By Joanne St. Lewis, Professor of Law at the University of Ottawa
My heart is heavy. The braided life of pain, joy, courage, strength and love – indeed, all that was the brilliant complex persona of Nelson Mandela is …
READ MOREIn anticipation of the December 5th book launch of the Oxford Handbook of Modern Diplomacy, CIPS posed the following question to former Prime Minister Paul Martin (who will be speaking at the event): “What does the recently announced DFATD …
READ MOREby Philippe Lagassé
Canada’s military training mission in Afghanistan will end in 2014. When the Canadian Forces are next sent overseas, members of Parliament will likely vote on the mission. The Conservative government has made it a point to consult …
READ MOREby John Mundy
Published in The Globe and Mail, November 25, 2013
The earth moved Sunday in Geneva when the United States, its P5 plus 1 negotiating partners and Iran came to an interim agreement on Iran’s nuclear program. …
READ MOREby Robert Hage
The same week that celebrity British street artist Banksy upset New Yorkers by saying the new World Trade Center is “vanilla…and looks like something they would build in Canada”, an Economist headline stated, “Canada doesn’t get any …
READ MOREBy David Black, Dalhousie University
A preview of David Black’s CIPS lecture on October 22, 2013
Among the various criticisms of the Harper government’s foreign policy, its presumed neglect or even abandonment of sub-Saharan Africa is among the most frequently …
READ MOREBy Michele Mastroeni, University of Edinburgh
A preview of Michele Mastroeni’s CIPS lecture on October 18, 2013
Industry leaders and governments have pursued innovation as a source of economic growth for the last two decades. While firms have been striving …
READ MOREby Gerd Schönwälder
A preview of the conference on ‘Promoting Democracy: What Role for the Emerging Powers?’ to take place at the University of Ottawa on October 15-16, 2013.
Millions around the world continue to name democracy as their preferred …
READ MOREby John Mundy
Published in the Globe and Mail, September 30, 2013
For the first time in many years there are hopeful signs that Iran is prepared to negotiate a comprehensive deal on its nuclear program with the United …
READ MOREby Joshua Ramisch
The harrowing images from Nairobi’s burning and blood-soaked Westgate Mall have come not just from journalists but from the cellphones nearly everyone in the building was carrying. Twitter has been alive with updates from all sides: from …
READ MOREBy Gareth Evans
Published on the openDemocracy blog, September 9, 2013. This essay is part of a symposium on R2P and the human rights crisis in Syria, guest edited by David Petrasek.
The lack of consensus in the …
READ MOREIan Hurd is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University
The debate sparked by Syria’s chemical weapons attack includes at least three separate controversies: 1) which (if any) international legal instruments govern Syria’s use of chemical weapons; 2) …
READ MOREby Michael Geist
Published on www.michaelgeist.ca, June 11, 2013.
The concerns about telephone and Internet surveillance moved north yesterday as the Globe revealed that Canada has its own metadata surveillance program. The program was discontinued in 2008 after concerns …
READ MOREPublished in the Ottawa Citizen, June 5, 2013
Are political scientists failing to play their part as critics of the government in Canada? Lawrence Martin thinks so. Writing in the Globe and Mail last week, he lamented that academics …
READ MOREby Rachel Kerr
On May 25, 2013, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia celebrated its twentieth anniversary. After 20 years and $2.2 billion, what has this extraordinary experiment in international criminal justice achieved? In The Hague, an exhibition …
READ MOREGuest blog post by Deborah Stienstra, Professor in Disability Studies, University of Manitoba
Policy makers, researchers and activists may be skeptical about including disability in discussions about fragile and conflict-affected states (FCAS). There are so many urgent and competing …
READ MOREby John Mundy
Published in the Globe and Mail, May 21, 2013
Imagine if U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had delivered the speech that Foreign Minister John Baird gave to the Global Dialogue on Iran’s Future last week …
READ MOREConference to be held on 15-16 October 2013 in Ottawa, Canada
Co-sponsored by:
German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE)
International Development Research Centre (IDRC), and
Centre for International Policy Studies (CIPS), University of Ottawa
Guest post by John Baird, Minister of Foreign Affairs.
In this post, Mr. Baird responds to Bob Rae’s commentary on Canadian foreign policy. CIPS is pleased to provide a venue for this debate. To receive notification of future blogposts, …
READ MOREBy guest-bloggers Steve Mason, Aga Khan Foundation Canada (AKFC), and Katie McGregor, University of Ottawa.
Renowned as a place of rich history, diverse cultures and world-famous musicians, Mali has been making headlines for very different reasons over the …
READ MOREGuest post by Bob Rae, MP
John Baird’s recent trip to the Middle East—and seemingly incoherent announcements before and after—give us a chance to re-assess the Conservative government’s foreign policy.
The Reform Party’s reverse takeover of the Progressive Conservative Party, …
READ MOREAs part of the global aid effectiveness agenda, the New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States…
READ MOREBased purely on need, enhancing our focus (and resources) on fragile and conflict-affected states (FCAS) …
READ MORECIPS Policy Brief No. 21, March 2013.
By JOHN MUNDY, Visiting Associate, CIPS.
by Philippe Lagassé
Published in Macleans.ca, February 3, 2012
Canada’s most monarchist government in decades has just dealt a serious blow to the Canadian Crown. In an effort to quickly enact changes regarding royal succession, the government has introduced …
READ MOREby Philippe Lagassé
Published in the Ottawa Citizen, December 6, 2012
It’s been a rough year for Canadian defence procurement.
This past spring, the Auditor General lambasted the defence department’s lack of due diligence in selecting the F-35 to …
READ MOREBy James W.J. Bowden and Philippe Lagassé
The full article was published in the Ottawa Citizen, December 4, 2012
We learned this week that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are expecting their first child. The news was greeted …
READ MOREby Philippe Lagassé
The Harper government recently announced that the National Fighter Procurement Secretariat (NFPS) will be looking at various options to replace Canada’s aging CF-18s. This comes at a time when the news about the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, …
READ MOREby John Mundy
Published in the Globe and Mail, November 26, 2012
The Munk Debate on the question of war with Iran, to be held on Monday night in Toronto, could not be more timely. With elections finally decided …
READ MOREPar Stéphane Paquin, Professeur agrégé à l’École nationale d’administration publique
Lorsque le gouvernement du Québec, sous Jean Charest, a exigé une plus grande participation des provinces canadiennes aux négociations et organisations internationales dont le Canada est membre, de nombreux …
READ MOREby John Mundy
Published in the Globe and Mail, October 25, 2012
When Canada closed its embassy in Tehran last month, it wasn’t just Canadian diplomats who were affected. We left behind a small number of local staff, and …
READ MOREpar Justin Massie
Published in La Presse, October 5, 2012
Lors de son dernier discours aux Nations unies, le ministre John Baird a exposé les fondements de la politique internationale de son gouvernement. Elle repose sur deux piliers: une …
READ MOREGuest contributor: ELIZABETH SHAKMAN HURD, Associate Professor of Political Science, Northwestern University.
In the United States, religious freedom is described as the ‘first freedom’: a fundamental human right and a sine qua non of democratic politics. Americans, we are …
READ MOREby Philippe Lagassé
After a month of lectures on Plato and Machiavelli, today I’m starting to teach Hobbes in my second-year undergraduate course on philosophical perspectives on conflict and rights. Personally, I find that this is the most interesting part …
READ MOREGuest contributor: LIAM MAHONY, Director of Fieldview Solutions and a pioneer in the theory and practice of international protection
When the international community struggles today with decisions about how to address the terrible civilian costs of armed conflict, the …
READ MOREGuest contributor: KYLE MATTHEWS, Senior Deputy Director of the Will to Intervene Project at the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (Concordia University)
The Responsibility to Protect doctrine has many enemies. States that will not or cannot …
READ MOREby John Mundy
Published in the Globe and Mail, September 10, 2012
No country suspends diplomatic relations with an adversary lightly. It signals that the possibility for future dialogue is over. While it is true that Canada has not …
READ MOREby Philippe Lagassé
First published on the Canadian International Council website.
A new Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS) was appointed by the Governor-in-Council last week. Following a few months of speculation about who would be named, Cabinet decided on …
READ MORECIPS Policy Brief No.18, June 2012.
By JOSHUA ROVNER, U.S. Naval War College.
CIPS is pleased to announce the appointment of John Mundy as Visiting Associate for the 2012-13 academic year.
Mr. Mundy is a former Canadian diplomat. Before retiring in 2008, he held senior diplomatic appointments in Trinidad and Tobago, Iran and …
READ MOREby Ted Schrecker
In a recent Foreign Affairs article, Laurie Garrett argues that the current economic crisis represents “a watershed moment for global public health” because of the probable stagnation of development assistance for health. In fact, the situation …
READ MOREby Rachel Kerr
May 16, 2012 was an auspicious day for international criminal justice for two reasons. First, the Special Court for Sierra Leone heard statements from the Prosecutor and from former Liberian President Charles Taylor at his sentencing hearing. …
READ MOREThe Office of the Inspector General of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) was established through legislation in 1984, in the same Act that created CSIS. The model was the U.S. practice of Inspector Generals, with a review and compliance …
READ MOREThe Ottawa Dialogue is a Track Two process involving a distinguished group of retired senior officials and military officers from India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. It is led by Peter Jones, Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School …
READ MOREby Philippe Lagassé
Published in the Globe and Mail, April 3, 2012.
In the wake of Tuesday’s expected report by the Auditor-General, the Conservative government’s hedging about the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is likely to accelerate. After nearly two …
READ MOREpar Justin Massie
A shortened version of this article appeared in La Presse on March 27, 2012.
Le recul du gouvernement Harper à l’égard de l’acquisition de 65 F-35 témoigne des malheurs entourant le développement du programme multinational d’avions de …
READ MORECIPS Policy Brief No.17, March 2012.
By DAVID PETRASEK, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.
Guest contributor: REX BRYNEN
Professor of Political Science, McGill University
In recent days, a social media-based campaign called KONY2012 has gone viral with worldwide calls for the arrest of Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). …
READ MORECIPS Policy Brief No.16, March 2012.
By STEVE COLL, New America Foundation.
CIPS Policy Brief No. 14 (February 2012).
By TRITA PARSI.
par Justin Massie
Le mardi, 31 janvier 2012, le titre de Dassault Aviation s’est envolé rapidement à la bourse de Paris. Avant 17 heures, le constructeur aéronautique français gagnait près de 22% en valeur boursière. Cette hausse tient pour l’essentiel …
READ MOREpar Justin Massie
Quel bilan annuel peut-on dresser de la politique étrangère du gouvernement Harper ? Grâce à la majorité parlementaire obtenue en mai dernier, le premier ministre bénéficie d’une immense autonomie politique – une « dictature bienveillante » selon …
READ MOREby Philippe Lagassé
The full article was published in the Ottawa Citizen on January 9, 2012
Should Canada abandon its constitutional monarchy and become a republic? Several commentators and notable politicians think so.
Accustomed to seeing the monarchy as a …
READ MOREpar Justin Massie
Suite aux élections de mai, le ministre des Affaires étrangères, John Baird, s’est vu confier la tâche de réviser la politique actuelle et d’élaborer un nouveau document avec l’espoir de permettre à Ottawa de mieux anticiper l’environnement …
READ MOREGuest contributor: STEFAN WOLFF
Professor of International Security at the University of Birmingham, UK
When Mohamed Bouazizi, a jobless graduate in the provincial city of Sidi Bouzid in Tunisia, about 200km southwest of the capital Tunis, set himself …
READ MORECIPS Policy Brief No. 13 (November 2011).
By Daryl Copeland.
By Roméo Dallaire and Philippe Lagassé
Published in Embassy Magazine, November 16, 2011.
Canada and its NATO allies performed admirably during their recent intervention in Libya. They acted to prevent a predatory regime from potentially committing a mass atrocity; …
READ MOREpar David Grondin
Cela fait plusieurs années que les Forces canadiennes sont passées maîtres du faire beaucoup avec peu; le Canada fait peu d’envieux, mais son personnel est qualifié et réputé pour savoir tirer le maximum d’un matériel qui n’est …
READ MOREby Philippe Lagassé
Did Canada play a critical political role in relation to the Libya intervention? My colleague Roland Paris is skeptical. In an earlier post on this blog, he points out that Canada’s political influence was secondary at best, …
READ MOREpar Justin Massie
Published in La Presse.ca, October 27, 2011
La guerre en Libye est maintenant terminée, du moins celle dans laquelle sont engagés les Occidentaux, avec la mort du dictateur Mouammar Kadhafi. Selon le ministre des Affaires étrangères, …
READ MOREby Philippe Lagassé
Forum: DND and Academic Policy Advice.
In this forum, CIPS blog contributors respond to a report written by Douglas Bland and Richard Shimooka of Queen’s University, who argue that the Department of National Defense pays little attention …
par Justin Massie
Forum: DND and Academic Policy Advice.
In this forum, CIPS blog contributors respond to a report written by Douglas Bland and Richard Shimooka of Queen’s University, who argue that the Department of National Defense pays little attention …