Policing disorder: Calgary Transit peace officers and the Alberta law enforcement framework

An analysis of current trends suggests that the delivery of policing services in Canada is fundamentally shifting. In 2011, the Province of Alberta established the Law Enforcement Framework, which includes Calgary Transit peace officers who are responsible for the safety and security needs of transit customers and employees. This article examines the role of Calgary Transit peace officers and makes recommendations for their incorporation into a broader model of nodal governance in order to ensure that the Calgary Police Service maintains a legitimate, coordinating role for the provision of public safety in the City of Calgary.     

Academic Institutions as Corporate Enterprise: Transparency,Power and Control in Staff Appraisal

Institutions of higher education, especially universities, have undergone a gradual transformation in the last 20 years or so under the pressures of accountability-related measures such as the research assessment exercise, quality assurance procedures, outcomes-based teaching and learning, and the university rankings system. These measures have led academic institutions to adopt practices that emphasize corporate management concerns. Universities are no longer regarded as institutions of learning but more as corporate enterprise. One aspect of this transformation is also seen in the implementation of staff appraisal systems and promotion exercises, which are becoming increasingly formal and less transparent, often operating behind closed doors, and privileging increased power to decision-makers. There is a resulting danger of policies and procedures being designed, constructed, and interpreted to assign maximum control to decision-makers over the outcome of such processes. This paper presents analysis of a corpus of policies, rules, and procedures being used in a number of institutions of higher education, focusing on the issues of transparency, power and control in academic appraisals and promotions, to study the extent to which these rules and procedures are likely to make the exercise transparent and assign equitable power and control to the decision-makers as well as to the staff at the receiving end.