Contributors

Canada-Asia Relations: Catch-Up or Leap-Frog?

Luncheon followed by talk on the state of Canada-Asia relations.

Speaker’s biography:
Yuen Pau Woo is a thought leader on contemporary Asia affairs & expert on Canada-Asia relations. He is currently the President & CEO of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, a Vancouver- based think-tank on Canada-Asia relations.

Mr. Woo is on the management board of the National Centre of Excellence in Immigration Research at SFU, where he is also an adjunct Professor at the Institute of Asian Research. He is an advisor to the Shanghai WTO Affairs Consultation Centre & the Asian Development Bank. He is also on the International Advisory Council of the Asia Society in New York; Canada’s representative on the Standing Committee of the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council; and Director of the APEC Study Centre in Canada.

Mr. Woo is widely published and a frequent contributor to national and international media.

Admission:
CIC Members = $30.00
CIC Student Members = $10.00
Non-Members = $35.00

Cut-off date for registration: Sunday, March 18, 2012

Event contact:
Maureen Bennett
maureenbennett@shaw.ca | (250) 385-8175  

Comment (0)

Paul Summerville’s talk “2012: The Year of Living Dangerously”

February 15, 2011, Paul Summerville’s talk “2012: The Year of Living Dangerously”

2012 will be the year of living dangerously.

The outlook for the global economy is clear as it is ugly: recession in Europe, Japan’s long term stagnation, below potential growth in the United States, a sharp slowdown in China and in most emerging-market economies with the risk of a spillover into Canada.

Sustainability is at the heart of vital questions being asked with great urgency right now everywhere about our environment, our economy, our politics, and our societies.

But why these questions right now, and why everywhere?

The latter is the easier of the two to answer, technological changes allow much of the human race to talk to each other without the filter of religion or government or a ruling elite.

This is not new even if the scope is; the printing press, radio, and television all have played a role through history in fermenting economic, political, and cultural change.

Just after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 I remember reading a newspaper interview with an East German housewife commenting about the speed and ease of the regime’s collapse.

She explained that any feelings about fighting for that regime had ended for most East Germans at least a decade earlier.

The reason?

American TV soap operas.

She said that it was American soap operas watched illegally beamed in from West Germany, made possible by 1980’s satellite technology, which proved that their government had been lying to them about the superiority of communism.

‘Now how did soap operas do that?’ the surprised journalist asked.

The refrigerators, she said, because when a refrigerator door opened in the course of a show revealing the great bounty of food, Coke, fresh fruit, and T-bone steaks, none of the characters rushed to grab everything they could get their hands on, which is exactly what would have happened in any East German kitchen before 1989.

And these refrigerators she went on to explain weren’t in the houses of the privileged but in the homes of teachers, bank tellers, bus drivers, janitors, and even students.

The society collapsed because people were exhausted living a great lie and exhilarated to share in the West’s wealth.

So back to the first question, why have environmental, economic, political and social issues found their way to the centre of our thinking?

I think one reason might be that just as communism failed because it was built on the flawed principle of equality of outcomes that the economic collapse centred on the high income countries in 2007-2008, and the painful recovery ever since, reminds us that capitalism built on false promises of equality of opportunity is equally flawed and is failing just the same.

How did this happen?

I think that we are suffering from a lack of imagination because of the grip that economists have had on public policy for over thirty years.

In my professional life the nostrums which economists peddle as insightful description and prescription for our economies, and societies, have never failed to amaze me.

First, the thesis that markets are rational.

A little like flat earth geology.

Then there is the arguments about peak oil, commodity prices staying permanently high, central banks controlling prices, economies tending to equilibrium, lower taxes and deregulation guaranteeing economic success, liberalisation of financial markets reducing the risk of a banking crisis, financial firms as great self-regulators, and command and control economies being sustainable.

Earlier this year I was asked to speak at a conference forecasting the outlook for 2012.

I was asked if I could ‘be a little bit funny and educational in an economist sort of way’.

Hmmm, an economics presentation that’s supposed to be a little bit funny; how about Allan Greenspan apologising for destroying the American economy or how about the guys that ran the credit default swap team at AIG that lost $61 billion in the first quarter of 2009.

How much money is that $61 billion dollars in 12 weeks?

Well, that’s $27 million dollars an hour.

Losses on a scale that threatened the global banking system were only possible because of the belief that markets are sustainably self-regulating.

Funny, like that?

Or how about Dick Fuld who earned $22 million dollars and change in 2007 the year before Lehman went bankrupt and yet he is still worth over $500 million?

Wealth of that magnitude against the destruction of so much of somebody else’s is only possible because of the belief that market outcomes are always just.

Funny, in a sickening kind of way?

In 2008 at a Senate hearing in Washington Greenspan admitted he was “partially wrong” after the tsunami-like consequences of his regulation-light Ayn Rand inspired banking policies and his asset boom and bust monetary regime were tearing apart the global economy.

Partially wrong?

Yeah.

Like being “partially pregnant” or “partially dead”.

For a man who was once remarkably hard to decipher Alan Greenspan is almost as clear as an empty Lehman Brothers’ office not to mention as empty as the 18.6 million homes unoccupied in the United States today one and half times all of Canada’s housing stock.

Is anybody laughing yet?

This reminds me of the old joke of the economist walking proudly alone in the middle of a long military parade full of tanks, missiles, and infantry because the misguided policy of a single economist can create a swath of destruction rivaling any military strike.

Just ask Alan Greenspan.

How does the economics profession get away with this stuff?

It has much to do with media financial illiteracy, particularly the willingness to swallow whole, the ‘market fundamentalism’, which swept aside arguments for a positive role for the state and importance of civil society.

A key reason that many high income countries have been struggling for the past five years, and are likely to struggle for the coming five, is because the lesson that a strong economy and social justice are two sides of the same coin was forgotten in a thirty love affair with economists.

The consequence has been a fraying of our common purpose.

Since 1980 we have allowed the market to dominate our societies as our politics became `market-driven, the market became uncontained and now we have the market societies, with the inequity, volatility, and crises to prove it.

Writers like Colin Leys, Tony Judt, Joseph Stieglitz, Jeffery Sachs, Simon Johnson and Bob Rae have been arguing for two decades about the risks embedded in a market driven world.

As Judt so aptly put it, students and patients ceased being citizens and became clients, public utilities like power and transport were returned to private hands, and however disruptive a new technology or trading partner might be, the brunt of the adjustment always fell on the individual while shareholders it seemed were bailed out whenever possible.

Economists convinced our political leaders that the state had no place, no capacity, and risked economic catastrophe if the state tamed the flow of transnational capital and the pressures generated by the new hyper-competitive global economy that emerged in the last quarter of the 20th century.

Jettisoned was the social democratic belief in the necessity and virtue of collective action for the collective good that is dependent on a critical role for the state and public spending.

Embraced was the argument that unless someone benefits directly from something the state does, then they shouldn’t have to pay for it, captured by home owners grumbling that their property taxes are paying to educate somebody else’s kids until they vote away the taxes.

Worshipped were fallacious theories like ‘the invisible hand of the market’ a phrase incidentally Adam Smith never coined, and whose unfettered free market intent a simple review of his writings would show he never even considered, but a phrase that became imbedded in our collective imagination.

It’s like we’ve been trapped in a Fox News echo chamber, ‘the biggest earners are the job creators’, ‘the job creators hate paying taxes and will stop working or leave the country’, ‘keep cutting taxes’, ‘keep cutting taxes’, ‘keep cutting spending’, ‘keep cutting spending’ etc. etc.

This seizure of political power by market fundamentalists has systematically undermined the centrality of liberalism as a defining thesis for shaping the societies of the developing world.

This has occurred to such an extent in the United States that to be successfully tattooed by a political opponent as a ‘liberal’ is tantamount to political assassination.

By liberalism I mean the belief that individuals are of equal worth, that citizens are made not born, that the circumstances of a person`s birth should not be the key determinant of a citizen`s life path, and that the state has a vital role in regulating the market and taxing its companies and citizens so that there are no significant barriers to how high someone may rise, a line below which no citizen can fall, and a timeless effort made to create the conditions of equality of opportunity for all citizens no matter how imperfect the process.

The consequence of the adoption of these core principles helped create the conditions for the rise of a class of middle income citizens in the high income countries that were increasingly better educated, better housed, better travelled, healthier, and wealthier than their parents with the deep belief that the chance of these same outcomes would extend to their children, and to their children, and to their children.

Now however this middle class promise has been undermined by the erosion of world class instruments of social justice including underinvestment in primary and secondary education, a sharp rise in the cost of post-secondary education, and tax and benefit policies that have magnified rapidly rising income inequality.

This was in part the consequence of economists convincing political leaders of the singular importance of the market in organising individual and community economic outcomes.

The result of this 30-year assault on liberalism has undermined the middle class and is reducing not increasing the number of people that can achieve middle class status and be lifted not crushed by globalisation.

For example, medium incomes have been stagnating in real terms, and middle class homes require two wage earners.

Stripped of its democratic responsibility by market-centred politics governments in many countries became enamored with a rapidly rising economic elite, even as income inequalities approached 1920 extremes.

Political leaders were less willing to tackle the great inequalities that globalisation inevitably creates and in some cases even amplified them.

What economists missed is how the sweeping power of new technologies set the stage for accelerated unequal outcomes as the benefits of globalisation have been harvested increasingly by fewer and fewer people in the developed world.

For example in the United States in 1974 the top 1% of families took home 9% of GDP today it is 25%, and while not as dramatic, this trend is mirrored in Canada and maybe accelerating.

This great shift in our thinking about the relationship between our democracy and the economy, the former serving the latter rather than the other way round, has occurred at the very moment when the speed and the reach and the impact of globalisation accelerated to the economic equivalent of something approaching the speed of light.

Since 1980 the sweeping power of new manufacturing, financial, communication, information, and transportation technologies revolutionized the global economy.

It is in this historical context that any annual forecast needs to be put.

Think about manufacturing for a moment.

In 1988 I completed my Ph.D. thesis on the Japanese auto industry at the University of Tokyo.

At that time the Japanese were under enormous pressure to invest in manufacturing facilities outside of Japan.

Most observers, particularly the Japanese and the Americans, thought that Japanese automakers would not be able to replicate the efficiencies of their manufacturing system because they would lack the key ingredient for efficiency, Japanese employees.

Toyota fought tooth and nail against investing in the United States, and the President of GM at a Senate hearing in the mid-1980s said, and I quote, “the Japanese car makers will not be able to build good cars in the United States because they will have to use American workers.”

They were both wrong.

In fact, Japan’s just in time production, and just in time design and development systems were not only exportable to developed countries like the United States and Canada, they were exportable anywhere there was a literate work force and a transportation system to accommodate it.

The export of Japan’s manufacturing technique revolutionalised the global economy crushing middle class manufacturing wages in every developed country except Germany that has institutionalised a role for labour.

Alongside this development was the evolution of a global financial system that demanded few regulations but whose biggest players were for the most part protected by the state with the resulting shift of the risk from partners in a business to taxpayers.

It is important to recognise that the pace of globalisation from 1985-2010 has only been matched once before from 1850-1870.

At that time, the export of wheat from North and South America devastated the agricultural communities of Central Europe, iron production and train transportation technologies dramatically reshaped economies and the societies they hosted.

The consequence was a collapse in prices and the beginning of almost a quarter century period of deflation from 1873-1896 known at the time as the ‘Great Depression’.

We are experiencing a similar period the only difference being that the consequences are not being exacerbated by gold backed currencies.

One of the features of that Great Depression was that economic outcomes were not uniform, countries like Sweden and Japan actually prospered partly because they were at an early stage of economic development driven by large infrastructure spending.

In thinking about specific national outcomes for 2012 this is an important lesson because despite what most economists will tell you there is not one model for national economic success because ultimately geographical, political and cultural features are more defining.

For example, coming to grips with understanding what cannot be understood with conventional economic tools is the long decline of Japan.

This was a lesson I learned trying to forecast the outlook for the Japanese economy as it entered its long period of stagnation in 1990.

By the summer of 19-92 the Japanese stock market, the Nikkei, had fallen by about 50% from its December 19-89 peak.

A cyclical analysis that focused on the evolution in components of GDP and prices by forecasting changes in monetary and fiscal policy that so dominated the approach of investment bank economists and strategists had become a recipe for failure, and potential bankruptcy.

A more insightful economic analysis was structural.

This structural analysis was based on two simple facts about the Japanese economy.

The first was that the credit process was broken because it had never worked according to market principles, was poorly regulated, and had been ruined by reckless late-1980s boom time lending.

The second was that capital investment as a percentage of GDP was at least 30% too high leading to a consistently low return on capital, and an economy that under-consumed.

Over investment in Japan was a consequence of the asset driven investment boom from 1985 to 1990, and the political support for an economy that was biased to savings-investment-and exports and not borrowing-consumption and imports in order to produce a permanent current account surplus.

Most economists took the working of the financial system and the structure of the Japanese economy as normal instead of fundamentally flawed.

It was becoming obvious to a few maverick economists that the only real solution was to allow large parts of the Japanese financial and industrial system to be destroyed.

I concluded that this was much more than an economic issue because the analysis had to go beyond economics both cyclical and structural, analysis that was first political, and later I came to understand, cultural.

Incidentally, this was not a great conclusion for someone being paid to be a Japanese economist in an investment bank in Japan.

Culturally, the most important insight into determining the fate of Japan then, and now, remains the cultural predisposition for Japan to be ‘Japanese’ with an enormous emphasis on societal control and stability.

In 19-93 any talk of change was framed by the unwanted risk of becoming ‘American’ with sharply higher income inequality.

This was so terrible an outcome that most Japanese were prepared to accept a falling standard of living as the price for keeping their culture and their ‘Japaneseness’ intact.

This they have done.

What Japan has not done is to rescue the economy from permanent economic decline particularly now that the country has fallen into a terrible demographic dead end whose only solution, immigration, poses an even greater cultural threat than income inequality ever could.

As far as the future of Japan is concerned, if becoming American was the cost to be avoided to break out of the 1990s structural economic down turn, it does not take much imagination to conclude how willing Japan will be to dramatically increase the number of immigrants – mostly from Asia – to break out of its demographic dead end today.

The key lesson I think is that although we speak about a ‘global’ equity market, the truth is not all markets are created equal; each national market operates in cultural and political contexts that have a defining impact, and although structural and cyclical economic forces vie with each other for dominance, they often are irrelevant to big market outcomes.

This analysis goes beyond most economists and strategists because they believe in the efficiency and cultural neutrality of markets, neither of which is true.

The hand wringing about capitalism as being too hot where the market is always right or too cold where the state dominates misses the truth that ultimately sustainable communities find the balance between the twin virtues of inequality of outcome and equality of opportunity.

The trick is how to tax and regulate the economy to ensure that unequal economic outcomes can provide the public revenue to invest in instruments of social justice, namely equality under the law, world class public education, the science of good health available to all citizens, and best in class public transportation so that together they become the foundation for the next generation of economic and social success.

Successful societies ensure that peoples’ lives are not simply dictated by the circumstances of their birth because societies will fail where rich kids grow up to be rich adults and poor kids grow up to be poor adults.

The tragedy is that a foul brew of tax and spending cuts were successfully peddled as income neutral and sold to gullible voters as a good thing for the ‘hard working individual’ no matter how incapable those people might be in participating in the wealth the economy created that has resulted in Great Gatsby like divisions in our society.

It is important to remember that tax cuts mostly benefit the wealthy while spending cuts always hurt the middle class and the poor a pattern that applies as much to Canada as it does the United States.

In fact, among OECD countries, Canada’s redistribution programs now rank only 22nd out of 29 countries in terms of their effectiveness in reducing income inequality.

This is why so many Canadian students are going to graduate with levels of debt that rivals a down payment on a first mortgage at the same time that income inequality rises at the fastest pace since the 1920s.

The pivotal elements of competitiveness are mostly determined by sustainable social investment, the quality of the work force, infrastructure, social peace, the rule of law, and the health of cities

We owe it to ourselves, and our fellow citizens, to understand that social justice and the economy are two sides of the same coin and to find the balance between unequal outcomes and equality of opportunity.

With that background let me turn to the outlook for Japan, Europe, the United States and China each of which is troubled but for different reasons.

First Japan.

As noted, because of its cultural barriers to institutional change and to immigration I think that Japan is in a permanent state of stagnation.

Simply, Japan is in 100 year decline and will be as important to the global economy by the end of this century as Portugal is today.

Europe is in the grips of a balance of payments crisis from which it cannot adjust.

While the depth and length of a certain European recession cannot be predicted, a continued credit crunch, sovereign-debt problems, lack of competitiveness, and fiscal austerity imply a serious downturn.

Europe is trapped in a Titanic-like currency union that is missing an ingredient much more important than fiscal balance, and that is labour mobility.

In a monetary union like Canada, if someone loses their employment they have two choices, live a life of poverty on social assistance or move to somewhere there are jobs.

In the Eurozone, an inefficient labour market, linguistic and cultural barriers makes it highly unlikely that the plumber in Athens is going to move to Stuttgart to look for work nor is the unemployed bank teller going to move from Madrid to Helsinki.

Moreover, countries like Greece and Italy are structurally uncompetitive and trapped into a currency they cannot afford, so they cannot benefit from a depreciating currency like Canada did in the mid-1990s to sort out their fiscal problems, and are only going to be crushed by ongoing rounds of austerity.

The breaking point maybe reached when a Greek national sets off a bomb in a German nightclub, it is the social dislocation that ultimately will bring an end to the Euro in its current form.

The US not only faces downside risks from the eurozone crisis, it must also contend with significant fiscal drag, ongoing deleveraging in the household sector (amid weak job creation, stagnant incomes, and persistent downward pressure on real estate and financial wealth), rising inequality, and political gridlock.

The US is also paying the price for a protracted period of under-investing in best in class justice, education and health outcomes, and tolerating Great Gatsby-like widening income inequality.

When my wife Taeko and I lived in Boston we were struck by how fearful Americans were; well in the United States middle income families seem to live over a trap door that can be suddenly sprung open by unemployment, divorce, an accident or even ill health.

And lower income families well they live directly underneath.

The American combination of economic insecurity, social inequity, and minimal government welfare support is proving to be a model incompatible with competing in the present day global economy.

The persistent underinvestment that the United States has made in primary and high school education has left the country with an estimated shortage of 2 million skilled workers that could take a big bite out of its high unemployment rate if they were available, but there’re not.

Anyone travelling in the United States today can see the impact of a lack of investment in roads and bridges, airports and railways.

The United States has begun the process of losing part of a generation of economic growth.

I would also remind you that the system of checks and balances that make up America’s political system have proven remarkably incapable of dealing with matters of national importance until it was almost too late, the dates 1861, 1933, and 1941 are a reminder of this truth.

Thankfully in Canada we have a parliamentary democracy that gives the Canadian Prime Minister with a majority a very strong hand even if our present day Prime Minister is well … ok let’s leave that for another day.

Meanwhile, the deep flaws in China’s growth model are becoming obvious.

Falling property prices are starting a chain reaction that will have a negative effect on developers, investment, and government revenue.

China’s outsized unequal economic results and withered civil society underlines that these types of outcomes are not just confined to countries where politics are market driven but also where the markets are politically driven, perhaps more so.

On the surface no country seems to have benefitted more than China from the last quarter century of globalisation.

Yet, I think there are very few countries that are going to pay a bigger price for the distortions to the economy, the state, and civil society than have been created in the wake of the state-directed push to modernize.

In China, the economy is a tool of the state to achieve narrow political ends that are not in the interests of the society as a whole specifically an elite drawn from the Communist Party, the bureaucracy, the People’s Liberation Army, and the National People’s Congress each competing amongst themselves to hold on and to profit from their political power.

While it is fashionable to forecast that China will easily become the world’s largest economy the much more important issue is what kind of shape China will be in when it gets there.

China has three very big problems among many.

First, the Chinese economy has the same woeful characteristics as Japan.

China’s tremendous bias to savings, investment, and exports, coupled with the financial, manufacturing, communication, information and transportation improvements in the global economy, at the very moment that China developed, has led to investment as a percentage of GDP to reach a level not seen anywhere before, a level well over 40%.

Driving this colossal rise in investment is a state directed banking system that floods money into capital rich projects divorced from any market discipline and supervised only by local party officials many of whom profit at same time.

Typical of this type of economy is a real estate centred boom, and China is no different.

Many measures of China’s real estate market are consistent with the real estate booms and busts experienced in Spain, the United States, Ireland and Japan.

Second, the crushing of the democracy movement in 1989 resulted in the re-assertion of the Communist Party over the levers of economic power symbolised by the rise of state owned enterprises in China.

China’s roughly 120,000 state-owned enterprises, and countless subsidiaries, receive about 75% of all bank loans, and during the massive stimulus to the Chinese economy in 2008, received about 90%.

The stories of corruption, price fixing, and illegal activities that constantly crop up are usually rooted in the small and privileged group of people who run these state owned firms and the long line of people behind them who benefit mostly family and friends.

It is remarkable how the closed, authoritarian, economically manipulated economies capture our imagination, countries that for a time seem invincible but ultimately, cannot find the keys to sustainability, which are openness and flexibility: Italy in 1920, Germany in 1930, Russia in 1970, Japan in 1980, and I think, China today.

Finally, China will become the world’s fastest ageing country by 2020 no matter what it does to inflect its fertility rate up in the next decade and will cause the labour force to start shrinking in about 5 years.

At the same time, China’s preference for boy babies over girl babies has resulted in the greatest imbalance between males and females in recorded human history.

China is short about 35 million women, and 15% of Chinese men will not be able to marry a female unless of course there is a second or even third husband.

Of note, the key difference between the demographic dynamics at work in China and Japan, is that Japan got rich then aged; China will become aged before it gets rich putting enormous pressure on Chinese society.

None of this is good for Canada because Japanese stagnation, the continued trust crisis in Europe, America’s economic and political gridlock, and unwinding the imbalances in China will continue to put great deflationary pressure on the global economy.

Consequently, the adjustment of the Canadian dollar which began in the summer of 2011 will continue, and I expect that the loonie will fall 10% against the US dollar by the end of the year.

The TSX’s performance being much more sensitive to the global business cycle since approximately 50% of its market cap is weighted towards resource prices will result in a drop of the TSX by about 10%.

Perversely because government finances are so dependent on resources and real estate the bond market will come under pressure and 10 year bond yields will rise by about 1%.

The real wild card for Canada is the property market particularly in Vancouver but being very long real estate in British Columbia I will do what any good analyst would do when confronted with a large downside risk to a sector they hold dear, start praying, in the year of living dangerously.

Thank you

Comment (1)

2012: The Year of Living Dangerously

Paul Summerville will offer a consideration of where markets are headed this year, and what this means for Canada.

Speaker’s biography:
Paul Summerville is an economist and Adjunct Professor at the Peter Gustavson School of Business at the University of Victoria. He has worked at a number of prominent financial firms including Deutsche Bank, Lehman Brothers, Richardson Greenshields, and TD Securities and is a frequent commentator on international economic issues on television and in press. He was a recent candidate for position of national policy chair with the Liberal Party of Canada, and he is currently writing a book — The Twin Virtues: Unequal Outcomes and Equality of Opportunity — on his website www.excellentfuture.ca.

Admission:
CIC Member price = $30.00
CIC Student Member price = $10.00
Non-Member price = $35.00

Cut-off date for registration: Sunday, February 12, 2012

Contact:
Maureen Bennett
maureenbennett@shaw.ca | (250) 385-8175

Comment (0)

Is the New Cold War Looming in East Asia

The CIC Victoria Branch presents “Is the New Cold War Looming in East Asia?” with speaker Dr. James Boutilier.

Admission:
CIC Member Price = $30.00
CIC Student Member Price = $10.00
Non-Member Price = $35.00

Registration:
Maureen Bennett
MaureenBennett@shaw.ca
(250) 385-8175
By December 11, 2011

Speaker’s biography:
Dr. James Boutilier is the Special Advisor (Policy) at Canada’s Maritime Forces Pacific Headquarters in Esquimalt, British Columbia. He is responsible for advising the Commander of Maritime Forces Pacific on matters of defence and foreign policy and maritime security in the Asia-Pacific region. Prior to his appointment at MARPAC, Dr. Boutilier spent 24 years on staff at the Royal Roads Military College in Victoria as Head of the History Department and then as Dean of Arts. He is also an adjunct professor of Pacific and Asian Studies at the University of Victoria and the President of the Maritime Awards Society of Canada.

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Embracing Democracy in the Balkans: Insights for the Middle East?

A luncheon talk by one of the foremost scholars of the Balkans, exploring the complex and challenging facets of state- and nation-building in weak states with little democratic experience and daunting socio-economic problems, and considering the possible lessons for the Middle East.

Admission:
CIC Member Price $30.00
CIC Student Member Price $10.00
Non-Member Price $35.00

About Speaker: 
Lenard J. Cohen is the co-founder of the School for International Studies at Simon Fraser University and, since 2009, Professor Emeritus. His interests include comparative political development with a special emphasis on the East European, Balkan and Eurasian regions and he is the author, most recently, of Embracing Democracy in the Western Balkans: From Post-Conflict Struggles toward European Integration.

Contact:
Maureen Bennett
maureenbennett@shaw.ca
(250) 385-8175  

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Integrated Intelligence and Deployability: Our National Challenge

The Victoria Branch of the Canadian International Council presents

“Integrated Intelligence and Deployability: Our National Challenge”

With Senator Hugh Segal

Admission:
CIC Member Price $30.00
Non-Member Price $35.00

Registration:
Email Scott Montague 
scott.montague@3drotator.com 
By Friday, November 16, 2001 

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Arctic Sovereignty

NOTICE

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2008–LUNCHEON AND MEETING

SPEAKER: PROFESSOR FRANKLYN GRIFFITHS

One of Canada’s leading experts on Arctic, Russian and International Security Affairs

TOPIC: ARCTIC SOVEREIGNTY

Price: $27.00 at the door—preferably by cheque payable to “CIC”

Parking: City car park on Fisgard St. across from Ambrosia

(c) if there are any dietary restrictions.

Ifthere are any last minute changes to your lunch attendance plans or if yourtelephoner does not make contact with you by eight days before the lunch,please notify our Secretary, Evelyn Ranger, at 250-361-4445 as soon aspossible.

NEXT MEETING

Monday,January 19, Peter Jones –Track Two Diplomacy andthe CIC

Dr. Peter Jones, a CIC Associate Research Fellow, is an AssociateProfessor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa,teaching and conducting research and project management on Track Two diplomacyand Middle East issues. Over the last 20 yearsDr. Jones has held a variety of senior policy and intelligence analysisappointments in the Privy Council Office, Department of National Defence andDepartment of Foreign Affairs as well as a four-year period in the mid-ninetiesas the Project Leader for the Middle East Security and Arms Control Project atthe Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Stockholm, Sweden.

He completed his undergraduate degree in history at Trent University,a MA in War Studies at the Royal Military College of Canada and a PhD in WarStudies from King’s College, Universityof London. His currentand past professional associations include Visiting Scholar, The School ofAdvanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Washington, DC;Senior Visiting Fellow, The Regional Centre for Conflict Prevention, JordanInstitute for Diplomacy, Amman, Jordan; Member of the Pugwash Council, theinternational governing body of the Pugwash Conference on Science and WorldAffairs for the 2007-2012 period; Member of the National Board of the CanadianAssociation for Security and Intelligence Studies (CASIS); Senior Fellow,Queen’s Centre for International Relations, Queen’s University, Kingston,Ontario; and Research Fellow, The Centre for Foreign Policy Studies, DalhousieUniversity, Halifax.

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Russia: A Grass Roots View of a Superpower

The Honourable Mary Collins

Russia: A Grass Roots View of a Superpower

• $27 at the door — preferably by cheque payableto “CIC”
• Parking: City car park on Fisgard Street across fromAmbrosia
• Please notify EVELYN RANGER erangercic@shaw.ca orcall 250.361.4445

Mary Collins is the President of Amarok Holdings Ltd. basedin Vancouver, B.C.
She has recently returned from serving as Resident CanadianAdvisor in Cheboksary, Russia, on a Health Reform Project for theChuvash Republic. In recent years she has undertaken internationalprojects in Russia, Ukraine and Vietnam related to capacitydevelopment for women, good governance and health reform.

Earlier in her career, she served as an elected Member ofParliament in the Canadian government and as a Minister, and wasthe first woman in Canada to serve in a Defence Portfolio asAssociate Minister of National Defence. Later she was the Ministerof Health for Canada and also Minister responsible for the Statusof Women. In addition to her service in government and role in theprivate sector, Mary has been an active board member of manyorganizations locally and nationally, including the Vancouver Boardof Trade, the Vancouver Library Board, Queens University and theCanadian Association of Former Parliamentarians.

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A Visit to Afghanistan

NOTICE OF AGM DINNER  MEETING

Speakers: Brigadier-General (Ret’d) Don Macnamara & Lieutenant-Commander Kris Phillips
Topic: A Visit to Afghanistan

Having just returned from a fact-finding mission to Afghanistan the CIC Victoria Branch President and the Canadian Forces Regional Public Affairs Officer are enthusiastic to share with members information & their observations on  progress in that country.

Time:             6:00 pm No Host Bar
                      6:30 pm A short Annual General Meeting
                      7:00 pm Dinner followed by Speakers Presentation
Price: $35.00 at the door, – preferably by cheque payable to “CIC”
Parking: On site

Brigadier-General Don Macnamara, OMM, CD (Retired), a specialist in national & international security affairs, is a retired air force Brigadier General who spent 37 years in the  Canadian Forces, serving in Canada, Britain, Europe & the United States.  On retirement. he joined the faculty of the Queen’s School of Business as a professor of international business.  He contributes as a media defence & national security analyst & community speaker, & has made visits to Afghanistan in each of the last two years – and one 25 years ago. He is President of the Victoria Branch and serves on the National Board of the CIC and chairs the Strategic Studies Working Group.

Lieutenant-Commander Kris Phillips, CD, a Career Naval Officer and Public Affairs Officer has had extensive experience in the Afghanistan theatre since the early days of Operation Enduring Freedom (US), otherwise known as Operation Appollo (CA) in 2002, when he was Combat Camera Team  leader during the hunt for Osama bin Laden.  He has also served in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Persian Gulf, Haiti and on the US Gulf Coast  (post hurricane Katrina ) He is now the  Regional Director of the National Defence Public Affairs Office in Vancouver and was an escort for Don Macnamara and Ken Summers  during their recent visit to Afghanistan in late March. 

Kindly Note:  When your telephoner calls, please be prepared to indicate:
•    whether or not you plan to attend the  dinner and meeting,
•    names of any guests (spouses & non-repetitive guests are most welcome), and if there are any dietary restrictions. If there are any last minute changes to your dinner attendance plans or if your telephoner does not make contact with you by four days before the dinner, please call our Telephone Coordinator Mrs Elizabeth Fraser at 658-8525 as soon as possible.

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Changing Dynamics in Canada – U.S. Relations

The Victoria Branch Conference The Changing Dynamics ofCanada-US Relations, will be held May 12-13 Dunsmuir Lodge,Victoria BC, and will feature a keynote address by Pamela Wallin,former Consul General for Canada in New York, on “TheRealities of Canada-U.S. Relations”, and panelists includingformer US Ambassador Paul Celucci and Canadian Ambassadors RaymondChrétien and Michael Kergin. Panelist are academics andpractitioners from the United stages and Canada, including CharlesDoran, Dwight Mason, and Christopher Sands from the US and DavidBercuson, James Fergusson, VAdm J.Y. Forcier, Jack Granatstein,Michael Hart, Larry Herman and Alex Moens. Those interested inattending this outstanding conference may contact Victoria BranchPresident BGen(Ret) Don Macnamara ( dmacnamara@business.queensu.ca)or Vice-President RAdm(Ret) Ken Summers (kensummers@shaw.ca) forfurther details.

 See the attached program for conference and agenda andregistration information.
Contact Email nancybou@telus.net

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