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"To be realists and demand the impossible: balancing foreign and domestic policy" by Michael Ignatieff Author and Harvard University professor Michael Ignatieff, touted as a leadership candidate by the Trudeau wing of the Liberal Party, has been testing the waters with a series of speeches. Here is an excerpt from an address he delivered in Ottawa in June 2005 to senior managers in the Canadian public service. "Taking aim at the messenger" by Patrick Gossage [summary not available] "L'Europe en crise" by Marie Bernard-Meunier The French and Dutch referendums on the new European constitutional treaty have plunged Europe into a crisis whose outcome is uncertain, says Marie Bernard- Meunier, Canada’s former ambassador to Germany. “What is to be feared above all is extreme views becoming commonplace. We can expect a resurgence of nationalism and protectionism across Europe. There is a risk of regression,” she writes. France has lost influence and credibility, and the French-German axis has been considerably weakened. And by postponing his referendum even before the meeting of the European Council, Tony Blair has lost an opportunity to step up as the new strong man of Europe. This crisis, she points out, proves that “integration cannot be decreed.” Now, for Europe to move forward, there are choices to be debated, and the decisions must have the support of the populations. "Les deux France" by Alain Noël [summary not available] "Founding the United Nations: Canada at San Francisco, 1945" by Denis Stairs In April 1945, delegations from 50 nations, including Canada, gathered in San Francisco for the conference resulting in the founding of the United Nations. It was still two weeks before the final Allied victory in Europe, while the war in the Pacific raged on to its conclusion in August. While the great powers assured their dominant role with their veto on the Security Council, the smaller powers like Canada carved out a place for themselves with rotating seats on the Security Council and a major role in developing the permanent multilateral infrastructure of the UN in agencies such as the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), based from its founding in Montreal. “If the dominance of the great powers was tolerable in a time of global war,” writes Denis Stairs, “it would hardly do in a time of peace, when a more inclusive politics would be much better suited to the needs of the lesser states.” In this look back at the San Francisco conference, Stairs writes how Canada got in on the ground floor. "Reforming the Security Council: what goes around, comes around" by Adam Chapnick The size and shape of the Security Council was debated even before the San Francisco conference, and some of the same ideas are being kicked around today on the UN’s 60th anniversary. In essence, what goes around comes around, and Adam Chapnick suggests most of the ideas for Security Council reform are as politically unachievable now as they were then, would result in even more influence in the hands of the great powers, and exacerbate the UN’s reputation as a dysfunctional organization at the very moment it needs to be seen as implementing bold and decisive reforms. Much more viable, he suggests, is Kofi Annan’s proposal that accession to the Security Council be based on article 23 of the UN Charter, focusing rightly on member nations’ contributions to the UN, from its budget to peacekeeping and other UN activities. Win the ones you can win, he advises, and leave this one for another day, "Between the UN and the US - reforming one, restraining the other" by Paul Heinbecker On its 60th anniversary, even UNophiles believe the United Nations needs reform, despite the fact that some of the contemporary criticism of the world body is a manifestation of woeful or, worse, willful ignorance, even of self-seeking animosity. The UN reflects the divisions of the international community on the major issues of our day and mirrors the absence of consensus on the appropriate responses. There is widespread dissatisfaction with the aging, unrepresentative Security Council, which is still the most important political/security body on earth, writes Paul Heinbecker. Nor is the General Assembly an efficient forum, although the UN’s funds, programs and agencies are usually well respected. “Fundamentally, the UN’s strength, universal membership, has also become its weakness,” writes our former ambassador to the UN. “Its membership has swollen to 191 countries, making the achievement of consensus on reform a Sisyphean task.” The Bush administration’s decision to defy the UN on Iraq put 60 years of the development of international law into jeopardy. Nonetheless, an effective UN and a constructive US are perhaps more important to Canada than to any other country. We can have an impact on both, but that will require deepened engagement in New York and speaking truth to power in Washington. "Haiti, again! A tough peacebuilding task" by Maciek Hawrylak and David M. Malone Haiti, the second oldest independent state in the Western Hemisphere, has seen 30 military coups and 20 constitutions since its founding in 1804. Since the end of the brutal Duvalier dictatorship in 1986, it has gradually descended into the status of a failed state. Successive UN peacebuilding operations have failed to stabilize the country and improve its standard of living, the lowest in the Western Hemipshere. Haiti today is a “densely overpopulated and ecologically ravaged country of 8.1 million inhabitants,” whose leading export is people, including its diaspora in Canada. It’s a country in a region where Canada has real interests and continues to try to make a difference. A daunting task, write Maciek Hawrylak and David M. Malone. "From myth to reality check; from peacekeeping to stabilization" by Sean M. Maloney Canadians cling to the mythology, born of the 1956 Suez Crisis, that we are a nation of peacekeepers, interposing between belligerent forces bent on war. Similarly, for decades Canada participated in the Cyprus UN force interposed between Greeks and Turks, not just to keep the peace, but as Sean Maloney writes, “to prevent the situation from escalating into a war that would destroy NATO.” Peacekeeping was actually part of the Cold War strategy of containing the global ambitions of Soviet communism. But the decline and fall of the Soviet empire from 1989 to 1991 “left local power brokers to their devices.” Subsequently, “UN forces brought in to monitor separation agreements found themselves caught between heavily armed warring factions.” Bosnia and Somalia were post-Cold War conflicts; Rwanda was sheer genocide. Afghanistan is a post-conflict exercise in nationbuilding. Peacekeeping, as Canadians understand it, no longer exists. Today's stabilization forces undertake much more dangerous roles. "A view from Washington: the immovable object of the UN meets the irresistible force of the US" by David T. Jones From the Washington perspective of a former US State Department official, the essential conflict between the UN and US is that “the UN resists the reality of US power. Or rather, it wishes the US to use its power only for UN-endorsed objectives.” During the Cold War, the US could always turn to NATO to enforce its policy of containment of the Soviet Union. With the fall of the USSR, the UN came together, in the view of David Jones, to evict Iraq from Kuwait, but then failed to deal with Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Moreover, the UN has been plagued by incompetence in its bureaucracy, corruption in its programs, and ineffectual responses to humanitarian crises, from Rwanda to Darfur. Any program of reform, he suggests, should start at the top, with a new secretary-general. "The global governance deficit" by Joseph Heath [summary not available] "When the Charter trumps health care - a collision of Canadian icons" by Antonia Maioni and Christopher Manfredi The Supreme Court decision in the Chaoulli case put two cherished icons of Canadian public policy, the Charter of Rights, and public health insurance, on a collision course. Few court-watchers saw it coming, even though, during arguments, the justices raked both Quebec and federal lawyers over the coals. Yet the Charter has been used as the argument of choice in previous health policy cases. “It is simply the most dramatic example,” write McGill’s Antonia Maioni and Christopher Manfredi, “of a phenomenon that became increasingly common throughout the 1990s: the use of Charter-based litigation to influence the development of health care policy. Indeed, throughout that decade the Supreme Court delivered important decisions on access to abortion, professional advertising regulations, assisted suicide, and the right to sign-language interpretation in the provision of health care.” The authors, noted authorities on health care and the Constitution, bring us up to date on the implications of a landmark case. "Single-payer health insurance works best" by Paul M. Jacobson The Supreme Court’s Chaoulli decision, disallowing prohibition of private health insurance in Quebec, raises questions of efficiency and equity in delivering health care. Paul M. Jacobson suggests that, however the service is delivered, a single-payer system (government) remains the most efficient model. He argues that alternative insurance will create incentives for service providers to move into more remunerative market segments and away from the principle of universality. He also suggests “a fragmented insurance market will lead to increased inefficiencies in the system.” "An American in Canada - another view of the Supreme Court decision on health care" by Ted Marmor A key point of contention in the Chaouilli case is that the “parallel financing” of private health insurance might reduce waiting times for procedures. But it also “increases overall costs,” writes Yale University’s Ted Marmor, who testified in the lower court trial about comparative health costs in other countries. “The court's majority,” he maintains, “posed the wrong questions when dealing with comparative evidence...” He concludes: “The central policy point to make about parallel health insurance is rather simple. Such systems are likely to be more expensive overall, are certain to be much less fair, and will not by themselves do very much at all about waiting lists.” "Waiting for health care" by Ara Karaboghossian [summary not available] "A brief window of opportunity for a referendum on democratic reform" by Tom Kent Our Founding Editor has more experience than most with the brokerage politics and tradeoffs of minority governments. Just as NDP support for the Liberals was crucial to the major social policy reforms of the 1960s, Tom Kent suggests the NDP could leverage their importance in the current Parliament by pushing an agenda of parliamentary reform, which if fast-tracked could lead to a referendum in conjunction with the promised winter election of 2006. It could be a way for the NDP to consolidate its present relevance, while enabling Paul Martin to achieve a big idea on the democratic deficit. Kent suggests the adoption of a mixed-memberproportional system, combining first-past-the-post MPs with a number selected from lists. But time, he warns, is short and action of the essence. "From a bang to a whimper - twenty years of lost momentum in financial institutions" by Stanley H. Hartt Twenty years ago this month, the failure of two small banks, and the possibility that some of Canada’s large ones might need rescuing, began the move toward consolidation of Canada’s financial services industry. Margaret Thatcher’s “Big Bang” in London in 1986 was followed by Canada’s “Little Bang,” knocking down three of the four pillars separating banks, trusts, and brokerage and insurance companies. While banks were allowed to acquire trust companies and securities dealers, a furious lobby by the insurance industry prevented the arrival of one-stop shopping in Canada. Twenty years later, the question of large-bank mergers and cross-pillar mergers with insurers remains unresolved in Canada, despite persuasive evidence they should be permitted to enable our financial services industry to remain competitive in a global market. Stanley Hartt, who was deputy minister of finance during the “Little Bang,” suggests it may have ended in a whimper. |
