CRSP Member Phil Boyle and Tia Dafnos receive the 2020 Canadian Law and Society Association (CLSA) English Language Article Prize

Congratulations to CRSP member Phil Boyle (University of Waterloo) and Tia Dafnos (University of New Brunswick), for receiving the 2020 Canadian Law and Society Association (CLSA) English Language Article Prize for their article, Infrastructures of Pacification: Vital Points, Critical Infrastructure, and Police Power in Canada, Canadian Journal of Law and Society.

Though described as the first milestone towards securing Canada’s critical infrastructure (CI), the 2009 National Strategy for Critical Infrastructure is the most recent effort in decades of federal engagement with the problem of how to secure the material elements that underpin state, economy, and society. In this article, we show how a little-known civil defence program initiated after WWII to protect important industrial facilities from military enemies has transformed in the contemporary period into the monitoring of a range of political and social movements as perceived dangers to what is understood today as CI. We view these changes as indicative of transformations in the exercise of police power through which the contemporary colonial-liberal order is enacted.