Latest news with #MunkSchool
National Post
10 hours ago
- Business
- National Post
Canada to meet 2% NATO spending pledge this year: Carney
OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney is pledging that Canada will achieve NATO's two per cent target this year — five years ahead of his prior commitment which promised to meet the mark by 2030. Article content Carney, who is set to attend the NATO Summit later this month, made the announcement in a speech at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy in Toronto on Monday. Article content Article content He said Canada's strategy is focused on four pillars: investing in the men and women who serve, expanding and enhancing military capabilities, strengthening the government's relationship with the defence industry and diversifying Canada's defence partnerships. Article content Article content 'We will ensure every dollar is invested wisely, including by prioritizing made-in-Canada manufacturing and supply chains,' he said. Article content 'We should no longer send three quarters of our defence capital spending to America.' Article content Carney said the government will invest in new submarines, aircraft, ships, armed vehicles and artillery, as well as new radar, drones and sensors. He also committed to a larger and sustained Canadian Armed Forces presence in Canada's north, year-round. He said the government will expand the reach and security mandate of the Canadian Coast Guard and integrate those investments into Canada's defence capabilities. And he said members of the Canadian Armed Forces will receive a 'well-deserved' salary bump. Article content Article content 'We will further accelerate our investments in the years to come, consistent with meeting our new security imperatives,' he said. Article content Carney called on all parties in Parliament to support these 'critical investments in our security and sovereignty.' Article content He will be taking questions from reporters this afternoon. Article content
CTV News
11 hours ago
- Business
- CTV News
Canada to boost defence spending to 2% of GDP this fiscal year
Ahead of next week's G7 summit, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced Monday that Canada will boost defence spending by billions of dollars to meet NATO's two per cent of GDP target this fiscal year. 'We will further accelerate our investments in the years to come, consistent with meeting our new security imperatives,' Carney announced during a speech at the Munk School in Toronto. 'We will ensure every dollar is invested wisely, including by prioritizing made-in-Canada manufacturing and supply chains,' he added.'We should no longer send three quarters of our defence capital spending to America.' Carney's new timeline comes well ahead of the 2030 target he pledged during the federal election. Just last year, the previous government under former prime minister Justin Trudeau committed to hitting two per cent by 2032. Canada has never met NATO's existing spending target since it first pledged to do so in 2014 and has faced public pressure from member countries for years to reach that target. The issue of defence spending is expected to be a major focal point at the NATO summit in The Hague later this month, where Secretary General Mark Rutte has signalled he will propose an overall investment plan that would increase defence investment to five per cent of GDP — 3.5 per cent for core defence spending and 1.5 per cent in defence-related investments like infrastructure. The most recent NATO figures show Canada spent 1.45 per cent of its GDP on defence in 2024. At the moment, 22 of the 32 member countries meet or exceed NATO's current two per cent target. According to National Defence, Canada is projected to spend $44.2 billion on defence in the 2025-26 fiscal year. A report released last fall from the parliamentary budget officer said the federal government would need to spend $81.9 billion to hit the two per cent of GDP target by 2032-33. This is a breaking story. More to come.
Arab News
18-05-2025
- Politics
- Arab News
Canadian expert praises Saudi Arabia's rapid AI, social progress
RIYADH: Janice Stein, founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto, has praised the Kingdom's ongoing transformation and its growing role in artificial intelligence and education. During a two-day visit, Stein met officials from government, academia, and the private sector, and highlighted Saudi Arabia's regional role while noting that much can be learned from Saudi Data and AI Authority's initiatives. 'We went to universities, think tanks, and government ministries that work in education and artificial intelligence,' said Stein, Belzberg professor of conflict management. She added: 'I think Canada can learn a lot.' Stein noted that officials at the SDAIA had explained that the Kingdom will have a K-12 AI education strategy 'in which students from grade three onward will start to learn about artificial intelligence and engage with it.' She told Arab News: 'Well, we are not there in Canada, and depending on how SDAIA measures and tracks its results, I think Canada can learn from the experiment SDAIA is running.' Stein added that the future project led by SDAIA had not yet been implemented in Saudi Arabia, but much could be learned from its research and rollout. 'There is a sense that things are moving quickly and that will be foundational to the role Saudi Arabia will play in the future,' she said. Stein also discussed the traditional educational cooperation model between Saudi Arabia and Canada, which has mainly involved Saudi students going abroad to study. She said: 'I think that will remain, but that is the old model.' Looking to the present, Stein said she was interested in sharing and learning from the 'very large experiment that Saudi society is now running.' She stressed that the goal was in partnership and not encouraging Saudis to leave the Kingdom, adding: 'Saudi Arabia is playing a leading role in the Gulf; I think all Saudis know that.' She said that Saudi Arabia had the weight and urgency to lead, and that what it needed was a clear focus and annual measurement to benchmark the country's progress against others. 'As a long-time student of the Middle East, my strong sense is that the Gulf is growing in strategic importance, things are moving, and the pace of change is accelerating,' she said. 'I thought, what a wonderful time to find an institutional partner here.' Stein stressed how impressed she was by the 'sense of urgency' in Saudi Arabia's developmental efforts. She said that in her conversations she had been struck by the strong focus on results and the awareness that time is limited, describing the urgency as 'really, really impressive.' Stein also noted the clear changes that women are undergoing, saying that it was encouraging to see women working at the airport on her arrival. She underlined that as women's roles start to change in society, that society itself begins to change. Stein said that Saudi people understood the 'rapid pace of global change and the need to act quickly — something often missing in more established societies.' She added: 'I think we all need that sense of urgency.'
The National
09-05-2025
- Politics
- The National
Frozen out: Academics seek refuge in Canada as Trump steps up attacks on US higher education
It's a cold spring afternoon on Toronto's bustling Bloor Street West, a 25km road that cuts through Canada's most populous city, from the Don river in the east to neighbouring Mississauga. At the intersection of Avenue Road, tourists queue for the city's Royal Ontario Museum, while students pop in and out of a local franchise of Tim Hortons, a Canadian coffee staple in the city. Tucked into the scene is the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, a relatively new addition to the centuries-old institution, established through a donation from the late Hungarian-Canadian philanthropist Peter Munk. The school will next year welcome a new member to its faculty – the American philosopher Jason Stanley, who, worried the current US political climate is putting the country at risk of fascism, is relocating his spouse and children to Canada this summer. Dr Stanley, who has been a professor at Yale University since 2013, has written extensively about authoritarian regimes and was the author of the 2018 book How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. 'I understand why Jason is as concerned as he is,' Dr Janice Stein, founding director of the Munk School, tells The National. 'It's very alarming.' 'We are seeing arrests of students, visas on campus that are expired with very little notice and unprecedented budget cuts to [US universities'] core science and research enterprise.' On the hiring of Dr Stanley, Dr Stein says the university had a position open with a focus on the US. They advertised the role and reviewed applications, choosing the best candidate in the school's view. Writing to the Daily Nous, Dr Stanley said he accepted the job offer after US President Donald Trump's treatment of New York's Columbia University, which for months faced campus protests against Israel amid the war in Gaza. Angered by the demonstrations, the Trump administration withheld $400 million in federal funding for Columbia until it submitted to a series of demands, which included banning face masks on campus and taking control of the department that offers courses on the Middle East from its faculty. 'When Columbia folded,' Dr Stanley said in an interview with PBS, 'I thought, OK, I'm just going to look at the probabilities of our democratic institutions folding. I think the probabilities are not in favour of US democracy.' The Trump administration has defended its actions against Columbia and other universities by saying it is fighting anti-Semitism on campuses. That argument has been rejected by Dr Stanley, who is Jewish and the son of Holocaust survivors – highlighting the Jewish groups and students that have joined the demonstrations. Dr Stanley did not respond to a request to be interviewed for this story. As part of the continuing clampdown, US immigration agents have targeted foreign-born students associated with pro-Palestine issues, at times grabbing them off the street in an effort to deport them. The best-known case is that of Mahmoud Khalil, a Syrian-born Palestinian student at Columbia and legal US resident who was arrested in March in front of his pregnant wife in Manhattan, without being accused of any crime. He has since been detained in Louisiana, as a legal battle ensues over the administration's attempt to remove him from the US, sparking more unrest at the Ivy League school. 'This is a clear violation of the rule of law,' Dr Stein says. 'Without the rule of law there is no protection, that's when states become authoritarian … it is a threat against everybody.' Also watching with concern is Dr Tyeshia Redden, a US academic who works as an assistant professor in the University of Toronto's geography department, specialising in urban planning. 'I can't imagine what it's like to be walking home and a group of masked people encircle and restrain you,' she says. "It's horrifying ... but I can't say that I'm surprised, because I understand how tyranny works. "I know how this story ends ... and I think there is a degree of helplessness that I feel." Dr Redden, who has been living in Canada for about two years after receiving a doctorate in Mr Trump's home state of Florida, tells The National that attacks on education in the US predate the current administration. She highlights Florida's Stop Woke Act, a 2022 state law prohibiting professors from expressing certain viewpoints while teaching topics the government deems unfavourable, such as racial discrimination or injustice. 'We've been seeing the beginnings of this for quite some time and we are now seeing it under the auspices of an administration that is bragging about it', she says. 'I've been warned by professional organisations to limit my visits to the US … I'm not making leisure trips at this point." Dr Stanley will not be alone in his new venture. The academic will be joined by historians Timothy Snyder and Marci Shore, who are also leaving Yale for the Munk School in the next academic year. 'This could be devastating for the academic community in the US,' Dr Stein says. 'You can't nurture that community if there isn't confidence in the rule of law.'
