The New Politics of Western Canada - by Charles Smith & Tom McIntosh (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A study of Western Canada's complex identity and politics.

The Canadian West: an economic engine with a history of grievance against federal power emanating from the east. The New Politics of Western Canada grapples with the West's complex, multifaceted past to promote a better understanding of this vast region's political realities and the challenges that lie ahead.

Contributors re-examine the historical and contemporary meanings attached to "the West" as a form of identity, through themes such as colonialism, gender, and class. They develop a nuanced analysis of Western political ideology, from resentment-based populism to the regional left. They explore pressing Western economic and policy concerns, such as labor, healthcare, and Indigenous democratic participation and protest.

Together, these themes provide intelligent, new ways of interpreting underexplored aspects of Western Canadian politics, adding depth to earlier attempts to explain the region as a political, economic, or sociological space.

Review Quotes

"Home to one third of Canada's population, the political significance of the West is steadily growing. The New Politics of Western Canada offer insights into the ideas, interests, and political movements based in the West that shape many conversations in contemporary Canadian politics. As various chapters note, Western conversations on both the left and the right inform national debates. This collection is an important contribution to the study of Canadian politics."-- "Lisa Young, Department of Political Science, University of Calgary"

"The contributors to The New Politics of Western Canada rescue us from a bankrupt, narrow focus on "Western alienation" to a critical exploration of the racial, gender, class, environmental, and provincial conflicts within the colonial-settler region referred to as 'Western Canada, ' including ongoing struggles of Indigenous people to regain sovereignty and to maintain their cultures and land base. This is a refreshing reset in discussions about politics in a region once presented as a unified entity only of interest in terms of its elites' conflicts with central Canadian elites."-- "Alvin Finkel, professor emeritus, Department of History, Athabasca University"

About the Author

Charles Smith is professor of political studies at St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan. He is co-editor of Transforming Provincial Politics: The Political Economy of Canada's Provinces and Territories in the Neoliberal Era and coauthor of Unions in Court: Organized Labour and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Tom McIntosh is professor of politics and international studies at the University of Regina and a researcher at the Saskatchewan Population Health and Evaluation Research Unit. He has published nine books on Canadian politics.