AIDS, Development and Canadian Policy - Achieving Universal Access by 2010

After nearly two years in the making, John Foster and I have finished our policy brief on Canada's response to global HIV/AIDS pandemic for the North-South Institute. The document involved extensive research (including a trip to the XVI International AIDS Conference) and eleven interviews with representatives from government, civil society, and academia.

The brief makes 36 recommendations for how Canada can better focus its policies in order to make good on its commitment to help the international community achieve universal access to treatment, care and prevention for HIV/AIDS by 2010. Chief among these suggestions are for the government to:

• increase its funding for HIV/AIDS interventions;

• improve the coherence between its policies for development, immigration, and international finance;

• reduce the conditions countries must meet before they can receive aid and debt relief;

• stop relying on internationally trained health workers to meet domestic shortages;

• ensure that intellectual property rights do not prevent medicines from reaching those in need;

• support innovative efforts to raise funds for HIV/AIDS interventions, such as UNITAID; and

• show increased political leadership by appointing a Canadian AIDS ambassador to coordinate the government's response to the pandemic.

Several hundred copies of the report have been distributed to parliamentarians, policy makers, and activists. So far, the document has been very well received, and was used extensively by the Interagency Coalition on AIDS and Development in the preparation of a consultation document on the future of Canada's global engagement on HIV/AIDS. A formal launch should hopefully come in late October or early November.

The brief is available for download from the North-South Institute. Please be sure to send me any comments or questions you might have.

CPSA Annual Meeting 2007

On Friday, June 1, I presented a paper entitled "A glimpse of the future? What the minority governments of the 38th and 39th Parliaments can teach about proposals for electoral reform." The session was well attended, and many people seemed willing to forgive me for not being "the real" Paul Thomas.

Unfortunately, the general consensus of the audience and the discussant was that current minority governments cannot be used to predict how parliament would function after electoral reform since the parties would face drastically different incentives. However, a number of those present did enjoy my research into the functioning of the most recent minority parliaments and suggested that I try to get it published. At the very least, I received several compliments on my slides, showing once again that if you can't have substance, you should at least have style.

For those of you who could not make it, or would like more information on the paper I presented, please check out the links below.

Text of the paper: download
Slideshow: download
Original research: download