L’impact de la culture sur le crédit, les institutions de financement et le droit de la faillite : quelques réflexions sur le cas canadien

Un triple clivage caractérise la société canadienne : le partage du pouvoir de légiférer entre le niveau fédéral et les provinces ; le bijuridisme, avec la présence d’une province de droit civil, le Québec, parmi des provinces de common law ; et le bilinguisme. En interagissant subtilement avec la culture et les valeurs particulières du Québec et des autres provinces, ces caractéristiques influencent les conceptions qu’ont les citoyens du crédit, des institutions de financement et de la faillite. À partir de données statistiques, l’auteur présente un aperçu de ses réflexions sur certaines différences au sein du Canada quant aux habitudes de crédit et au rôle des institutions financières. Il estime que les différences de comportement relevées s’expliquent non seulement par des motifs juridiques, mais également par des aspects historiques et culturels. Ainsi, alors que les règles juridiques applicables aux banques et à la faillite s’appliquent uniformément au Canada, les Québécois adoptent des comportements d’épargne, de recours au crédit et d’insolvabilité différents. Ils utilisent plus fréquemment les coopératives de crédit, dont le fonctionnement repose sur des préceptes de solidarité et dont le mode de contrôle coopératif coïncide avec certaines valeurs québécoises. Les Québécois connaissent également un nombre croissant de faillites, dont la source semble résider, comme dans le reste du Canada, dans des transformations démographiques et sociales mélangeant droit, culture et valeurs.Three cleavages characterize Canadian society: the division of legislative power between the federal and provincial levels; bijuralism, with the presence of a civil law province, Quebec, among the common law provinces; and bilingualism. In their subtle interactions with the particular culture and values of Quebec and the other provinces, these characteristics influence citizens’ conceptions of credit, lending institutions, and bankruptcy. Using statistical data as a starting point, the author presents his reflections upon certain differences in Canada relating to credit patterns and the role of lending institutions. He hypothesizes that these differences in behaviour can be explained not only by legal motives, but equally historical and cultural factors.Thus, while the regulations concerning banks and bankruptcy apply uniformly across Canada, the Québécois adopt distinct habits related to savings, the use of credit, and insolvency. They make more frequent use of credit unions, institutions that base their operations on the precepts of solidarity and use a model of cooperative control, which coincides with certain provincial values. The Québécois also experience a growing number of bankruptcies, whose source seems to lie, as in the rest of Canada, in demographic and social transformations that mix the law, culture, and values

La régulation du marché des valeurs mobilières au moyen de normes de portée générale : les leçons de l'affaire Ainsley

Une décision d'un tribunal ontarien a amené une révision complète du pouvoir de l'Ontario Securities Commission d'exercer ses fonctions de régulation au moyen de normes de portée générale. Dans le présent article, l'auteur revoit les principes de droit administratif permettant de qualifier les normes de ce type élaborées par les organismes de régulation économique et, après avoir décrit les réformes survenues en Ontario, il évalue la pertinence d'apporter les mêmes changements au fonctionnement de la Commission des valeurs mobilières du Québec.Following a court ruling which declared policy statements issued by the Ontario Securities Commission to be ultra vires, the Ontario Securities Act was amended to give regulatory power to the Commission, thereby laying down a clear legal basis for the adoption of such statements. This article examines the principle in administrative law under which various norms issued by administrative agencies can be qualified and distinguished. The purpose is to evaluate the adequacy of changes that occurred in O.S.C. powers and to determine if the Quebec Securities Act should be amended to a similar extent

Online Mutual Foreground Segmentation for Multispectral Stereo Videos

The segmentation of video sequences into foreground and background regions is a low-level process commonly used in video content analysis and smart surveillance applications. Using a multispectral camera setup can improve this process by providing more diverse data to help identify objects despite adverse imaging conditions. The registration of several data sources is however not trivial if the appearance of objects produced by each sensor differs substantially. This problem is further complicated when parallax effects cannot be ignored when using close-range stereo pairs. In this work, we present a new method to simultaneously tackle multispectral segmentation and stereo registration. Using an iterative procedure, we estimate the labeling result for one problem using the provisional result of the other. Our approach is based on the alternating minimization of two energy functions that are linked through the use of dynamic priors. We rely on the integration of shape and appearance cues to find proper multispectral correspondences, and to properly segment objects in low contrast regions. We also formulate our model as a frame processing pipeline using higher order terms to improve the temporal coherence of our results. Our method is evaluated under different configurations on multiple multispectral datasets, and our implementation is available online.Comment: Preprint accepted for publication in IJCV (December 2018

Successful early percutaneous closure of acute ventricular septal rupture complicating acute myocardial infarction with Amplatzer ventricular septal occluder

Acute ventricular septal rupture - ventricular septal defect (VSD) following acute myocardial infarction remains a critical condition. We present an 80 year-old patient with an acute VSD following an acute inferior myocardial infarction. Percutaneous VSD closure with an Amplatzer ventricular septal occluder (AVSO) was performed successfully, two days after initial admission. In-hospital follow-up was uneventful. We speculate that percutaneous VSD closure with an AVSO can be an alternative to surgical correction for these patients. Despite the impressive result, this innovative approach needs further investigation and refinements before it can be recommended as the treatment of choice for acute ischemic VSD. (Cardiol J 2007; 14: 411-414

Dynamiques sectorielles et relations du travail : le cas de l’industrie québécoise de la construction

Depuis 1968, les relations du travail dans l’industrie québécoise de la construction font l’objet d’un encadrement institutionnel unique au monde. L’intégration d’éléments issus du régime général de rapports collectifs du travail ainsi que de celui d’extension juridique des conventions collectives a permis au législateur de réduire et d’encadrer certains conflits inhérents à l’activité productive propre à cette industrie ainsi qu’à l’action collective des salariés de la construction. Ce régime de relations du travail fait aujourd’hui l’objet d’une dérèglementation progressive qui soulève certaines questions quant à l’avenir de la paix industrielle dans ce secteur névralgique de l’économie québécoise.En plus d’offrir une présentation synthétique de ce régime particulier et de son évolution, l’étude de ce cas permet de montrer la pertinence d’une étude sectorielle des problèmes du travail et de l’emploi ainsi que des solutions élaborées pour résoudre ceux-ci, l’approche sectorielle permettant d’envisager de nombreuses problématiques qui transcendent la réalité des milieux de travail individuels.Since 1968, labour relations in Quebec’s construction industry have been regulated by a unique legal framework. By integrating elements of the general labour relations regime and of the act on judicial extension of collective agreements, legislators reduced some conflicts associated with this industry and construction workers’ collective action. The progressive deregulation of this labour relations regime raises some questions about the future of industrial peace in this key sector of Quebec’s economy.The author presents an overview of this labour relations regime and of its evolution. The study of this case also reveals the relevance of industry studies for the research on labour and employment problems. Indeed, some issues transcend what is experienced at the level of individual workplaces and can only be grasped on a sectorial scale

Reproducible Evaluation of Pan-Tilt-Zoom Tracking

Tracking with a Pan-Tilt-Zoom (PTZ) camera has been a research topic in computer vision for many years. However, it is very difficult to assess the progress that has been made on this topic because there is no standard evaluation methodology. The difficulty in evaluating PTZ tracking algorithms arises from their dynamic nature. In contrast to other forms of tracking, PTZ tracking involves both locating the target in the image and controlling the motors of the camera to aim it so that the target stays in its field of view. This type of tracking can only be performed online. In this paper, we propose a new evaluation framework based on a virtual PTZ camera. With this framework, tracking scenarios do not change for each experiment and we are able to replicate online PTZ camera control and behavior including camera positioning delays, tracker processing delays, and numerical zoom. We tested our evaluation framework with the Camshift tracker to show its viability and to establish baseline results.Comment: This is an extended version of the 2015 ICIP paper "Reproducible Evaluation of Pan-Tilt-Zoom Tracking

Strange bedfellows? Attitudes toward minority religious symbols in the public sphere

In this study, we contend that distinguishing individuals who support bans on minority religious symbols from those who want to ban all religious symbols improves our understanding of the roots of opposition to minority religious symbols in the public sphere. We hypothesize that both groups are likely driven by markedly different motivations and that opposition to the presence of minority religious symbols in the public sphere may be the result of an alliance between “strange bedfellows,” clusters of individuals whose political outlooks usually bring them to opposite sides of political debates. Drawing on a survey conducted in the province of Quebec (Canada), we find that while holding liberal values and low religiosity are key characteristics of those who would ban all religious symbols, feelings of cultural threat and generalized prejudice are central characteristics of those who would only restrict minority religious symbols. Negative attitudes specifically toward Muslims, however, also appear to motivate both groups

Ethnic minority belonging in a multilevel political community:The role of exclusionary experiences and welcoming provincial contexts in Canada

Numerous studies demonstrate that immigrant and ethnic minority populations’ sense of belonging to the political communities in which they reside depends in part on the welcoming context: the constellation of policies, discourses, identities and prevailing attitudes relating to ethnocultural diversity in those political communities. However, while these studies typically focus on national belonging, in multilevel political communities belonging may be expressed at the national and subnational levels. Relying on a survey of ethnic minority group members in Canada, this study compares national and subnational belonging in three provinces where subnational and national welcoming contexts are very similar, to one case, Quebec, where the subnational welcoming context is significantly different from the national one. The results show a distinctive set of dynamics in Quebec, where ethnic minorities who feel excluded are more likely than those in other provinces to hold the subnational community responsible for their exclusion.</p