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Pandemic Parliaments: Canadian Legislatures in a Time of Crisis

Canadian legislatures’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have raised questions about whether and how parliaments should continue to meet during the pandemic (Reid, 2020; Thomas, 2020a). The purpose of this research note is twofold: (1) to document how Canadian legislatures have changed in response...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Rayment, Erica, VandenBeukel, Jason
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Cambridge University Press 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7256419/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0008423920000499
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author Rayment, Erica
VandenBeukel, Jason
author_facet Rayment, Erica
VandenBeukel, Jason
author_sort Rayment, Erica
collection PubMed
description Canadian legislatures’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have raised questions about whether and how parliaments should continue to meet during the pandemic (Reid, 2020; Thomas, 2020a). The purpose of this research note is twofold: (1) to document how Canadian legislatures have changed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and (2) to assess the effect of these responses on legislatures’ ability to fulfill their core functions. Through an analysis of parliamentary records from all elected federal, provincial and territorial legislatures in Canada, we find that the role of parliaments as sites of citizen representation has suffered the most, whereas the scrutinizing and legislative functions of parliaments have tended to be preserved, albeit in a significantly truncated form. We argue that patterns in legislatures' varied responses to the pandemic reveal which aspects of parliamentary functioning these bodies de facto prioritize and which are at risk of being eroded.
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spelling pubmed-72564192020-05-29 Pandemic Parliaments: Canadian Legislatures in a Time of Crisis Rayment, Erica VandenBeukel, Jason Can J Polit Sci Research Note/Notes de recherche Canadian legislatures’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have raised questions about whether and how parliaments should continue to meet during the pandemic (Reid, 2020; Thomas, 2020a). The purpose of this research note is twofold: (1) to document how Canadian legislatures have changed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and (2) to assess the effect of these responses on legislatures’ ability to fulfill their core functions. Through an analysis of parliamentary records from all elected federal, provincial and territorial legislatures in Canada, we find that the role of parliaments as sites of citizen representation has suffered the most, whereas the scrutinizing and legislative functions of parliaments have tended to be preserved, albeit in a significantly truncated form. We argue that patterns in legislatures' varied responses to the pandemic reveal which aspects of parliamentary functioning these bodies de facto prioritize and which are at risk of being eroded. Cambridge University Press 2020-05-15 /pmc/articles/PMC7256419/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0008423920000499 Text en © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 2020 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Note/Notes de recherche
Rayment, Erica
VandenBeukel, Jason
Pandemic Parliaments: Canadian Legislatures in a Time of Crisis
title Pandemic Parliaments: Canadian Legislatures in a Time of Crisis
title_full Pandemic Parliaments: Canadian Legislatures in a Time of Crisis
title_fullStr Pandemic Parliaments: Canadian Legislatures in a Time of Crisis
title_full_unstemmed Pandemic Parliaments: Canadian Legislatures in a Time of Crisis
title_short Pandemic Parliaments: Canadian Legislatures in a Time of Crisis
title_sort pandemic parliaments: canadian legislatures in a time of crisis
topic Research Note/Notes de recherche
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7256419/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0008423920000499
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