specific policy areas. Applying selected case studies of federal privatizations in Canada under the Progressive Conservative governments of Brian Mulroney from 1984 to 1993--a policy area central to the Mulroney Governments' neoconservative agenda--against the typology of competitiveness clearly indicates that when confronted with the conflicting imperatives of global markets and economic prosperity, governments will likely choose to intervene to protect and promote the latter than pay homage to the former. The results of the thesis' analyses challenge the viability of neoconservative ideology and particularly the effectiveness of free market policies to respond to the challenge of economic competitiveness in the new world economy, presenting a renewed case for progressive and proactive state intervention.

This study of Quebec Protestant superior and secondary education in the late-nineteenth, early-twentieth century focuses on the professsionalization of the principalship of model schools which were subsidized from the Protestant share of the Quebec Superior Education Fund. The dissertation tries to make a conceptual and historical link between a regulation which prohibited principals from providing the official academy grade curriculum to pupils enrolled in model schools and a series of school consolidation campaigns which the Protestant Committee of the Council of Public Instruction planned and implemented between 1906 and 1926. The dissertation proposes that the "educationists" of the Protestant Committee and the Provincial Association of Protestant Teachers of Quebec created the pre-conditions for the late nineteenth century Protestant rural school problem and subsequently conceptualized school consolidation and pupil transportation as solutions to this problem. The thesis argues that teacher professionalization regulations forced pupils at early ages out of one-room schools into graded, secondary, and graded, secondary, consolidated schools. Those school boards, principals, and pupils who were left out of the network of Protestant graded schools faced the loss of their Superior Education fund grants, their jobs, and their access to school leaving examinations respectively. The nineteenth century model school--a relatively inexpensive and flexible provider of secondary education--was transformed by Protestant Committee initiatives to classify pupils by age-grade, consolidate rural schools, and obtain enabling pupil transportation legislation for the boards of Protestant school municipalities. Professionally certified men teachers developed a graded elementary and secondary system in the context of Protestant minority education rights obtained in 1867 with the British North America Act and the British Canadian nationalism and domestic ideology of Montreal's elites. They used Protestant Committee regulation to reshape the right of the school commissioner to become a dissentient trustee into the right of the board of commissioners to create the separate Protestant school municipality. They did not believe that incumbent men and women principals of turn-of-the century model schools were qualified to defend a Protestant school system, and saw the depletion of Protestant school municipality tax revenues as a consequence of the growth of the Catholic school municipality tax base. However, with their devaluation of the model schools, they limited the possibilities of secondary school provision for principals, teachers, and pupils.

This study examines Canadian military nursing from the onset of the 1914 Great War to the end of the first post-War decade in 1929. Its purpose is to focus on the experience of military nursing in an attempt to discover the specifics of the profession, particularly during the interwar years, and to analyse the factors that affected military nursing during that era. The analysis of military nursing in context with the era revealed three main conclusions. First, unlike the peacetime experience, military nursing during the Great War was a professionally and culturally liberating experience that set Military Nurses apart form their civil peers. Unfortunately, during the interwar years, the re-instatement of Nursing Sisters to pre-War military positions of administration, removed them from the clinical setting, was deleterious to the profession, and did not accord them the opportunity to apply the practice element of their profession. Second, the introduction of non-commissioned men as hospital orderlies provided the major hospital military workforce that maintained the Nursing Sister's distance from the bedside and usurped them of their clinical focus and the opportunity to provide patient care. As an unfavourable offshoot to this, Military Nurses were restricted to administration. Without a practice component to their profession, Military Nurses had little in common with their civil peers who were actively engaged in practice and in activities to advance the profession. Last, the limitation imposed upon Nursing Sisters' by their appointment of relative rank precluded them from advancing within the military organization, from participating in the re-structuring of the CAMC and from influencing any policy that affected patient services or the Nursing profession. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

The purpose of this study is to describe and analyze farmers' perceptions of the impact of agriculture on the state of the environment, and on soil and water quality in particular. The study area is the Raisin River Watershed of Eastern Ontario. Survey research, based on 80 "in-depth" on-farm interviews, represents the primary methodology employed. Fully 58.75% of the respondents believe that agricultural practices used in the watershed contribute to environmental changes, 31.25% consider that water quality changed in the past ten years, and 57.5% observed soil degradation on their farm. Gender, level of education, farming experience, full time versus part time farming, farm organisation membership, and gross farm sales appear to influence farmers' environmental perceptions. No correlation was found between respondents' perceptions and their age, ethnic origin, production type, land tenure, county of residence or farm proximity to the river. The results suggest to resource managers possible strategies for increasing farmers' participation in conservation programs, and promoting sustainable agricultural practices. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

This study, based on 253 oral histories, examines the life stages of Franco-Albertan women during the period 1890-1940. Migrating from other Canadian territory or immigrating from Europe or from the United States, Franco-Albertans settled across the province, but especially in northern areas, around Edmonton, St. Paul and Peace River, where they formed substantial communities. Their immigration was promoted by the western Roman Catholic Church hierarchy and the clergy took an active role in overseeing the foundation and development of new settlements. Within francophone communities, women played an active role. This study argues that their experiences of migration and settlement, and of daily life, were shaped especially by their gender and ethnicity, although class and region also played a role. All francophone women, whether of European or of North-American origin, came under the influence of the Victorian construct of separate spheres and the accompanying gender ideals which defined women's place and roles in society. Franco-Albertan women's gender identity was further fashioned by culturally determined ideals, especially by the conservative clerical-nationalism promoted in franco-Catholic communities. Gender and ethnicity shaped every stage of Franco-Albertan women's lives. In childhood and youth, Franco-Albertan girls played games and engaged in work which taught them adult female roles. The need to contribute to the family economy placed on them heavy work responsibilities, especially since francophone households tended to be poorer, larger, and more rural, on average, than other Albertan families as a whole. Work, in turn encroached on their schooling opportunities. The number of years spent at school increased as frontier conditions receded, but francophone girls, both rural and urban, continued to receive less schooling than young women of British-origin and Albertan girls as a whole. Ethnicity contributed to some of the disparity. Francophone girls also tended to marry earlier than English-speaking Albertans. In rural areas, the narrow social space in which they moved meant that they mostly chose marital partners within their own locality, socio-economic, religious and linguistic group. In urban areas, the territories of courtship were wider. There, francophone women were also exposed to the ideals of romantic love, but on the whole, they, like rural Franco-Albertan women, continued to marry for traditional reasons. Once married, their lives centred around home and family. They were wives, mothers, keepers of the home, and auxiliaries to husbands. Although their activities were not confined to the private sphere, their lives were very much circumscribed by the domestic ideals, espoused in Franco-Albertan communities.

Abstract Not Available.

Jewish political behavior is generally characterized as liberal. This study advances an alternative conception based on rationality and pragmatism rather than reflexive liberalism. The author argues that pragmatism can dictate either liberal or non-liberal behavior for Jews, and that behavior which departs from liberalism need not be treated as a departure from an historical trend but can be regarded as a continuation of a long tradition of pragmatism. The 1989 Quebec election, which saw the election of four Equality Party of Quebec candidates, serves as the case study. The support given to the Equality candidates by the Montreal Anglophone Jewish community is examined by way of a content analysis of several pre-election editions of The Suburban, a Montreal English weekly newspaper. The Suburban is demonstrated to have been extremely supportive of the Equality Party and overwhelmingly Jewish in content and orientation. It is argued that The Suburban served as a tool for direct and indirect Jewish support for the Equality Party.

The thesis analyzes W. J. Gordon Martin's exclusion from the practice of law by the Benchers of the Law Society of British Columbia in 1948, and the protest raised in response to this action. A conservative legal elite, closely aligned with the provincial state, rejected Martin as unfit due to his Marxian-socialist beliefs and his association with the Communist Labor-Progressive Party. Cold War fears and hostility and a larger conservative campaign against socialism and labour radicalism fuelled the Benchers' actions. Left-wing political and labour groups, students, journalists and civil libertarians protested the Benchers' decision, their conservative elitism, and the legislated discretionary powers which allowed a technically qualified candidate to be rejected for political/ideological reasons. This case occurred during the formative period of the Canadian civil liberties movement, and the protest reflected increased public concern for the fundamental freedoms of the individual. The protest composition, organization, focus, and ultimately its demise, demonstrated the juvenile status of the civil liberties movement. The legal establishment granted Martin "due process," his day in a court where he had no chance of a victory. Civil libertarians chose to grant the procedure and its outcome as conclusive in a period when few safeguards for freedoms existed outside of public vigilance and protest. In the Martin case, the process undermined the principles of civil liberties.

The thesis explores three questions: On what basis were Ontario voters courted during the 1993 federal election by the Reform Party of Canada? What are the political, economic, and demographic predictors of Reform support in Ontario? What are the implications of Reform support in Ontario for the Canadian party system? The thesis proceeds to structure the exploration of these questions within three schools of thought: post-modernism, political party systems theory, and theories regarding the emergence of collective behaviour. The thesis explores these questions using a variety of methodologies, including re-examinations of electoral data in order to control for rural, sub-urban, and urban effects, demographic and economic data gathered from Statistics Canada, and a questionnaire completed by Reform Party candidates in the 1993 federal election. The thesis explores the effect of previous federal, provincial, and referendum voting patterns on Reform Party support. The thesis concludes that: (1) the Reform Party vote in Ontario is the vote of the ideologically-committed right wing, (2) the Party's support is concentrated in mid-sized urban Ontario and defies a rural description, (3) the support is that of the economically secure who are facing declining opportunities, (4) the politicization of citizen alienation through the themes of parliamentary reform and populism has been key in developing activism in Ontario, and fiscal conservatism is a solidifying agent of this conversion. The thesis explores the implications of the Reform Party's success in Ontario, particularly whether the party can escape the inherent difficulties between populism and parliamentary democracy. The thesis concludes with a discussion of whether the party is the harbinger of fundamental change in the Canadian political party system. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

Les pouvoirs de la Couronne en matiere de defense et de controle sur les Forces armees sont principalement issus de la prerogative dont les limites sont souvent ambigues et incertaines. Bien que certaines regles legislatives encadrent le recours a la force militaire, elles sont peu nombreuses et d'une application limitee. Ceci est particulierement vrai pour l'usage de la force militaire en temps de paix pour maintenir l'ordre et la securite publics. Ayant connu une lente evolution au rythme du developpement de la common law, les pouvoirs modernes fondant le recours aux Forces armees en temps de paix pour des taches non traditionnelles, soit pour l'application des lois ou pour offrir une assistance technique ou humanitaire aux autorites civiles, ne sont pas illimites. Bien que la forme du droit attribue une tres grande marge de manoeuvre a la Couronne quant au recours a la force militaire en temps de paix, ce pouvoir n'est pas illimite. L'ambiguite des regles de droit qui regissent la defense de l'Etat et le recours en temps de paix aux Forces armees canadiennes militent en faveur de l'adoption de dispositions legislatives plus precises et mieux adaptees aux besoins contemporains en matiere de defense interne. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)