The Other Macdonald Report

In 1982 the Macdonald Commission began its $20-million mission to find a consensus on Canada's future. The commission held hearings in 28 towns and cities, met with 700 concerned parties and assembled nearly 40,000 pages of testimony. In his Report, Commission chair Donald S. Macdonald announced Canada must make a "leap of faith" and embrace free trade with the U.S., apparently signalling the victory of a globalizing, corporate vision of the country's development. The Other Macdonald Report reopens the debate, presenting twenty key submissions to the Commission by organizations such as the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, the United Auto Workers, the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, the Canadian Mental Health Association and the National Farmers Union. Together these groups offer a vision of Canada where human needs take priority over capital and technology. The Other Macdonald Report offers alternatives to the corporate vision for Canada's future, alternatives forged during the vibrant free trade debates of the mid-1980s.

In Transforming the Nation, leading Canadian politicians and scholars reflect on the major policy debates of the period and offer new and surprising interpretations of Brian Mulroney. Mulroney had a tremendous impact on Canada, charting a new direction for the country through his decisions on a variety of public-policy issues - free trade with the United States, social-security reform, foreign policy, and Canada's North. The Mulroney government represented a dramatic break with Canada's past.

The special language of poor-bashing disguises the real causes of poverty, hurts and excludes people who are poor, cheapens the labour of people who have jobs, and takes the pressure off the rich. Swanson, a twenty-five year veteran of anti-poverty work, exposes the ideology of poor-bashing in a clear, forceful style. She examines how media "poornography" operates when reporters cover poverty stories. She also reveals how government and corporate clients use poor-bashing focus groups. To make the book even more useful Swanson includes key chapters on the history of poor-bashing.

The Labour Party became a major political force during the 1920s. It unexpectedly entered office as a minority government in 1924; five years later as the largest party in the Commons it took office again. For many the party's enhanced status was associated closely with its leader, Ramsay MacDonald. The years of optimism were destroyed by rising unemployment; in August 1931, the second Labour Government faced pressures for public expenditure cuts in the midst of a financial crisis. The Government collapsed, and MacDonald led a new administration composed of erstwhile opponents and a few old colleagues. Labour went into opposition; an early election reduced it to a parliamentary rump. This study offers a uniquely detailed analysis of Labour in the 1920s based on a wide variety of unpublished sources. The emphasis is on the variety of identities available within the party, and demonstrates how disputes over identity made a crucial contribution to the 1931 crisis. Thorough scholarship and distinctive interpretation combine to provide an important examination of a major episode in twentieth-century history.