The New West, located in the interior West of the United States and includes the states of Arizona, Colorado, Montana, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming, is experiencing a large and growing population of internal migrants. This dissertation utilized data from the United States Bureau of the Census‘ County and City Data Book: 2007 and other sources to analyze migration patterns at the structural-contextual level and the individual-level in the New West. At the structural-contextual level, ordinary least squares regression equations were estimated to predict a series of relationships between ecological factors and net migration rates for nonmetropolitan counties. Focus was placed on variables pertaining to amenity-based characteristics and sustenance organization in order to predict net migration rates. Findings suggest that areas with flourishing sustenance producing activities and more amenity-based characteristics are experiencing higher levels of in-migration. At the individual-level, multinomial logit equations were estimated for a sample of residents living in the state of Nevada based on age, educational background, sex, marital status, and racial/ethnic identification to predict the likelihood of an individual having engaged in an interstate migration into the state of Nevada. Individuals having recently migrated to Nevada were found to be older, having obtained higher levels of education, and of Hispanic or Asian descent. These findings confirm that both structural-contextual level and individual-level predictors are essential in the understanding the patterns of migration occurring in the New West.

Traditional understanding of the Canadian federation includes a belief that leadership from the federal government is necessary for effective intergovernmental relations and collective policy. The ability of the federal government to set a national vision has waned in the years since the constitutional negotiations. In its place has been a rise in interprovincial collaboration and leadership. A 30 year review of policy regarding the economic union and internal trade reveals that provincial asymmetry and incremental bilateral or regional action has shown an ability to contribute to a renewed pan-Canadian consensus. From this we can see how the system of interprovincial relations that has developed can serve to advance innovative policy and critical intergovernmental collaboration needed in the Canadian federation. / Graduate

This thesis examines the comprehensive Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA) that was signed in 2006 by the governments of Alberta and British Columbia. The central objective is to examine why two successive Saskatchewan governments chose not to sign the TILMA. This thesis also examines the TILMAs influence on subsequent developments in internal trade policy reform in Canada. The three central research questions are: What is the TILMA, and how does it fit within the existing internal trade regulatory regime established under the Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT)? Why did Saskatchewan not sign the TILMA? What effect, if any, has the TILMA had on establishing a new model or paradigm for internal trade policy in Canada? The key findings are that Saskatchewan did not sign the TILMA because Alberta and British Columbia would not accede to its demands to make exemptions for the procurement practices of municipalities and the subsidiaries of crown corporations. Another factor was the decision by the Saskatchewan government to launch a public consultation process before ratifying the agreement. The public consultation process provided the opponents of the agreement (i.e., municipal government, labour and non-governmental organizations) with an opportunity to organize and express their opposition to the agreement. Their strong opposition to the agreement during those consultations led both the NDP Government and subsequently a cautious Saskatchewan Party Government, which only had a slim majority in the legislature to walk away from what was being portrayed in the media as a very contentious policy decision. Their choice stands in contrast to that of the Liberal and Conservative Governments of British Columbia and Alberta respectively, that chose to sign the TILMA prior to undertaking consultations with the public and community stakeholders. In 2010 the Saskatchewan Party government would sign the New West Partnership Trade Agreement that included almost all of the provisions of the TILMA without public or stakeholder consultation. This thesis reveals that the TILMA has had modest but important effects on establishing a new model or paradigm for internal trade policy in Canada by enhancing the utility and scope of binding enforcement mechanisms and comprehensive interprovincial agreements. It was more comprehensive in scope than interprovincial agreements that had been signed previously to supplement the AIT. Contrary to what some had envisioned or proclaimed, the TILMA did not have substantial transformative effects either in addressing internal trade barriers in Canada or in supplanting the existing framework of internal trade policy established under the AIT.

This thesis examines the comprehensive Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA) that was signed in 2006 by the governments of Alberta and British Columbia. The central objective is to examine why two successive Saskatchewan governments chose not to sign the TILMA. This thesis also examines the TILMAs influence on subsequent developments in internal trade policy reform in Canada. The three central research questions are: What is the TILMA, and how does it fit within the existing internal trade regulatory regime established under the Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT)? Why did Saskatchewan not sign the TILMA? What effect, if any, has the TILMA had on establishing a new model or paradigm for internal trade policy in Canada? The key findings are that Saskatchewan did not sign the TILMA because Alberta and British Columbia would not accede to its demands to make exemptions for the procurement practices of municipalities and the subsidiaries of crown corporations. Another factor was the decision by the Saskatchewan government to launch a public consultation process before ratifying the agreement. The public consultation process provided the opponents of the agreement (i.e., municipal government, labour and non-governmental organizations) with an opportunity to organize and express their opposition to the agreement. Their strong opposition to the agreement during those consultations led both the NDP Government and subsequently a cautious Saskatchewan Party Government, which only had a slim majority in the legislature to walk away from what was being portrayed in the media as a very contentious policy decision. Their choice stands in contrast to that of the Liberal and Conservative Governments of British Columbia and Alberta respectively, that chose to sign the TILMA prior to undertaking consultations with the public and community stakeholders. In 2010 the Saskatchewan Party government would sign the New West Partnership Trade Agreement that included almost all of the provisions of the TILMA without public or stakeholder consultation. This thesis reveals that the TILMA has had modest but important effects on establishing a new model or paradigm for internal trade policy in Canada by enhancing the utility and scope of binding enforcement mechanisms and comprehensive interprovincial agreements. It was more comprehensive in scope than interprovincial agreements that had been signed previously to supplement the AIT. Contrary to what some had envisioned or proclaimed, the TILMA did not have substantial transformative effects either in addressing internal trade barriers in Canada or in supplanting the existing framework of internal trade policy established under the AIT.

By setting the writings of Etel Adnan, Annie Dillard, Marilynne Robinson and Rebecca Solnit into dialogue with those of the New England Transcendentalists, this thesis proposes a New Transcendentalism that both reinvigorates and reimagines Transcendentalist thought for our increasingly intersectional and deterritorialized contemporary context. Drawing on key re-readings by Stanley Cavell, George Kateb and Branka Arsić, the project contributes towards the twenty-first-century shift in Transcendentalist scholarship which seeks to challenge the popular image of New England Transcendentalism as uncompromisingly individualist, abstract and ultimately the preserve of white male privilege. Moreover, in its identification and examination of an interrelated poetics and politics of liminality across these old and new Transcendentalist writings, the project also extends the scope of a more recent strain of Transcendentalist scholarship which emphasises the dialogical underpinnings of the nineteenth-century movement. The project comprises three central chapters, each of which situates New Transcendentalism within a series of vertical and lateral dialogues. The trajectory of my chapters follows the logic of Emerson s ever-widening circles , in that each takes a wider critical lens through which to explore the dialogical relationship between my four writers and the New England Transcendentalists. In Chapter 1 the focus is upon anthropological theories of liminality; in Chapter 2 upon feminist interventions within psychoanalysis; and in Chapter 3 upon the revisionary work of Post-West criticism. In keeping with the dialogical analogies that inform this project throughout, the relationship examined within this thesis between Adnan, Dillard, Robinson and Solnit and the nineteenth-century Transcendentalists is understood as itself reciprocal, in that it not only demonstrates how my four contemporary writers may be read productively in the light of their New England forebears, but also how those readings in turn invite us to reconsider our understanding of those earlier thinkers.