Welcome to the 2020 Canadian Study of Parliament Group (CSPG) annual conference: Perspectives on Legislatures and Legislative Power: Past, Present, Future! Bienvenue!
For the first time, our annual conference is a virtual affair. We are delighted to have presenters joining us from five continents to share their ideas and research on all aspects of Parliament – from thoughts on present day practices (including how Parliament should function during a pandemic) to research on historical precedents. In addition, we have special live events that you won’t want to miss!
The conference has three components:
Video presentations can be accessed from this page.
All live events occur over Zoom and registration is required. Each Q&A session is scheduled for 45 minutes; Live Special Events are scheduled each for an hour but may run longer.
Video presentations will have closed captions available in both official languages. Simultaneous interpretation has been arranged for all live events but cannot be guaranteed owing to parliamentary activities that may take priority.
Registering for the conference allows you to participate in all of the Live Q&As in addition to the Live Special Events. To register, click the registration button to be re-directed to our EventBrite page.
Note: Please register using the e-mail address associated with your Zoom account so as to ensure you will have access to the live events.
If you have a credit with the CSPG from our cancelled March event, you may already be registered for the Conference. Please communicate with us if you wish to confirm your registration.
Regular registration is $50 CAD. A reduced registration fee of $25 is available for retirees, students, and members of Australian, Scottish, and UK Study of Parliament Groups. Registration fees cover not only conference costs but support other CSPG programs such as our student bursaries. The CSPG is a registered non-profit organization. (If you are a presenter or special guest who has not received your confirmation of free registration and associated Zoom event links, please e-mail Charles.Feldman@sen.parl.gc.ca).
We encourage you to share and engage with us on social media – our Twitter feed can be found at @CSPG_GCEP. Our conference hashtag is #CSPG2020 in English, #GCEP2020 in French.
We thank you for your interest in the CSPG and wish to thank all of our presenters and special guests for sharing their time and insights with us! The conference committee members (Élise, Charlie, Anna, Paul, Erin) hope that our first-ever virtual offering provides a great experience for everyone -- if you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to be in touch: info@cspg-gcep.ca.
We are delighted that so many presenters are sharing their time and insights with us through pre-recorded video presentations as part of our virtual conference. The videos are available using the links below, sorted by thematically-linked panel. Live Question and Answer (Q&A) sessions will be held with each panel (registration required) on the indicated time and date (all times are local to Ottawa, Canada).
Note: Closed captioning in both official languages for each video is available through YouTube.
Live Q&A sessions have been organized to allow for engagement with presenters on their video presentations. The panels have been organized at times to allow for presenters located in different time-zones to participate at reasonable times, as best as could be planned considering some of the more extreme time-zone differences.
Each Live Q&A is scheduled for 45 minutes and will take place on the Zoom platform. Simultaneous interpretation has been arranged but cannot be guaranteed owing to parliamentary activities that may have priority.
Live Special Events (included with registration) have been scheduled – consult the below conference schedule for more details.
All times are local to Ottawa, Ontario, Canada (Eastern time)
John Mark Keyes (Professor – University of Ottawa, Canada)
Parliamentary Scrutiny and Judicial Review of Executive Legislation – It is working in Canada?
Anne Twomey (Professor – University of Sydney, Australia)
Ministerial Advice upon the Refusal of Royal Assent
Charlie Feldman (Parliamentary Counsel – Senate of Canada, Canada)
Checking in with Charter Statements
Madeleine Meilleur (Former Ottawa-Vanier MPP and Attorney General of Ontario, Canada)
Louise Cockram (PhD Candidate in Political Science – Carleton University, Canada)
Zim Nwokora, Amy Nethery, Peter Ferguson and Matthew Clarke (Deakin University, Australia)
The Afterlife of Parliamentarian: Evidence from Victoria, Australia
Moderator: Lori Turnbull (Director of the School of Public Administration – Dalhousie University, Canada)
In one of the most defining moments in political history, Australia’s Governor General dismissed the nation’s Prime Minister. “The Dismissal” and its associated events in 1975 remain Australia’s most notorious constitutional crisis. In 2020, Professor Jenny Hocking scored a major victory in Australia’s High Court allowing her access to never-before-seen correspondence between Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and then Australian Governor-General Sir John Kerr regarding Kerr’s dismissal of then Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. Join us for an exciting discussion of “The Dismissal”, its impact on Australian parliamentary history, and a look at the newly-uncovered “Palace Papers”.
Hugh Bochel (Professor of Public Policy – University of Lincoln, UK)
Committee Witnesses in the Parliament of Canada
Christopher Alcantara, Michelle Caplan, Mathieu Turgeon (The University of Western Ontario, Canada)
Does Party Discipline Suppress Substantive Representation?
Timothy Goodwin (Barrister – Victorian Bar, Australia) and Julian Murphy (PhD Candidate –Melbourne Law School, Australia)
Indigenous Languages in Parliament – Comparing Canada and Australia
Erica Rayment (Instructor – University of Calgary, Canada)
The Impact of Elected Women on Parliamentary Debate in Canada
Tracey Raney (Associate Professor – Ryerson University, Canada)
The Canadian Senate’s Proposed Anti-harassment Policy: A Gendered Analysis
Cheryl Collier (Associate Professor – University of Windsor, Canada)
Gender and Individual Ministerial Responsibility in Canada
Chris Greenaway (PhD Candidate – University of Toronto, Canada)
Parliamentary Debate, Word Embeddings and Isolated Networks of Meaning
Guillermo Renna (Alumnus – Parliamentary Internship Programme, Canada)
Bicameral Ping-Pong: Messages Between the House of Commons and the Senate
Elizabeth McCallion (PhD Candidate – Queen’s University, Canada)
Michael Kaczorowski (Former Senior Policy Advisor – Government of Canada, Canada)
Parliamentary Government in the Age of Populism
Florence Vallée-Dubois (PhD Candidate – Université de Montréal, Canada), Jean-François Godbout (Professeur titulaire – Université de Montréal, Canada) and Christopher Cochrane (Associate Professor – University of Toronto, Canada)
Parliamentary Debates in Canada (1901-2015)
Gavin Hart (University of Huddersfield, UK)
Prime Minister’s Questions and Party Competition: A Corbyn Case-Stdy
Meaghan Irons (Alumna – Ontario Legislative Programme, Canada)
Interjections: Heckling in the Legislature by Ontario Members of Provincial Parliament
Dr. Teale N. Phelps Bondaroff (Research Coordinator - BC Humanist Association, Canada), Ian Bushfield (Executive Director - BC Humanist Association, Canada), Dr. Katie E. Marshall (Assistant Professor - University of British Columbia, and Board Member - BC Humanist Association, Canada), Ranil Prasad (Campaign Manager, Researcher, and Board Member - BC Humanist Association, Canada) and Noah Laurence (Researcher - BC Humanist Association, Canada)
Change and Prayers: An Analysis of Prayers in the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia 2003-2020
Panelists to be announced and may be subject to change owing to legislative obligations.
Legislators from Alberta, British Columbia and the Yukon join together for a panel sharing their unique experiences.
Alberta
Angela Pitt, MLA and Deputy Speaker
Rakhi Pancholi, MLA
Yukon
Pauline Frost, MLA and Minister
British Columbia
Sonia Furstenau, Leader of the BC Green Party (former MLA seeking re-election)
Moderator: Anna Esselment (University of Waterloo)
Chair: Susan Delacourt (Toronto Star)
Critics: Christine de Clercy (Western University), Marc-André Bodet (Université Laval) and Jonathan Malloy (Carlton University)
This session involves a lively discussion about party discipline in Canada. The conversation is anchored by a forthcoming book authored by Alex Marland that presents the findings of 131 in-depth interviews with politicians and political staff across the country. Insights are shared about concealed institutions such as caucus meetings and the party whip, as well as tactics such as wedge politics, message boxes, social media shareables and vote sheets. Parliamentarians who wander off script or who purposely challenge the leader’s position in public are subject to a variety of disciplinary measures, causing some to question the nature of the political system itself. The book is a topical examination of party discipline in Canada, ranging from Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s extraordinary efforts to nurture caucus cohesion through to the SNC-Lavalin affair under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Who says these proceedings are routine? Join us for our AGM!
Note: Our AGM is open to all and will be a regular Zoom meeting. It can be accessed with this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85617448603?pwd=a0xUT1U0UW4yZ1FYQnIrSCt6VkhpZz09
John Magyar (Researcher – Travers Smith LLP, Barrister & Solicitor, UK)
Parliamentary Documents in Court: Canadian Judicial Practices in Context
Chris Oxtoby (Senior Researcher – University of Cape Town, South Africa)
Judicial Appointments and Parliament in South Africa
Robert Leckey (Samuel Gale Professor and Dean, Faculty of Law – McGill University, Canada)
Rereading and Rethinking the Notwithstanding Clause after Quebec’s Bill 21
Charles Robert (Clerk - House of Commons, Canada)
Parliamentary Privilege and the Role of the Speaker
Ariane Beauregard (Parliamentary Counsel – National Assembly of Quebec)
The Courts and the Québec National Assembly: A Case of Mutual Deference
Robert Burroughs (PhD Student, University of New Brunswick)
New Brunswick’s 59 Legislative Assembly: An experiment with accidental new parliamentarianism
Jonathan Chibois (Postdoctoral Researcher – School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, Paris, France)
Penny Bryden (Processor, Department of History – University of Victoria)
Affairs of the House: Scandal in Canadian Parliamentary Debate
Steve Chaplin (Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Law – University of Ottawa)
Parliaments and Internationalism: The “International Grand Committee”
Jennifer Han (Alumna – Ontario Legislative Programme, Canada)
Party-Sans Meetings: The Role of All-Party Groups at the Ontario Legislature
Alexandra Anderson (Post-doctoral Researcher – University of Sheffield, UK)
Governance, Engagement, and the Canadian Parliamentary Refurbishment Project
Cristina Leston-Bandeira (Professor of Politics – University of Leeds, UK)
What makes for effective public engagement with Parliament?
Paula Clerici (Professor, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Assistant Researcher at the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research in Argentina (CONICET), Argentina)
Geneviève Tellier (Full Professor, School of Political Studies – University of Ottawa)
Assessing 20 Years of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates
Ben Yong (Associate Professor of Public Law and Human Rights – Durham Law School, UK)
The Responsiveness of Parliamentary Officials
Gavin Charles (Alumnus, Parliamentary Internship Program)
The Role of Parliament in Canadian Military Missions Abroad
Moderated by Élise Hurtubise-Loranger and Scott Lemoine
In this special event we will hear from Annette Boucher, QC, Acting Clerk of the Nova Scotia House of Assembly. The discussion will focus on the parliamentary career of Me Boucher – including her roles as legislative counsel and Clerk – as well as well as the realities and challenges of serving a provincial legislature.
© 2015 Canadian Study of Parliament Group