Due North? Do American Theories of Legislative Committees Apply to Canada?

Several theories of legislative organisation have been proposed to explain committee selection in American legislatures, but do these theories travel outside the United States? This paper tests whether these theories apply to data from the Canadian House of Commons. It was found that the distributive and partisan models of legislative organisation explain committee composition in Canada. In many cases, committees in the House of Commons are made up of preference outliers. As predicted by partisan models, it was also found that the governing party stacks committees with its members, but this is conditional upon the strength of the governing party.

Sediment accumulation rates in subarctic lakes: insights into age-depth modeling from 22 dated lake records from the Northwest Territories, Canada

Age-depth modeling using Bayesian statistics requires well-informed prior information about the behavior of sediment accumulation. Here we present average sediment accumulation rates (represented as deposition times, DT, in yr/cm) for lakes in an Arctic setting, and we examine the variability across space (intra- and inter-lake) and time (late Holocene). The dataset includes over 100 radiocarbon dates, primarily on bulk sediment, from 22 sediment cores obtained from 18 lakes spanning the boreal to tundra ecotone gradients in subarctic Canada. There are four to twenty-five radiocarbon dates per core, depending on the length and character of the sediment records. Deposition times were calculated at 100-year intervals from age-depth models constructed using the ‘classical’ age-depth modeling software Clam. Lakes in boreal settings have the most rapid accumulation (mean DT 20 ± 10 years), whereas lakes in tundra settings accumulate at moderate (mean DT 70 ± 10 years) to very slow rates, (>100 yr/cm). Many of the age-depth models demonstrate fluctuations in accumulation that coincide with lake evolution and post-glacial climate change. Ten of our sediment cores yielded sediments as old as c. 9,000 cal BP (BP = years before AD 1950). From between c. 9,000 cal BP and c. 6,000 cal BP, sediment accumulation was relatively rapid (DT of 20 to 60 yr/cm). Accumulation slowed between c. 5,500 and c. 4,000 cal BP as vegetation expanded northward in response to warming. A short period of rapid accumulation occurred near 1,200 cal BP at three lakes. Our research will help inform priors in Bayesian age modeling.

Neoliberalism, the University, Public Goods, and Agricultural Innovation

After World War II, most industrialising nations adopted some form of welfare-state approach to balance the economic activities of self-interested agents and social welfare. In the realm of scientific research and innovation, this often meant that governments took primary responsibility for funding public research organisations, including research universities and government laboratories. Over the past four decades, however, the significance of private funding for agricultural research has increased, and academic scientists now often work in public-private partnerships. We argue that this trend needs to be carefully monitored because public goods are likely to be overlooked and undervalued in such arrangements. In the interest of developing indicators to monitor the trend, we document public and private funding for agricultural research and agricultural innovation in four countries: the USA, the UK, Ireland and Germany. Our results show that although neoliberalism is evident in each country, it is not homogeneous in its application and impacts, suggesting that national and institutional contexts matter. This article is directed at stimulating debates on the relationships between university research, agricultural innovation and public goods.

Mobilizing against neoliberalism? Global affirmative action in context

This article uses the example of Northern Ireland to illustrate how political mobilization may
be deployed to challenge structural forms of inequality. The experience suggests that regulatory
models can be designed for particular contexts to shape approaches that present challenges to
dominant economic and political orthodoxies. The intention is not to overstate the significance
of this specific transitional context but simply to highlight elements that might feature in any
attempt to mobilize successfully around human rights and equality, and against aspects of neoliberal
thinking.

Predictors of place of death for those in receipt of home-based palliative care services in Ontario, Canada

Many cancer patients die in institutional settings despite their preference to die at home. A longitudinal, prospective cohort study was conducted to comprehensively assess the determinants of home death for patients receiving home-based palliative care. Data collected from biweekly telephone interviews with caregivers (n=302) and program databases were entered into a multivariate logistic model. Patients with high nursing costs (odds ratio [OR]: 4.3; confidence interval [CI]: 1.8-10.2) and patients with high personal support worker costs (OR: 2.3; CI: 1.1-4.5) were more likely to die at home than those with low costs. Patients who lived alone were less likely to die at home than those who cohabitated (OR: 0.4; CI: 0.2-0.8), and those with a high propensity for a home-death preference were more likely to die at home than those with a low propensity (OR: 5.8; CI: 1.1-31.3). An understanding of the predictors of place of death may contribute to the development of effective interventions that support home death.