In this thesis I evaluate the role of Inuit governance in Nunavut's political space. To do this, I critically examine the practice of political consultation, as it is a site where government and Inuit communities interact. This thesis begins with an overview of the government structure in Nunavut and its consultation process. It then shifts focus to discuss the principles and practices supported within Inuit governance. A political and conceptual gap will be revealed. In response to this gap, I introduce and explore the Kitchen Consultation Model, a community based consultation model inspired by the principles and practices of Inuit governance. This model provides Inuit communities with a political framework to support dialogue and interaction within the community, supporting Inuit communities in designing solutions to address their challenges. This thesis ends with a discussion on the role of Inuit governance within the broader Indigenous context

The pollination drop is a conservative pollination mechanism observed in all major gymnosperm taxa. Despite its ubiquity and essentiality to gymnosperm reproductive success, it remains poorly understood. Recent studies identifying conifer ovular secretion proteins have indicated a more complex role for ovular secretions than pollen receipt. We used a proteomics approach to analyze the pollination drops of four gymnosperm species (Juniperus communis (common juniper), Juniperus oxycedrus (prickly juniper), Chamaecyparis lawsoniana (Port Orford cedar), and Welwitschia mirabilis). Pollination drop proteins were separated by SDS-PAGE, and the most abundant proteins were analyzed by mass spectrometry and sequenced. Based on BLAST searching of combined amino acid sequences, several proteins were identified: an 83 kDa subtilisin-like proteinase, a 62 kDa glycosyl hydrolase, a 47.5 kDa glucan 1,3-ß-glucosidase precursor, a 30 kDa chitinase, and a 25 kDa thaumatin-like protein in J. connnunis; a 30 kDa chitinase, a 25 kDa thaumatin-like protein, and a 32.5 kDa glucanase-like protein in J. oxycedrus; an 83 kDa subtilisin-like proteinase, a 62 kDa (ß-D-glucan exohydrolase, a 47.5 kDa glucan 1,3-ß-glucosidase, and two 25 kDa thaumatin-like proteins in C. lawsoniana, and a 25 kDa chitinase in W. mirabilis. Gymnosperm phylogeny is a highly debated topic, particularly following the widespread adoption of molecular phylogenetic analyses which conflict with historical morphological phylogenies. The gymnosperms are a difficult group to classify because of their deep evolutionary history and lack of conservative features. Considering that the pollination drop is a highly conservative feature of gymnosperm reproduction, we propose that analysis of pollination drop protein (PDP) variation could be used as an alternative method to resolve gymnosperm phylogeny. PDP variation was analyzed at three taxonomic levels: genus, family, and gymnosperm clade. Based on variation in SDS-PAGE banding patterns, identified peptides, amino acid sequences, and protein identification, we conclude that PDP variation has a phylogenetic component. Further research is necessary to develop this method into a tool used to predict phylogenetic relationships. Based on protein identifications, there is strong evidence that the pollination drop functions in both pathogen defense and pollen development. The observation of hydrogen peroxide and peroxidase activity in the ovular secretions of J. communis, C. lawsoniana, Pseudotsuga menziesii (Douglas fir), and Larix x marschlinsii (hybrid larch) provided further support for the assumed functions of ovular secretions.

This thesis examines the link between international exchange programs, cross-cultural communication, and conflict resolution. Through a case study of the Canada World Youth Core Program, my research sought to answer the question: How do the participants of the Canada World Youth Core Program perceive their adaptability, cross-cultural communication, and conflict resolution skills to have been developed or improved as a result of their participation in the program? I asked eleven former Canadian participants of the program to share their stories of conflict and challenges throughout the exchange, which resulted in rich and detailed qualitative data. My findings suggest that increased opportunities to engage in cross-cultural communication through international exchange programs, such as Canada World Youth, can increase an individual’s adaptability, cross-cultural communication, and conflict resolution skills. I therefore conclude that such programs are an important component to the Canadian educational system, and should be supported, promoted, and made widely available to Canadian youth.

Building on the premise that Canadian government thus far has been incapable of enacting a working model of how to implement sustainability, this thesis defines Canada’s basic environmental position and takes it as a starting point to a prospective shift in our national value system. Using a case study of a the Detroit River International Crossing Project, a government-initiated development project in Windsor, Ontario, and a careful analysis of publicly available documents, it measures Canada’s stated values with respect to the environment against the project’s actual pathways of action, thereby unearthing the embedded value system which governs environmental ethics and policies in Canada. Also, this thesis will draw comparisons with the value system of the Walpole Island First Nation – a representative Indigenous community located near Windsor – in order to present alternative ways of relating to the earth and of conceptualizing environmental ethics and policies.

Internet protocol TV (IPTV) is predicted to be the key technology winner in the future. It has, however, stringent quality of service (QoS) requirements. When IPTV traffic shares the network resources with other traffic like data and voice, how to ensure their QoS and efficiently utilize the network resources is a key and challenging issue. In this thesis, Class based queueing (CBQ) is suggested to deploy at the bottleneck router to allow heterogeneous traffic share network resources fairly and efficiently. Then, we propose a two-level Markovian video traffic model and develop a fluid flow based analytical framework to quantify the performance of IPTV systems and derive the admission regions to ensure the QoS of IPTV traffic. The proposed two-level Markovian traffic model exploits both the temporal and spatial complexity of video traffic. The model can easily be incorporated to network simulators. The fidelity of the proposed video model and the effectiveness of the analytical framework are verified by network simulations driven by real video traces. Given the traffic model, a fluid flow based analytical framework is developed to study the queueing behaviors of IPTV traffic in wired, single-hop and multi-hop wireless networks. The analytical results provide insights in how traffic characteristics and network parameters affect the network performance. To ensure the QoS of heterogeneous traffic, admission regions of a wired or wireless bottleneck, with or without CBQ are obtained. The simulation and analytical results both illustrate that time-varying wireless link accommodates much less IPTV connections than the wired link with fixed data rate. The variations of both the incoming traffic arrival rate and the outgoing service rate affect the network performance and admission region. Therefore, it is recommended to deploy proper traffic shaping and resource management schemes in order to support IPTV traffic more efficiently.

Original poems in English and Spanish.

This thesis critiques the dominant theorization of Canadian sanctuary as expressed by Randy Lippert. Particularly, I contend that Lippert’s Foucaudian analysis offers an impoverished understanding of sanctuary recipients by insisting they are political only insofar as they embrace bare life and become a silent spectacle. To re-conceptualize the political role of recipients, I evoke Hannah Arendt and Jacques Rancière’s notion that politics is constitutive of an interruption. I suggest that, living in a borderland between citizenship/non-citizenship, sanctuary recipients draw critical attention to their own exclusions and thus enact the political interruption par excellence. However, Arendt and Rancière’s stipulation that this interruption must be visible also limits political efficacy for recipients for it necessitates that they must expose themselves as helpless spectacles. I argue that this uncontested commitment to visibility is also dominantly expressed by theorists, such as Jenny Edkins, who are concerned with agency for other abject subjectivities. Troubling, this dedication to visibility results in the same apolitical formulation of sanctuary recipients that Lippert offers. As an alternative, I conclude that a type of (in)visible interruption offers a more a fruitful way to understand political agency for sanctuary recipients, and indeed for other seemingly abject figures.

Photonic crystals (PCs) and binary supergratings (BSGs) with large refractive index steps are promising structures for designing new compact optical devices. This thesis presents an inverse design tool in these two important areas of photonics. The tool consists of an optimization module and a simulation engine. Due to the binary nature of PCs and BSGs, Boolean particle swarm optimization (Boolean PSO), a recently proposed binary stochastic optimization algorithm, is used in the optimization module. The simulation engine, on the other hand, is chosen according to the structure to be modeled. The proposed inverse design tool has been used to design a very low F-number photonic crystal lens and compact BSG filters for applications such as wavelength-division multiplexing, tunable lasers and intrachip optical networks. The inverse design tool allows designing optical filters with almost arbitrary wavelength filtering, in addition the proposed filters are more compact than previous demonstrations of BSG. Furthermore, it is found that Boolean PSO outperforms Genetic Algorithm (GA) as an optimization technique for use in the inverse design tool developed in this thesis.

Two parametric models for income and financial return distributions are presented. There are the four-parameter normal Laplace (NL) and the five-parameter generalized normal Laplace (GNL) distributions. Their properties are discussed; furthermore, estimation of the parameters by the method of moments and maximum likelihood is presented. The performances of fitting the two models to nine empirical distributions of family income have been evaluated and compared against the four- and five-parameter generalized beta2 (GB2) and generalized beta (GB) distributions which had been previously claimed as best-fitting four- and five- parameter models for income distribution. The results demonstrate that the NL distribution has better performance than the GB and GB2 distributions with the GNL distribution providing an even better fit. Limited application to data on financial log returns shows that the fit of the GNL is comparable to the well-known generalized hyperbolic distribution. However, the GNL suffers from a lack of closed-form expressions for its probability density and cumulative distribution functions, and fitting the distribution numerically is slow and not always reliable. The results of this thesis suggest a strong case for considering the GNL family as parametric models for income data and possibly for financial logarithmic returns.

Anadromous Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) return annually from marine ecosystems to their natal freshwater habitat to spawn and die. Runs of spawning salmon provide an important source of nutrients and energy to watersheds. However, in coastal systems, substantial amounts of salmon-derived nutrients can be exported back to estuaries. Human land use, including agriculture and urban development, also contribute substantial nutrients to coastal ecosystems, and have the potential to confound results from salmon-derived nutrient studies. This thesis examines the influences of spawning salmon and human land use on stream nutrient and particulate dynamics, including export to estuaries. It also investigates the use of the stable isotope composition (δ13C and δ15N) of estuarine clams, the varnish clam (Nuttalia obscurata: Reeve, 1857) and the manila clam (Tapes philippinarum), and their food sources, as indices of the freshwater export of salmon-derived nutrients to estuaries. Samples were collected from three nearby river-estuary systems along Southeast Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Study systems had either a large number of returning salmon and little human land use (Goldstream), few returning salmon and extensive human land use (Shawnigan), or few returning salmon and little human land use (Holland). In Goldstream River, high abundance of salmon carcasses increased concentrations of total nitrogen and total phosphorus stream water below a barrier to upstream salmon migration. Carcasses also contributed substantial amounts of organic matter to the stream, as indicated by high δ13C and δ15N, and corresponding low C:N ratios in suspended particulate organic matter. My calculations indicate that between 51-77% of the phosphorus transported upstream by migrating salmon, was exported back to the estuary. Human land use also increased downstream nutrient concentrations and raised baseline δ15N in stream ecosystems, which is cause for concern and caution for salmon-derived nutrient studies in land use-affected watersheds, or in the reverse situation, for anthropogenic nutrient studies in watersheds that support runs of anadromous salmon. The high δ15N of anthropogenic nitrogen was not evident in the Shawnigan Estuary. In the Goldstream Estuary salmon-derived nutrients appeared to increase the δ15N of clams, and both the δ13C and δ15N of sedimentary organic matter (SOM), with more enrichment in the high intertidal zone near the river mouth, than in the mid-intertidal zone. The stable isotope composition of clams and SOM was relatively constant across the period of salmon spawning and carcass decay, indicating that they may reflect a legacy salmon-derived nutrient input into estuaries. This study demonstrates that substantial amounts of salmon-derived nutrients are exported back downstream to the Goldstream Estuary where they appear to become integrated into the estuarine food web. Data from a series of estuaries receiving a range of nutrients inputs from salmon is needed to confirm indices of salmon-derived nutrients in estuaries. There is also need for more extensive examination regarding the downstream effects of salmon-derived nutrients in areas such as estuarine productivity, community composition, and positive feedback mechanisms that influence salmon populations. This last area of research is of particular importance considering the high number of salmon stocks at risk in B.C.