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World Water Day takes place on 22 March: make time to read 2009 Foundation scholar Jeremy Schmidt’s latest article, “From state to system: Financialization and the water-energy-food-climate nexus,” published on 1 March 2018 in Geoforum. Schmidt’s article showed how, since the 2008 global financial crisis, the way we talk about water governance has shifted from state-centred to globally interconnected models – so much so that the water-energy-food nexus is now one of the most prominent aspects of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. At the same time, global financial networks are increasingly using this nexus to stem economic risks and open new channels for wealth accumulation. Schmidt and his co-author Nathanial Matthews warned that these financialized approaches to water governance leave critical issues of ethics and justice unaddressed.

Jeremy Schmidt is a 2009 Trudeau scholar and assistant professor of human geography at Durham University. Read his article here (free access until 28 April 2018).

From environmental and social justice to incarceration to healthcare and parenthood, three Foundation scholars examine youth and its relationship to institutions in Canada.

What will it take to unleash the potential of Canadian youth today? For a growing number of Foundation scholars, answering that question raises others: the extent to which Canadian youth experience empathy, and the degree to which Canadian institutions are open to change.

Despite covering one sixth of the planet’s surface, Oceania has long been of minor interest to global powers. But an independence referendum in New Caledonia and elections in Cook Islands, Fiji, and French Polynesia could help trigger a strategic reset in the region this year. In her introduction to a special series of articles on Oceania in 2018 published by the East-West Center’s Asia Pacific Bulletin on 26 March 2018, 2015 Foundation fellow Cleo Paskal emphasized how “the confluence of major changes in all three of the 3 geos (geopolitical, geoeconomic, and geo-physical) is making the strategic picture in Oceania increasingly complex.” Under Paskal’s skilled curation, five experts in Chinese, American, French, Japanese, and Australian relations with the region explored the complex web of power and security in today’s Oceania.

Cleo Paskal is a 2015 Foundation fellow, an associate fellow at Chatham House, and adjunct faculty in the Department of Geopolitics, Manipal University, India. She is also a director at The Oceania Research Project. Read the special series of articles here, and read Cleo Paskal’s introduction here.

On 26 March 2018 in Le Devoir, eight professors, researchers, and lawyers denounced (French only) the comments of Patrick Beauchesne, Quebec’s deputy minister of the environment, who declared on 6 February that it would be problematic for environmental assessments to take Indigenous knowledge and scientific evidence equally into account. The eight signatories to the letter, including 2003 and 2004 Foundation scholars Sophie Thériault and Margarida Garcia, protested Quebec’s “counter-productive,” “reductive,” and “offensive” discourse on traditional Indigenous knowledge.

What can we learn about sharia law through the lens of the political struggles triggered by its application? That is the question 2009 Foundation scholar Jean-Michel Landry examined in his presentation to the Raoul-Dandurand Chair in Strategic and Diplomatic Studies at Université du Québec à Montréal on 22 March 2018 (French only). By retracing the evolution of two protest movements – one Sunni, one Shia – aiming to modify religion-based norms in Lebanese family law, Landry showed how religion is increasingly shaped by the state in secular contexts.

Jean-Michel Landry is a 2009 Foundation scholar, a Banting postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Anthropology at McGill University, a doctoral fellow at the Institut Français du Proche-Orient, and an affiliated researcher at the Orient Institute of Beirut.

On 25 March 2018, German police arrested Catalan independence leader Carles Puigdemont. The next day, 2010 Foundation fellow Alain-G. Gagnon stated in an article (French only) in Le Devoir that the arrest constitutes intimidation by Mariano Rajoy’s government and is doomed to fail, given the massive popular mobilization it stirred. Gagnon also warned against the "odious" behavior of the Spanish government: impeding Catalans to freely choose their president puts democracy at risk and moves Spain towards a regime where Catalans are no longer free to express an opinion contrary to the central government’s. The international implications of this democratic backsliding must also be considered: "If we tolerate this of Spain, which claims to be an advanced democracy, what can we expect from less democratic countries? How can democratic countries position themselves as models if we are the first not to respect the rules of the game?” asked Gagnon (translation ours).

Alain-G. Gagnon is a 2010 Foundation fellow and a full professor of political science at UQAM. He has held the Canada Research Chair in Quebec and Canadian Studies since 2003 and has headed the CAP-CF at UQAM since 12 March 2018. Read the article here.

While theoretical analyses of secularization abound, we lack ethnographic observations of how secularization actually affects citizens in secular states – especially when those citizens are religious women. This observation pushed 2003 Foundation scholar Pascale Fournier and co-author Jacques Berlinerblau to publish an ethnography of traditionalist Jewish and Muslim women seeking divorce in Canada, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Published in Secularism and Nonreligion on 22 March 2018, “Reframing Secularist Premises: Divorce Among Traditionalist Muslim and Jewish Women Within the Secular State” shows how traditionalist religious women attempting to dissolve their marriage in a secularist legal environment must grapple with “dual navigation”: they must negotiate both the secular state’s and their faith communities’ demands and legal systems. Fournier and her co-author also challenge assumptions that religious women’s “cheap-settling” behaviour reflects passivity and submission to religious demands, instead arguing that these decisions showcase women’s agency and rational decision-making under difficult circumstances.

Pascale Fournier is a 2003 Foundation scholar, a full professor in the Civil Law section at the University of Ottawa, and a commissioner on the Quebec Human Rights and Youth Rights Commission. Read her article here.

The recent acquittals in the Colten Boushie and Tina Fontaine cases have sparked controversy on the purpose and neutrality of legal education. In an opinion piece published on 17 March 2018 by The Globe and Mail, 2010 and 2012 scholars Lisa Kelly and Lisa Kerr argued that law schools should not only train students in legal and case-based rules and doctrines, but should also teach students how to analyze the relationship between law and politics. Law has helped to create inequality and continues to distribute power in today’s societies, wrote Kelly and Kerr, and “we should be suspicious of those who don’t want law schools to notice.”

Lisa Kelly and Lisa Kerr are 2010 and 2012 Foundation scholars and assistant professors of law at Queen’s University. Read their article here.

Since March 2018, Loblaws has commercialized cricket powder as a source of protein to add to sauces and smoothies. 2014 Foundation scholar Tammara Soma was cited in an article published by The Toronto Star on 31 March 2018 on the rising popularity of insect-based products and their implications for food security and waste in Canada. With the market for alternative forms of meat as well as soy- and nut-based foods growing each day, mass-producing sustainable and nutritious foods using insects is becoming increasingly business-friendly. “It’s going to be a big wave, not a fad,” concluded Soma, who applauds the noticeable shift towards sustainability, awareness, and consciousness signalled by wider insect consumption in the Global North.

Tammara Soma is a 2014 Foundation scholar, a doctoral candidate in urban planning at the University of Toronto, and the director of research at the university’s Food Systems Lab. Read the full article here.

In the Colten Boushie case, Gerald Stanley’s defence team used peremptory challenges to produce an all-white jury – and the accused murderer was acquitted. In an article published on 2 April 2018 by The Conversation Canada, 2013 Foundation fellow Kent Roach argued that Bill C-75’s proposal to abolish peremptory challenges should be welcomed as “a good first step towards diverse, impartial Canadian juries.“ In response to critics, Roach demonstrated that peremptory challenges are “an invitation to discrimination” and that they undermine public confidence in the Canadian judiciary. But he also warned that “more work is needed to ensure that juries represent the diversity of our communities.” By maintaining the citizenship requirement for jurors, Bill C-75 means that permanent residents from racialized and minority groups may not be selected despite their competency and impartiality. Ultimately, our goal should be “a modern standard based on equality that ensures a fair and random sample of the community.”

Kent Roach is a 2013 Foundation fellow and a professor of law at the University of Toronto. Read his article here.