The Constitutional Amending Process

Since the failure to ratify the Meech Lake Accord in June 1990, the constitutional future of Canada has been the topic of increasingly urgent debate. So far, a consensus has emerged on two things. First, federalism as it is enshrined in the Constitution Acts of 1867 and 1982 no longer meets the needs and aspirations of the majority. Second, the means used in the past to achieve major constitutional revision are no longer acceptable to the majority of Canadians. Put simply, constitutional revision is essential if Canada is to survive and the means of achieving this revision must be more open and more consultative in nature than in the past. We have not yet reached a consensus on issues of constitutional substance or form, including the form public input should take in the future. But one thing is clear: if an agreement is reached on changes to the Constitution, the issues of how these changes can be achieved under the existing amending process and how future amendments can be accomplished will have to be addressed. Attention will also have to be given to the formal amending procedure involving the rules for ratification and the informal procedure involving how proposals for amendment are formulated and initiated. To that end, the federal and provincial governments have been studying these various aspects of the amending process from initiation to ratification, past, present, and future. This report contributes to that undertaking

Towards a methodical framework for comprehensively assessing forest multifunctionality

Funded by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. Grant Number: DFG FOR 891/1-3 National Natural Science Foundation of China. Grant Numbers: 30710103907, 30930005, 31170457, 31210103910 Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) Sino-German Centre for Research Promotion in Beijing. Grant Number: GZ 986Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Variable Trends in R-X Bond Dissociation Energies (R = Me, Et, i -Pr, t -Bu)

(Equation presented) High level ab initio molecular orbital calculations confirm experimental indications that the effect of alkyl substituents (R = Me, Et, i-Pr, t-Bu) on R-X bond dissociation energies varies considerably according to the nature of X.

The Constitutional Amending Process

Since the failure to ratify the Meech Lake Accord in June 1990, the constitutional future of Canada has been the topic of increasingly urgent debate. So far, a consensus has emerged on two things. First, federalism as it is enshrined in the Constitution Acts of 1867 and 1982 no longer meets the needs and aspirations of the majority. Second, the means used in the past to achieve major constitutional revision are no longer acceptable to the majority of Canadians. Put simply, constitutional revision is essential if Canada is to survive and the means of achieving this revision must be more open and more consultative in nature than in the past. We have not yet reached a consensus on issues of constitutional substance or form, including the form public input should take in the future. But one thing is clear: if an agreement is reached on changes to the Constitution, the issues of how these changes can be achieved under the existing amending process and how future amendments can be accomplished will have to be addressed. Attention will also have to be given to the formal amending procedure involving the rules for ratification and the informal procedure involving how proposals for amendment are formulated and initiated. To that end, the federal and provincial governments have been studying these various aspects of the amending process from initiation to ratification, past, present, and future. This report contributes to that undertaking

Toward a methodical framework for comprehensively assessing forest multifunctionality

Biodiversity-ecosystem functioning (BEF) research has extended its scope from communities that are short-lived or reshape their structure annually to structurally complex forest ecosystems. The establishment of tree diversity experiments poses specific methodological challenges for assessing the multiple functions provided by forest ecosystems. In particular, methodological inconsistencies and nonstandardized protocols impede the analysis of multifunctionality within, and comparability across the increasing number of tree diversity experiments. By providing an overview on key methods currently applied in one of the largest forest biodiversity experiments, we show how methods differing in scale and simplicity can be combined to retrieve consistent data allowing novel insights into forest ecosystem functioning. Furthermore, we discuss and develop recommendations for the integration and transferability of diverse methodical approaches to present and future forest biodiversity experiments. We identified four principles that should guide basic decisions concerning method selection for tree diversity experiments and forest BEF research: (1) method selection should be directed toward maximizing data density to increase the number of measured variables in each plot. (2) Methods should cover all relevant scales of the experiment to consider scale dependencies of biodiversity effects. (3) The same variable should be evaluated with the same method across space and time for adequate larger-scale and longer-time data analysis and to reduce errors due to changing measurement protocols. (4) Standardized, practical and rapid methods for assessing biodiversity and ecosystem functions should be promoted to increase comparability among forest BEF experiments. We demonstrate that currently available methods provide us with a sophisticated toolbox to improve a synergistic understanding of forest multifunctionality. However, these methods require further adjustment to the specific requirements of structurally complex and long-lived forest ecosystems. By applying methods connecting relevant scales, trophic levels, and above- and belowground ecosystem compartments, knowledge gain from large tree diversity experiments can be optimized