Foreign Affairs
The Strategic Quagmire: Why Nation Building in Afghanistan is Failing
Although NATO seeks to remove the threat of terrorist or rogue state use of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East, this goal has morphed into a push to create regimes that behave more responsibly and govern more democratically, explains Anil Hira from the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute. Hira argues that if NATO wants to achieve these goals, the lack of an overarching strategic direction needs to be addressed.
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Open Letter to Prime Minister Harper
In an open letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the Asia Pacific Foundation’s Pittman Potter outlines three specific issues he believes are important to Canada’s national interest and should be predominant in Harper’s meetings with China’s President Hu Jintao.
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Gravity Shift: Re-thinking China and India in 2030
On the heels of Prime Minister Harper’s recent trips to India and China, the Asia Pacific Foundation’s Wendy Dobson contends that while the world’s centre of economic gravity in the will be pulled toward the Asian powerhouses in the coming decades, their roles in the world will be constrained by the need to rebalance significant distortions in their domestic economies.
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Strategy and Symbiosis: The Role of Time during Counterinsurgency
Time works against a counterinsurgency in both a political and a material way, explains Eric Jarine of the Canadian International Council. Jardine discusses this issue of time during the conduct of counterinsurgency and proposes a set of policies to sever the symbiotic linkages between the counterinsurgency and the insurgency.
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Economy
Measuring Economic Security in Insecure Times
The Centre for the Study of Living Standards has released new estimates of economic well-being in Canada and 13 other OECD countries. The index focuses on consumption rather than production, emphasizes the household perspective, integrates wealth into well-being measurement, and gives prominence to distributional issues.
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Canadian Provincial Investment Climate: 2009 Report
The allocation of investment capital is increasingly acknowledged as a leading contributor to a jurisdiction’s economic success or failure, states a new report by the Fraser Institute. The Institute’s Provincial Investment Climate Index quantitatively evaluates public policies that create and sustain positive investment climates.
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Experts at Queen’s University Make Economic Predictions
Queen's School of Business professors made their economic predictions for 2010 at the 28th annual Business Forecast Lunch. Overall, the Canadian economy appears to be on the mend. But while the financial markets are rising, consumer confidence is declining. In 2010, the business world will need strong management to convert our uncertainty for risk. 2009 was a hard year for Kingston, and the next three to five years will prove to be a critical juncture for the city. Read
Labour Force Survey
According to Statistics Canada, employment in Canada rose by 79,000 in November, bringing the unemployment rate down 0.1 percentage points to 8.5%. Despite November's gain, employment was 321,000 (-1.9%) below the peak of October 2008.
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Canada's Economic Action Plan Investments in Science and Technology
Investments under Canada’s Economic Action Plan are helping to build a strong, innovative and prosperous Canadian economy through excellence in science, technology and research. The Honourable Gary Goodyear, Minister of State (Science and Technology) noted that “through our Economic Action Plan, we are investing about $5 billion in science and technology initiatives — one of the largest ever single investments in science and technology in Canada.
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Developing a Deprivation Index
A deprivation index is a list of items that are widely seen as necessary for a household to maintain a standard of living above the poverty level. A new paper tells the story of the development of the Ontario Deprivation Index by the Daily Bread Food Bank and the Caledon Institute of Social Policy.
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Public Policy
Getting Students from Lower-income Families to Seek Post-secondary Education
The Social Research and Development Corporation (SRDC) has released a report which shows that offering career education and an early guarantee of financial aid to high school students can have significant impacts on their interest in post-secondary studies. According to the study, students from lower-income families are more likely to seek post-secondary education as a result of new innovative programming. SRDC’s research shows that offering career education and an early guarantee of financial aid to high school students is having significant impacts on their interest in post-secondary studies.
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Revealing the Paths of Secondary School Students to their Post-Secondary Destinations
A new study by researchers at Queen’s University examines the transitions young people make from secondary school to university, college, apprenticeship and the workplace. It found that over 60% of first-year college enrolees do not come directly from secondary school, but after one or two years in the workforce.
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Environment
Barcelona Postscript
In this report by the International Institute for Sustainable Development, Director John Drexhage examines the developments between the climate change meetings held in Barcelona in November 2009 and those to be held in Copenhagen in December 2009. Read
New Research Suggests Climate Change Solution Must Focus on Technology
In an article that appears in the December 3rd issue of the journal Nature, Christopher Green and Isabel Galiana of McGill's School of Environment and Department of Economics make the case for abandoning emission reduction targets in favour of a technology-led climate policy. Read
Sports
Tracking Olympic Athletes Online
University of Calgary’s Larry Katz is unveiling a new way for Canadians to keep track of their favourite Winter Olympic athletes or to keep tabs on how the Canadian Olympic teams are performing.
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Canadians Want Stiff Penalties for Doping Athletes
Two in three Canadians favour lifetime bans or stiff four-year suspensions for athletes found using performance-enhancing drugs at the Olympics, according to a new poll conducted by Nanos Research for Policy Options. One in three, 32.7%, favours a lifetime ban from competition for athletes caught using performance-enhancing drugs. Another third of the population (33.7%) favours a stiff four-year suspension, while one-quarter, 26.4%, favours a lighter one-year suspension.
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