Rights & Democracy
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Broadbent Institute Signs Letter to the Prime Minister Concerning Canada’s Digital Sovereignty
We join dozens of organizations and individuals across Canada in an open letter to the Prime Minister of Canada, urging him to make digital sovereignty a top priority for Canada.
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Broadbent Bulletin – September 2025
Welcome to the September edition of the Broadbent Bulletin.
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A Radically Democratic Free Speech
The guiding ideal of Ed Broadbent’s public life was that liberal rights like freedom of speech and freedom of expression are necessary but insufficient guarantors of democratic equality.
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Addressing Economic Racism in Canada’s Pandemic Response and Recovery
In the beginning of the pandemic, COVID-19 was said to be “the great equalizer”, impacting people across all walks of life. Now, well-documented racial health inequities for COVID-19 have proven…
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Big Data and Criminal Justice: What Canadians Need to Know
We outline what ‘big data’ is, how it is used in the context of criminal justice in Canada and beyond, and how we might think about the potential beneficial and…
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An Electoral System for All: Why British Columbia Should Adopt Proportional Representation
Now, rather than relying on FPTP and defenses like “Well, this is how we’ve always done it!” we can choose an electoral system for the 21st century.
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Progress in the Age of Trump
The Broadbent Institute commissioned Stratcom to research current political attitudes among Canadians on issues of inequality and economic security, and in relation to the Trump presidency.
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Reflections on the Social Democratic Tradition
The term social democracy means the full extension of democratic principles to both the social and economic sphere and overlaps closely with the concept of democratic socialism, which denotes building…
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Toward Adequate Income Assistance for People with Disabilities in British Columbia
British Columbia has a long way to go towards providing an adequate and dignified standard of living to persons with disabilities. In Toward Adequate Income Assistance for People with Disabilities in…
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Submission from the Broadbent Institute to the Canada Revenue Agency’s online consultation on charities’ political activities
This brief outlines the distinct lack of clarity of the current rules regulating political activity and highlights how the biased scrutiny and targeted auditing of certain types of charities has…
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Submission to the Special Committee on Electoral Reform
Because of endemic problems with our first-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system in a modern, multiparty context - notably, false majorities, distorted outcomes, wasted votes and the underrepresentation of women and other…
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An Electoral System for All: Why Canada Should Adopt Proportional Representation
We can choose a system that will serve and represent Canadians fairly and equally while better engaging them in the political process. And that’s a system based on proportional representation.