Explores Canada’s gateway cities and their role in global trade and governance, revealing the connections between transportation, policy, and citizen participation.
Gateways to Trade examines how Canada’s major gateway city-regions—Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, and Halifax—position themselves within global value chains and leverage transportation infrastructure to facilitate international trade. Comparing these four urban centers, the authors provide a clear-eyed perspective on trade policy and the local governance dynamics that shape it.
The book explores how urban governments engage with global production networks and value chains, showing that in planning transportation infrastructure for trade, city regimes often function as executive democracies—consulting private actors and senior levels of government while bypassing citizen organizations. Highlighting the critical role of local governments, often overlooked in debates on trade, the book offers key insights into Canadian trade and infrastructure policies. Its findings are especially relevant in today’s rapidly changing global economic environment.
Dorval Brunelle is a retired professor in the Department of Sociology at the Université du Québec à Montréal. He acted as director of the Observatory of the Americas and the Institut d'études internationales de Montréal (UQAM). His publications in English include From World Order to Global Disorder: States, Markets, and Dissent and, with Jackie Smith and others, the second edition of Global Democracy and the World Social Forums. Claudia De Fuentes is a professor of innovation and entrepreneurship at the Sobey School of Business at Saint Mary's University. She is an editorial board member of Innovation and Development and the International Journal of Technological Learning, Innovation, and Development, and has guest-edited special issues of Science and Public Policy, Innovation and Development, and the International Business Review. Peter V. Hall is the vice-provost and associate vice-president, academic, and a professor of urban studies at Simon Fraser University. He is co-editor, with Robert McCalla and others, of Integrating Seaports and Trade Corridors and, with Markus Hesse, of Cities, Regions and Flows, and co-author with Pamela Stern of The Proposal Economy: Neoliberal Citizenship in "Ontario's Most Historic Town." He is also an associate editor of the Journal of Transport Geography. Jean Michel Montsion is a professor in the Department of Global and Social Studies, Glendon College, and director of the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies at York University. He has worked in the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre and the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada. He is co-editor, with Ann H. Kim and Elizabeth Buckner, of International Students from Asia in Canadian Universities: Institutional Challenges at the Intersection of Internationalization, Inclusion, and Racialization.
