Louky Bersianik, dans L'Euguélionne, écrit que « la liberté s'éprouve individuellement (...). Ce n'est pas un sentiment que l'on éprouve en groupe ». Pourtant, les mouvements de révolte s'expriment collectivement et avec beaucoup d'émotions et de passion. C'est d'ailleurs ce qui dérange. Ma recherche porte sur le rôle diffus du droit dans l'organisation et le contrôle des mouvements de dissidence. Le droit est souvent utilisé pour limiter la dissidence, même si théoriquement, il vise également à en protéger l'exercice. Après tout, la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés protège la liberté d'expression, la liberté d'association et la liberté de réunion pacifique. Comment analyser ce rôle hybride et cette interaction complexe entre, d'une part, la protection constitutionnelle et, d'autre part, l'utilisation de différentes formes de réglementation qui encadrent ou restreignent le droit de manifester? D'autant plus que plusieurs constatent que le droit est souvent ignoré dans la pratique de la manifestation et le contrôle policier qui la confronte.  En savoir plus

Since the election of Justin Trudeau as Prime Minister of Canada, researchers have been anticipating (with some optimism) that, as promised, he will reinstate the long form census. In fact, as I was in the process of writing this piece, I received an email from a colleague inviting me to sign a petition, titled: "Reinstate the Long-Form Census in time for 2016" which is to be sent to Wayde Smith, Deputy Minister responsible for Statistics Canada, and Justin Trudeau, Leader of Liberal Party of Canada. The idea, I assume, is to demonstrate to the deputy minister and the prime minister designate, that there is widespread support for the "Long-Form Census" because the collected data is not only important to policymakers for developing evidence-based policies related to social services and infrastructure, but also for social scientists: "to track demographic patterns and shifts in the Canadian population . . . ; to shed light on our ethnic, linguistic, racial, and religious make up; to identify disparities in income and education levels, among, for instance, immigrant, second-generation, and aboriginal peoples, and between men and women; and to understand how we think about our identities" (Petition). It is these last two points on the significance of the census data that I wish to focus on here. Specifically, I argue that the re-instated long form census needs to be explicit and deliberate in collecting race date from Canadians - for only in doing so will we be able to fully understand and appreciate the disparities among members of our society, and those of racialized Canadians in particular relating to their workforce participation. Read more

I am one of a group of seven social scientists who have recently completed an SSHRC-funded study of the experiences of racialized and Indigenous faculty members in Canadian universities. The book, based on a large number of interviews, analysis of employment equity programs, and analysis of differential data on representation, salaries, and tenure and promotion, is forthcoming. In this brief article, I wish to reflect on some of the issues that arose during the interview process. Recently I was reading through some of the transcripts and it struck me that nearly two years later, after the recordings have been anonymized, coded, and organized several of them stand out because of the clarity or the passion of the words. I have a clear memory of those individuals, and of the many subtle aspects-gestures, facial expressions, expressions of anger, empathy, bewilderment-that do not come across in the depersonalized transcripts. Read more