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AbstractTwice before the Second World War the Canadian merchant marine had collapsed in the face of competing conceptions of empire and commercial interest. Though once home to a thriving merchant fleet, the passing of the age of sail marked Canada's decline as a maritime nation. Most of the surviving merchant fleet sailed under British registry, employing British crews and officers. During the Second World War, Canada rebuilt its merchant marine. As the war drew to a close, the state, labour and enterprise supported the framing of a Canadian maritime policy to preserve the merchant shipping capacity developed during the war.The fleet's ambiguous origins, conflicting national trade policy, the absence of a laissez-faire international shipping market, the rise of cold-war tensions and the very peculiar problems of trade to the sterling bloc savaged post-war efforts to maintain the fleet. The timing and nature of the collapse were particularly Canadian. Barriers to currency convertibility, carriage restrictions, and high labour and production costs, proved formidable obstacles which representatives of the Canadian state were very largely powerless to overcome. In combination, these elements, rather than some invisible hand, explain why Canadian ship owners led the way in abandoning their national flag and why the state helped them. Sole attribution for the death of the merchant marine should no longer fall to unfavourable labour costs or union activism.

This essay presents a critical analysis of the economic theory of corporations and its idioms, such as “nexus of contracts”, “agency costs”, and “shareholder value”. It calls for the development of a richer and more inclusive theory of business corporations that draws on the experience of the last three decades and better addresses the needs of the post-Enron, post-AIG world.The author identifies the following shortcomings of the economic theory of corporations. First, the contractarian interpretation overlooks the role of law and public policy in corporations. Second, using share prices as the yardstick of corporate performance and encouraging practices such as the buyback of shares have serious implications for the competitiveness and sustainability of corporations. Third, there is inadequate attention to the characteristic and normative distinctions between debt and equity. And fourth, hostile takeovers are treated as virtually the only solution to entrenched managements. The problem of managerial power must be reviewed in the light of evidence regarding managerial power and the efficacy of boards. Equally, there is a case for developing a more deliberated, fair, and equitable policy on executive pay.

The objective of this article is to offer critical reflective analysis of the notion of violence from the point of view of ethology and evolutionary psychology. The authors define violence as a value judgment of aggression in which aggression, operationally defined by any oriented (physical, gestural, verbal, etc.), non-playful behavior that may potentially cause harm to the physical or psychological integrity of another person, is deemed to be an abuse of power. Thus, they adopt a position contrary to that of researchers who consider parental neglect, play-fighting and war games among children to be violent. They also respond to the tendency to consider parental corporal punishment as necessarily violent. They then examine the adaptive biological functions of different types of aggression as well as several of the natural regulating mechanisms governing them. They consider the question of violence from two angles: is violence typical of the entire human species, and are men more violent than women? The authors then propose a model for family power relationships (marital, parent-child, child-child) which may provide a better understanding of family conflict and its possible influence on the development not only of child aggression towards peers but also of children's competitive skills for gaining access to environmental resources. Finally, they conclude that morality is arbitrary and it is therefore important not to attempt to use science to justify it.

Keywords: agression, compétition, éthologie, punition physique, psychologie évolutionniste, rapport de pouvoir, relation d'activation, violence conjugale, activation relationship, aggression, competition, ethology, evolutionary psychology, physical punishment, power relationship, conjugal violence

Article 3136 C.c.Q. is a departure from the general rules of jurisdiction applicable to a Quebec authority. Based on the principle of necessity and in the absence of an appropriate forum, it authorizes an authority to exercise jurisdiction in relation to a matter not subject to its direct jurisdiction when it is impossible or unreasonable for the parties to access a foreign authority and when the litigation has a sufficient connection with Quebec. Article 3136 thus confers a discretionary jurisdiction on a Quebec authority. This discretion is limited by the definitional elements expressed in article 3136 and has been further narrowed by an inappropriate interpretation by the Court of Appeal in Lamborghini. The critical factor is that necessity jurisdiction implies that the litigation is subject to an effective remedy in the Quebec forum. Availability of an effective remedy renders reasonable the exercise of necessity jurisdiction and the requirement that foreign litigation be instituted, unreasonable. However, the factor of remedy is ignored, or without expression, in both doctrine and jurisprudence. Supported by a comparative approach between the civil law and the common law, the first part presents a general analysis of this exceptional rule with particular attention to the Swiss law which inspired the drafters of article 3136. In the second part, article 3136 is considered in context with the general provisions of the Code and the legislative history of the provision is clarified. The third part analyzes the definitional elements of the article and the last part examines its application as reflected in the relevant jurisprudence.

In the early days soon after the release of the landmark policy paper Indian Control of Indian Education (1972), postsecondary studies among Indigenous people in Quebec were still new and relatively unknown. Against a backdrop of Indigenous communities starting to take ownership of their own services, the demand for postsecondary Indigenous graduates began to increase significantly, resulting in the development of tailored programs and services: the Amerindianization program led by UQAC in 1971 and the founding of Manitou College in 1973, for example, stand out as two major milestones. The distinctive linguistic reality of Quebec moreover soon became apparent, adding to the initial bilingual dimension (moving from an  Indigenous language to an non-Indigenous one) the duality of a francophone and anglophone education system rooted in colonial history. Drawing on a review of literature on postsecondary Indigenous education in Quebec from 1972 to 2021, our analysis in the present article is framed around the changes that took place over these past five decades in programs and services provided by postsecondary institutions. Also discussed are issues involving Indigenous student paths marked by identity, systemic racism and discrimination. We note that in spite of sustained efforts by an increasing number of institutions, Indigenouspeople still face enduring barriers. We conclude with some thoughts on the university and the CEGEP as postsecondary institutions, their development model and their role in decolonizing and democratizing education.

Keywords: autochtone, enseignement supérieur, services aux étudiants, programmes d'études, Québec, Indigenous, higher education, student services, study programs, Quebec