Canada’s Critical Minerals Strategy is unfolding at a pivotal moment in global affairs. As geopolitical rivalries intensify and the energy transition accelerates, critical minerals have become the backbone of civilian and defense technologies ranging from semiconductors to batteries and electric vehicles. Canada’s 2022 Critical Minerals Strategy (CMS) seeks to position the country as a global supplier of choice while reducing reliance on China. This partnership initiative brings academia, industry and think tanks together to investigate and evaluate Canada’s critical mineral diplomacy. By studying Canada’s partnerships, trade and investment agreements, export financing, soft power tools, and unilateral trade interventions, the project seeks to understand Canada’s position in critical mineral and metal supply chains from upstream mining to downstream applications.

It asks a simple but pressing question: How effective are Canada’s instruments of economic statecraft in delivering secure and sustainable critical mineral supply chains that connect Canada with the world while reducing over-dependence on China?

The University of Ottawa and the Embassy of France in Canada initiated the Research Chair in Science Diplomacy to tackle unique science diplomacy challenges. CIPS researcher and University of Ottawa professor, Patrick Fafard, has been named co-chair, alongside Pascal Griset, co-director of the International School of Science Diplomacy and Professor of Modern History at Sorbonne Université in France.

The literature on fragile and conflict-affected states (FCAS) recognises that state legitimacy is deeply contested, and that more attention should be paid to the views of marginalised populations in that regard, in FCAS. Yet there is little empirically based scholarship on those populations’ expectations of and practices towards the state, particularly from an intersectional perspective, in distinct fragile states. Led by working groups of scholars from Burkina Faso, Haiti, Lebanon and Canada, this project breaks new ground by re-reading the scholarly literature and public opinion surveys, and by conducting focus groups with selected populations at the bottom of social hierarchies – whose lives are marked by intersecting age, class, gender, race, (dis)ability and other markers of difference/power – in each country.

At a time when the post-war liberal world order is under severe strain and illiberal forces are on the rise across the world, the ‘World Order Research Programme’ brings together CIPS scholars from different disciplines and perspectives to analyze the current challenges and investigate opportunities for building a more democratic, just and inclusive world order. Ranging from the rise of populism and the Far Right, to economic transformations and geopolitical realignments, the Programme’s distinct, yet connected projects provide a comprehensive analysis of some of the most important issues facing Canada and the world.

Canadian Defence Policy in Theory and Practice was published in 2020 and edited by Philippe Lagassé (Norman Patterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University), Srdjan Vucetic and Thomas Juneau (both Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa). The content emphasizes the process of defence policy-making rather than just the outcomes of that process, focusing especially on how political and organizational interests impact planning and standard operating procedures that shape Canadian defence policy and practices. The authors’ workshop for this volume, held in 2017, was supported by CIPS and the Department of National Defence Engagement Grant.

The second volume of Canadian Defence Policy in Theory and Practice was released in October 2023. The previous volume, which offered the first comprehensive book on Canadian defence policy in 25 years, covered a wide range of topics, including relations with demography, relations with Indigenous peoples, the Arctic, strategy-making, procurement, accountability, the role of special interests, and civil-military relations. This second volume, which was prepared in part thanks to support from CIPS, offers eight chapters on topics not previously covered in the first volume, on policy-making, climate change, procurement, gender, personnel retention, NORAD, and the budget.

Work on Volume Three of Canadian Defence Policy in Theory and Practice will begin in the coming months.