NCube/papyrus huggingface dataset:
Surveillance électronique et métadonnées : vers une nouvelle conception constitutionnelle du droit à la vie privée au Canada?

This master’s thesis focuses on the scope of the Canadian constitutional protection of the right to privacy, in view of the wide scale governmental electronic surveillance of electronic communications metadata, conducted for national security purposes. It is argued, following a detailed presentation of the nature and extent of certain specific governmental electronic surveillance activities, that the « Biographical core » analytical framework, governing the scope of the protection granted to informational privacy in Canadian constitutional law, is most likely applicable to electronic communications metadata. This position is directly supported by the relevant constitutional interpretation rules and cases. This is particularly true in light of the fact that metadata are, inherently, potentially significantly revealing, especially considering the capacities of an array of electronic surveillance activities, as well as the non-legal implications they entail for privacy.

Keyphrases: National security, War on terror, Electronic Surveillance, Metadata, Information technologies, Right to privacy, Constitutional law, Democracy
La formation du sujet dans la philosophie féministe de Judith Butler

In Gender Trouble, Judith Butler challenges feminism as identity politics, which, according to her, would produce a new set of potential exclusions, based on the category “woman”. I will not dispute how she articulates that sexuality gives sense to gender, which produces sex. My interest lies in how Butler understands the process of becoming a subject for an individual, and how people tend to belong to a collective identity, via gender performativity. She states that gender is an act and identity a form of practice. I will explain how she understands that human beings are constituted by their acts and criticize, according to two feminist authors, her conception of gender. I will conclude that Butler has to admit that some kind of feminine identity is necessary to feminism, even when we consider her plea for the inclusion of individuals sexually marginalized.

Keyphrases: Judith Butler, Post-structuralisme, Feminism, Subject, Gender, Performativity, Anti-essentialism, Post-structuralism
Variations dans la réponse de la diversité génétique de populations de couleuvres insulaires faisant face à la perte d’habitat

The Montreal metropolitan community includes numerous islands located at the confluence of the Saint-Lawrence and Ottawa Rivers. In such a fragmented landscape, dispersal of animals is limited by the distance between islands as well as the currents. This system offers an ideal context for the study of the effects of habitat loss on the genetic diversity of animal populations located on islands or archipelagos. This study seeks to assess the effects of habitat area by comparing the organization of genetic diversity of two highly distinct snake species, Storeria dekayi and Thamnophis sirtalis. Analysis realized with microsatellite markers reveals a much stronger genetic organisation in S. dekayi (FST=0.19) than in T. sirtalis (FST=0.07) in the Montreal area. For both studied species, most populations found in reduced habitats showed similar genetic diversity to what was observed in larger habitats. Nevertheless, some populations showed different responses to the loss of habitat, including traces of genetic bottlenecks, a loss in mean allelic richness or an important alteration of their allelic frequencies. This study also reveals an important loss of genetic diversity in the continental snake populations. At the regional scale, the results reveal an important loss of genetic diversity in the continental snake populations and that the insular populations of the Montreal area now constitute a reservoir of the remnant genetic diversity. Moreover, this study not only demonstrates that the genetic response to habitat loss can be very case-specific, but also that to detect traces of such a phenomenon can require a very particular framework. A growing number of publications based on birds and mammals have reported the absence of a genetic signature following a habitat loss. This is the first study to report this phenomenon in reptiles. A note intended for managers is provided about the conservation of the Dekay’s brown snake, S. dekayi.

Keyphrases: Storeria dekayi, Thamnophis sirtalis, Genetic diversity, Habitat loss, Microsatellite markers
Témoigner par la fiction : une étude de L’Écriture ou la vie de Jorge Semprun et de L’Immense fatigue des pierres de Régine Robin

Taking as a starting point the paradoxical link that exists between testimony and literature (one being considered veracious and the other, fictional), this master’s thesis explores the use of fiction in the autobiographical and testimonial works of Jorge Semprun, with L’Écriture ou la vie (1994), and Régine Robin, with L’Immense fatigue des pierres (1996). This study tries to confirm the assumption that, in making their testimony a literary work which assumes a fare share of fiction, the two authors succeed in offering a more accurate testimony of their experience of Holocaust. Chapter one consists in a critic and historic overview of the two approaches, which are this thesis foundations : the Holocaust studies and the testimonial writings (Derrida, Bornand, Prstojevic) on one hand, and the studies on autobiographical writings (Lejeune, Robin, Viart and Vercier) on the other. It focusses on finding what unifies them and tries to position Robin and Semprun in this large literary conventions spectrum. The next two chapters of this thesis are focussing on the various fictional effects as well as on the reality-occurencies in both novels of the corpus, first by studying the staging of this ambiguous truth pact through the literary representation of the auctorial figures and the act of writing, and then, by observing the literary representation of reality through the many intertextual references, the actual concentration camp visits descriptions (that have become a topos of Holocaust literature) and finally Semprun and Robin’s particular use of the archives.

Keyphrases: Fiction, Jorge Semprun, Régine Robin, Testimony, Autobiography, Holocaust, Fiction, Truth, Jorge Semprun, Régine Robin
Le réengagement du Canada dans les Amériques : déficits démocratiques, intégration économique et insécurité

In 2007, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that the renewal of Canada’s engagement in the Americas was an international priority for his government. The document that formalized the new emphasis on the western hemisphere stipulates that Canada is committed to advancing democracy, economic integration, and security simultaneously. The purpose of this research is to challenge the official discourse by examining Canada’s policy towards Colombia and Honduras. The Colombia case study focuses on the effects of economic integration on human rights and security. It argues that the text of the Canada-Colombia free trade agreement and the human rights impact assessments do not adequately address the risks posed by Canadian investments and that their shortcomings dilute Ottawa’s commitment to human rights protection and conflict resolution. The Honduras case study is concerned with the impact of democratic deficits and insecurity on economic integration. It shows that the rightward shift that followed the 2009 coup d’État allowed the Canadian government to undertake bilateral free trade negotiations and take part in the reform of the Honduran mining code while democratic deficits and insecurity prevented the meaningful participation of the Honduran people in the economic integration process. I conclude that these two cases contradict the official discourse, as the goal of economic integration has been reached at the expense of the other objectives.

Keyphrases: Honduras, Canadian foreign policy, Americas, Colombia, Honduras
Utilisation des formulaires de niveaux d’interventions médicales (NIM) en fin de vie chez les patients qui décèdent en milieu hospitalier au Québec

This thesis focuses on the use of  levels of interventions (LOI) in Quebec hospitals. LOI are forms, organized as a scale, that have been developed to facilitate decision-making process related to resuscitation, life-sustaining and life-prolonging treatments and care to be given. The objective of this thesis is to provide an overview of the current use of LOI in Quebec hospitals, in order to make recommendations for health care professionals, institutions and policy makers. First, a literature review article is presented to situate concepts associated with LOI with current issues in the hospital setting, for example: the large number of patients who die in hospitals, communication problems between health care professionals and patients and their families, difficulties in decision-making at the end of life, and delays associated with do not resuscitate (DNR) orders. Secondly, another article is presented with the research study results. To establish a picture of the practices related to LOI in hospitals, an audit of 299 charts of adult patients who died in three hospitals was undertaken. The results are analyzed with a principle-based ethical framework. Although the use of LOI may vary on certain aspects between hospitals, the LOI would be an effective way to promote respect of patient autonomy, beneficence and caring, but they do not seem effective against inequity issues in access to palliative care. To facilitate and promote their use, it is recommended to standardize the LOI forms across the province and institutions, and to establish clear practice guidelines. Also, more training for health care professionals and adding the signature of a member of the interdisciplinary team would allow professionals to be better equipped for difficult discussions and decision-making, and encourage interdisciplinary practice.

Keyphrases: Levels of intervention, levels of care, end-of-life, decision-making, ethics
Place et rôle de l’émotion en justice réparatrice : étude du cheminement émotionnel d’ex-contrevenants engagés dans un processus réparateur

This research describes and discusses the emotional path of ex-offenders involved in a process of restorative justice. The emotional path is tackled from the perspective of "lifecourse" analysis.    We met four former offenders sentenced to a prison term, and living in the community at the moment of our interviews. In order to interpret their emotional life course, the interviews were conducted in depth and in a non-directive approach. Participants performed either a Victim-Offender-Encounter (VOE), a face-to-face experience with a victim, or direct atonement with their victim.    The analysis of our empirical data shows two distinct emotional periods in ex-offenders. Their path is characterized first by a closed state, then by an emotional opening. For each emotional state, we present its various emotional components and the resulting emotional changes. The transition, that is the passage between a closed state to a state of emotional openness, and the restorative justice experience, have been thoroughly studied. From these analysis emerged the concept of "emotional turning points," appearing as the keystone of the restorative pathway of former offenders. It is clear that an emotional turning point is considered a prerequisite for taking part in a restorative program, but also as a barometer of the restorative effects of the experiences.

Keyphrases: Restorative justice, offender, turning point, emotional turning point, restorative process, life course, Victimes Offenders Encounters, face to face
L'algorithme de Branch and Price and Cut pour le problème de conception de réseaux avec coûts fixes et sans capacité

The network design problem has been studied extensively in the field of operational research given its characteristics and applications in many areas such as  transportation, communications, and logistics. We are particularly interested in solving the multicommodity uncapacitated fixed-charge network design problem, with the aim of meeting the demands of all the products while minimizing the total cost of transporting commodities and designing the network. This problem is typically modeled as a linear integer program including continuous variables. To solve it, we applied the exact method of Branch-and-bound based on linear relaxation with a stopping criterion, while exploiting the column generation and cutting-plane methods. We tested our Branch-and-Price-and-Cut algorithm on 156 instances divided into five groups of different sizes, and we compared it with Cplex, one of the best mathematical optimization solvers. We compare it also with the Branch-and-Cut method. Numerical results show that our method is competitive and perform better especially on large-scale instances with many commodities.

Keyphrases: Branch-and-Bound, Multicommodity network design problem, Column generation, Cutting-plane method
«Embrasser le guerrier enflé de haulx exploitz» : les ratés durant l’entrée de Charles IX à Paris en 1571

This dissertation seeks to understand the nature of the relationship between the city of Paris and king Charles IX through the study of his royal entry in 1571. For historians, the study of the major monarchical rituals captures the mechanisms of symbolic communication that create the royal power. The royal entry, a codified ritual during which a city host his sovereign, shows the nature of the power dynamic between the monarchy and the urban centre. Generally seen as a consensual moment, the royal entry can also serve as a framework for the urban councillors to express their disagreement with the king’s policies. The comparison between the official relation of the entry and the municipal archives reveals a set of blunders that allows us to deconstruct the consistent image of concord long been associated with the 1571 entry. Far from being a glorious portrait of king Charles IX, the entry program rather celebrate Catherine de Medici and Duke Henry of Anjou. The Parisian councillors express therefore their critics against a monarchy whose inaction during the religious wars illustrates his weakness.

Keyphrases: France, Paris, Charles IX, Royal Entry, Ritual/Ceremony, Sixteenth Century, Monarchy
Construire l'avantage comparatif du Brésil? : la coordination dans les filiales soja du Mato Grosso et du Paraná

This dissertation proposes an alternative argument for explaining the Brazilian soybean boom. Drawing on the theory of organization and on institutional political economy, this research compares the organization of the value chain in the states of Mato Grosso and Paraná. Firstly, this research attempts to detail the internal workings of each mode of organization in order to conceptualize the latter as integral and coherent systems. As a result, Mato Grosso’s coordination mode (supply-chain integration) may be described as a hybrid organizational mode bearing resemblances with hierarchical organization whereas Paraná’s hybrid mode (agro industrial cooperative) tilts towards market organization. We identify the nature of risks as the primary determinant of the degree of governance centralization within each model. As a result, it is argued that each model is coherent and efficient because it serves the purpose of mitigating risks in a way that is responsive and adapted to local production imperatives. Such consideration is of upmost importance given that risk mitigation may encourage transactions and hence, induce economic growth.  Secondly, such a research endeavour would be incomplete without a detailed analysis of the political and historical factors that influenced the development trajectory of each region. In order to take those variables into account, the case studies trace the history of the agrarian policies and institutions that shaped the economic landscape of each region starting from the 1960s, this is, when the production of soybeans started gaining importance in Brazil. Analyzing institutional change, it is argued, is critical for understanding the rules of the game that underpin the actual modes of coordination in each region.

Keyphrases: Modes de coordination hybrides, Brazil : Mato Grosso and Parana, Agribusiness multinationals and supply-chain integration, Agroindustrial cooperatives, Soybeans, Hybrid modes of organization
Logarithme d'harmoniques sphériques pour le rendu d'ombres douces de champs de hauteurs et de maillages

Shadows provide important visual cues to a viewer about the relative positions of objects in a scene, as well as certain properties of the lighting in an environment, such as orientation, size, and intensity. The importance of shadows in visual simulations is even more striking when any element of an environment, such as characters in a scene or the light sources themselves, are animated over time.  The simulation of so-called "hard" shadows from small point or directional light sources is a very mature field in computer graphics, with many concrete and well-established solutions. On the other hand, efficiently approximating the shadowing effects from larger "area" light sources, such as ceiling lights or environment maps captured from the real world, remains an open problem. Indeed, in many applications, the availability of a high-performance solution to this problem trumps the need for an accurate solution.  Our work aims to solve the problem of approximating soft shadows interactively, in scenes where the geometric elements and lighting are both allowed to be animated over time. We decompose dynamic scene elements into deformable objects, approximated with a collection of non-deformable animated spheres, and height field geometry. By leveraging a novel spherical harmonic basis-space exponentiation formulation, we are able to very quickly accumulate the shadowing effects from these many dynamic blockers, while also encoding their local reflectance behaviour in a similar reduced basis representation.  Our proof-of-concept implementation uses a hybrid, multi-resolution image- and object-space visibility marching algorithm that decouples geometric complexity from radiometric complexity. We demonstrate our method on several scenes with dynamic blockers and complex illumination.

Keyphrases: Spherical harmonics, Spherical harmonics exponentiation, Precomputed radiance transfer, Image rendering
Dynamique saisonnière des communautés nitrifiantes dans un petit lac oligotrophe

Since the discovery that some archaea are able to oxidize ammonia aerobically, several studies have focused on measuring nitrification rates and identifying the diversity of planktonic ammonia oxidizers in marine systems. Despite the global importance of freshwater lakes, far fewer studies have done the same in these ecosystems. Here we investigated the importance of nitrification and characterize the microbial community catalyzing the first rate-limiting step of nitrification over an annual cycle in a temperate lake. The measurements of ammonia oxidation rates, using the 15NH4+ isotope tracer method, at two depths in the photic zone show that this process occurred throughout the entire year in the lake. Rates of ammonia oxidation ranged from undetectable to 333 nmol L-1 d-1 with a peak of activity during winter. Off all environmental variables measured, ammonium concentrations in the water-column seem to have the strongest effect on the magnitude of ammonia oxidation rates. We detected the presence of ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) and bacteria (AOB) using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assays targeting part of the ammonia monooxygenase (amoA) gene. Both AOA and AOB were detected in the photic zone of the lake, although only AOA were omnipresent over the year. The sequencing of archaeal amoA genes reveals that most of the AOA in the lake are members of the Nitrosotalea cluster (also referred as SAGMGC-1 or group I.1a associated), which confirms the ecological relevance of this cluster in oligotrophic freshwaters. Altogether, our results indicate that winter may be a critical time for ammonia oxidation in temperate lakes and provide a baseline for the understanding of ammonia oxidation in small oligotrophic lakes.

Keyphrases: Nitrification, Azote, Ammonia oxidation, Nitrogen, Rates, Amoa gene, Freshwater lakes, Temperate climate, Bacteria, Archaea, Thaumarchaeota
Aux frontières du mercenariat : éléments de contexte et trajectoires de trois «affreux» français de la sécession katangaise (1960-1963)

This thesis studies the case of three French combatants engaged in favor of the secession of Katanga (1960-1963), in the wake of Belgian Congo’s independence. These men were recruited to fight against the Congolese army and UN peacekeepers as those latter sought to reintegrate by force the province into a united Congo. Hardened by a decade of counter-insurgency warfare, the few dozens of French “affreux” proved to be key figures in the Katangese military apparatus. The thesis is informed by recent work in the sociology of intellectual and activist fields, and confirms the relevance of these methodologies in the study of transnational military service. Focusing on the objective conditions that structure practice rather than on the psychological dimensions of action, this research highlights the “deep forces” according to which the intervention of the “affreux” was shaped. The trajectories of these men are examined across the varying levels of context within which they took place: the history of decolonization and of the Cold War; the rapports between old European nations and emerging world powers regarding Africa; the principles, rules and rationale characterizing the foreign policy of France under the Fifth Republic. Our thesis reveals that the use of the “affreux” coincides with the decline of old colonial powers and with the affirmation of new players such as the United States, the Soviet Union and the UN on the international stage. The engagement of these men, without any official status, appears to France as a roundabout way to keep in place some of its interests and influence in Africa.

Keyphrases: Africa, Decolonization, France, Diplomatic History, Mercenarism
La science historique et le rapport aux savoirs des manuels québécois du cours collégial «Histoire de la civilisation occidentale» : analyse épistémologique et critique

While the teaching of history in Quebec once aimed to promote students acquire specific content, nationalist and religious, decades of scientific and political will seek to reorient the discipline. The history taught must now shift its approach to the history of science. In focusing on the transmission of content, learning is now targeting a specific mode of apprehending reality: historical thinking. This study raises the question of correspondence between school history and the current scholarly historiography in the context of epistemological paradigm shift and reports to know that this implies. The assumption is that the history taught – as it appears in Western history textbooks for use by college students – did not follow the historiographical developments in recent years, specifically with regard to their epistemological posture.

Keyphrases: History, Epistemology, Relation to knowledg, History college textbook, Constructivism