@Federations e-newsletter

Rod Macdonell appointed Senior Director of Public Information and Education

On December 12, Rod Macdonell, former executive director of Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, joined the forum as Senior Director of Public Information and Education by the Forum of Federations. Macdonell graduated in law at l'Université de Sherbrooke in Quebec. He was an investigative journalist at the Montreal Gazette where he worked from 1983 to 1999. At the Gazette he wrote about politics, corruption, the environment and the justice system, among other issues. For five years, he taught investigative journalism to journalists in Africa through a World Bank program. He also delivered training workshops for journalists in Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe. He was a three-time winner of Quebec's highest journalist award from the Fédération Professionnelle des Journalistes du Québec (FPJQ).

Shawn Houlihan named Africa Program Director

On December 12, Shawn Houlihan joined the Forum of Federations as Director of the Africa Program. He holds a Master in Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a BA and Master of Development Economics from Dalhousie University. He starts off by working for the Forum in Sudan and will arrive in the Forum office in January, 2006. Houlihan spent five years in Ethiopia (1993-1998), first as CIDA's Democracy and Governance Advisor and later in the Ethiopian PMO as head of a comprehensive civil service reform program. He also has extensive experience in Sudan, as an advisor to CIDA and Senator Lois Wilson (1999-2002) and later as a member of one of the post-conflict Joint Assessment Mission teams and as an advisor to the United Nations Development Programme on governance and capacity development (mid-2004 to present). He has completed a wide range of consultant assignments for CIDA on matters of governance, capacity development and conflict management, including on the Middle East, Horn of Africa, Pan Africa and Southern Africa as well as for the Policy, Asia and Multilateral branches. He also has a strong background in negotiation training, including work with the federal government, First Nations and the World Health Organization.

Valerie Raymond seconded to Forum as Vice President, Governance Programs

In October 2005, Valerie Raymond became the Forum's Vice President for Governance Programs, on secondment for a year from Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs, until Céline Auclair returns. Ms. Raymond has held a number of senior positions in Ottawa and abroad since 1986. Ms. Raymond served as Canada's High Commissioner to Sri Lanka and to the Maldives (2002 - 2005). From 1997 to 2001, she was Canadian High Commissioner to New Zealand. She was also High Commissioner to Fiji and five other South Pacific island nations. During six years of work on United Nations and global issues, she oversaw development of Government of Canada positions for three UN World Conferences (1993 World Conference on Human Rights; 1995 Beijing World Conference on Women; 1996 Habitat II Summit).

Practitioners, VIPs, academics and NGO staff gather for Forum book launch

Members of the Canadian parliament, representatives from federal governments worldwide and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada were among the crowd at the Forum's book launch for the Global Dialogue on Federalism series of publications and the Handbook of Federal Countries, 2005 on June 15 in Ottawa. Among those present were Bernard Patry, Chair of the Canadian House of Commons Committee on Foreign Affairs; Peter Milliken, Speaker of the Canadian House of Commons; and Marie Fortier, Canadian Deputy Minister of Intergovernmental Relations. Also present were ambassadors and embassy staff from Iraq, Syria, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Mexico, Germany, Turkey and other countries. The new Forum President, George Anderson, spoke to the crowd, as did outgoing Forum President Bob Rae, Mexican Ambassador to Canada Teresa de Madero, and outgoing Forum Director of Communications Karl Nerenberg.

New Forum Chair is former President of Switzerland

Arnold Koller, former President of Switzerland, was elected Chair of the Forum's board of directors in February. Koller, who was a professor of trade and commercial law at the University of St. Gallen, was elected to the National Council, Switzerland's legislature, in 1971. He served in the Swiss Federal Council, the executive of the Swiss government, beginning in 1986 and was President of the Swiss Confederation in 1990 and 1997. In 2000, he was named to the board of directors of the Forum of Federations. In 2001 and 2002, he chaired the board of directors of the organizing committee for the International Conference on Federalism 2002 in St. Gallen, Switzerland. He is also the co-author of Federalism in a Changing World: Learning from Each Other, Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2003.

Forum's Strategic Council makes new recommendations

The first meeting of the Strategic Council, which provides advice to the Forum of Federations' board of directors, took place in Ottawa on June 14, 2005.

The council said that the Forum should "recognize that federalism through power sharing has a role to play in conflict prevention and governance in general" so that the Forum will be engaged in a variety of contexts, of which post-conflict situations would be only one. That advice was one of a series of recommendations made by the council in its first meeting, as well as calling on the Forum to:

  • enhance South-South exchanges and to call upon experts from emerging federations
  • strike a balance by pooling experts from all orders of government
  • strengthen its role as a centre of excellence to make a bridge for sharing knowledge between academics and practitioners

Representatives attending the Strategic Council came from the six federal countries that signed Framework Arrangements with the Forum by that date. Ethiopia also participated as an observer. This new arrangement allows the council to provide broad, general policy and orientation guidelines to the Forum. The board of directors continues to manage the Forum, but nominations for members of the board now come from government representatives on the Strategic Council as well as from the board's nominating committee.

New Members

Five new candidates for membership on the Forum's Board of Directors were nominated by partner governments of the Forum and recommended to the board by the Forum's Strategic Council in its first meeting in June 2005. Shortly thereafter, the Forum named these five candidates to the Board. The new Board members are Roger Wilkins, Australia; Wolf Okresek, Austria; Rt. Hon. Kim Campbell, Canada; S. Lakshminarayanan, India; and Wolf Linder, Switzerland.

Karl Nerenberg leaves Forum of Federations

After five years as the Forum of Federations Director of Public Information, veteran public broadcaster Karl Nerenberg is leaving the Forum to become the Director of Communication and Public Outreach at the Canadian Institute for Health Information.