Le recours au Comité des droits de l'homme de l'O.N.U. : une illusion?

The international charter of human freedoms became a legal reality via the coming into force of the following three documents : the International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights and the optional protocol attached to it. The Human Rights Committee was created under the Convention on Civil and Political Rights. In accordance with the controlling machinery set up under the optional protocol, the Committee must examine complaints from individuals who feel that their rights as defined and protected by the Convention, have been violated. Besides Uruguay, Canada is the country that submits the greatest number of complaints to the Human Rights Committee. To this days, six « communications » putting it into question have been at the origin of the adoption of « final views » two of which have demonstrated a violation of rights laid down in the Convention. Yet various improvements have proved to be desirable so as to make resorting to the Committee more efficient. It is even conceivable that making the rule on exhausting internal recourses might allow the Committee to influence Canadian law by inciting Canada to amend its Constitution or to integrate the Convention into its national law so as to be usable before the courts. The Committee has thereby contributed to increasing the basic freedoms of Canadians via the Convention on Civil and Political Rights. Although their accomplishments have been praiseworthy, work done by the Human Rights Committee risks being incomplete if the status quo continues

Boosting insights in insurance tariff plans with tree-based machine learning methods

Pricing actuaries typically operate within the framework of generalized linear models (GLMs). With the upswing of data analytics, our study puts focus on machine learning methods to develop full tariff plans built from both the frequency and severity of claims. We adapt the loss functions used in the algorithms such that the specific characteristics of insurance data are carefully incorporated: highly unbalanced count data with excess zeros and varying exposure on the frequency side combined with scarce, but potentially long-tailed data on the severity side. A key requirement is the need for transparent and interpretable pricing models which are easily explainable to all stakeholders. We therefore focus on machine learning with decision trees: starting from simple regression trees, we work towards more advanced ensembles such as random forests and boosted trees. We show how to choose the optimal tuning parameters for these models in an elaborate cross-validation scheme, we present visualization tools to obtain insights from the resulting models and the economic value of these new modeling approaches is evaluated. Boosted trees outperform the classical GLMs, allowing the insurer to form profitable portfolios and to guard against potential adverse risk selection

La Déclaration de Doha sur la santé publique : la bonne prescription ? Une perspective historique sur le débat concernant la protection par brevet des médicaments

Le 14 mai 2005, les modifcations à la Loi sur les brevets du Canada sont entrées en vigueur. Ce changement a pour objet de permettre aux pays en voie de développement d’avoir accès à des médicaments génériques à moindre coût. Cette réforme met en oeuvre la Déclaration de Doha et la décision du 30 août 2003 du Conseil général de l’Organisation mondiale du commerce. Le présent article examine la pertinence de ces modifcations en les replaçant dans un contexte historique. Dans ce dessein, les auteurs retracent d’abord l’origine historique du brevet en insistant sur le domaine pharmaceutique. Ils démontrent ensuite en quoi l’Accord sur les aspects des droits de propriété intellectuelle qui touchent au commerce (ADPIC) constitue un renforcement du régime international de protection de la propriété industrielle pour enfn se demander si la solution adoptée à Doha puis au Canada est la bonne.On May 14, 005, the amendments to the Canada Patent Acttook effect. The purpose of the amendments is to make it possible for developing countries to have access to generic medicines at a lower cost. This reform implements the Doha Declaration and the August 30, 003 decision of the General Council of the World Trade Organization. This paper analyzes the relevance of these modifcations by situating them in their historic context. As such, the authors return to the historic origins of the patent by emphasizing developments in the pharmaceutical feld. They then illustrate the manner in which the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement) constitutes an intensifca-tion of the international system for protecting industrial ownership, then they fnally dwell upon righteousness of the solution adopted at Doha, then by Canada

Jeux de bols et de voix = Of Bowls and Voices

"Of Bowls and Voices is a collaborative project that seeks, through artistic means, to open a dialogue and creative space between the Quebecois South and North. It brings together two art forms, Inuit throat singing (katajjaq) and ceramics" -- p. [3]

Les défis d’une interface : les groupes de femmes et le réseau de la santé et des services sociaux de la région de Québec

Les propositions de la réforme Côté en ce qui concerne le communautaire ne sont pas sans susciter des inquiétudes du point de vue des groupes de femmes. Nous voulons montrer que ces groupes ne constituent pas un ensemble homogène, qu'ils représentent des intérêts différents qui se manifestent clairement lorsqu'ils s'engagent dans des processus de concertation. Ils entretiennent de plus des liens inter-organisationnels complexes, notamment par la participation à des tables de concertation. Cette participation soulève des paradoxes et entraîne des effets non prévus, dont les auteures font état. Enfin, le roulement dans le personnel bénévole et la clientèle affecte parfois leur enracinement. En somme, il apparaît que la concertation exigée par le partenariat doit être sans cesse renégociée et ne peut en aucun cas constituer le point de départ d'un processus d'arrimage aux institutions étatiques

Intrusive vowels preceding /R/ in Quebec French

It has been observed (e.g. [2]) that an intrusive vowel (Vi) is frequently produced in obstruent+/R/ clusters, which is interpreted as a cluster simplification process. Here we look at Vi next to /R/ in a broader variety of contexts, in a corpus of 12,981 words read by 103 speakers of Quebec French [3, 4]. LMM shows that Vi is more likely to appear word- initially than in clusters, which questions the interpretation of Vi in terms of simplification. Vi is also more likely to appear with apical than dorsal /R/ (both attested in Quebec French) and, in clusters, after voiced obstruents. Vi is significantly more frequent in monosyllabic than in polysyllabic words. Regarding the quality of Vi, t-tests between Vi and the following vowel’s mean F1 and F2 (Hz) and duration show that there is little to no difference between the quality of the two vowels, though Vi is significantly shorter

Hypoarticulation as a tool for assessing social distance: an acoustic study of speech addressed to different types of interlocutors

Work within Hyper-Hypoarticulation Theory (H&H) and Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT) is increasingly focused on the adaptation of speech to the identity of the interlocutor (Koppen et al. 2017, Pardo et al. 2012, among others). These studies show a correlation between changes in the rate and spectral characteristics of speech (especially vowels) and the relationship between the speakers. Using the Diapix task (Baker & Hazan 2011), 10 Québec-French-speaking couples were invited to interact together and with two strangers, one French and one Québécois. This produced a corpus of 25h of speech and 121000 vowels. Spectral variations (especially hyper- / hypo- articulation), and changes in speech rate depending on the interlocutor, were studied using ((G)LMM) analysis. Our results reveal a correlation between the degree of social distance and speech reduction: the closer the interlocutors are (partners), the more speech is reduced