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Security hawks have it dead wrong. Conventional, not nuclear-powered, submarines are the right choice for Canada, for nuclear non-proliferation and for global stability.

(An oped at Globe and Mail with Jon Hartley) Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland recently announced that the government of Canada  will no longer issue inflation-protected "real return" bonds. A kerfuffle erupted.The government may wish to avoid inflation-protected bonds, because it thinks inflation will get a lot worse than markets do. But betting in markets is not a responsible strategy.If the government won't do it, corporations, banks and financial institutions should issue these bonds themselves rather than just complain. Not every asset must be provided by the government.Real return bonds adjust both principal and interest for inflation. If inflation goes up, you get more money back. Nice. But when everyone expects inflation, you pay a commensurately higher price ahead of time.With 5-per-cent inflation, say, a real return bond might pay 1 per cent, so you get 6 per cent after inflation adjustment; but a regular bond will pay something like 6 per cent already. Like everything in finance, it's really about risk: Real return bonds protect against the risk that inflation will turn out worse than bond markets expect. Regular bonds have lost 11 per cent of their real value since January, 2021, because of inflation that markets did not expect. Those who bought real return bonds were protected from this risk.For this reason, long-term real return bonds are very useful, and ought to be more popular than they are. They can provide a steady stream of real payments immune from inflation or interest rate risk. As such, they can make an ideal component of any long-term portfolio, such as a retirement portfolio or an endowment. So, complain the members of the Canadian Fixed-Income Forum and other Canadian pension managers, it is a huge mistake for the government to stop providing this useful asset. Good point.The government answers that the bonds are not "liquid," meaning you can't always sell them quickly at a good price. But why does the government care about liquidity? The point of bonds to the government is to raise revenue at a good rate, and the point of long-term real return bonds to the investor is precisely to live off the coupons and not to trade them actively. Moreover, if liquidity is an issue, the government can easily improve it by issuing perpetuals and simplifying the bonds' tax treatment.So why stop issuing real return bonds? The government may suspect that inflation will go up a lot more, and it will then have to pay more to bondholders. Non-indexed debt can be inflated away if the fiscal situation worsens. The cumulative 11-per-cent inflation since January, 2021, has inflated away 11 per cent of the debt already. Argentines have seen a lot more.But issuing indexed debt makes sense if the government plans to be responsible. Tax payments and budget costs rise with inflation, and fall with disinflation, so the budget is stabilized if inflation-indexed bond payments do the same. And issuing indexed debt that can't be inflated away is a good incentive not to turn around and inflate debt away.Indexed debt is also a very useful signal, as it gives a market-based measure of inflation expectations.If the government won't do it, however, there is no reason that the government's critics can't issue them. Companies can issue real return bonds, as they already issue U.S. dollar bonds. Banks can offer real return accounts and certificates of deposit.If the government steps out of the market, there's all the more demand for private issuers to step in. Pension funds desperate to replace vanishing inflation-indexed government bonds are natural clients. Company profits rise and fall with inflation, so they have a natural incentive to issue bonds whose payments rise and fall with inflation. Even mortgage rates could rise and fall with an index of wages.Why not? Broadly, this reluctance seems one more symptom of an overleveraged, overregulated, government-dependent and not very competitive or innovative banking and financial system. Banks and other financial institutions only want to issue or expand a new product if they can quickly lay off the risk onto the government, and earn steady fees. The model of issuing equity to bear risk and then offering a profitable innovative product to consumers is too out of fashion.Bring on the real return bonds. And if government won't do it, make your own.

Yaell Emerich (McGill University - Faculty of Law) has posted Concepts and Words: A Transsystemic Approach to the Study of Law between Law and Language (Revue juridique Thémis, volume 51, numéro 2-3, 2017, p. 591–624) on SSRN. Here is the...

Canada can show real leadership right now by reinstating lifesaving UNRWA funding and by recognizing the Palestinian state.

 This week, I went to Winnipeg in the coldest temps of the year thus far to observe one of the new CDSN research efforts: understanding the dynamics of Canadian domestic emergency operations in response to natural events.  Paraphrasing Emdad Haque, one of our co-directors,  nature will create extreme conditions, but whether they are disastrous is up to people and government.  Emdad, Nira Agrawal, and Kawser Ahmed brought together a sharp group of folks, including the army's liaison to Manitoba, the ADM for Emergency Management in Manitoba (a survivor of my big IR class at McG), researches from the universities in the area, and more (see here for details).  What did I learn?Emergencies are rare for any individual but they are increasingly common collectively.  Climate change is already fostering more and more floods, fires, and other extreme events.  So, this is not just a thing that happens from time to time but is an every day thing now.The notion of the CAF as a last responder needs to die.  Yes, the military wants to be called on only in the most extreme emergencies when no one else can do what they can do.  But there are plenty of incentives for folks to ask for help and for the CAF to be unable to say no.That most of this stuff ends being led by the most local folks--that the feds don't take over but are there to supplement.  Which means the military is following orders, not ordering people around.As always, prevention is the least expensive route but often there are not political incentives.  It seems to me that the real opportunity to make changes to manage/mitigate is as the cycle goes from response to the emergency to recovery--that building back better is a thing.  Rebuild out of harm's way, away from the flood plains, for example.As always, the Indigenous people are put into awful positions by the past and by the present.  Limited infrastructure means they need assistance, but then they are seen as objects, those to be rescued, rather than agents with their own expertise and preferences.  Evacuations need to be rethought--they are very disruptive physically, economically, culturally, mentally.Federalism in Canada continues to suck mightily.  Some provinces understand that they need to build back better, so the Winnipeg floods didn't recur with the same level of damage.  Others understand that they can save money by doing less preparation and then call the feds in when help is needed.There is a lot more work, coordination, planning, preparation going on in this area in between emergencies, that many bad storms and other events do get mitigated.  But again, it is going to get much harder as storms and other conditions get more intense.I was very pleased to see the CDSN idea work out here--that we had engaged people in different parts of government and society, there was a real exchange of information, the students were super engaged, and it is the start of a more comparative analytical conversation.  I also learned that Winnipeg is cold, full of friendly folks, and one can lose one's mittens in a cab and then get them back when one happens to take the same cab back to the airport.So glad I could hang with Andrea Charron, who has done so much for the CDSN

 To be fair, the friendship was always either nascent or tenuous at best.  That Canada is host to the largest Sikh population outside of India, and like many diasporas, more enthused for more extreme political ends than those back home would set the tension level on "not good" anyway.  Then you add in that India is  ruled by the Hindu Nationalist Party and by Modi, so any friction becomes much hotter and much more useful for domestic political purposes back home.One can start on either side of the Indo-Pacific region on this.  Because my own start as a scholar of the international relations of ethnic politics, which included some study of South Asia, came long before my move to Canada, I will start with the India side. Modi and his party got into power by engaging in ethnic outbidding, by promising to be the best defenders of the Hindu majority, which meant, of course, targeting minorities of all kinds as threats that needed to be put in their place. So, Muslims have paid a significant price for this in India. It has meant in foreign policy that Canada is seen as a real problem, rather than Canada's self-image as the less imperial Commonwealth country that everyone loves more than the US (Canadians take great pride that Americans will put on a Canadian flag on their backpacks when the US is governed by a Bush or Trump).  In Modi's eyes, Canada is a supporter of Sikh separatism. That Sikhs in Canada are politically powerful and use that power to support separatism in the homeland.  Yes, Sikhs are powerful--Trudeau at one point had four Sikhs in his cabinet, far out of proportion to their population, but their population is not small.  Trudeau kept an awful Minister of National Defence because he didn't want to offend a key constituency and source of campaign dollars.  And, yes, an Air India flight was blown up by Canadian-based Sikhs.  The intelligence services and the cops messed up before and afterwards.  So, Indian fans of Modi cite that event as Canada being a base of anti-India terrorism.  The more accurate charge is that Canada continues to be lousy at stopping the flow of money to extremists of all kinds, but, no, Canada is not a place where Sikhs have bases to train for future terrorist attacks. Canada is not Afghanistan of 2001.  Turning to the Canadian side, some folks are accusing Trudeau of playing this up and publicizing this for political gain.  And that is, well, laughable.  There are two dynamics here that are intersecting.  The first is, yes, this government (and any other) would be pandering to Sikh voters, and, yes, significant numbers of folks in this community were asking for the government to take more seriously India's role in the death of Hardeep Singh Nijjar.  The other dynamic is that the Trudeau government has faced much criticism for being slow to deal with China's election interference. So, there has been pressure for Trudeau to act faster.Still, this government did not act precipitously in this case. They did not go public as soon as they got a hint of this.  Instead, they worked their allies, and they sent several folks over to India to get their support for an investigation, including Canada's National Security and Intelligence Advisor, Jody Thomas. They were rebuffed. It seems clear that the government would have liked to have continued to handle this quietly, but they got alerted that a reporter was going to release a story on this.  With more stories coming out that the US was the country that had provided some signals intel to Canada that supported the India connection in Nijjar's death, I am pretty convinced that, yes, India through its intelligence services had this guy killed, directly or indirectly. I am biased in this, as I have long been suspicious of Modi and his Hindu National party.  But the pattern of events seems to make it clear that there is more than just a little something to this. While India can be upset that Sikhs in Canada protest against India and support Sikh separatism, and that politicians took the sides of protesters in India over changes in agriculture policy last year, none of that justifies killing a Canadian citizen on Canadian territory. This is not what friends do to each other.  Unless something happened that I am not aware of, at no point did the British whack any fundraiser in Boston seeking to support the Irish Republican Army.  Modi did this because he is arrogant, and he may be right that he can get away with it since the US needs India in its anti-China containment efforts. And, yes, he would not be the first autocratic-leaning leader to bully Canada. It has been open season for some time with China, Russia, and the Saudis taking turns, with the Iranians also engaged in election interference.My pals in Ottawa who work in and near the intel scene are pretty outraged at how lamely this government and previous ones have dealt with such stuff. I am not sure better reactions would have mattered that much since the asymmetries in these situations are pretty stark, but, yes, Canada can do better on protecting its citizens, including those in the various diaspora communities, than it has.I don't expect things to get better between India and Canada. Modi is scoring a lot of points on this at home. Trudeau is not, but he is stuck. I have often wondered why his government pandered so much to Sikhs when there are also other Indian-Canadians here, and that pandering to one side might be problematic for the other. In this case, where a Canadian was killed, taking this seriously is less about the pandering of the past and more of the challenge of defending Canadians from backsliding democracies. 

Rarely have two major democracies descended into as ugly a diplomatic spat as the one now unfolding between Canada and India. With the traditionally friendly relationship already at its lowest point ever, both sides are ...

Canada's contribution to protecting the world's refugees is undeniable. Through its resettlement programmes and, more generally, its promotion of the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR), Canada has demonstrated a firm commitment to the goals and principles enshrined in the 1951 …

 I woke up in the middle of the night because I am old and I ate and drank too much.  I couldn't resist schnitzel and strudel as I am in Vienna for a talk and for some other shenanigans (more on that in another post).  And then I saw Phil Lagassé's post on the Conservatives and if they might spend on defence if elected.  On that general topic, I am a skeptic as I think the CPC cares more about deficits than about defence, and the place to cut the budget is, alas, defence.  That is where the money is.  This was true under Harper.  I don't know what Pierre Poilevre believes in, other than opportunism and pandering to the far right, but I don't think he will commit lots of money to get Canada to 2% of GDP (on the other hand, he could tank the economy, and that is the other way to get there).  Oh, and to be clear, I think we need to spend significantly more on the military--I am just not going to threat inflate to get us there.Anyway, Phil said in his piece that we need to spend more to deal with the threat in the Arctic, and I had to scoff. Which led to a fun exchange in bluesky, reminiscent of the old days on twitter where we would argue and people thought we hated each other.  Hint: I don't co-author with people I don't like.  Ir don't co-author with the same person several times unless we get along very well.  But it is both fun and educational to push back against one of the very sharpest defence minds in Canada.Specifically, Phil said: "Canadians know their Arctic is vulnerable."  And my ensuing commentary focused on that: what exactly is the threat to Canada from on high?  And should we consider this the most significant/dangerous threat?  My point is that it is way back in line.  Phil says we need to have better situational awareness up north.  My rejoinder is: no invasion coming, just some spy ships on the water and below it.  Others chimed in: more ships going through the northwest passage means more environmental stuff could go awry.  And, I agree.  But where does that line up in the threat picture?  Here's my cranky, awakened with acid in my throat, ranking of the threats facing Canada. Climate change: Canadians are paying a high price for the changing climate even if we could joke about being a beneficiary as our winters get mostly shorter.  Milder?  Variance is more certain than anything else.  Anyhow, people are dying in floods and fires, much property is being destroyed.  When I speak of threat, I think of real harms to Canadians, to the economy, to governance.  Climate change is first and it is not close.  I was mocked by someone via email when I said this on TV,  but I have never been a super lefty, green environmentalist type in my work.  It is just the reality that in dollar amounts and in lives, the warming planet is harming Canadians in a big way and it is only going to get worse. A recurring theme is that many of the threats either cannot or will not have the military as the lead agency.  This actually comes the closest given that the provinces underinvest in emergency management, knowing that the military will act if asked and won't present a bill.Pandemics: how many people were killed by covid in Canada?  Nearly 60,000, which is more than Canadians killed in all foreign wars combined if one leaves out WWI.  Plus many people now have long covid.  It did a heap of damage to the economy, and, if you care about deficits (I don't really), guess what blew a big hole in the budget? I am very glad the Liberal government poured a ton of money into the economy as we didn't have runs on food banks during the height of the pandemic.  I just wish Conservative-led provinces actually spent the money allotted to health care on.... health care.  Will covid be the last pandemic?  No.  Indeed, given what it has done to attitudes about vaccinations, quarantines, and masking, I doubt we will respond as well next time.  Scary, eh?  The military was called out because other agencies lacked capacity, but this was really a medical/scientific thing, so let's not allocate a ton of money to the military for pandemic preparedness.Cyber attacks.  Wars are distant, but cyber attacks are hitting Canadians every day, disrupting people's lives, hurting various businesses and public agencies, and pose a significant threat where some country could bring down our power or harm dams and more.  Is this the military's job?  Partially but not really.  We don't need people who are trained to fire weapons and ready to deploy abroad and all that stuff to fight a cyber war.  We need smart folks at well equipped desks.  We definitely need to have more money spent on the military to survive and thrive in a cyberwar environment, but the CAF is not really our answer to thwarting cyber attacks against the Canadian public.Far right violence.  We live in a time of increasing attacks by xenophobes, misogynists, homophobes, racists, anti-semities, Islamophobes, and white supremacists (these hates tend to travel together).  Yes, left wing extremists can have many of these attributes, but
it is clear that the violence is almost entirely coming from the far
right. These haters are doing real harm to Canadians right now, and the trend is in the wrong direction.  Can the military do anything about this?  I think the general rule of not having the military police the public is a very good idea.  Instead, the military's role is mostly to make sure it is not training the next generation of far right terrorists.  Disinformation.  This is, of course, related to the prior one, but it also involves foreign actors who are trying to tilt election outcomes.  We are increasingly living in a time where people can't trust what they see and hear, or they are trusting the wrong actors.  This leads to develop dangerous beliefs--like vaccines are poisonous, that the government in power is engaging in great, deliberate harm against its ideological opponents, and so forth,  While the Liberals have screwed up many things, they need some trust in government to operate on our behalf, just as the Conservatives or NDP would need people to trust in institutions.  The military should not be the primary actor at home on this either even as they engage in info ops abroad.People might I was joking about the increases in truck/SUV size being a threat, but more than 2000 people died in car accidents in 2023, and the trend is going up, even if one cuts the peak covid years from the dataset.North Korean missiles. While China and Russia have nuclear missiles, I have a bit more faith in the workings of deterrence and a bit less worried about accidental/deliberate first use.  North Korea would not have any reason to attack Canada, but I could imagine that their aim might be that good.  Of course, what is the CAF's role in this?  Providing warning that Vancouver is doomed and then helping to respond to the aftermath.  We have no defences against ballistic missiles nor will Canada have any such systems  anytime in the future.  I am a skeptic about American strategic defense (although tactical anti-missile systems seem to range from pretty good to amazing), but I do think Canada should join the US system as the ABM treaty is very dead.  This is a military job and would justify the massive investment in NORAD modernization.  Otherwise, it really is a system to warn us to give us a few minutes to kiss our loved ones goodbye.  Oh, and manage relations with the US.US relations!  The Canadian economy and its security crucially depend on the US, and, oh my, Canada will be so very, very fucked if Trump were to win. Democracies have lived beside authoritarian regimes before (hey, Finland!), but so much of Canada's position in the world relies on this huge market and this peaceful border and cooperation with the US.  When was the last time Canada fought abroad without the US beside its side?  UN missions?  Guess again as the UN relies heavily on American support to do its ops.  One could argue this would mean less wars for Canada--no more Afghanistans (which was purely to help its ally).  But Canada would be even at greater risk of being bullied by the China's and Saudi Arabia's of the world.  And, of course, by Trump himself.  But again, this is not the CAF's job to prevent or mitigate this.  If Trump is elected, most of the problems above get worse and this item zooms to the top.Maybe here goes: incomplete understanding of what is happening in the Arctic. Yes, that stuff up north is still Canada, but the threat to Canadians up there is not really that posed by Russia or China but by the lack of infrastructure and by the aforementioned climate change, pandemics, etc.So, if the military is not needed for this stuff, or only needed for domestic emergency ops, why spend tens of billions on it?  Why increase spending?  It comes down to this: the military is an instrument of policy.  This means that it can and is used to further Canadian government objectives even if most of those objectives are not about thwarting threats to Canada.  Canada has consistent interests in the world for which the CAF is a key tool, such as helping to foster stability in Europe and Asia.  Canada, like the US, has learned that when those continents catch fire, it damages Canadian interests and hurts Canadians.  A war in the South China Sea with or without the Canadian navy would be catastrophic to the Canadian economy.  War west of Ukraine would also be quite damaging.  NATO itself is an important interest that requires the Canadian military to invest in itself and in NATO missions.  Ultimately, Canadians want to do good in the world and want to support the international order, whether we call it liberal or rules-based or American hegemony or whatever.  Because we understand that Canadians have more influence within institutions than outside of them, that the rules have favored the Canadian economy, and helped the Canadian people to enjoy the fruits of international cooperation.Ultimately, one wants a well armed, well trained, well staffed military to prepare for the worst.  In my ranking of threats, I focused on both likelihood of the threat being realized and the amount of harm that is likely if the threat happens.  Climate change is at the top because it is happening and is not going away and is going to do heaps of damage.  The threat in the Arctic is lower down because it is unlike that any foreign actor will attack that way and the damage they can do is not that great, again compared to everything else.Oh, and what is also a threat?  Having an under-funded, unprepared, ill-equipped military sent off to war--that way lies tragedy.  So, yes, spend more, but let's not exaggerate where the threats are coming from and what the role of the military is.

Canada must act in accordance with its professed strong support for international law and the International Court of Justice by calling on Israel to fully comply with the ICJ rulings.

After inflammatory public accusations by Canadian PM Justin Trudeau, the diplomatic rift between India and Canada continues to grow. This is a dangerous trend with vital global security implications.
The post What to Make of the India-Canada Spat? appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

Janet Conway is a Professor of Sociology at Brock University, Canada. Her research focuses on global justice, transnational feminisms and indigenous activisms. From May to July 2022 she was a research...

After backtracking by the PM, Canada has finally done the right thing and reinstated UNRWA funding. The next step is to immediately stop all arms exports to Israel.

Canada must reinstate funding for UNRWA immediately as well as taking further concrete action to end the war in Gaza and build a lasting peace. And it must get serious about helping build prospects for peace in Ukraine.

Ameera Es-Sabar discusses the concept of silent violence in the context of Canada, drawing parallels between Canada's exclusionary approaches towards its Indigenous inhabitants and its (lack of) response to ongoing events in Palestine and Israel. By highlighting similarities in Canada's approaches towards Indigenous peoples both at home and abroad, and its contrasting responses to events in … Continued