Article 6 / 8 , Vol. 47 No. 3 (Autumn)

Mapping Canadian Leaders’ Use of YouTube

Canada’s federal, provincial and territorial party leaders have an established and active presence on several of the most popular social media platforms, including Facebook, X/Twitter, and Instagram. Party leaders tend to be much less active on the video-sharing platform YouTube. With news media taking note of the success federal Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre has found on this platform, the authors of this article sought to learn if it portends a shift in the extent it is used. They conclude that, to date, YouTube has still not joined the ranks of other popular social media platforms, likely due to the cost of production, the time it takes to create a YouTube video, and the disproportionate levels of engagement compared to content posted elsewhere. However, the authors hypothesize that with two other federal leaders, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of the Liberal Party and Jagmeet Singh of the New Democratic Party, increasingly producing Direct to Viewer content in advance of the next general election, Canadian politicians may at some point in the future make use of this technology as much as their American counterparts.

Andrew J.A. Mattan, Aidan Harris, and Tamara A. Small

Continue reading “Mapping Canadian Leaders’ Use of YouTube”

Public Involvement in Redistribution: A Reflection

The Canadian Constitution requires that federal electoral districts be reviewed after each decennial census to reflect population changes. This process, known as redistribution, has two phases: representation and readjustment. Public participation is a crucial stage in the readjustment process. The Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act requires each boundary commission to hold at least one public hearing in the province after the boundary commission develops an initial map proposal. This article offers a reflection on the involvement of the public in the most recent redistribution process. The data in this paper is collated from the 2022 reports of the 10 boundary commissions; data collected from the 2012 redistribution is also used as context. The starting place for analysis will be the work of John Courtney where he draws several conclusions about the involvement of the public in his foundational analysis of boundary commissions prior to 1994. Since it has been almost 20 years since the publication of these works, this gives us an opportunity to reflect on those conclusions using the most recent processes.

Tamara A. Small