Search Results

Over the last decade, there has been a revolution in cross-border tax information exchange and reporting. While this dramatic shift was the product of multiple forces and events, a fundamental reality is that politics, technology, and law intersected to drive the shift to the point where nation-states will now transmit and receive from each other significant ongoing flows of taxpayer information. States can now expect to accumulate large stashes of data on cross-border income, assets, and activities on a scale and level of comprehensiveness unmatched by previous information exchange regimes.This article examines the pressing follow-up question of how this data will be used and what issues nation-states will confront when data comes home. Although concerns about data protection and use have been raised in critiquing the new cross-border information exchange regimes, a systematic examination of how governments might use or fail to use data and when those uses will pose unacceptable risks has yet to be undertaken. This article analyzes how domestic politics, priorities, and institutions are likely to affect tax enforcement and data usage at the nation-state level going forward. We argue that despite the dominant focus on global developments, domestic politics and technological constraints will likely play an equally if not more significant role in data use and protection as countries receive data and decide what to do with it. The mere fact that collective political will on a global level produced the information revolution does not prevent domestic forces from either derailing the revolution in practice or redirecting data to other uses. This article maps the potential risks and examines the extent to which individual nation-states will have the capacity or inclination to conduct enforcement, protect taxpayer privacy, and attend to distributional outcomes and risks. We ultimately articulate a framework for understanding the country-level factors likely to affect outcomes and pathways when data comes home.

Given the inclination of legal scholars to progressively displace the meaning of a judicial decision from its context toward abstract propositions, it is no surprise that at its fiftieth anniversary, Roncarelli v. Duplessis has come to be interpreted in Manichean terms. The complex currents of postwar society and politics in Quebec are reduced to a simple story of good and evil in which evil is incarnated in Duplessis's “persecution” of Roncarelli.In this paper the author argues for a more nuanced interpretation of the case. He suggests that the thirteen opinions delivered at trial and on appeal reflect several debates about society, the state and law that are as important now as half a century ago. The personal socio-demography of the judges authoring these opinions may have predisposed them to decide one way or the other; however, the majority and dissenting opinions also diverged (even if unconsciously) in their philosophical leanings in relation to social theory (internormative pluralism), political theory (communitarianism), and legal theory (pragmatic instrumentalism). Today, these dimensions can be seen to provide support for each of the positions argued by Duplessis's counsel in Roncarelli given the state of the law in 1946.

In several contemporary constitutional democracies, including Canada, proportionality is becoming the main principle of judicial control. Nevertheless, this principle is rarely included in constitutional texts, either expressly or by necessary implication. What is the foundation of the proportionality principle? The answer to this question is not easy. Contemporary constitutional law and discourse indicate at least two conceptions of the proportionality principle, following two models of constitutionalism which the author names, respectively, the “model of priority of rights” and the “model of optimisation of values in conflict.” The former is correlated with, while the latter moves away from, liberal constitutionalism. As the “model of optimisation of values in conflict” appears to prevail in the process of justifying limitations to guaranteed constitutional rights, the author seeks to understand the interest in this model at this point in juridical and political history. He argues that the model of optimisation of values in conflict is appealing because, considering the pluralism and multiculturalism that characterize contemporary democratic societies, this model is more respectful of the moral equality of individuals than the liberal model. Noting that the liberal model of priority of rights is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain, the author examines two consequences of the optimization model: constitutional subjectivism and constitutional pluralism. If the author's thesis is correct, the increased tendency to resort to the proportionality principle may indicate a major conceptual shift in democratic constitutionalism. It appears that democratic societies are moving away from liberal constitutionalism, and toward a “pluralist” or “multiculturalist” brand of egalitarian constitutionalism.

This paper provides an analysis of the characteristics of complexity in medical language. Complexity allows a greater density of informational content, and a more efficient transmission of information among experts. However, if the ratio between informational content and effort required to understand it exceeds a determined threshold, complexity may impede communication rather than aid it. This so called “hypercomplexity” creates a barrier in communication, not only between healthcare professionals and unqualified persons, but also among specialists.For the classification of a text the authors propose a complexity scale, based on the linguistic opaqueness and the typology of the text. The impact of the complexity level on the result of a communication will be shown on examples taken from a corpus of educational material (informed consent forms and pharmaceutical package inserts).

Keywords: Langue de spécialité, langage médical, complexité, condensation syntaxique, hypercomplexité, nominalisation, éponyme, emprunt, consentement éclairé, notice de médicament, Specialized language, medical language, complexity, syntactic, condensation, hypercomplexity, nominalization, eponym, loan-word, informed consent form, medicine instruction leaflet

In the 18th century the Indigenous peoples of the James Bay region shared land near the coast, a few resources, and furs from a vast hinterland with European newcomers. The Royal Proclamation of 1763 excluded Rupert's Land – an appropriate decision for it was quite distinct from lands in the south where settlers were acquiring Indigenous land on the fee simple real estate model. What were the James Bay indigenous people's conditions for sharing their land? It was arguably their principles, and not King George's edict, that characterized the year 1763 at Moose Fort (Moose Factory). This paper draws on Hudson's Bay Co. records to examine what was being shared with the newcomers in this northern region. Unlike in the southern regions, the newcomers had no intention of displacing Indigenous peoples. A modest sharing of land and a generous sharing of food and fur resources, on terms congenial to its first inhabitants, characterizes 1763 in this northern region.

This article proposes a description of children who present sexually problematic behaviour. Normal sexual development as well as the different clinical and developmental criteria distinguishing normal from problematic sexual behaviour are summarized. Following this review, the different classifications of children with sexually problematic behaviour that can help assess the nature of the sexual behaviours are discussed. A synthesis of the risk factors that have been used to explain children's sexual misconduct is then offered. Finally, this article underlines the limits of our present knowledge in relation to the various manifestations of sexual behaviour and the authors conclude on new directions in research.

Keywords: recension des écrits, sexualité, comportements sexuels problématiques, enfants, literature review, sexuality, sexually problematic behaviour, children

Historians contend that the heyday of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or Wobblies) in the U.S. and Canada ended when it was suppressed by the authorities in the First World War because of the “foreigners” within its ranks. However, the IWW went underground and re-emerged briefly in the late 1920s and 1930s as a force in lumber and mining unions in both countries. Little is known about its organization during this period, particularly the operations of the Canadian Administration established in 1932. This article explores the activities of Canadian Wobblies and their attempts to form a Canadian Administration between 1931 and 1935 in Port Arthur, Ontario. It establishes that the Canadian leadership increasingly separated itself from an ineffectual American leadership and attempted to establish uniquely “Canadian” polices.

AbstractDirect democracy appeared in California at the beginning of the century in the wake of widespread disillusionment with representative democracy and the Progressive movement. It might provide an answer to similar problems encountered in Quebec and Canada today. However, the initiative and the referendum in California have had such important, unintended consequences that many observers declare them to have changed into the opposite of what their creators intended. The debate these institutions evoke requires a clarification of its underlying values.

Automobiles and summer cottages both play important roles in Ontario society, but neither of them has received much attention from scholars. This article examines how the automobile reshaped and reoriented the practice of summer cottaging. Particularly following the Second World War, the automobile served to expand cottaging both socially and geographically. Highway construction opened up new parts of the province to cottage development, while the advantages of automobile travel helped to transform cottaging from an elite activity into a mass phenomenon. Cars changed the nature of cottage life, making it more private and informal. They also led to a striking reversal in government policies, which historically had catered as much to Americans as to Ontarians. Finally the automobile influenced many aspects of cottage country, from its social atmosphere to its natural environment and its political disputes. Ultimately, the car democratized cottaging and, at the same time, fashioned some of the less pleasant features of cottage life.