Inroads: A Journal of Opinion articles from January 1 2000

Inroads: A Journal of Opinion archives from January 1 2000

Replies to Jean-Francois Lisee's Sortie de secours.
January 1, 2000... Should the RoC close the "emergency exit"? I write these words two weeks before the Parti quebecois convention. There, almost 2,000 delegates will conscientiously pore over hundreds of resolutions in workshops and plenaries. Some...

CBC, or not to be?
January 1, 2000... IN JUNE 1999, WITH THE EMBATTLED CBC awaiting the announcement of a new president, the Inroads listserv, in that accidentally purposeful manner of Internet discussion groups, began a discussion of the weaknesses and strengths of Canada's public...

Academic club: exclusion throught stealth.
January 1, 2000... By now, the old boys' networks have been exposed -- those subterranean clubs, membership to which unlocks the doors one thought opened only to the key of merit. So too have the lobby groups been exposed -- political influence, we now know, is a...

(Philippe) Seguin, (Jacques) Parizeau and globalization.
January 1, 2000... Most people are pessimistic about globalization, but, in Une Bouteille dans la Met, Le Quebec et la mondialization, (Montreal: VLB editeur) Jacques Parizeau takes an optimistic approach. Parizeau (or his publisher), we should note, thanks the...

Prime Minister of Canada: primus in al things.
January 1, 2000... THERE HAVE BEEN A NUMBER OF important developments inside and outside the government of Canada in recent years that have strengthened the hand of the prime minister in relation to cabinet. In this article, Donald Savoie reviews these...

King into Trudeau: Jean Chretien seeks clarity.
January 1, 2000... IN THE LEAD-UP TO QUEBEC'S 1995 referendum, Reg Whitaker writes, federalist options were constrained by Ottawa's fiscal position and the failures of Meech Lake and Charlottetown. But as long as a federalist victory appeared inevitable, Prime...

There's still a chance for Jean III.
January 1, 2000... Jean Chretien I and II missed out on safeguarding his "best country in the world" but there's still a chance for Jean Chretien III JEAN CHRETIEN'S FIRST TERM WAS preoccupied with mastering the deficit; his second term's one-step-at-a-time...

Is Canada really No. 1? The shaky foundation of Canada's welfare state.
January 1, 2000... ONE OF JEAN CHRETIEN'S FAVOURITE themes is that Canada is the best country in the world. In this article Inroads co-editor Henry Milner draws on research from his recently completed book to question the assessment, based on the United Nations'...

New Cite libre: a precious legacy abandoned.
January 1, 2000... THIS ARTICLE TRACES THE HISTORY of Cite libre from its 1950 founding by Pierre Trudeau and Gerard Pelletier, through its death in 1966 and resurrection in 1991 (under the editorship of Anne-Marie Bourdouxhe), and its subsequent rebirth as a...

Foreward (Canadian social policy).
January 1, 2000... Since the 1995 referendum, discussion of formal constitutional change has largely disappeared from Canadian political debates. Underlying tensions within the federation persist, however, and much of the diplomatic activity has merely shifted...

Social union and Monsieur Ryan's unconditional right to opt out.
January 1, 2000... I read with interest the analysis of the agreement on the social union written by Claude Ryan for the journal Inroads, a lengthy selection of which Le Devoir republished. For a federalist of my persuasion, it is a great pleasure to realize that...

Letters (between Claude Ryan and Andre Burelle.
January 1, 2000... The following exchange of letters between the two of us was intended to remain private. We have agreed to the publication of an English version of those letters because an editor of inroads, John Richards, insisted they would be of interest to...

Step in the right direction.
January 1, 2000... IN FEBRUARY 1999, OTTAWA AND NINE PROVINCES subscribed to an agreement concerning management of the Canadian social union. Quebec refused to sign. Claude Ryan's article on all this in the last issue of Inroads (No. 8, 1999) has sparked a lively...

Can Sweden remain "exceptional" inside the European Union?
January 1, 2000... SWEDEN IS NOT PART OF THE EUROPEAN Monetary Union; and -- despite the late and less than rousing recent endorsement of EMU by the governing Social Democratic Party -- a majority wants to keep it that way. In this article, an eminent Swedish...

New UK: devolution and the union state.
January 1, 2000... UNLIKE THEIR OLD LABOUR PREDECESSORS, the current crop of New Labour leaders is sensitive to the excessive centralization of political power in Britain. Since coming to office in 1997, Labour have devolved certain responsibilities to newly...

In a small Czech town.
January 1, 2000... CZECHOSLOVAKIA WAS ANNEXED BY Germany in 1939 and liberated in 1945. The Communists assumed full control in 1948 and adopted a Soviet-style single-party constitution. The Prague Spring attempt at liberalization was crushed by Warsaw Pact troops...

What's wrong with Canada? A business view.
January 1, 2000... THERE SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN A TIME, IN THE '60s, when private business was thought of as crass, polluting, exploitative, amoral, not really necessary, and likely on its last less. Business started climbing back in the '70s, with expensive...

John Ralston Saul's Reflections of a siamese twin: an exchange.
January 1, 2000... ACCORDING TO PETER C. NEWMAN IN MACLEAN'S, "John Ralston Saul can claim shelf space with such seminal thinkers as Harold Innis, Marshall McLuhan and George Grant." Saul has risen to almost mythic status in anglophone Canada, and he's done it...

Toward a just and inclusive school system: defending the Proulx Report.
January 1, 2000... The eight members of the task force were drawn from the academic, legal and educational arenas, and represent a variety of religious perspectives and faiths. It was presided by Jean-Pierre Proulx of the University of Montreal, one of our most...

Proulx Report and the role of the state in Quebec schools.
January 1, 2000... The Proulx Report constituted partial delivery on a promise made by the then Minister of Education (Pauline Marois) to organize a public debate on the question of religion in schools. She had announced her intention to commission a study...

Proulx Report (Daniel Weinstock responds).
January 1, 2000... ONE OF THE FIRST LESSONS A FIRST-YEAR philosophy student learns is that ad hominem arguments are, in intellectual debate, the refuge of the cowardly and the lazy. Impugn the integrity and the good faith of their authors, ascribe dark motives to...

Proulx Report (Gary Caldwell responds).
January 1, 2000... MR. WEINSTOCK TELLS US HOW HE AND the other task force members considered the republican and communitarian solutions to the so-called discrimination problem. The choice between the two is the following: the first consists in abolishing...

Time to say goodbye: the case for getting Quebec out of Canada.
January 1, 2000... FOR THE LAST QUARTER CENTURY, Reed Scowen has been a prominent public figure in Quebec life, and an eloquent spokesman for the federalist cause. Accordingly, his writing a book inviting Canadians outside Quebec to "divest" themselves of their...

Author responds (to the review of his book).
January 1, 2000... John Richards obviously understands what I was getting at. He states my position fairly and his criticisms are really the expression of a vision of our country which is different from my own, but certainly no less valid. While Richards...