Other Politics

Canada-First Nations relationships are obviously the topic of the day. Besides the very serious substantive issues that are under discussion, I noticed one interesting trend in the public debate, that is, the struggle over whether Chief Spence's diet constituted a genuine "hunger strike" or something else. In a lot of media coverage, journalists have been characterizing her protest as a "liquid only diet" or "liquid diet" or "forgoing solid foods", rather than a hunger strike.

Last week, Nobel Prize Winner and Public Choice economist James Buchanen, died.

You can read his NY Times obituary here.

Buchanan's work, and public choice in general, hasn't received a lot of attention in Canada (at least among Canadian political scientists, I think), as far as I can tell, yet the work is extremely important and relevant to understanding Canadian politics.

Previously, I wrote a little bit about a conference I attended in October on "Partnering for Successful Economic Development: Lessons Learned and Best Practices."

I've been meaning to write something in this space that draws upon some public policy theory to argue that this horrible shooting might actually spur meaningful policy change in the United States re: gun control. However, Andrew Gelman has a great post at the monkey cage which says much of what I had planned to say:

Here is my co-author and former M.A. Supervisor, Tom Flanagan, talking about our book (cover below) via video conference with Dr. Brady Deaton and his Land Economics class at the University of Guelph.