Michael D. Behiels
Michael Derek Behiels is a Canadian historian who served as a professor and University Research Chair in the Department of History at the University of Ottawa, specializing in twentieth-century Canadian politics. A student of Ramsay Cook, he is a prominent defender of Pierre Trudeau's conception of federalism: no special status for Quebec and maintenance of linguistic minority rights. In 1985, while a faculty member at Acadia University, his published doctoral dissertation Prelude to Quebec's Quiet Revolution was nominated for the Governor General's Award for English-language non-fiction. Thanks to this book's success, he is still considered to be a major authority on the thought of former Le Devoir editor André Laurendeau.
He frequently appears in the media to comment on current events, most notably on CPAC's weekly call-in show Goldhawk Live.
Behiels in 2010 has argued that Canada has recently undergone a political realignment, of the sort that occurs rarely and makes a long term shift in the political alignment of the parties. The patterns of the 2004 Canadian [federal election|2004], 2006, and 2008 elections and the continuance of Harper's government, argues Behiels, has led many of Canada's political experts to the conclusion that a new political party paradigm has emerged. Behiels says they find its basis in a right-wing political party capable of reconfiguring the role of the state – federal and provincial – in twenty-first-century.
In 2011, he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.