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TORONTO 2004

HALIFAX 2003

TORONTO 2002
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Searching for New Liberalism: Speakers

Howard Aster

Howard Aster, Ph.D., is a retired professor of Political Science from McMaster University.

In addition to his work in academia, Dr. Aster has served on the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of the CBC, and has been a consultant to numerous Government of Canada departments, including Foreign Affairs, Employment and Immigration, the Canadian Conference of the Arts, Goldfarb Consultants, and has acted as a Policy Advisor to the Minister of the Secretary of State.

Dr. Aster is now the publisher at Mosaic Press and the author/editor of 11 books, most recently "What's Left? The NDP in Renewal" plus over 100 articles.

Lloyd Axworthy

Lloyd Axworthy is Director and CEO of the Liu Centre for the Study of Global Issues at the University of British Columbia and holds positions on several boards and companies. He joined the law firm of Fraser Milner Casgrain as a consultant on trade and international affairs. He is a Board member of the MacArthur Foundation, Human Rights Watch, Lester B. Pearson College, University of the Arctic, Impacs (Institute for Media, Policy and Civil Society), the Conflict Analysis and Management Advisory Board at Royal Roads University and on the Port of Churchill Advisory Board. He is also serving as Chairman of the Human Security Centre for the United Nations University for Peace (UPEACE), member of the Eminent Persons Group on Small Arms, Co-Chair of the State of the World Forum, Commission on Globalization, and Honourary Chairman of the Canadian Landmine Foundation. Dr. Axworthy is a UNICEF Canada special representative. In November, as Oxfam's special humanitarian envoy for Afghanistan, Dr. Axworthy led a mission to Pakistan to assess the humanitarian crisis. In May, 2002, he lead the Commonwealth Election Observer team to Sierra Leone.

Dr. Axworthy graduated in 1961 with a B.A. from United College (now the University of Winnipeg), obtained his M.A. in Political Science from Princeton University in 1963, subsequently earning a PhD from Princeton in 1972.

Lloyd Axworthy's political career spanned 27 years, during six of which he served in the Manitoba Legislative Assembly and 21 in the Federal Parliament. First elected federally in 1979 as Liberal MP for Winnipeg-Fort Garry, Mr. Axworthy was re-elected in 1980, 1984, 1988, 1993 and 1997. He held several Cabinet positions, notably Minister of Employment and Immigration, Minister Responsible for the Status of Women, Minister of Transport, of Human Resources Development, of Western Economic Diversification and Minister of Foreign Affairs.

He continues to be involved in international matters, leading the Canadian delegation to The Hague Conference on Climate Change and as Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS). Dr. Axworthy lectures widely in Canada, the US and abroad.

Tom Axworthy

Thomas S. Axworthy is Executive Director of The Historica Foundation of Canada, a Toronto-based charitable organization with the mission to foster the enhancement of Canadianism. He is an Adjunct Lecturer at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, as well as Chairman of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada. In recognition of his outstanding achievement and service in the field of history and heritage, Dr. Axworthy was recently made an Officer of the Order of Canada.

From 1981 to 1984, Dr. Axworthy was Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister of Canada, the Right Honourable Pierre Trudeau. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. from Queen's University in 1970 and 1979 respectively and was a visiting student at Nuffield College, Oxford University, in 1972-73.

Dr. Axworthy is also the author and editor of several books and articles including Our American Cousins: The United States Through Canadian Eyes (Toronto, Ont.: James Lorimer & Co., 1987), Marching to a Different Drummer: An Essay on the Liberals and Conservatives in Convention (Toronto, Ont.: Stoddart, 1988) and Towards a Just Society: The Trudeau Years (Markham, Ont.: Penguin Books, 1990).

Peter Biro

Peter L. Biro is a Partner at the Toronto firm of Goodman and Carr LLP practising in the areas of civil and commercial litigation. Peter's cases have ranged from private commercial disputes, both domestic and international, to constitutional and administrative public law matters, including local and international human rights matters, Charter cases and judicial review of administrative action. He appears regularly before various courts and tribunals in Canada.

Peter obtained his B.A. from the University of Guelph in 1982, his M.A. in Political Science from McMaster University in 1985, and pursued doctoral studies in political philosophy and Canadian government at the University of Toronto. Peter then attended McGill University's Faculty of Law where, in 1991, he obtained law degrees in both civil and common law and was awarded the Fern Gertrude Kennedy Prize in Jurisprudence and the Nathan Cotler Memorial Prize in Human Rights law. Peter has presented papers to and taught at various institutions including: The Canadian Bar Association, The Canadian Corporate Counsel Association, The Institute for International Research, Insight, Lorman Education Services, and Seneca College.

A frequently published author, Peter has written for both academic and trade journals on a wide variety of legal subjects. He is often quoted in the media in connection with his cases and on matters in which he is called upon to comment. In addition, Peter has appeared frequently as guest commentator on Court TV and CP24.

Sandford Borins

Sandford Borins is Professor of Public Management in the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and Chair of the Division of Management at the University of Toronto at Scarborough. He has been a visiting professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley.

Professor Borins's current research deals with public management innovation from a comparative perspective, focusing on a variety of economically advanced and developing countries. He regularly speaks about public management innovation to public servants at all levels of government in Canada and the United States.

Professor Borins has also had a wide range of professional experience. He is a rapporteur for conferences held by the Commonwealth Association for Public Administration and Management and the Canadian and Ontario governments. He was a member of the selection panels for the Commonwealth Association for Public Administration and Management and Institute of Public Administration of Canada innovation awards, as well as chair of the selection panel for the Amethyst Award for Excellence in the Ontario Public Service. He was a member of the board of directors of the Ontario Transportation Capital Corporation, which developed Ontario's Highway 407, the world's most advanced electronic toll road.

Professor Borins received his B.A. magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1971, his Master in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government in 1974 and his Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University in 1976. He is the author of numerous articles on public management, as well as five books. For more detailed information, visit his home page.

Candis Callison

Candis Callison is a doctoral candidate in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She recently completed a master's degree in Comparative Media Studies at MIT focusing on issues related to visual culture, media convergence, and digital representations of the environment. An account of some of the ideas behind her master's thesis, "A Digital Assemblage: Diagramming the Social Realities of the Stikine Watershed" was recently published in Canadian Living Magazine.

Candis' previous professional background includes producing, writing and reporting for television, the Internet, print, and radio in Canada (CBC, CTV, APTN, Knowledge Network) and the United States (Lycos, Tech TV). For her pioneering work in media convergence, she was featured in the Canadian book, Technology with Curves: Women Reshaping the Digital Landscape. Born and raised in British Columbia, Candis is a member of the Tahltan Nation. She currently lives with her husband in Boston, Massachusetts.

Ed Cowan

Edgar (Ed) Cowan is a management and marketing consultant in the cultural and mass media sector.

Mr. Cowan was a former publisher of Saturday Night Magazine, founding partner of CityTV in Toronto, President of Lively Arts Market Builders Inc. and the C Channel cultural pay television network. He was Deputy Director, Broadcast Centre, at the 1988 Calgary Olympic Games, media investment advisor to the Business Development Bank of Canada, and strategic marketing advisor to BCE/Bell/Stentor on the launch and rollout of the Sympatico Internet Service.

Mr. Cowan has also served on many national cultural boards including: the Toronto International Film Festival, National Theatre School, The Niagara Institute, Canadian Conference of the Arts, Writer's Development Trust, and as an advisory board member of The Canada Council's, Arts Venture Capital Fund and the Ontario Cultural Industries Council.

Wayne Hunt

Wayne Hunt is a Professor in the Faculty of Social Science at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick. He has lectured at many universities in North America and Europe. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a Visiting Fellow in the Centre for International Studies at the London School of Economics.

Dr. Hunt has published a number of articles in the fields of political leadership, the challenge of new technologies, and the changing role of the media in international politics. He is the head of an international study looking at the evolving role of the media in North America and in Russia. He has also been active in partisan politics and has stood as a candidate for the Liberal nomination in the riding of Algoma-Manitoulin.

Brooke Jeffrey

Brooke Jeffrey teaches public policy and federalism at Concordia University, where she is Director of the Graduate Program in Public Administration in the Department of Political Science.

A former senior public servant and Liberal policy advisor, Dr. Jeffrey is the author of several books on Canadian public policy and a frequent media commentator on current issues. Her most recent work is "Hard Right Turn: The New Face of Neoconservatism in Canada."

Chris Jones

Chris Jones is the Director of Government Relations at the Railway Association of Canada. In this capacity, he advocates for improved fiscal and infrastructure treatment of freight and passenger railways by Federal and Provincial Governments.

Mr. Jones has worked on Parliament Hill in Ottawa as a political advisor to several politicians. He has also worked for an investment bank in London, England. He has degrees from Queen's University, the London School of Economics, and Oxford University. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on the relationships between the member companies of the European Airbus consortium and their sponsoring national governments.

Alison Loat

Alison Loat is the Director of Development of Canada25, a non-profit organization that works to get young people meaningfully engaged in public policy in Canada, where she is responsible for strategic development and fundraising. Alison has been involved in Canada25 since the its founding in May 2000, and served as its first executive director.

Alison is also a candidate for the Masters of Public Policy (MPP) degree from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Prior to graduate school, she worked as a consultant at the Medical and Related Sciences (MARS) Discovery District, a public/private organization working to accelerate Canada's ability to commercialize its medical and related research, and as a business analyst in the Toronto office of McKinsey & Company.

Alison has an honours degree in political studies from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, where she served as Vice-President (University Affairs) of the Alma Mater Society, the undergraduate student government, and as a News Editor at the Queen's Journal.

Lorna Marsden

Lorna Marsden, who is currently President & Vice-Chancellor of York University, has spent her career in universities — receiving her BA from the University of Toronto, her PhD from Princeton, teaching and administering at the universities of Toronto, Wilfrid Laurier and York. She has been thinking about the role of universities in Canadian social and economic life for many years.

For eight and a half years between 1984 and 1992, she served as Senator in the Parliament of Canada where she was engaged in committees dealing with social and economic issues. Since 1970 she has been involved in the policy committees of the Liberal Party of Canada serving as a vice-president of the LPC and Chair of the National Policy Committee for several years. In Liberal International she has worked on policy matters having to do with social and economic affairs.

Underlying these policy concerns is her work in labour markets, labour force and population studies. Her early, key book was "The Fragile Federation: Social Change in Canada" (with Edward B. Harvey).

Antonia Maioni

Antonia Maioni is Director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada, as well as holding the positions of Associate Professor of Political Science and William Dawson Scholar at McGill University, and is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Health Administration, Université de Montréal.

She studied at Université Laval and subsequently earned a master's degree at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University and a doctorate at Northwestern University. She has held visiting appointments at the Center for European Studies at Harvard and in the North American Studies Program at Duke University, as well as the European University Institute.

Professor Maioni has published in the fields of Canadian and comparative politics, with a particular focus on health and social policy. She is the author of Parting at the Crossroads: The Emergence of Health Insurance in the United States and Canada (published by Princeton University Press in 1998). She is currently investigating political change and the future of the Canadian health care model, with funding provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Michael Marzolini

Michael Marzolini is Chairman and CEO of POLLARA, the strategic public opinion research firm he founded as Insight Canada Research in 1985. In this role, he provides research-driven counsel on corporate image, strategic positioning, public affairs, marketing and communications to a wide range of companies, institutions and industry associations in North America.

Michael has more than 20 years of marketing and public affairs research experience. Prior to establishing his own firm, Michael was a consultant with several market and behavioural research organizations in Canada and the United States. He also served ten years with Canada Systems Group as a senior data manager and statistician.

Michael specializes in public affairs and corporate image research, and advises the senior management of many of North America's largest corporations on how to position their firms in the rapidly changing marketing and public affairs environment. As Chairman of POLLARA, Michael oversees projects, participates in the analysis of qualitative and quantitative studies, and works with the firm's clients to implement the resulting strategic recommendations.

In addition to his work for private sector firms and for government, Michael is also the official pollster for the Liberal Party of Canada.

Désirée McGraw

For the past 16 years, Désirée Marielle McGraw has worked as a consultant, researcher, reporter and spokesperson in the field of international relations on issues ranging from peace and security to environment and sustainable development. Currently, as a lecturer on globalization and governance at McGill University, Désirée is also a Director of the G8 Research Group based at the University of Toronto's Munk Center for International Studies.

Désirée serves on the board or executive of several national and international associations, including the International Federation of University Women, the International Studies Association, the Academic Council of the United Nations System, the UN Association of Canada, the Canadian Institute for International Affairs, and the London Goodenough Association of Canada.

Désirée currently works as a senior associate with Stratos, an Ottawa-based consulting firm specializing in "strategies to sustainability." As an expert on international negotiations and communications, she has advised a range of clients in the private and public sectors both in Canada and abroad. Désirée first became involved with the United Nations at age 18 when she was appointed by the Governor General of Canada to serve as a youth advisor to the Canadian Delegation to the UN's Third Special Session on Disarmament. Since that time, she has served on several national delegations to UN summits. Following her appointment by UN Under-Secretary-General Maurice Strong to serve as one of two World Youth Ambassadors to the 1992 Earth Summit, she spent four years working as a reporter for the Earth Negotiations Bulletin (1993-1997), a global multimedia reporting service on environment and development.

David Pecaut

David Pecaut is the CEO of iFormation Group, a global company that builds new technology ventures out of the existing businesses and legacy assets of Global 2000 companies. Prior to launching iFormation, David managed the Canadian practice of The Boston Consulting Group and led BCG's global e-commerce practice area.

A well-known speaker and writer, David has been an advisor to companies and governments on public policy issues in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. David has maintained an avid interest in urban policy generally and Toronto's future in particular as both consultant and community leader. While at BCG he lead the pro bono economic study of the future of Toronto for the Anne Golden Task Force on the GTA. In 1997 he led a joint effort between BCG and the Bank of Nova Scotia to analyze how the financial services sector drives economic growth in the city. More recently, he was a featured speaker at the Toronto City Summit.

David was also founder and chair of the Canadian eBusiness Roundtable, a public/private forum that brought together business leaders and government ministers to formulate policy recommendations for attracting new businesses to Canada and to foster the development of a sustainable high-growth technology sector. David also co-founded — and serves on the Board of — Career Edge, Canada's national youth internship program.

David holds a Master's in Philosophy from the University of Sussex, England, and a BA magna cum laude from Harvard University.

Michael Phelps

Michael E.J. Phelps is Chairman of the Advisory Board, Duke Energy Gas Transmission — Canada. From January 1988 to 2002, he served as President and Chief Executive Officer, and subsequently as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, of Westcoast Energy Inc., Vancouver, BC.

In 2001, Mr. Phelps was appointed as an Officer to the Order of Canada. He currently holds the position of Distinguished University Fellow and Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Commerce, the University of British Columbia.

Mr. Phelps sits on the Board of Directors of Duke Energy Corporation, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Canadian Pacific Railway Company and Canfor Corporation. He is Chairman of the Board of Altura Growth Fund and serves on the Boards of Fairborne Energy Ltd. and the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada. Mr. Phelps is also a Member of the Advisory Board, Aon Reed Stenhouse Inc., a Member of the Advisory Council, the University of British Columbia - Faculty of Commerce and Business Administration and the Leading Edge Endowment Fund.

Mark Podlasly

Mark Podlasly, a member of the N'laka'pmx First Nation in B.C., has been working with the Harvard JFK School of Government and the Harvard Business School as a Teaching Fellow and Research Associate.

A recent Master of Public Administration (MPA) graduate from Harvard University, Podlasly's background includes over ten years of experience in business development and project management with Westcoast Energy (now Duke Energy), advising and consultation with the Federal Treaty Negotiation Office in Vancouver, and developing a telecommunications strategy in Arizona for Motorola Corporation and the Hopi Indian Nation. He also led a 1998 attempt to reclaim 500,000 acres of contiguous privately owned tribal territory in British Columbia through use of private capital and the creation of joint ventures.

His article titled, "Are Aboriginal People Canadian?: An Examination of What it Means to be Canadian in a Shared Land" was recently published in the Literary Review of Canada. He is married and temporarily resides in Boston, Massachusetts.

John Polanyi

John Polanyi, educated at Manchester University, England, was a post-doctoral fellow at Princeton University and the National Research Council of Canada. He is presently a faculty member in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Toronto. He is a member of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada (P.C.), and a Companion of the Order of Canada (C.C.). His awards include the 1986 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the Royal Medal of the Royal Society of London, and some thirty honorary degrees from six countries.

He has served on the Prime Minister of Canada's Advisory Board on Science and Technology and the Premier's Council of Ontario. He was a founding member of both the Committee on Scholarly Freedom of the Royal Society, and a further international human rights organization, the Canadian Committee for Scientists and Scholars, of which he is the current President. Additionally he was the founding Chairman of the Canadian Pugwash Group in 1960, and has been active for four decades in International Pugwash.

Dr. Polyani has written extensively on science policy, the control of armaments, and peacekeeping. He is co-editor of a book, "The Dangers of Nuclear War", and was a participant in the "Canada 21" study of a 21st century defence posture for Canada. He was co-chair (with Sir Brian Urquhart) of the Department of Foreign Affairs International Consultative Committee on a Rapid Response Capability for the United Nations.

Sherri Torjman

Sherri Torjman is Vice-President of the Caledon Institute of Social Policy. She has written extensively on various aspects of social policy. She is the author of many Caledon reports including Reclaiming Our Humanity, The Social Dimension of Sustainable Development and From Information to Application: How Communities Learn.

Ms. Torjman wrote the welfare series of reports for the National Council of Welfare and has written four books on disability policy. She has taught a course in social policy at the McGill University School of Social Work.

Ms. Torjman worked for the House of Commons Committee on the Disabled, the House of Commons Special Committee on Child Care and the Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies. She is a former Director of The Trillium Foundation.