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This article provides a robust normative appraisal of the Canadian equalization transfers system. The two-dimensional dominance criteria introduced by Atkinson and Bourguignon (RES, 1982) are used to compare the distributions of private and public goods before and after equalization payments. Because the distribution before equalization is not observable, it is simulated on the basis of various scenarios that specify both its financing by the federal government and its utilization by provincial governments. The main result of the paper is that, for most scenarios, equalization transfers have an ambiguous normative impact on the distribution of well-being among Canadians and that, for some scenarios, equalization transfers actually worsen this distribution of well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There have recently been a number of high profile political incidents, and legal cases, that raise questions about hate speech. At the same time, the tensions, and perceived conflicts, between religion and sexuality have become controversial topics. This paper considers the relationship between religious freedom, free speech and equality through an analysis of recent case law in Great Britain, Canada and the United States. The paper starts with a discussion of how conflicts between these values arise in areas such as hate speech and explores the differences between the European and US approach to this issue. In Council of Europe member states there is an increasing use of the criminal law to regulate hate speech. This paper argues that criminalisation of hate speech poses a distinct risk to the values of free speech and proposes alternative non-legal responses such as a greater use of cultural policy. The paper also explores a range of cases where the religion and sexual orientation conflict has arisen in areas such as the workplace. An analysis of these cases suggests that although there is no perfect resolution of this issue, it is possible to develop a set of principles that encourage a balance between the values of religious freedom, free speech and equality even in difficult situations where there is a conflict between religion and sexuality. The paper concludes with some practical recommendations for managing the tensions or conflicts between religious freedom, free speech and equality in liberal democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents, for the first time, multivariate analyses of Canadian national data and tests the relationship between class-based egalitarianism and housework for married and cohabiting male and female university professors in 2000. Consistent with evidence in the general population, gender accounts for more variation in housework than a host of other predictors (i.e., class- and gender-based ideology, institutional contexts and resources, available time, presence of children, age, minority racial status, and religiosity). Nevertheless, these forces play important roles in increasing or decreasing domestic labor contributions of both male and female academics. Among these, professors who possess class-based egalitarian views do more housework, and egalitarianism increases domestic labor contributions of males and decreases that of females. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a critical examination of the stay-at-home dad (SAHD) as a concept and set of practices in Canada and the United States (U.S.). It is informed by a feminist relational approach to practices of work and care, a genealogical approach to concepts, and by case study material from a 14-year qualitative and longitudinal research program on stay-at-home fathers and breadwinning mothers primarily in Canada, but more recently in both Canada and the U.S. I take up three theoretical and conceptual issues. First, I explicate the concepts of work, care, and choice that underpin the SAHD concept and I explore how these are taken up in government reporting and some research studies in Canada and the U.S. Second, drawing from my longitudinal research on stay-at-home fathers, I apply feminist and relational theoretical approaches to work, care, and choice and argue that this approach leads to specific theoretical and methodological implications for the study of SAHDs. Finally, I attempt to answer the question: Is the SAHD a feminist concept? I argue that while studies on SAHDs can offer important glimpses into possibilities of egalitarian family relationships and are fruitful sites for feminist analyses of family relationships, the SAHD concept is located in a conceptual net that includes binaries of work and care and individualized conceptions of choice. I thus question the utility of the SAHD as a feminist concept since the binaries that inform it have long been contested by feminist scholars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National and international research documents a relationship between greater economic inequality and higher homicide rates. However, much of this work uses simple cross sections at high levels of aggregation rather than longer time series of cities or districts and lacks controls for a more substantial range of confounding factors. Using longitudinal Canadian provincial-level data over the period 1982 to 2017, we occasionally find a positive correlation between inequality and homicides rates. However, the relationship between income inequality and homicide rates in Canada reverses to become negative when looking at Canadian census metropolitan areas (CMAs). Moreover, the province-level result between greater inequality and homicide rates also appears to break down once accounting for regional effects. We conclude that much of the literature that finds a relationship between greater economic inequality and homicide rates needs to be re-examined within a longer time and more disaggregated framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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News frames are the interpretations and emphases in the presentation of complex issues that privilege certain understandings over others. We take the case of the framing of economic inequality in the news in order to make an empirical contribution and a conceptual contribution. The framing of economic inequality in news coverage is important to understand as news frames can shape public opinion and subsequently policy responses to inequality. There is no research we are aware of that documents how economic inequality is framed in the news. We compiled a dataset of 2109 news articles, published between 2000 and 2014, about economic inequality, and conducted a detailed content analysis. Empirically, we document how inequality was framed as an issue, specifically whether it was framed as a social problem with negative consequences, and what its causes, consequences, and solutions were. Conceptually, we also address an important gap in knowledge about the determinants of news frames. Research about how news frames are shaped by contextual factors in the production of news is uncertain about which factors matter and to what extent. The dataset has a set of features that allow us to simultaneously examine a number of potential determinants of news frames. Our data allow us to compare the relative influences on news coverage of economic inequality of (1) national context, (2) the political leaning of newspapers, (3) changing economic conditions, and (4) social movement efforts. Of these four factors, we find that only the Occupy movement influenced the volume of attention and the identification of economic inequality as a problem with negative consequences. National context, political leaning, and change in economic conditions had much more limited, or no, influence. Following the emergence of the Occupy movement, attention to economic inequality increased and remained higher than before. However, despite the clear effects of the Occupy movement on problem identification, news coverage of the causes and solutions to economic inequality did not significantly shift. We, therefore, find that social movement activity had the clearest influence on news frames, but the observed effect in this case was superficial rather than detailed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of Equality of Opportunity (EO) has pervaded much of economic and social justice policy over the last half century in conveying a sense of liberation from the circumstances that constrain an individual's ability to achieve it, and it has been a cornerstone of many gender equality programs. However unequivocal pursuit of the so called 'Luck Egalitarianism' imperative has met with many critics who question why individuals who are blessed with good circumstances would wish to be 'liberated' from them. This has led to a more qualified pursuit of Equal Opportunity which adds an additional proviso-that no circumstance group should be made worse off by such a policy or decentralized private initiative. Indeed observed practices, by focusing on the opportunities of the poorly endowed in circumstance, do accord with such a qualified Equal Opportunity mandate. Here it is contended that, because of the asymmetric nature of such a policy or initiative, existing empirical techniques will not fully capture the progress made toward an EO goal. Hence a new technique is introduced and employed in examining progress toward such a Qualified Equal Opportunity (QEO) Objective in the context of the educational attainments of Canadian males and females born between the 1920s and the 1970s (In the early part of that century, females did not perform as well as males educationally, and were much more constrained by their parental educational circumstance). A QEO goal is generally found to cohere with the data with females becoming less attached to their parental educational circumstance, and indeed surpassing males in their educational attainments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates Pareto power law (PPL) behavior at the top of the Canadian wealth distribution. To this end, Canadian Business data on the wealthiest 100 Canadians for the years 1999-2008 are used. The resulting estimates of the PPL exponent ranged from approximately 1.0 to 1.3 depending on the year of analysis and the estimation method used. These estimates are roughly comparable to those based on Forbes' list of the wealthiest 400 Americans. Furthermore, whereas modified OLS and maximum likelihood estimates of the power law exponents conform to Zipf's law, the OLS estimates do not. These results raise some concerns about deducing the magnitudes of and trends in the power law exponents based on a single estimation method and highlight the importance of extensive hypothesis testing for model adequacy. The battery of diagnostic tests pertaining to PPL behavior at the top of the Canadian wealth distribution yields some conflicting results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although gender equity for athletes is a frequently researched topic, it is often assumed that understandings of gender equity are unitary and shared, which may complicate the implementation of it. The purpose of this study was to understand and critique the meanings of gender equity for athletes through in-depth interviews with 5 administrators, 6 coaches, and 17 athletes at 1 Canadian university athletic department. These data were coded and categorized using Atlas.ti. The findings revealed multiple but narrow meanings of gender equity: (a) equality, (b) conditional equality, and (c) a women’s only issue. None of these challenged the taken for granted assumptions associated with university athletics; however, they illustrated the complexities and struggles involved in understanding this organizational value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Reference re E.I. the Supreme Court of Canada was asked to assess the constitutionality of the federally administered maternity and parental leave benefit regime. This social programme has been a key site of feminist struggle in Canada, with attention focused in recent years on whether the benefit, as delivered, was an equality-enhancing regime. This note examines the way in which the questions posed to the Supreme Court of Canada were framed in a manner that obscured the essential equality dimensions of the issue before the Court. It is argued, however, that, notwithstanding the relatively formal division of powers answer that the Court was called upon to give, the decision is a promisingly substantive reflection on the debate over the most effective means to recognize the care-giving labour of Canadian parents through the delivery of this benefit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the issues associated with the plans of the Canadian and South African Constitutional Court to develop an equality law which promotes human dignity. Aim of the equality jurisprudence being developed in Canada and South Africa; Purpose of the South African Constitution; Definition of discrimination; Concept of human dignity; Concerns about a dignity-based approach to equality.

The author explains the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and its impact on women's social and economic status. She enumerates evidences showing non-improvement in the women's economic condition which include less pay compared to men, less access to employer pension plans and majority of income earners below the poverty line. She also discusses the role Canadian women can play in changing the face of Canadian justice system. She highlights the significant role the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF) plays as intervenor in equality cases.

The article discusses research on the extent to which police in Canada are enforcing the communicating law against customers compared to the prostitutes. It explores the equal treatment of prostitutes issue, the case of tricks and the enforcement pattern as well as the disposition and sentencing of adult prostitutes in different parts of Canada. It concludes that Vancouver police are more prone to criminalizing public activities of prostitutes than customers compared to Toronto and Montreal police and that there is conflict in criminal justice system.

The article presents information about employment equity policies in Canada. A discussion is presented about underutilization of certain members of society and discriminatory practices by people and institutions who provide opportunities for economic and social advancement such as educational institutions, employers, and providers of housing. The author focuses on the role of employment equity policy as a response to the underutilization of women in the workplace. Sociodemographic and economic indicators of a large supply of skilled women workers are analyzed.

The article discusses the performance of business cycle in small open economy (SOE). It notes that to obtain countercyclical trade equality of SOE such as Canada, real business cycle model by Greenwood, Hercowitz and Hoffman (GHH) is needed. Moreover, a means to determine wealth effect to the SOE model is to consider preferences depicting the extent of effect. It states that eliminated wealth effect in SOE model with GHH preferences indicates that the ability for smooth consumption is terminated. Consumption volatility is in higher model with GHH preferences than non-GHH preferences.