Insight

Over the past eight years, the federal Conservatives have seldom missed an opportunity to show Canadians how seriously they take crime and how eager they are to make convicted offenders sorry for their transgressions.

Recent numbers from the World Bank remind us that the worldwide flow of remittances – the money immigrants send back to their countries of origin – is astounding. In all, international migrants were responsible for the movement of an estimated U.S. $529-billion in 2012.

When U.S. President Barack Obama won 71 per cent of the Hispanic vote in 2012, it dealt the final blow to an idea that had been popular during George W. Bush’s years: that Hispanic Americans’ conservative values on social issues (rooted in their predominantly Catholic religiosity), made them “natural” Republicans.

Much has been made of a purported rightward shift in Canadian values. But research shows that Canadians still want government in their lives, and a majority are not embracing conservative social values.

Justin Trudeau, leader of a Liberal Party that many recent polls have found nudging ahead of the Conservatives, is fond of describing his growing army of young volunteers across the country.

I’ve been committing sociology since my early youth. My parents and even my parish priest failed to detect early signs of trouble, even though I read the daily newspaper voraciously (a common warning signal among teenagers in the 1960s).

Climate change is once again emerging as a pressing global issue, and it is becoming increasingly clear that substantial actions will need to be taken. What to do?

Growing up in the 1960s, we learned about Canada’s ‘two solitudes’ defining our national identity – and our national division – the French in Quebec and the English in the rest of Canada.