Taking the Harper Government’s Refugee Policy to Court

There is no question that significant changes occurred in Canadian refugee policy under the Conservative government of Stephen Harper during its near ten years in power. Indeed, observers note that virtually no aspect was left untouched. The effects of many of these alterations are still unfolding, and while the subsequent Liberal government of Justin Trudeau committed itself to reversing or altering some of them, many will likely be preserved. In this chapter, we focus on changes that occurred to Canada’s inland refugee policy with two larger goals in mind. First, we de-mystify the role of the courts in shaping refugee policy in Canada. Second, we contribute to a growing body of work that reflects on the contentious relationship between the Harper government and the courts. In particular, the chapter examines the mobilization that occurred through and beyond the courts in response to the government’s 2012 cuts to the Interim Federal Health Program (IFHP) for refugees. Our research shows that while the role of the courts in overseeing Canadian refugee policy is generally quite limited, significant mobilization on behalf of refugees inside and outside the courts occurred in response to the Harper government’s particularly rights-restrictive approach. Overall, we argue that in order to understand the relationship between the courts and public policy, it is necessary to appreciate the broader policy and political contours within which court rulings emerge, and the specific contexts that prompt court involvement in the first instance

A Laboratory Assessment of Tradable Fishing Allowances

Transferable allowance management systems are receiving increased attention from fishery managers and stakeholders alike. We use a laboratory experiment in which human subjects play the role of fishers to evaluate the promised economic efficiency of tradable allowance systems. In an experiment designed to parallel the most common rules for trading allowances, we find that allowance prices are only weakly associated with the value of the fishing right it provides. Instead, we find a high degree of price variability, consistent with field experiences. In the lab, this variability hampers convergence and supports speculation, leading to average prices much higher than the equilibrium value of allowances. During this protracted price discovery, allowances are misallocated and efficiency falls. Modifications to the market institutions used in most tradable allowance systems to improve price discovery and enhance efficiency are discussed.fishery management, ITQs, tradable fishing rights, transferable allowances, experiments, asset markets, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, Q22, Q28, G12,

Genetic Algorithm Selection of Features for Hand-printed Character Identification

We have constructed a linear discriminator for hand-printed character recognition that uses a (binary) vector of 1,500 features based on an equidistributed collection of products of pixel pairs. This classifier is competitive with other techniques, but faster to train and to run for classification. However, the 1,500-member feature set clearly contains many redundant (overlapping or useless) members, anda significantly smaller set would be very desirable (e.g., for faster training, a faster and smaller application program, and a smaller system suitable for hardware implementation). A system using the small set of features should also be better at generalization, since fewer features are less likely to allow a system to memorize noise in the training data. Several approaches to using a genetic algorithm to search for effective small subsets of features have been tried, and we have successfully derived a 300-element set of features and built a classifier whose performance is as good on our training and testing set as the system using the full set

Phylogeography of the Variable Dwarf-Kingfisher Ceyx lepidus (Aves: Alcedinidae) Inferred from Mitochondrial and Nuclear DNA Sequences

This is the Publisher's version also available electronically from http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1525/auk.2012.12102We reconstructed the phylogeographic relationships of the Variable Dwarf-Kingfisher (Ceyx lepidus) using DNA sequence data. Maximum likelihood and Bayesian analysis methods were used to reconstruct trees from a multilocus data set of all 15 named subspecies of the Ceyx lepidus species complex. The concatenated data-set length was 2,471 base pairs and included two mitochondrial genes and two noncoding nuclear introns. Support for the monophyly of C. lepidus was equivocal. We instead found support for a clade including all C. lepidus subspecies plus two endemic Philippine taxa: C. argentatus and C. cyanopectus. Relationships among subspecific taxa were not well resolved, and many nodes were collapsed into polytomies suggesting a rapid and widespread colonization. In situ diversification likely played a role in generating current diversity within four archipelagos: the Philippines, Malukus, Bismarcks, and Solomons. Some biogeographic patterns recovered for the Solomon Islands taxa match those seen in other bird species, such as the close relationship of taxa on Bougainville, Choiseul, and Isabel. By contrast, the sister relationship between populations on Guadalcanal and the New Georgia Group is novel. We discuss species limits and make taxonomic recommendations to treat all 15 subspecies of C. lepidus as species

The existence and evolution of morphotypes in Anolis lizards: coexistence patterns, not adaptive radiations, distinguish mainland and island faunas

The evolution of distinct ecologies and correlated morphologies (“ecomorphs,” in combination) among similar species allows sympatric occupation of diverse microhabitats. Particular ecomorphs may evolve repeatedly, that is, convergently, as separate lineages arrive at similar solutions. Caribbean Anolis lizards (anoles) are a classic ecomorph system, particularly well-studied for the diverse morphotypes resulting from adaptive radiations. But few studies have analyzed the equally species-diverse mainland Anolis. Here, we use clustering analyses of nine traits for 336 species of Anolis to objectively identify morphological groups (morphotypes). We analyze the presence of recovered morphotypes on mainland and islands in general and relative to the composition of 76 mainland and 91 island anole assemblages. We test for evolutionary convergence of morphotypes within and between mainland and island environments by mapping our recovered morphotypes onto recent phylogenetic estimates and by analyzing four of our measured traits using program SURFACE. We find that particular morphotypes tend to be restricted to either mainland or island environments. Morphotype diversity and convergence are not concentrated within either island or mainland environments. Morphotype content of assemblages differs between mainland and island areas, with island assemblages displaying greater numbers of morphotypes than mainland assemblages. Taken with recent research, these results suggest a restructuring of one of the classic adaptive radiation stories and a reconsideration of research concerning island–mainland faunal differences. Island radiations of anoles are unexceptional relative to mainland radiations with regard to species count, rates of speciation and phenotypic evolution, morphotype diversity, and rates of convergence. But local island assemblage appear to be more diverse than mainland assemblages. The explanation for this assemblage disparity may reside in one of the classic hypothesized island–mainland environmental differences (i.e., greater numbers of predators/competitors/environmental complexity on the mainland). Similarity between mainland and island anole radiations may indicate exceptional evolution in the anole clade overall or ordinary evolution in an extraordinarily studied clade