Hugh Alan Craig Cairns, OC FRSC (2 March 1930 – 27 August 2018) was a Canadian political scientist and professor.
He achieved his doctorate at Oxford University, conducting research on British precolonial views of Africa while in Rhodesia.
[3] Cairns was a member of the Hawthorn Report (officially A Survey of the Contemporary Indians of Canada: Economic, Political, Educational Needs and Policies) in 1966 and 1967.
The report was undertaken following a 1964 request by the Canadian federal government to the University of British Columbia to assess the well-being of Canada's Indigenous peoples.
[1][2] Cairns' scholarship has explored a multitude of issues within Canadian political science, sparking decades of debate and refinement of his ideas.
In reference to Cairn's intellectual legacy, Gerald Kernerman and Philip Resnick state: "On a remarkably wide range of topics – from the regional impact of Canada's electoral system, the role of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, and the development of Canadian federalism to the ongoing efforts to constitutionally reshape the federation and the effects on minorities of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms – Cairns has initiated and shaped many of our most pivotal debates.
[9] In the Canadian political science debate of whether Canada was initially intended to be centralized or decentralized, Cairns said in 1971 that "the pursuit of the real meaning of the [Constitution Act, 1867] is [...] a meaningless game, incapable of a decisive outcome.