Booze Cigarettes And Constitutional Dust Ups

Gerard Comeau, a retiree living in rural New Brunswick, never thought his booze run would turn him into a Canadian hero. In 2012, after Comeau had driven to Quebec to purchase cheaper beer and crossed back into his home province, police officers participating in a low-stakes sting operation tailed and detained him, confiscated his haul, and levied a fine of less than $300. Countries routinely engage in trade wars and erect barriers to protect domestic industries from foreign competition. Comeau, however, was detained by the full force of the law for engaging in commerce with a Canadian business on the other side of a domestic border. With Comeau’s story as its starting point, Booze, Cigarettes, and Constitutional Dust-Ups tells the fascinating tale of Canadian interprovincial trade. Ryan Manucha examines the historical, political, and legal forces that gave rise to the regulation of interprovincial commerce in Canada, the trade-offs that come with liberalized domestic free trade, and Canada’s enduring pursuit of economic union. The pandemic laid bare the vulnerability of global supply chains, the fickleness of foreign trading partners, and the surprising slipperiness of domestic trade. In a global climate of increasingly isolationist geopolitics, the history and possibility of Canada’s economic union, quirks and all, deserve careful attention.

Gerard Comeau, a retiree living in rural New Brunswick, never thought his booze run would turn him into a Canadian hero. In 2012, after Comeau had driven to Quebec to purchase cheaper beer and crossed back into his home province, police officers participating in a low-stakes sting operation tailed and detained him, confiscated his haul, and levied a fine of less than $300. Countries routinely engage in trade wars and erect barriers to protect domestic industries from foreign competition. Comeau, however, was detained by the full force of the law for engaging in commerce with a Canadian business on the other side of a domestic border. With Comeau’s story as its starting point, Booze, Cigarettes, and Constitutional Dust-Ups tells the fascinating tale of Canadian interprovincial trade. Ryan Manucha examines the historical, political, and legal forces that gave rise to the regulation of interprovincial commerce in Canada, the trade-offs that come with liberalized domestic free trade, and Canada’s enduring pursuit of economic union. The pandemic laid bare the vulnerability of global supply chains, the fickleness of foreign trading partners, and the surprising slipperiness of domestic trade. In a global climate of increasingly isolationist geopolitics, the history and possibility of Canada’s economic union, quirks and all, deserve careful attention.

The world is changing - geopolitically and economically - at an alarmingly fast pace. Populism, protectionism, and authoritarianism are on the rise. Braver Canada analyzes these and many other global shifts, offering provocative prescriptions for both the public and the private sectors. Reviewing the foreign policy challenges, achievements, and missteps of the Justin Trudeau government, Derek Burney and Fen Hampson argue that the country's leadership must craft a new approach to global affairs based on a solid grasp of current and emerging global political and economic realities. They focus on competitiveness, trade, energy, environment, and immigration and refugee issues, also discussing a recalibration of relations with China and India. Expanding on the ideas and policy recommendations in their previous book, Brave New Canada, which called for Canada to diversify its economic ties outside the United States, they note how the global and regional environment has shifted dramatically in recent years. A timely and compelling analysis, Braver Canada lays out the challenges for Canada in a rapidly changing, turbulent world and the strategies required for future prosperity.

To this day, women globally are subjected to forms of control over their bodies, and their ability to exercise their reproductive rights in particular is still constrained. Amid a rise of challenges to the advancement of women’s rights, including the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade in the United States, sexual and reproductive health rights are at the forefront of conversations about the advancement of gender equality. To determine how communications are used strategically to shape policy, Carolina Matos explores fifty-two feminist and health NGOs from across the world and how they are improving discourse on sexuality and reproductive health in the public sphere. She investigates how these organizations are making use of communications amid various contemporary challenges, including the proliferation of misinformation about women’s rights and health in the public sphere due to the actions of oppositional far-right nationalist groups. Through original in-depth interviews within the NGOs and empirical research of the institutions’ online presences, Matos unpacks the complexities of the relationship between women’s health, communications, and development, contributing to the fields of development, health communications, and gender studies, and advancing the debate on the role of feminist NGOs in advocating for women’s rights. With a postcolonial critique of the role of NGOs in development, Matos illuminates the strategic use of communications in the mediation and advocacy of gender equality and reproductive health.

Humans and human mobility, including driving and flying, are entangled with the climate emergency. Fossil-fuelled mobility worsens severe weather, and in turn, severe weather disrupts human mobility. A shift to zero-emission vehicles is critical but insufficient to repair the damage or prepare communities for the coming disruptions severe weather will bring. In Under the Weather Stephanie Sodero explores the intersection between human mobility and severe weather. Anchored in two Atlantic Canadian hurricane case studies, Hurricane Juan in Mi'kma'ki/Nova Scotia in 2003 and Hurricane Igor in Ktaqmkuk/Newfoundland in 2010, the book contributes to contemporary cultural and policy discussions by offering five practical recommendations – revolutionize mobility, prioritize vital mobility of medical goods and services, embrace ecological mobilities, rebrand redundancy, and think flexibly – for how mobility can be reimagined to work with, rather than against, the climate in ways that also benefit the health, education, and economy of local communities. This ecological approach to mobilities sheds light on extreme mobility dependency and the impact of mobility disruptions on the ground in Canadian communities. Focusing on the entangled relationship between human mobility and the climate, Under the Weather examines how communities can transform their relationship with mobility to enable greater resilience.

Why do great powers go to war? Why are non-violent, diplomatic options not prioritized? Nostalgic Virility as a Cause of War argues that world leaders react to status decline by going to war, guided by a nostalgic, virile understanding of what it means to be powerful. This nostalgic virility – a system of subjective beliefs about power, bravery, strength, morality, and health – acts as a filter through which leaders articulate glorified interpretations of history and assess their power and their country’s status on the international stage. In this rigorous study of France, the United Kingdom, and the United States, Matthieu Grandpierron tests the theory of nostalgic virility against the two more common theoretical frameworks of realism and the diversionary theory of war. Consulting thousands of newly declassified government documents at the highest levels of decision making, Grandpierron examines three specific cases – the early years of the Indochina War (1945–47), the British reconquest of the Falklands in 1982, and the US invasion of Grenada in 1983 – convincingly contending that status-seeking behaviour and nostalgic virility are more relevant in explaining why a leader chooses war and conflict over non-violent, diplomatic options than the dominant frameworks. Looking to the recent past, Nostalgic Virility as a Cause of War considers how this new model can be applied to current conflicts – from the Russian war in Ukraine to Chinese actions in the South China Sea – and provides surprising ways of thinking about the relationship between power, decision makers, and causes of war.

Federal countries face innumerable challenges including public health crises, economic uncertainty, and widespread public distrust in governing institutions. They are also home to 40 per cent of the world’s population. Rethinking Decentralization explores the question of what makes a successful federal government by examining the unique role of public attitudes in maintaining the fragile institutions of federalism. Conventional wisdom is that successful federal governance is predicated on the degree to which authority is devolved to lower levels of government and the extent to which citizens display a “federal spirit” – a term often referenced but rarely defined. Jacob Deem puts these claims to the test, examining public attitudes in Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Deem demonstrates how the role of citizen attachment to particular manifestations of decentralization, subsidiarity, and federalism is unique to each country and a reflection of its history, institutions, and culture. Essential reading for policymakers, academics, and everyday citizens, Rethinking Decentralization re-centres the public to offer a nuanced way of thinking about federal governance.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) has undergone wide-ranging changes since 2006, when it was given a new maritime warning mission and the NORAD Agreement was signed in perpetuity. Andrea Charron and James Fergusson trace NORAD’s recent history, marked by innovations in technology and in command and control, but also by unprecedented threats. The shared defence of North America remains an important issue that should extend to other areas, such as the joint defence of the maritime and cyber domains. Fuelled by a deep curiosity about the command and its decisions made in the face of inevitable geopolitical and technological changes, this book uses a functional lens to evaluate NORAD’s options and the technological and organizational solutions needed to defend North America. The authors investigate the ways in which the NORAD command might adapt in the future as it struggles to modernize and keep ahead of new threats. This book comes at a critical time. The rise of new peer competitors requires a fundamental reconsideration of North American defence. As one of very few contemporary analyses of the command and its future, NORAD will be a vital tool for scholars and practitioners.