Reinventing Canada

A supplementary reader for Canadian Politics. This collection of twenty-three articles by leading Canadian scholars provides a comprehensive supplementary text for Canadian Politics courses. Re-Inventing Canada addresses the major issues that define Canada's current political culture, including globalization, race, disability, immigration, environment, and foreign policy. While the articles cover a wide range of topics, editors Janine Brodie and Linda Trimble provide students with a detailed overview of the overriding theme of "re-inventing Canada." Furthermore, Brodie and Trimble have carefully organized the selection of articles according to the following subsections: Re-Thinking Community, Re-Casting Identities and Citizenship, Re-Inventing Governance, and Re-Drawing Boundaries.

Regent Park Redux evaluates one of the biggest experiments in public housing redevelopment from the tenant perspective. Built in the 1940s, Toronto’s Regent Park has experienced common large-scale public housing problems. Instead of simply tearing down old buildings and scattering inhabitants, the city’s housing authority came up with a plan for radical transformation. In partnership with a private developer, the Toronto Community Housing Corporation organized a twenty-year, billion-dollar makeover. The reconstituted neighbourhood, one of the most diverse in the world, will offer a new mix of amenities and social services intended to "reknit the urban fabric." Regent Park Redux, based on a ten-year study of 52 households as they moved through stages of displacement and resettlement, examines the dreams and hopes residents have for their community and their future. Urban planners and designers across the world, in cities facing some of the same challenges as Toronto, will want to pay attention to this story.

Some painful news: Canada no longer has the best health-care system in the world. How might we fix Canada’s health-care system? Why would we want to? What’s stopping us from doing so? These three questions lie at the heart of this in-depth exploration of one of the biggest political and personal issues facing Canadians. Skyvington explains why change has to occur, in light of the implications of doing nothing, and describes how Canadians can and must get involved to save our health-care system. This May Hurt a Bit is meant to provide a blueprint for change once those in charge finally acknowledge the most inconvenient truth — namely, that Canada’s health-care system is in poor health.

Reinventing Bankruptcy Law explodes conventional wisdom about the history of the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act and in its place offers the first historical account of Canada’s premier corporate restructuring statute. The book adopts a novel research approach that combines legal history, socio-legal theory, ideas from political science, and doctrinal legal analysis. Meticulously researched and multi-disciplinary, Reinventing Bankruptcy Law provides a comprehensive and concise history of CCAA law over the course of the twentieth century, framing developments within broader changes in Canadian institutions including federalism, judicial review, and statutory interpretation. Examining the influence of private parties and commercial practices on lawmaking, Virginia Torrie argues that CCAA law was shaped by the commercial needs of powerful creditors to restructure corporate borrowers, providing a compelling thesis about the dynamics of legal change in the context of corporate restructuring. Torrie exposes the errors in recent case law to devastating effect and argues that courts and the legislature have switched roles – leading to the conclusion that contemporary CCAA courts function like a modern day Court of Chancery. This book is essential reading for the Canadian insolvency community as well as those interested in Canadian institutions, legal history, and the dynamics of change.

Brings a politically savvy, business-friendly approach to thinking through the shortcomings and obstacles of Canada’s health-care system, and their solutions Tackles the problem using a framework for creative thinking, Simplexity, developed by Dr. Min Basadur of the Michael G. DeGroote School of Business, the Creative Education Foundation, and the Academy of Management Author is a political and health-care policy pundit and columnist with deep knowledge of the issues waiting to explode Author appears on NEWSTALK 1010 every Saturday and publishes columns with Sun Media and Postmedia

In a comprehensive study of the defence-procurement environment and the legislative and regulatory framework that governs the process, Alan Williams argues that an inoperable procurement process has led to the near disarmament of the Canadian Forces, the collapse of national defence policy, and a system compromised by bureaucracy and conflicting interests. The only way to fix these problems, says Williams, is to completely reinvent the system of defence procurement, from the roles of various people and organizations to the process itself. Williams also examines questions surrounding efficiency, accountability, and the motivations of politicians and bureaucrats in defence spending. He provides an exhaustive examination of a complex and vital process - a virtual roadmap for a reconstruction that would allow Canada's defence spending to support national security and the Canadian Forces.

Do you want or need to change your life, but aren’t sure where to start—or whether you have what it takes? At fifty-seven, Arlene Dickinson’s life was turned upside down. Her company was on the brink of disaster. Her sense of herself as a strong, confident leader was in tatters. She was overwhelmed by feelings of loss, fear, and shame. Five years later, her business is booming, she’s never been happier or more excited about the future, and she’s raised tens of millions of dollars and built a whole ecosystem to help other entrepreneurs. How did she turn things around? By following the process she’s always used to transform underperforming companies—only this time, she used it to transform her own life. Applying business principles to her personal life helped her figure out very quickly where she wanted to go and how to get there. Having a clear set of practical steps to follow kept her on track when emotions threatened to derail her progress. In Reinvention, Dickinson shares this blueprint for locating your sense of purpose, realistically evaluating your strengths, assessing opportunities outside your comfort zone, and charting a bold new path. Whether you have a big career dream to achieve, or you need to rebuild after a personal setback, this step-by-step plan for reinvention will help you change your own life—for the better.

Short-listed for the 2012 Speaker’s Award One hundred years ago, the City of Brantford advertised itself as the most important manufacturing centre in Canada. During the century that followed, its industrial economy boomed, faltered, and finally collapsed. By the end of the twentieth century, Brantford was known for unemployment, hard luck, and the infamy of having "the worst downtown in Canada." For twenty years the downtown was in steep decline. Significant attempts at urban revival had failed until Wilfrid Laurier University decided to locate a campus in the heart of Brantford’s crumbling city centre. Leo Groarke revisists the grandeur of the city’s past, explores the economic downfall, and tells the story of the arrival of the university, its early struggles, its commitment to historic restoration, and its ultimate success as a catalyst for urban renewal. The compelling story he recounts will engage anyone interested in the plight of the North-American city core and the role that universities and colleges can play in re-establishing downtowns as vibrant centres of historical and contemporary importance.