Michael Byers on Politics

I'm an academic, author, human rights advocate and environmental activist. I'm also a husband (to Katharine) and father to two impossibly energetic and stubborn young boys. For more on me, please visit the "About" section at the top left-hand corner of this page. For my views on politics, both national and international, please see below!

How to save Santa

There's plenty of policy work to do to preserve Santa's Arctic home for future generations

Michael Byers, Ottawa Citizen, December 22, 2009

My children are worried. They're learning about climate change and asking, "What will happen to Santa Claus when the North Pole becomes ice-free?"

"Don't worry," I tell them. "Santa is magic. How else could he keep his workshop stationary on the constantly moving Arctic sea-ice? How else could he make the elves and reindeer vanish when the Russians planted a flag on the North Pole sea-floor two years ago?"

Russia and Canada: Partners in the North?

Recognizing each other's sovereignty claims brings mutual benefits

MOSCOW -- Michael Byers, Globe and Mail, December 21, 2009

Amap produced by Natural Resources Canada has pride of place in Arctic ambassador Anton Vasiliev's office, in the Stalinist-era skyscraper housing the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Centred on the geographic North Pole, the map shows how Russia and Canada dominate the Arctic region. Between them, the two largest countries on Earth account for three-quarters of the Arctic Ocean's coastline.

Elements of a war crime seem to be present

Michael Byers, Macleans.ca, November 20, 2009

Canadians should hang their heads in shame. Richard Colvin’s testimony about torture in Afghanistan is a searing indictment of government officials who either knew—or should have known—that Canada was transferring detainees to torture.

Between 2006 and 2007, Colvin, the second-highest-ranking Canadian diplomat in Kabul, sent 17 reports about torture to Ottawa. The reports, which were circulated widely within the departments of Foreign Affairs and National Defence, confirmed public warnings from international officials and journalists.

Liberals and New Democrats together could unseat Harper

Electoral ceasefire would put nation's centre-left majority in political control

Michael Byers, Toronto Star, November 2, 2009

Negative ads have prejudiced voters against Michael Ignatieff, and brought Stephen Harper within reach of a majority government. The Conservatives now lead the Liberals by about 10 percentage points.

The situation seems unlikely to improve. The Prime Minister's divisive partisan tactics have diminished the public's respect for politicians in general. In just four years, he has changed the tone of media coverage and public discourse, shifting the mood of the nation toward cynicism and selfishness.

Liberal infighting has not helped, while the NDP has missed two opportunities – on climate change and macroeconomic policy – to capture the national imagination with bold ideas.

There is only one surefire way to prevent a Harper majority. The Liberals and NDP should agree to not run candidates against each other in the next campaign.

The Northwest Passage is already Canadian

The proposed name change to Canadian Northwest Passage won't strengthen our claim in international law, and it may well hurt it.

Michael Byers, Globe and Mail, October 27, 2009

Like motherhood and apple pie, Arctic sovereignty is difficult to oppose.

So when Conservative MP Daryl Kramp introduced a motion on Oct. 5 to rename the Northwest Passage the “Canadian Northwest Passage,” the Liberals, NDP and Bloc Québécois quickly jumped on board.

It's time to reconsider that move – before the motion is put to a final vote. Renaming the Northwest Passage would weaken our legal claim, offend the Inuit and contradict centuries of Canadian history.

Heil Olympics

Michael Byers

Letter to the Editor, Globe and Mail, Thursday, Oct. 15, 2009

Reading Marsha Lederman's report about Canada's behaviour at the 1936 Olympics (A Salute That Shocked The World - Review, Oct. 14), I was struck by how little we've learned. At a recent meeting with officials at the Integrated Security Unit for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, I noticed a poster from the 1936 Winter Games on the boardroom wall. The evidently Aryan figure on the poster is making the Nazi salute. Civil liberties, anyone?

Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law, University of British Columbia

For the original text, see: Heil Olympics

Treat Northwest Passage as an internal waterway to boost national security

That status would make it subject to Canadian law

Barbara Yaffe, Vancouver Sun, October 10, 2009

Imagine a group of terrorists gaining access to North America by way of an increasingly ice-free and largely unpoliced Canadian Arctic.

Imagine them infiltrating the Northwest Passage with ship-launched cruise missiles or weapons of mass destruction.

These are the sort of scenarios that pose a real threat to Canadian interests, not the territorial claims of other nations, according to a newly published book, Who Owns the Arctic? Understanding Sovereignty Disputes in the North.

Rechristening Northwest Passage shows Canada’s insecurity, expert fears

Randy Boswell, Ottawa Citizen, October 8, 2009

A Conservative MP’s bid to officially rename the Northwest Passage the “Canadian Northwest Passage” — which garnered praise from all three opposition parties earlier this week — could backfire in the legal arena, says a leading expert on Arctic geopolitics and international law.

Dear bad guys: 'This is not a soft target. Don't come here'

U.S. undertakes massive Olympic security operation centred in Washington State command post

Robert Matas, Globe and Mail, September 26, 2009

The non-descript warehouse is located at the tip of a dead-end road in an industrial park near the Bellingham, Wash., airport, 30 kilometres south of the Canada-U.S. border. A one-storey structure without signage, it offers no clue from the street what goes on behind its cream-coloured walls.

Canada pushes nuclear technology in Asia

ANDREW MAYEDA, Ottawa Citizen, September 24, 2009

OTTAWA — Trade Minister Stockwell Day will sign a treaty with Kazakhstan on Thursday that will clear Canada to export nuclear technology to the ex-Soviet republic, part of a push by the government to drum up business for Canada's nuclear industry in Central Asia and India.

Canada's man in Washington brings expertise to water file

Doer's experience with Devils Lake makes him the ideal person to deal with cross-border issues

Toronto Star, September 8, 2009

MICHAEL BYERS 

Of the many challenges Gary Doer faces as Canada's ambassador to the United States, none will engage his interest more than protecting our transboundary rivers and lakes.

The 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty prohibits diversions that have not been approved by the governments of both Canada and the United States, as well as pollution "on either side to the injury of health or property on the other."

Today, North Dakota is violating those provisions and placing the entire treaty at risk.

Shock-And-Awe Reciprocated

Letter to the Editor, Globe and Mail, Sept. 5, 2009

If the Americans followed the example of the Canadian Forces (Mock Shock-And-Awe In Washington: Canada Stages Taliban Attack To Bring U.S. Attention To Afghan Mission – front page, Sept. 4), they’d set off explosives in the space between the U.S. embassy and the National Gallery of Canada. And blow up the peacekeeping monument.

Michael Byers, Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law, University of British Columbia

For the original text, see: Shock-And-Awe

Who do they think we are?

Branding Canada: Projecting Canada's Soft Power Through Public Diplomacy, by Evan H. Potter, McGill-Queen's University Press, 464 pages, $32.95

Reviewed by Michael Byers, Globe and Mail, August 19, 2009

John Humphreys hardly ever stumbles over his words. But emotion intervened in May, 2009, when the BBC Radio host conveyed the “bizarre” news that the Queen's representative in Canada, Michaëlle Jean, had eaten the “raw” heart of a seal.

Although many Canadians approved of the Governor-General's actions, the gesture cost us dearly in Europe. It reinforced the stereotype of a backward, resource-dependent country, and quite possibly affected future business deals and vacation plans.

Diplomatic thaw at hand over Arctic

Cold War posturing often mainly intended for domestic politics

Bruce Campion-Smith, Toronto Star, August 15, 2009

OTTAWA–Bomber flights through Arctic airspace, paratroop drops planned over the North Pole, submarine missions and diplomatic spats, all driven by heavy doses of nationalistic chest-thumping.

Don't forget the potential of vast untapped resource riches to raise the stakes even higher.

At first blush, it smacks of a Cold War revival as northern nations face off over the barren Arctic landscape. But in the tangled world of Arctic diplomacy, where nationalist ideas converge and sometimes clash at the top of the world, not all is as it seems.

When Defence Minister Peter MacKay rebukes Russia for Arctic bomber flights and Artur Chilingarov, Russia's hardline Arctic envoy, makes clear Moscow's northern ambitions, their chest-thumping is often aimed at a home audience.

"Russian politicians, just like politicians in Denmark and Canada are sometimes focused on domestic politics when they engage in international relations concerning the Arctic," said Michael Byers, Canadian Research Chair in International Law and Politics at the University of British Columbia.

"I kind of look at Chilingarov and Peter MacKay playing a similar role in two different governments, playing to a sense of nationalism in their own country," he said.

Dropping 48-year-old 'New' would help revitalize NDP

Name change has to be part of a larger project to deliver modern progressive policies

Michael Byers, Toronto Star, August 11, 2009

NDP members are travelling to Halifax for their national convention this week. They might just return home as "Democrats," having dropped the "New" in their 48-year-old name – and with it the acronym.

Re-packaging Arctic sovereignty

Canada's new Northern Strategy is mostly made up of old ideas that have gone nowhere

Michael Byers, Ottawa Citizen, August 5, 2009

Glenn Gould called it The Idea of North. Conceptions of sovereignty are often wrapped up in national identities, and nowhere is this more true than with Canada's Arctic. For many Canadians, when the United States claims an unfettered right to use the Northwest Passage, it is like a wealthy neighbour claiming the right to tramp through our living room.

Policy in a cold climate

Letter-to-the-editor, Globe and Mail, August 1, 2009

Jeffrey Simpson’s otherwise excellent analysis of Stephen Harper’s Northern Strategy (It’s An Arctic Policy Worth Building On – July 31) overlooks the diplomatic dimension. Instead of the pro-active negotiations and creative law-making that characterized the Trudeau and Mulroney governments and gave us the 1970 Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act and the 1988 Arctic Co-operation Agreement, the Harper government is content to “manage” our sovereignty disputes.

Which means Ottawa is not seeking solutions: As the sea ice disappears, commercial actors rush in, and a military mindset replaces conceptions of stewardship and co-operation.

Michael Byers, Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law, University of British Columbia

Russia plans polar parachute drop

General insists mission is peaceful, but experts say it ups polar stakes

Randy Boswell, Ottawa Citizen, July 30, 2009

OTTAWA — In a planned mission that echoes Russia's controversial 2007 flag-planting on the seabed at the North Pole, a team of Russian paratroopers is reportedly preparing for a symbolic landing there next spring to mark the 60th anniversary of a Cold War achievement by two Soviet scientists.

Arctic expert questions Canada's northern strategy

CBC News, July 28, 2009

The federal government's new strategy for Canada's North may be a case of political posturing, at least one Arctic sovereignty expert has suggested.

The Northern Strategy, released on Sunday, promises to assert Canada's sovereignty over its resource-rich Arctic lands and waters, while addressing the need for jobs, housing and a clean environment in the region.

But Michael Byers, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law at the University of British Columbia, said the strategy offered little in the way of new initiatives and announcements.

The poppy problem keeps growing

A lot more Canadians are likely to die from Afghan heroin than to perish on Afghan soil

Michael Byers, Special to the Vancouver Sun, July 11, 2009

SEEDS OF TERROR: How Heroin Is Bankrolling the Taliban and al Qaeda

By Gretchen Peters

St. Martin's Press/ H.B. Fenn, 300 pages ($32.95)

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Last November, I met a beautiful and cheerful young woman who was literally bursting with song. She was high on heroin, arms bruised from needle punctures, and so terribly thin that her pyjamas flapped as she danced through the vomit- and urine-stained halls of one of Vancouver's cheapest hotels.

By now, the young woman is probably dead -- one of the latest Canadian victims not just of the war on drugs, but also of the war in Afghanistan.