michael adams

Asked to state his political philosophy in a nutshell, long-serving Ontario premier Bill Davis famously said, "Bland works." For his Progressive Conservatives, it worked until 1985, when he made the surprise announcement that his government would extend public funding to Catholic schools through high school.

Were you, like me, watching Quebec's election results pouring in last night, remembering Jacques Parizeau's denunciation of "the ethnic vote" in 1995 and anticipating that one of the defeated candidates might blame his ill-deserved fate on veiled Muslim voters - all 67 of them?

In this 1997 bestseller, Michael Adams describes the trajectory of social change in Canada, illuminating the society's movement over the latter half of the 20th century from values of religiosity and deference to authority to those of secularism and autonomy.

American Backlash is a study of American values that goes beyond the Red versus Blue dichotomy, beyond the litany of divisive political issues that receive so much attention in American public discourse: abortion, stem-cell research, euthanasia, same-sex marriage, Darwin versus Genesis, prayer in schools, and so on.

In June of 1989, a remarkable thing happened. When Environics asked Canadians what they saw as the top problem facing the country, the most common answer was the environment.

The members of the Parti Québécois have spoken, electing as their new leader a young, handsome, gay, and postcocaine André Boisclair, who has assured supporters a vote for him is a vote for a referendum " immédiatement" upon his moving across the aisle in the National Assembly.

Okay, Canada, Mother's Day Pop Quiz. Question: What policy idea is capable of uniting: (a) social conservatives, (b) advocates of smaller government, and (c) Quebec, the most socially progressive region in North America?

Who would have thought? The community responsible for Toronto's gay pride parade, reliably the opposite of dull, finds itself at the centre of a legislative debate that has become boring.

Canada’s Supreme Court recently declared that, should the federal govern-ment wish to proceed with same-sex marriage legislation, it should be encumbered only by its own fear of controversy–not by any constitutional constraints.