Letter from the president

Welcome to the National Capital Branch’s website. Our large and expanding membership includes a wide variety of people with vast experience in one or more aspects of foreign policy including politicians and many public servants from various government departments as well as members from the private sector, young professionals and students from the Norman Paterson School of International affairs at Carleton and the Centre for International Policy at the University of Ottawa. A major thrust over the past year was to reach out to students with a series of events organized as “Politics in the Pub”. In terms of raising our profile, almost every one of our dinner events is now taped by CPAC for future broadcast and there is a link to them on this site. Over the past two years we’ve welcomed over a hundred new members under 35. Our Youth caucus meets regularly to discuss how to engage with young professionals. We’ve held a series of a career-orientation ‘speed date’ evenings at Carleton, in association with Fen Hampson and the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, and at the University of Ottawa with the support of Roland Paris and the Center for International Policy Studies.

The work of the branch brings us into closer relationships with the departments and agencies of the Canadian Government, especially DFAIT, PCO, CSIS, DND, Industry Canada, Finance and CIDA. We are grateful for their cooperation and support.

We are especially grateful for the continuing collaboration with the IDRC – their support has made possible many of our special initiatives. This includes a very successful day-long public conference on Iran in Context: Regional and Global Implications hosted in early May.

The National Capital Branch has several autonomous units:

The CIC Ottawa Foreign Policy Initiative, headed by Gerry Wright and Craig Hunter, organises public and private seminars to engage policymakers and stakeholders from inside and outside government to discuss topical international issues. In the autumn a public seminar was held at DFAIT which looked at a number of issues raised by last year’s Open Canada report. The various presentations are available on CIC’s general site. The FPI continues to hold seminars bringing together policymakers and stakeholders from inside and outside government to discuss topical international issues with future sessions likely to include the Arctic, Canada and Europe, and Hemispheric Security.

Three study groups look independently at the Middle East (Peter Larson), Latin America (Ken Johnson) and Africa (Paul Hitschfeld). Most recently the Middle East study group hosted a session open to the wider membership at City Hall on developments in the Arab world with former Ambassador Michel de Salaberry.

The new Executive elected in June looks forward to continuing to make the National Capital Branch one of the leading actors in terms of discussion of important issues in the development and delivery of Canadian foreign policy and to the overall work of the CIC at the national level.

John J. Noble
President, CIC-National Capital Branch