Scholars\u27 Views on Improving Border Policy

On April 29, the Center for Canadian-American Studies at Western Washington University hosted a conference, Bridging Distances: Past and Future Perspectives on Canada-US Relations, to mark the program’s 40th anniversary.* Participating scholars and practitioners were asked to comment on future trends, opportunities and challenges in the relationship. Plenary remarks were given by Ian Brodie, former chief of staff to Prime Minister Harper, and the luncheon address was delivered by David Emerson, chair of the Energy Policy Institute of Canada and former minister in two governments. Panelists were convened to discuss issues covering the following areas: • Both Sides Now: Parallel Lines Across Binational Pasts • Border Tensions-Trade Mobility and Security • Contending Perspectives, Energy and the Environment • The US in a Shifting World: How Canada Fits It. This Brief discusses ideas about the border that surfaced in the conference presentations and discussions

Canada-US Border Securitization: Implications for Binational Cooperation

State borders are critical junctions where oppositional dynamics of exclusion and inclusion are played out. In the last eight years, transnational congruence inherent in economic globalization has clashed directly with the assertion of territorial security by the United States. Borders, harkening to the geopolitics of past centuries, are once again asserted to be sites of vulnerability and lines for maintaining control over people and territory. Border enforcement emphasizes controlling movement of undesirable people and goods, but it is also about ensuring domestic stability and countering challenges to the status quo. Given a history in which immigrants are as likely seen to be threats to national security as welcomed sources of assets and skills, border concerns and border control processes invariably breed anxiety about internal social and cultural boundaries as well. By differentiating the other, borders and their supporting narratives reinforce them. In addition to immigrants and refugees, people considered sufficiently different from prevailing norms are also affected. While national border policies affect the nation as a whole, border regions are disproportionately impacted. Border regions are the locus of cross border social and economic relations, the first point of contact and interaction between nations. As such, they serve to mediate perceptions of, as well as actual, relationship between countries. Their functions as social and economic conduits are constrained as border controls are intensified. Borders, under these conditions, serve to weaken relationships, and impede cross­border cooperation in such areas as commerce, environment, and public health. But the costs of border restrictions are far more than material and environmental alone. They involve social and psychological costs of growing suspicions, reluctance to engage, or slowed momentum for investing further in well established transboundary networks for working in common to solve complex problems. Focusing particularly on the Canada-U.S. border, this paper examines the impact of tighter border policies and enforcement processes on cross-border interaction, as well as their implications for binational and multinational security challenges. Among the questions that will guide the discussion are: What impact do exclusionary border policies have on host societies? How do border policies impact conceptions of border lands and binational cooperation? What problems are inherent in the often heralded trend toward smarter borders

Reconciling Environmentalism and the Left: Perspectives on Democracy and Social Justice in British Columbia\u27s Environmental Movement

The article examines how political ideas of environmentalists support as well as impede relations between the environmental movement and other progressive movements. This requires examination of the role and meaning of social justice and democracy in the discourse of environmentalism. Ibis study focuses such an examination on a sample of environmental activists in British Columbia. Q methodology is used to discern patterns of association between particular sets of environmental ideas, and beliefs and values related to democracy and social justice. The authors identify four environmental/political perspectives: alienated ecocentrism, civic communitarianism, insider preservationism and green egalitarianism. These perspectives share a perception of justice focused on fair democratic procedures. Fairness is linked to inclusion and equal treatment

Stakeholder Views on Improving Border Management

The Canada-US border, like all international borders, performs certain functions related to restricting, regulating and interdicting cross-border flows of people, products and pollutants. How border officials carry out these functions is shaped by historical factors and the political-economic agendas of state authorities. Though Canada-US border management has always been influenced by security issues such as boundary disputes, prohibition and illicit drugs, only since 9/11 has the border been viewed as a vital security problem in the context of American national security. This new reality has brought increased attention to the northern border and prompted a continuing debate about the appropriate balance between securitization of the border and facilitation of trade and social interaction

POPcorn: An Online Resource Providing Access to Distributed and Diverse Maize Project Data

The purpose of the online resource presented here, POPcorn (Project Portal for corn), is to enhance accessibility of maize genetic and genomic resources for plant biologists. Currently, many online locations are difficult to find, some are best searched independently, and individual project websites often degrade over time—sometimes disappearing entirely. The POPcorn site makes available (1) a centralized, web-accessible resource to search and browse descriptions of ongoing maize genomics projects, (2) a single, stand-alone tool that uses web Services and minimal data warehousing to search for sequence matches in online resources of diverse offsite projects, and (3) a set of tools that enables researchers to migrate their data to the long-term model organism database for maize genetic and genomic information: MaizeGDB. Examples demonstrating POPcorn's utility are provided herein

Status of Muon Collider Research and Development and Future Plans

The status of the research on muon colliders is discussed and plans are outlined for future theoretical and experimental studies. Besides continued work on the parameters of a 3-4 and 0.5 TeV center-of-mass (CoM) energy collider, many studies are now concentrating on a machine near 0.1 TeV (CoM) that could be a factory for the s-channel production of Higgs particles. We discuss the research on the various components in such muon colliders, starting from the proton accelerator needed to generate pions from a heavy-Z target and proceeding through the phase rotation and decay ($\pi \to \mu \nu_{\mu}$) channel, muon cooling, acceleration, storage in a collider ring and the collider detector. We also present theoretical and experimental R & D plans for the next several years that should lead to a better understanding of the design and feasibility issues for all of the components. This report is an update of the progress on the R & D since the Feasibility Study of Muon Colliders presented at the Snowmass'96 Workshop [R. B. Palmer, A. Sessler and A. Tollestrup, Proceedings of the 1996 DPF/DPB Summer Study on High-Energy Physics (Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Menlo Park, CA, 1997)].Comment: 95 pages, 75 figures. Submitted to Physical Review Special Topics, Accelerators and Beam

From rule to ruin: the Conservative Party of British Columbia, 1928-1954

In 1928 the Conservative Party of British Columbia won an impressive electoral victory, taking 35 of the 48 seats in the legislature. The victory was a comeback for Conservatives since after forming consecutive governments during the years 1903-1916, they remained in opposition from 1916-1928. The comeback, however, was not to be permanent. Five years later, in the 1933 election, the Conservative Party met disaster. Not a single candidate running with the Conservative label was elected. Although their fortunes improved in the 1937 and 1941 elections, Conservatives would not again form a government on their own in British Columbia. Throughout the 1940s they shared power in a coalition government, but in so doing the forces were set in motion which culminated in the party's collapse in the early 1950s. The party suffered a massive defeat in the 1953 election, an event which marked the end of the Conservative Party as a serious contender in the province's electoral politics since Conservatives have been unable to make a showing in provincial elections in the 21 years since. What happened to the provincial Conservatives is the question addressed in this study. How did a party which has enjoyed a history of success in both the province's federal and provincial arenas lose, almost entirely, its support base in the early 1950s? The general approach of this study is historical-interpretative. An account and interpretation of the Conservatives' fate is given through a detailed analysis of the party's internal politics. The focus is on politicians (party leaders) and their efforts to build and maintain a party clientele, their definition of goals and the strategies devised to attain them. The major theme which emerges is that the party's ultimate failure to survive as a contender in provincial politics is inextricably bound up with the internal fractionalization that continued to plague it. This study begins by examining the period when the Conservative Party was one of two major parties in British Columbia. The background of this early period is important in understanding the principal actors and political conflicts which set the context for later events. The main body of the study examines the personalities and conflicts in the party during the years 1933-1954. The years of coalition government (1941-1952) are singled out for special treatment because the chain of events precipitated by the coalition ultimately led to the party's disintegration and collapse.Arts, Faculty ofPolitical Science, Department ofGraduat