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From the archives

Alberta and Me

From a land of oil, true enough

Amanda Perry

Referendum? What Referendum?

A constitutional expert argues that the federal insistence on clarity has paid off

Sujit Choudhry

The Grey Plateau

When the world stopped five years ago

Stephen Marche
Our Contributors

David E. Smith

David E. Smith is co-editor (with John C. Courtney) of The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Politics (Oxford University Press, 2010) and author of Federalism and the Constitution of Canada (University of Toronto Press, 2010).

Articles by
David E. Smith

Whose Canada Is This?

Pearson often gets credit for forging the modernnation, but Diefenbaker’s legacy lives on November 2010
Pity the federal Liberals: confined to seemingly permanent Opposition, they await the deliverance that only power can bring. In this political purgatory they are now visited by further vexation: their legacy is cast in doubt. What legacy? Why, that tapestry of distinctive symbols (anthem, flag, citizenship), processes (a domestic constitutional amending formula, end of judicial appeals to London) and policies (admission of Newfoundland and Labrador as a…

The Elected and the Appointed

Which branch of government truly merits Canadians’ trust? April 2010
In “Sitting on the Bench,” a sketch from Beyond the Fringe, the British comedy review of the 1960s, Peter Cook played a character named E.L. Wisty, a miner. Wisty claims that he could have been a judge but “never had the Latin for the judgin’.” One reason he regrets his fate is that sitting on the bench would have been safer than…