Event Date: January 23, 2024 - 4:00pm to 5:30pm
Location: FSS 4004, 120 University Private, University of Ottawa

Presented by CIPS and the Asian Studies Network

The January presidential and legislative elections of January 13th in Taiwan were followed worldwide because of the dire warnings issued by the leadership of the CCP in Beijing. Although Taiwanese are acutely aware of the particular positions they find themselves in, they voted, like citizens of other mature democracies, keeping in mind day-to-day issues and the prospects in seeing an improvement in their living conditions. Professor Laliberté will discuss some of the unexpected results of the presidential and legislative elections, and sketch what the near future has in store for the population.

This event will take place in English with a bilingual Q&A.

Speaker:

André Laliberté – After obtaining a doctorate in political science from the University of British Columbia in 1999, André Laliberté taught at the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa, where he is a full professor and teaches courses on comparative politics, with a focus on the countries of the Indo-Pacific region. He is co-director of the Research Chair in Taiwanese Studies, in addition to being an associate researcher at the Center for International Policy Studies and the Human Rights Research and Education Center at the University of Ottawa. He has published articles and chapters on various aspects of Taiwan’s democratic transition and consolidation, including changing civil-military relations, women’s participation in parliament, migrant workers’ rights, and the political actions of religious associations. He has also written on different dimensions of the CCP religious work. He was a visiting scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington in 2011 and at Leipzig University in 2019. He regularly visits Taiwan for research and has done the same often to Hong Kong and to over ten different cities in China.

Moderator:

Margaret McCuaig-Johnston is a Board Member of the China Strategic Risks Institute, a Senior Fellow at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs and a Senior Fellow with the Institute for Science, Society and Policy at the University of Ottawa, as well as an Advisory Board Member of the Canada-China Forum, and a member of the Canada Committee of Human Rights Watch.  She is a member of the Canada-U.S. Commission on China, as well as a Policy Advisor to the Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project.  She previously served a Distinguished Fellow with the Asia-Pacific Foundation of Canada, a Senior Fellow with the China Institute at the University of Alberta, a Board Member of the Canadian International Council, and Vice Chair of the Board of the neutrino observatory SNOLab.  Her research includes China’s human rights violations, technologies used in surveillance, and national security risks of academic collaborations with China, as well as China’s innovation system and challenges that western technology firms have had working in China. Margaret worked in the Canadian public service for 37 years in science and technology policy, programs and funding, and served at the Assistant Deputy Minister level at Department of Finance, Natural Resources Canada and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council.  She has held management positions at Industry Canada, the Prime Minister’s National Advisory Board on S&T, the Ministry of State for Science and Technology, and the Privy Council Office.  For the last seven years of her government career, Margaret was a member of the Canada-China Joint Committee on Science and Technology.   Margaret holds an MA in International Relations focused on China, and an Honours BA in Political Economy.