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"The new Iraq: a fraught but worthy adventure in nation-building" by Bob Rae From North America, the news from Iraq seems not just overwhelmingly violent and negative but — except for the occasional glimmer of change — hopeless. For former Ontario Premier Bob Rae, Iraq has become something else altogether. Rae has been acting as a constitutional adviser to the Iraqi Parliament, and writes that despite the violence in the war-ravaged state, progress is being made. Rae says that “the establishment of a stable, secure state is in the broad interest of all countries, including Canada,” and that, ”Deep instability anywhere can pose a threat to Canada’s security.” There are no “countries far away of which we know little,” to borrow Neville Chamberlain’s unfortunate 1938 phrase. "The thin line between protecting citizens and protecting the state" by Robin V. Sears In the post-9/11 world, liberal democracies face a cruel dilemma between providing for the security of their citizens, and providing for their rights as citizens. And the London bombings have resulted in a muscular response by the Blair government that leaves many social democrats feeling very uncomfortable. The response of the Canadian government to these new realities has been uniquely inadequate in both supporting the United States in the war on terror, and abandoning Canadian citizens such as Mahar Arar, who was tortured in Syria after being deported from the US, where he was a passenger in transit, without even being advised of his consular rights. Contributing writer Robin Sears observes that Canada’s inability to provide equal citizenship, even in the Charter era, did not begin with the events of September 11, 2001, but rather with those of June 23, 1985, and the Air India disaster, which “left many Canadians of Indian and Sikh background to wonder publicly it the performance” of their government “would have been better if the victims had been white.” "Getting religion on softwood lumber: a biblical test of the rule of law" by Carl Grenier Canada has pursued a two-track strategy in the softwood lumber dispute, “Track 1 referring to litigation and Track 2 to negotiation,” writes the head of the Free Trade Lumber Council. To date, neither track has yielded positive results. Track 1 was derailed on August 10, 2005, when the US refused to comply with a NAFTA Extraordinary Challenge Committee ruling against US countervail duties against Canadian softwood imports. “We believed Track 1 would enhance our negotiating position,” writes Carl Grenier, “but that Track 2 would be our salvation.” Now what? Canada should insist the US honour its treaty obligations under NAFTA. He writes: “the rule of law is being tested.” "The worst is yet to come: hurricanes and global warming" by Gordon McBean Twenty four-hour news saturation and the internet have made all of us witnesses to, if not victims of, all the planet’s natural disasters. From the Southeast Asia tsunami on Boxing Day 2004 to Hurricane Katrina and her aftermath in the fall, the past year has also been devastating but it has also been a reminder of humanity’s breathtaking capacity for empathy. We all looked at the faces of those devastated by Hurricane Katrina and knew it could have been us. And as the University of Western Ontario’s Gordon McBean writes, if climate change patterns hold, one day, when Canada finds itself in the path of weather catastrophes we’re used to watching from a distance, it will be. "The politics of climate change at the Montreal conference: high stakes for the Martin government, the Kyoto Protocol and the future of the planet" by Elizabeth May From its conception in 1997 to its activation earlier this year, the Kyoto Protocol has been slammed as naïve and impractical by certain US presidents and lauded as a rare example of international cooperation by fans of the Earth. But as Sierra Club of Canada Executive Director Elizabeth May writes, its future very much depends on what progress may come of the Montreal Climate Change Conference, whose host government welcomes the diversion from election pressure but also has some explaining to do about its own unmet Kyoto targets. "Adapt and thrive: options for reducing the climate-change adaptation deficit" by Ian Burton Part of the climate change impact equation is the degree to which the people most affected by change — mostly in the world’s poorest nations — can adapt to it, particularly in a post-disaster context. Ian Burton, an expert on adaptation and a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change fourth assessment, due in 2007, writes that, “The grim prospect is that with climate change the adaptation deficit as a whole is set to grow significantly larger.” Burton links the evolution in thinking on adaptation to the thinking on climate change, which is finally being recognized as a poverty and equity issue. But more needs to be done, and fast, by governments — including Canada’s. "Federalism and capital markets in Canada and the US: financing infrastructure in the wake of Hurricane Katrina" by W. Bartley Hildreth Hurricane Katrina was much more than a natural disaster, it also left New Orleans and the Gulf Coast of the United States financially devastated. The rebuilding effort will take place on the ground, coordinated largely by the state and federal governments and financed in capital markets. “Markets can supplement federalism,” writes Bart Hildreth, a visiting Fulbright scholar at McGill University. “A key advantage of debt markets is that these competitive, risk-bearing institutions are less prone to accept questionable projects and financial plans than are politicians up the federal hierarchy,” he says. Hildreth examines the financial relationship and programs of the federal governments in the US and Canada with the sub-national governments at the state/provincial and municipal levels, and concludes each country could learn from the other. “Citizens in both countries were left in awe of the sudden disintegration of New Orleans and its infrastructure,” he concludes. “As with infrastructure questions elsewhere, the solution is likely to be found in a combination of federalism and capital markets.” "Science et politique des changements climatiques : décider dans un climat incertain" by Louis Guay “For a political decision to be made, some consensus is necessary; for science to progress and help in the decision-making process, scientists must reduce the uncertainty associated with scientific advances,” writes Louis Guay. He examines here the sometimes tense, sometimes more serene, relationship between politics and science as regards the problem of climate change, the way the different stakeholders in this controversy position themselves vis-à-vis these two spheres, and the ethical underpinnings of the strategies advocated by each to deal with climate change. "Hope for the best and prepare for the worst: how Canada's insurers stay a step ahead of climate change" by Paul Kovacs As the occurrence and severity of extreme weather events have increased, so have the costs to insurance companies, which has put the insurance industry in the front lines of climate change and adaptation research. Canada is at the forefront of this burgeoning field, particularly through the work of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction, based at the University of Western Ontario. As the centre’s Director, Paul Kovacs writes, at the same time that government spending on the sort of infrastructure upgrades that can make all the difference in a catastrophic event like Hurricane Katrina has dropped dramatically, the likelihood of such catastrophic events has risen, making innovation and preparedness major priorities for the industry with the most at stake. "Huffing and puffing and blowing it down: how to make houses that will survive a Katrina" by Gregory A. Kopp and F. Michael Bartlett Disaster aftermath coverage inevitably shows houses and other buildings that appear to be damaged according to some random, arbitrary calculus: a house reduced to toothpicks right next to one that seems untouched. As Gregory Kopp and Michael Bartlett write, this effect has less to do with the whims of the elements than with construction codes and design standards. Using real examples from Hurricanes Katrina and Dennis, they make a case for better building codes and provide a preview of what will go on at a unique University of Western Ontario testing facility named after a nursery rhyme. "After the storm: pathologies of decision-making in New Orleans" by Ray Taras A Canadian professor of political science at Tulane University in New Orleans, Ray Taras had an opportunity to observe decision-making from within the disaster zone after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Big Easy. His assessment: “Post traumatic stress syndrome suffered by usually competent leaders on the ground, combined with the obliviousness and usual incompetence of Bush administration officials, led to hundreds of needless deaths, tens of thousands of lives changed forever, and billions of dollars of property damage.” The re-building of New Orleans is a conversation with strong overtones of the racial inequalities that are always present there, and observable by even the most casual visitor to the city. "The incredible shrinking sea ice" by David Barber, Louis Fortier, and Michael Byers In the disaster blockbuster, “The Day After Tomorrow,” the shrinking of polar ice caused by climate change unleashes an extreme weather Armaggedon which, among other things, sees the Statue of Liberty engulfed by a tidal wave. The predictions offered here by David Barber, Louis Fortier and Michael Byers are less cataclysmic but equally compelling. In relaying the scientific evidence and outlining the ecological, economic and political impacts of polar climate change, Barber, Fortier and Byers present a chilling case for heading off doomsday. "Canadian Charter equality at 20: reflections of a card-carrying member of the Court Party" by Martha Jackman On the 20th anniversary of the Charter’s equality rights guarantees, Charter activist and expert Martha Jackman reviews the record of Charter litigation as a means to redress inequalities in Canada and concludes that it is mixed at best. Far from undermining Canadian democracy, she says, the Charter provides an important and legitimate avenue for challenging growing social inequities. Yet, low income litigants invoking the Charter have met with limited success due to a series of presumptions, including that social policy is beyond the legitimate purview of the courts, and that the state is neutral in its dealings with the poor. All in all, the relationship between rights and democracy is far more nuanced than the Charter critics argue, she says, and the real question, to her, is not whether the Charter and the so-called Court Party are destroying democracy, but rather how the Charter’s equality rights can inform and contribute to further strengthening the underlying values of our democratic system. "The trading dragon: boosting Canada's transportation infrastructure to accommodate the new China syndrome" by Christopher Jones China’s emergence as an economic superpower and hyper-trader demands new strategies, not just in trade policy but in managing the growing volume of goods entering, leaving and traversing Canada. Christopher Jones of the Railway Association of Canada writes, “At the same time that bulk resource exporters are looking to seize upon opportunities in China, Chinese exports of containerized merchandise are flooding our shores. Canada has only 1 percent of China’s export trade and is struggling to cope with the stresses and strains that recent traffic growth in containerized freight has imposed.” Here, Jones lays down a plan for the next stretch. "High noon in Hong Kong: will the WTO's rich and poor bridge the gap?" by Dean Foster In the beginning, World Trade Organization ministerial meetings, like their GATT predecessors, were known for not much more than lukewarm coffee, elevator intrigue and seemingly endless debate over agricultural subsidies. But since the 1999 Seattle ministerial was cut short by violent anti-globalization protests, WTO ministerials have become better known for their fortress security, Molotov cocktails and seemingly endless debate over agricultural subsidies. As Dean Foster of Carleton University’s Norman Paterson School writes, most of the pressure for real progress on the Doha Development Agenda at this month’s Hong Kong ministerial will be from the developing country members, who will be within the barricades. "Tinkering and spreading the blame: how the first Gomery report let Quebecers down" by Alain-G. Gagnon and Raffaele Iacovino To most Canadians, the sponsorship scandal was about greed and abuse of power. To Quebecers, the impact of the scandal and the commission that showcased it was much more nuanced. As Alain-G.Gagnon and Raffaele Iacovino of the Université du Québec à Montréal write, “The Gomery Commission has done little to reconcile the fundamental flaws in Ottawa’s approach to its relations with Quebec.” If the sponsorship scandal was a window on the belief “that the discontents of Quebecers were so superficial as to be treatable through the infantile blandishments of commercial advertising’s flashy colours and creative slogans,” they write, then it will take more than Gomery to repair the damage. "Lucide.com vs Solidaire.org" by Alain Noël [summary not available] |
