In 1929, the Judicial Committee of the Imperial Privy Council (JCPC) located in Great Britain and the highest court of appeal in the British Commonwealth overruled the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in the landmark Edwards v. Attorney General for Canada case (1930). More commonly known as the “Persons Case,” this reference case sought to determine whether women were “persons” and therefore eligible to sit in the Senate of Canada. In writing up the court’s decision John Sankey, then Lord Chancellor of the JCPC, set out what has become a leading principle of constitutional interpretation in Canada: “The British North America Act planted in Canada a living tree capable of growth and expansion within its natural limits” (p. 136). Thus, despite the intent of its original framers, the values of the day meant the word “persons” used in section 24 of the British North America Act (1867) should be considered as including women—and therefore that they could be appointed to the Senate.

While the interpretive metaphor of the living tree had been somewhat forgotten in the five decades following its enunciation, it was reinvigorated with the adoption of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms which came into existence in 1984. Perhaps most significant has been its impact throughout the 1990s and 2000s in securing of equality rights for those whose sexual orientations, gender identities and gender expressions (SOGIE) did not fit with traditional heterosexual norms. For example, it was mentioned in Reference re Same-Sex Marriage (2004) and Canada (Attorney General) v. Hislop (2007) cases which sought to secure survivor Canada Pension Plan benefits for same-sex couples. In the former the court argued that: “The ‘frozen concepts’ reasoning runs contrary to one of the most fundamental principles of Canadian constitutional interpretation: that our Constitution is a living tree which, by way of progressive interpretation, accommodates and addresses the realities of modern life. Read expansively, the word ‘marriage’ in s. 91(26) does not exclude same-sex marriage.” In fact, the opening of civil marriage to same-sex couples “far from violating the Charter, flows from it.” (Reference re Same-Sex Marriage 2004)

The idea that the Constitution is a timeless document capable of adapting to the transformations that shape Canadian society is useful in understanding the human rights revolution that has occurred in Canada since (and even before) the adoption of the Charter, but it is also useful in understanding the Canadian political system. Indeed, the principle of constitutional interpretation of the living tree carries a tension between continuity and change. On the one hand, the framework of the political regime established by the British North America Act in 1867 still prevails today. For example, the ideologies that founded Canada (liberalism and conservatism) still hold the upper hand in the Canadian political game, as does nationalism, which has inspired the desire for self-determination of French-speaking people. Few changes have occurred in our political institutions over the past century and a half. Canada is still a constitutional monarchy where debates about the appropriateness of becoming a republic have little influence. Parliament maintains a bicameral structure, and despite various debates over the years, members of the Senate are still not elected by Canadians. The first past the post voting system introduced by the Constitutional Act of 1791 continues to be employed despite numerous attempts by civil society to replace it. The prime minister remains a central actor in the Canadian parliamentary system, although her/his power has evolved over time to make her/him a hegemonic actor (some will say an elected queen/king). Interest groups still enjoy privileged access to policymakers and their influence on the public policy process remains significant. Despite a public discourse that promotes diversity, Canada’s political system remains dominated—in terms of its ethos, institutions, actors, processes—by white, heterosexual and cisgender men. In addition, First Nations peoples continue to suffer from the colonial oppression of the federal state.

Yet despite this remarkable continuity since Confederation, the Canadian political system has also undergone a profound transformation. New political ideologies have emerged and have even been able to access legislative representation, as evidenced by appearance of social democratic parties in the early 1900s and more recently the Green Party of Canada. The Constitution of Canada has been enriched by a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which has served minorities rather well, including women and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and queer (LGBTQ) people. The judicial branch of state power emancipated itself from British control when the Supreme Court became the court of last appeal in criminal matters in 1933 and in civil matters in 1949. While Canadians still use the first-the-post-system to designate MPs, the electoral supply has diversified, electoral behaviour has become more complex and the partisan system has shifted from a two-party to a polarised pluralist party system. Legislative bodies are slowly becoming more diverse and political executives have broadened their representative mandates from geographic and linguistic representation to incorporate religious, ethnic/racial, gender and sexual orientation and identity. While the British North America Act of 1867 places a very secondary importance on municipalities, they are now full-edge players in Canadian political governance. Although civil society has always been a breeding ground for citizen activism (as evidenced by the uprisings of 1837–1838 or even resistance to conscription), social movements have grown in importance since the 1970s, have become formalised and have gained legitimacy in the eyes of the population but also of the state apparatus. This is reflected in the reframing of state language on gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression (SOGIE).

Indeed, an examination of the Canadian political system in light of gender reveals two observations: one is that it has always been deeply mono-gendered, in the sense that the male principle reigns by default; the other is that the feminist revolution of the 1970s and beyond forced it to undergo certain transformations. The Canadian political system has been, and continues to be, dominated by heterosexual and cisgender men. This is true of its ideologies, its institutional culture and its public policies. For example, liberalism, the ideological background of the Canadian political system, is based on a division between the private (the space of the reproduction of life and family) and the public (the world of production via the economy, society and politics), with women being assigned to the former and men to the latter. State institutions are dominated by men, who occupy the majority of legislative, executive and judicial roles. As far as public policies are concerned, many are still based on the pre-eminence of the male principle, whether in defence, healthcare or taxation.

The feminist revolution of the 1970s and beyond not only uncovered this male pre-eminence of the Canadian political system, but also provided a transformative force for it to become more inclusive of women. For example, in 1967 the Liberal government of Lester B. Pearson established the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada, whose mandate was to “inquire into and report upon the status of women in Canada, and to recommend what steps might be taken by the Federal Government to ensure for women equal opportunities with men in all aspects of Canadian Society” (Canada 1970: vii). The Commission’s 1970 report captures the full scope of second-class citizenship for Canadian women, making 167 recommendations, many of which are still relevant today. In doing so, the Commission was not only in tune with the mobilisations of the feminist movement that were then taking place in Canadian political society, but it also encouraged and legitimised such mobilisations within the state apparatus itself as state-based feminism institutions. Thus, the position of Minister responsible for the Status of Women was created in 1971 in response to the report, and in 1976 a department agency (the Office of the Coordinator, Status of Women) was created, which led to Status of Women Canada. In 1995, the federal government adopted a plan for equality between women and men. One of the objectives was to implement gender-based analysis in all federal departments and agencies. In 2011, the gender-based analysis adopted an intersectional design to become the gender-based analysis plus, and in 2018 the Ministry of Women and Gender Equality, which replaced Status of Women Canada, was given a mandate to work to “the advancement of equality, including social, economic and political equality, with respect to sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity or expression” (Women and Gender Equality Ministry Act, L.C. 2018, c. 27, art. 661, para. 2a), thus clearly incorporating the SOGIE variable.

The feminist revolution of the 1970s and beyond also affected state personnel: more women are sitting in the House of Commons and provincial legislatures, acting as cabinet ministers and holding judicial office. Women are also more present among federal public service executives. Women, albeit only a few, have served as prime minister or premier, including Kathleen Wynne, not only the first woman to be premier of Ontario but the first openly LGBTQ person to hold such an elite office in Canada and across the Commonwealth. However, gender parity in politics is still a long way off.

Furthermore, these findings—that the Canadian political system is male-dominated, and that feminism and the mobilisation of LGBTQ interests have created within it a certain room for women and those with diverse SOGIE backgrounds—are absent from the textbooks on the Canadian political system. The Palgrave Handbook on Gender, Sexualities and Canadian Politics is the fruit of an observation: mainstream introductory Canadian politics textbooks are embedded in a narrow vision of Canada in which white Anglo-saxon heterosexual cisgender men are the active citizens and political entrepreneurs, a reading that needs to be challenged by accounts more sensitive to the diversities of Canadian society. Indeed, textbooks on Canadian politics either say nothing about women, mention them in a paragraph or footnote or segregate them to a “special” chapter. As for sexualities, they are conspicuous by their very absence. These silences should not come as a surprise, since women and sexualities have traditionally been associated with the private sphere, a field conceptualised as antinomic of the public sphere—the political space. And that is not to mention other absences in addition to gender and sexuality, including those related to ethnic/racial origin, social class, capacity and, above all, those that silence Indigenous realities. In fact, the only diversity that seems to be acceptable in Canadian politics is that of language—and, following out of that, that of the regions. It is as if Canada is a country only made up of white, heterosexual and cisgender men, petit-bourgeois, fully able-bodied and so on, and that its political system and institutions (e.g., the constitution, the executive, social movements, public policies) do not have gendered, sexualised and intersectional dimensions. It is this vision that the Handbook proposes to challenge by promoting a gendered, sexualised and intersectional reading of Canadian politics.

The primary objective of the Handbook is to revisit the field of Canadian politics in light of gender—in other words, to examine the study of Canadian politics using “gender” as a category of analysis. First and foremost, our approach to gender does not just involve a focus on women. We understand gender as being inclusive of women; however, we interpret gender more broadly. As a result, in its assessment of Canadian politics this text adopts a focus on sex, sexualities, sexual identities and where possible other intersecting identities constituted by class, race/ethnicity, age, capacity, religion and other categories. The basic premise of the Handbook is that political actors have a gender, are sexual beings and have other intersecting identities that frame how Canadian politics is thought, told and enacted; in turn, Canadian politics, as a set of ideas, state institutions, decision-making processes and civil society mobilisations, does and redoes gender. Ultimately, the goal of the Handbook is to shed light on the gendered, sexualised and intersectional nature of Canadian politics. Put differently, the Handbook is driven by the objective of constituting an introductory textbook to Canadian politics whose privileged approach is that of intersectionality. As a result, it places gender and sexuality at the forefront of its focus and identify how they interweave with other diversities to read the Canadian political system. It seeks to answer questions such as: What happens to the ideologies that form the bedrock of Canadian political society when examined in light of gender, sexuality and other intersectional identities? What do the voting system or municipal political institutions tell us when they are subject to the same scrutiny? And what about interest groups—does this traditional elite bargaining device of liberal societies provide a voice for women and sexual minorities to influence the public decision-making process? Are public policies neutral, that is, without gendered and sexualised assumptions upstream and without gender-specific and sexualised effects downstream?

We would note that the contributors to this volume come from a variety of theoretical, methodological and geographic backgrounds. Contributors also reflect different generations of ideas and streams of thought in Canadian politics. As a result, the volume and its approach to the study of Canadian politics reflects the diversity of scholarship in this field and the role that sexual orientation and gender identity play in our political institutions, processes and policy approaches.

The Handbook is designed as many other mainstream introductory Canadian politics textbook with four parts (ideologies, institutions, civil society and public policy), each of which contains several chapters. Each chapter reviews the basics of a given topic from the perspective of gendered/sexualised and other intersectional identities. For example, the chapter on the legislative branch provides basics on the topic (the principles that govern the legislative power, a description of the Senate and the House of Commons, their main actors and functions, etc.), but from gendered/sexualised and intersectionalised perspectives.

Part I, on “ideologies,” explores the principal political ideologies that have inspired Canadian politics since confederation: liberalism, conservatism, social democracy/socialism and nationalism. This part also discusses philosophies that inform Indigenous governance, which have been eradicated from the Canadian ideological landscape. This examination of the dominant ideological approaches underpinning politics sheds light on a paradox: on the one hand, gender, sexualities and other intersec...