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Is the contemporary art scene in Canada as inclusive as it claims to be? What about Quebec? In an article (French only) published in Le Devoir on 10 February 2018, Jason Lewis noted that “Quebec society is in denial about Indigenous people […] there is a very strong desire to identify communal space as Quebecois space.” Furthermore, “in the Western world, art is separate from knowledge, the artist from the scientist, the aesthetic from the political. For First Nations, these realities go together.” These are among the reasons why Lewis felt it has been difficult to create a dialogue in contemporary art that goes beyond the fundamental differences between Eurocentric and Indigenous conceptualizations of art.

Not all hope is lost, however. In an article published in Concordia University Magazine on 30 January 2018, Lewis exposed the innovative approach of the Indigenous Futures research cluster. “These clean divisions between science, engineering, art and the humanities are not clean at all,” he affirmed. And it is precisely through multidisciplinary work that the conversation on Indigeneity will break open.

Jason Lewis is a 2014 Trudeau fellow and the Concordia University Research Chair in Computational Media and the Indigenous Future Imaginary as well as a professor in design and computation arts. Read the Le Devoir article here and the Concordia University Magazine article here.

With the Paris Agreement, 195 parties pledged to curtail their greenhouse gas emissions and fund adaptive solutions to climate change. As in any agreement, however, the dual question of accountability and compliance arises. In a chapter published on 24 April 2018 in Climate Law, 2016 Foundation scholar Christopher Campbell-Duruflé argued that parties’ compliance with the Paris Agreement could be promoted through a legal accountability approach. He recommended "practices of legal justification, assessment, and consequences" within the Agreement’s Implementation and Compliance Committee. Campbell-Duruflé concluded that although this approach would still be subject to political acceptance, it has the potential to “foster parties’ sense of trust, reciprocity, and legal obligation toward one another.”
Christopher Campbell-Duruflé is a 2016 scholar and a doctoral candidate in international law at the University of Toronto. Read his article here.

For every 1,000 incidents of sexual assault in Canada, only 33 are reported to police, 12 result in charges, six proceed to trial, and three lead to conviction. What do these numbers tell us about the structure of the criminal justice system and its response to sexual violence? In an opinion article published on 23 April 2018 by Policy Options, 2017 Foundation scholars Daniel Del Gobbo and Vathsala Illesinghe argued that restorative justice could shape new approaches to the “structural inequalities in the legal system that disadvantage women.” They showed how, in a restorative justice process, a qualified facilitator would bring together the survivor, the offender, and the community to discuss and decide on a collective action plan to both reduce recidivism and transform the sociocultural content that fostered violence in the first place.
Daniel Del Gobbo is a 2017 Foundation scholar and a doctoral student at the Faculty of law of the University of Toronto. Vathsala Illesinghe is a 2017 Foundation scholar and a doctoral student in policy studies at Ryerson University. Read their article here.

Since 2006 in Canada, the question of allowing private property ownership on Indigenous First Nations’ reserved lands has stirred controversy. Responses within Indigenous communities have been varied: while the Assembly of First Nations formally rejected it in 2010, the First Nations Tax Commission, spearheaded by Manny Jules, claims that Aboriginal access to private property would greatly improve the living standards of many Indigenous Canadians. In an article published in the Annals of the American Association of Geographers on 18 January 2018, Jeremy Schmidt tracked the bureaucratic processes behind federal attempts at creating private property regimes on Indigenous reserved lands. For Schmidt, the current government’s First Nations Property Ownership Initiative is no less than a “[repackaging of] dispossession as the restoration of Aboriginal territory and property.”

Jeremy Schmidt is a 2009 Trudeau scholar and lecturer (assistant professor) of human geography at Durham University. Read his article here (restricted access).

Israel was primarily founded on the idea of refuge. Yet Tel Aviv routinely labels Eritrean and Sudanese migrants that enter Israel from Egypt as “infiltrators”, while Benjamin Netanyahu is suspected of having contracted a secret agreement with Paul Kagame to send thousands of Eritreans and Sudanese to Rwanda. In an opinion piece published in The Globe and Mail on 14 February 2018, René Provost denounced the “tragic irony” of Israel’s handling of refugee flows. Not only must Israel do more, but so must Canada, he asserted. Whether Eritrean, Sudanese, or Syrian, vulnerable individuals and communities deserve safety and help from countries like Israel and Canada, which must imperatively uphold their non-refoulement obligations under the international refugee regime. René Provost is a 2015 Trudeau fellow and professor of law at McGill University. Read his article here.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) accounts for one quarter of all reported crime in Canada. A less known fact is that immigrant women are most at risk of experiencing this form of abuse. In her article "Immigration Policies and Immigrant Women’s Vulnerability to Intimate Partner Violence in Canada," published in the Journal of International Migration and Integration on 14 February 2018, Vathsala Illesinghe considered how neoliberal immigration policies create economic, social, and political conditions that increase immigrant women’s vulnerability to IPV. She further examined how the IPV experienced by immigrant women is often attributed to cultural and racial determinants, in stark contrast to Canada’s multiculturalist ideals.

Vathsala Illesinghe is a 2017 Trudeau scholar and doctoral candidate in policy studies at Ryerson University. To learn her recommendations, read her article.

Ever wondered about family life in academia? In a discussion (French only) curated by Radio Canada on 18 February 2018 with six other Quebec academics, Marie-Ève Desroches examined academic careers and family life. She emphasized that her SSHRC and Trudeau Foundation scholarships gave her the means to go on parental leave. But not everyone is as lucky – many young academics can only count on their own savings, which constrain their personal choices, she added.

Marie-Ève Desroches is a 2016 scholar and a doctoral candidate in urban studies at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique’s Centre Urbanisation Cultures Société. Listen to her interview here.

The year 2017 has shown that democracy is increasingly threatened by digital attacks. The French and Kenyan presidential elections as well as the German parliamentarian elections are examples of digital interference with democracy. In an article published by Policy Options on 18 January 2018, Christopher Tenove argues that the best way to defend ourselves from electoral interference by foreign digital operations is to strengthen democracy domestically. The article delineates five key observations from a report he co-authored and was released by the University of British Columbia’s Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions.

Christopher Tenove is a 2008 Trudeau Foundation scholar and a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of British Columbia.

From the Aga Khan University in Karachi to the United Nations in New York, four alumni scholars working in international institutions reflect on how their experience at the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation helped shape their trajectory.

“During my studies, the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation was one of the only environments, if not the only environment, that valued the fact that I am an interdisciplinary thinker,” says Rosalind Raddatz, 2010 scholar speaking from Nairobi, Kenya. “Over and over, academia pushed me to specialize. The political scientists said that my work was too ethnographic; the philosophy department said that I drew too much on political science. But my Foundation scholarship legitimized my approach, and that’s the approach that the Aga Khan University was looking for when it appointed me director of the provost’s office with 20 percent of my time for academic research.”

Since Canada’s medical assistance in dying law received royal assent in June 2016, more than 2000 people have died with the help of a doctor. However, the ambiguity of the law’s eligibility criterion – requiring that “natural death has become reasonably foreseeable” – has come under considerable criticism. In an article published on 23 April 2018 by The Conversation Canada, 2015 Foundation fellow Jocelyn Downie and co-author Jennifer Chandler claimed that individuals “with grievous and irremediable conditions causing intolerable suffering” needed more clarity on the legislation’s meaning and implementation. Only in Nova Scotia have physicians and surgeons successfully clarified the “reasonably foreseeable” criterion; Downie and Chandler urged that regulators and health professionals in Canada as a whole now follow Nova Scotia’s lead in order to “serve and protect the public interest.”
Jocelyn Downie is a 2015 Foundation fellow and a professor in the Faculties of Law and Medicine at Dalhousie University. Read her article here.