Hamish Telford – författare

Arguably, political changes in Canada have been greater in the 1990s than in any other decade since Confederation, but do these changes signify a shift in Canadian political culture? Can we even speak of a Canadian political culture? What are the consequences of these changes for the federation? Are Canadians more or less united? Are federal-provincial relations better or worse? What does the future hold? The authors attempt to answer these questions through analyses of the federal party system, politics in the provinces and regions, and political dynamics in a number of issue areas, including Aboriginal politics, the Charter, multiculturalism, the rural-urban cleavage, and social policy. Contributors include Gordon Gibson (Fraser Institute), Hugh Segal (Institute for Research on Public Policy), Samuel LaSelva (University of British Columbia), Jennifer Smith (Dalhousie University), Alain-G. Gagnon (McGill University), Nelson Wiseman (University of Toronto), and Ian Stewart (Acadia University).

In Talking Past Each Other, Hamish Telford provides an engaging account of the long-running dialogue between the governments of Quebec and Canada on the meaning and purpose of federalism. He argues that the government of Canada has adopted a theory of federalism that enables it to address most issues of "national" importance to the federation irrespective of the formal division of powers in the constitution. The theory of "majoritarian federalism," as he calls it, allows the government of Canada to promote "national" unity and the universality of citizenship. By contrast, Quebec’s theory of federalism, which he calls "difference federalism," stresses the importance of provincial autonomy, so as to allow each province, most especially Quebec, to preserve and promote its particularity. These definitions represent irreconcilable constitutional premises. The governments of Canada and Quebec have thus quite literally been "talking past each other" for the last 150 years.Talking Past Each Other is the first monograph in a generation to recount this story in its entirety.