The present volume records the papers delivered at the Society’s Symposium held in Ottawa on Saturday, November 20, 1999. An introductory chapter has been added afterward to better define the spirit in which the 1999 symposium was conceived, designed and realized.

I would like to thank the Society’s Program Committee and my colleagues from the Centre on Governance at the University of Ottawa for their assistance. I also thank the personnel of the Ottawa office of the Society (Nancy Schenk, Shawna Lawson, Sophie Buoro, Sandy Jackson and Nancy Lessard) for having taken care of all organizational matters.

I would also...

The financial crisis in Asia in 1997 triggered a lively and sometimes raucous debate on the need to redesign the so-called architecture of the postwar Bretton Woods institutions, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. What has resulted thus far is most aptly described as improved plumbing and interior design. One should not disparage these incremental improvements although basic issues, especially overlap between the two institutions and the longer-term role of the private sector in burden-sharing, have not been confronted and likely won’t be until the next financial crisis.

But that’s not what I want to talk about today....

Canadians have a distorted view of the world system and of their own place in it. This is inherited both from the post-World War II experience, when Canada stood tall among nations because of the fact that so many of them had been badly damaged during the 1939-45 war period, and from the activist Pearson era when Canada played a leadership role in world affairs. One may get a visual sense of this aggrandized self-portrait in the maps of the world as presented in Air Canada in-flight magazines. In these maps, Toronto, Montréal and Vancouver are nodes toward which every...

It is a trite observation that corporations have an enormous and multidimensional impact on Canadian society. Decisions taken by management on a day-to-day basis affect the profitability of the corporation and the value of shareholder investments as well as the security of the stakes of others with financial claims against the corporation, including employees, creditors, customers and suppliers, and the interests of the community in which the corporation operates. The interests of these stakeholders coincide in most cases: all have a general interest in the financial health of the corporation. Sometimes, however, the value of the shareholders’ investment in the...

My task in this short paper is to portray the big picture of where we have come from and where we are in the contentious policy area of Aboriginal/non-Aboriginal relations. I do so in the hope that such understanding will position us to make better future choices than the past choices which have led to our present troubled situation. This is not a policy area for the incautious and the unwary. Uncertainty, ambiguity, the ruinous consequences of past policy, rapid change, the voice appropriation thesis, and the language of nationalism all contribute to the highly politicized discourse that attends policy...

Les concepts de gouvernance et de société civile sont tous deux polysé-miques—le second davantage que le premier—et également idéologiques, le second maintenant plus souvent marqué à droite: c’est la première piste de réflexion que je voudrais poursuivre avec vous aujourd’hui (I). Par ailleurs, au moins deux types d’intersection entre gouvernance et société civile sont actuellement présents au Canada. Une première intersection, majeure, se situe en terrain néo-libéral, où elle tente d’evacuer l’État au profit de mécanismes de domination favorables aux intervenants auxquels profite le rapport de force—lire: le marché. La seconde, moins envahissante, ancrée dans un autre...

The centrality of science has led to the development of elaborate schemes for managing university research. Those being managed—of whom I am one—too seldom express their views as to the merits of these schemes. To do so, they reason, would be to engage in politics. They prefer to do science. We may honour them for their devotion to what they do, but we should blame them for their irresponsibility in failing to challenge the policy-makers.

The first step in opening a debate with government would be to come to an agreement as to the nature of university science....

In reality, no one is in charge of our Canadian health care system. No one single player controls it. In fact, it would be more accurate to speak in the plural of our ten—more precisely thirteen—health care systems, since they are provincially and territorially based. Yet, the first statement is not completely erroneous and this communication intends to discuss governance issues as they apply to our national health care system. We will present our views on the dysfunctions and the challenges of governance at both the macro and meso levels.

What do we mean by governance? Governance is...

For the armed forces the pace of change since the end of the Cold War in 1989 has been extraordinary. This has accompanied simultaneous changes in both international security and domestic society. One of the effects of the period of domestic and international turbulence since 1989, is that the “people dimension” of the British armed services and of the Canadian Forces (CF) has become a central problem in defence debates. In Great Britain the outcome of the Strategic Defence Review has meant that a range of personnel issues—equal opportunities in employment and “over-stretch” for example—have moved up the...