This week the leaders of the three NAFTA nations are meeting in Mexico for an opportunity to tune up NAFTA and repair some points of political contention between “Los Tres Amigos.” Much of the media reporting on the meeting has taken a negative approach to the gathering, pointing out points of contention between the three friends. […]
Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported that more crude oil is being sent by sea and inland waterways as a supplement to railways and pipelines. Since 2010, the amount of oil shipped on barges from the Midwest down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico has increased 13 times. Much of this […]
Finland has a smaller profile in the Arctic than its neighbor to the west, Norway. Whereas Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg declared at last week’s Arctic Frontiers conference that the Arctic will continue to be “most important foreign policy area” for her country, Finland’s most important foreign policy area is arguably Russia, with which it […]
Although last week’s Arctic Frontiers conference in Tromsø, Norway focused on the activities of “humans in the Arctic,” from sleeping habits to snowmobile accidents in Svalbard, top politicians still made headline appearances. The Prime Minister of Norway, along with Greenland’s Prime Minister and Finland’s Foreign Minister, spoke on Tuesday, the second day of the conference. […]
On January 8, in Inuvik, Northwest Territories, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper presided over the groundbreaking ceremony of the extension of the Dempster Highway to Tuktoyaktuk, on the Arctic Ocean’s coastline. The extension will lengthen the highway 137 kilometers, finally bringing an all-weather road to Tuk. The existing road, which opened in 1979, stretches 730 […]
“We do not give up the North Pole. Canada’s claims to the North Pole are no more than ambition.” So declared Russian polar explorer and scientist Artur Chilingarov on December 11, whom President Vladimir Putin named a “Hero of Russia” after he famously planted his country’s flag on the seabed underneath the North Pole in 2007. […]
Dr. Janice Gross Stein is the Director of the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, where she is the Belzberg Professor of Conflict Management in the Department of Political Science. Dr. Stein is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a member of the Order of Canada and the […]
Over the next year Latin America will likely redefine the region’s relationship with the rest of the world for the next decade. As many saw 2008 as the year China gained its current international reputation, Brazil and Latin America will likely become more important to those of us who live outside the region beginning in 2014. […]
I attended the American Geological Union (AGU) Fall Meeting this week in San Francisco. It’s billed as “the largest worldwide conference in geophysical science,” with over 20,000 attendants. There was a vast number of talks on the cryosphere, which I’ll try to cover over the next few days. One session I attended, “Frontier Science from Extended Continental […]
The Filipino diaspora is one of the most widespread in the world, with members making their homes from Alaska to the UAE. The FT reports that in 2012, overseas Filipino sent $21 billion back to their country of origin. Now, in the wake of Typhoon Yolanda, one of the most powerful storms in recorded history, […]
The Olympic torch for the upcoming Winter Games in Sochi, Russia has made quite the journey so far. It’s only a little over a month into its 123-day, 65,000 kilometer relay, but already, the torch has made it to the frigid north and even outer space. This past week, cosmonauts carried the torch during the […]
Editor’s Note: The following article was recently published in SITREP, The Journal of the Royal Canadian Military Institute. Re-Published with Permission from SITREP, Issue #6 Nov – Dec 2013 by Reza Akhlaghi Silicon Valley in the southern region of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California has been home to America’s most innovative […]
Canada and the European Union are working out the final details of their newly minted Free Trade Agreement. The first of these modern agreements will be completed with Canada in the midst of new agreements being discussed with Brazil as well as added access for Colombians and with Mercosur as a whole. The Canadian agreement […]
Recent news from the information provided by Edward Snowden has placed the United States out of favour with Brazil when it was revealed that the U.S. has been spying on Brazil. Along with the U.S. allegation, Canada was also brought into the debate when it was alleged that Canadian intelligence agents have been sourcing private […]
“It’s so far, but so very near to us now.” This is what Dr. Uttam Kumar Sinha observed during the opening of the AsiArctic conference at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis (IDSA) in New Delhi, India last week. India received observer status in the Arctic Council in May of this year, along with […]
