The debate over economic globalization has reached a fever pitch in the past decade and a half with Western governments and multinational corporations trumpeting its virtues and a multitude of activists and developing-world citizens vociferously denouncing it. Both sides would agree that globalization is a recent development that is changing the way people and nations do business, but in Globalization Unplugged, Peter Urmetzer questions whether national economies are losing their sovereignty and whether the topic of globalization merits as much discussion as it...

As the world moves into the twenty-first century, cellular systems, high-density data storage, and the Internet are but a few of the new technologies that promise great advances in productivity and improvements in the quality of life. Yet these new technologies also threaten personal privacy. A surveillance society, in which the individual has little control over personal information, may be the logical result of deregulation, globalization, and a mass data-processing capacity. Consumers report increasing concern over erosion of personal privacy even as they volunteer personal information...

This book offers a crisp and thoughtful account of political phenomena still fresh in the minds of Canadians, and with continuing relevance to policy-making processes. As the first major work on the origins, strategies, and activities of movements and coalitions that arose in Canada and spread across North America to oppose free trade, it captures an important developmental period in Canadian political life.

Focusing on an analysis of the Action Canada Network, Jeffrey Ayres adopts a political-process model to link the emergence of popular sector movements and transnational networks...

The forest sector, historically Canada's largest industry and largest employer, remains today the source of most of Canada's positive balance of trade on goods and commodities. Why, then, is there a dearth of policy literature devoted to exploring the industry as a nation-wide phenomenon?

Arguing that the complexity of policy-making in the forest sector has led many analysts to focus exclusively on specific sectoral activities or jurisdictions, this collection of essays offers a simplifying framework of analysis developed in comparative public policy studies to address the current...

The massive changes under way in capitalist commodity production include the transition from a traditional or Fordist approach to a post-Fordist one, involving practices such as employee involvement, continuous improvement, and gainsharing. In this research monograph, Bob Russell explores the changing character of industrial relations and labour processes in two staple industries: potash and uranium mining.

Using an innovative case-analytic approach, Russell compares the managerial strategies used by five transnational firms. As indicated by his title, More with Less, he sees the...

Risky Business is a comprehensive look at Canada's science-based policy and regulatory regime. It asks what risks Canadians might be exposed to as fiscal pressures strain the capacity of regulators in areas such as food, drugs, pesticides, fisheries, and the environment.

The first part of this book focuses the reader's attention on diverse and major themes and issues that pervade science-based regulatory regimes today. The second part suggests a framework for analysis and endeavours to present both sympathetic and critical perspectives on the inner-workings of regulatory departments...

Since 1997 Quebec has offered licensed child care services for $5 per day to its entire population. British Columbia has begun its own program of universal subsidization of licensed child care services for five and six year old children. With this in mind, and the belief that Canadian governments and the public are ready to contemplate making a major investment in improving child care services, Gordon Cleveland and Michael Krashinsky have assembled many of the key experts and activists in the area of Canadian child care policy, and asked them to consider a number of crucial...

The first in-depth analysis of temporary work in Canada, Leah F. Vosko's important new book examines a number of important trends, including the commodification of labour power; the decline of the full-time, full-year job as a norm; and the gendered character of prevailing employment relationships. Spanning the period from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century, Temporary Work traces the evolution of the temporary employment relationship in Canada and places it in an international context. It explores how, and to what extent, 'temporary work' is becoming a norm for a diverse...

Contingent Work, Disrupted Lives examines the repercussions of economic globalization on several manufacturing-dependent rural communities in Canada. Foregrounding a distinct interest in the 'grassroots' effects of such contemporary corporate strategies as plant closures and downsizing, authors Anthony Winson and Belinda Leach consider the impact of this restructuring on the residents of various communities. The authors argue that the new rural economy involves a fundamental shift in the stability and security of people's lives and, ultimately, it causes wrenching change and an...