School of Public Policy &amp; Governance

Honorary Degree

Canada has its share of corporate heavyweights, but few, if any, have the global influence of Dominic Barton.

The global managing partner of McKinsey & Co. – a management consulting firm so revered in some circles it’s known simply as “the firm” – has spent the last three decades shaping the world of business by advising corporate and government clients in Europe, North America, Asia and elsewhere. That includes Barton's own backyard in Canada, where he is chair of the federal government's Advisory Council on Economic Growth.

Yet Barton, who is based in London, England, and today received an honorary Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, from the ��Ƶ, is not your typical hard-nosed power player – despite taking meetings with two or three CEOs per day.

“For a phenomenally powerful guy, he couldn’t be nicer,” Roger Martin, the former dean of U of T’s Rotman School of Management and the director of the Martin Prosperity Institute, told the Toronto Star two years ago.

“I’m not sure he’s got any enemies.”

Barton’s disarming approach may have something to do with his Canadian roots. Born in Uganda, where his father – a U of T alumnus – worked as a missionary, Barton spent a good chunk of his formative years in Canada after the family moved back to Toronto when he was seven and then onward to Chilliwack, B.C.. He graduated with honours from the University of British Columbia and went on to study at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar – but not before working on a B.C. fishing trawler and in a Fort Nelson sawmill.

Introducing U of T's new Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy

noreen.rasbach — Fri, 06 Apr 2018 18:56:00 +0000

Introducing U of T's new Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy

noreen.rasbach Fri, 04/06/2018 - 14:56

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The School of Public Policy & Governance, located in the Canadiana Gallery (left), will join the Munk School of Global Affairs (right) to become the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy (photo by Noreen Ahmed-Ullah)

Noreen Ahmed-Ullah

Topic

Cheryl Regehr

Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

Subheadline

School of Public Policy & Governance and Munk School of Global Affairs to merge

Two distinguished fields of study at the ��Ƶ are joining together into one school, reinforcing the university’s position as a leader in global affairs and public policy – areas that in today’s changing geopolitical realities increasingly see overlap and share an agenda.

U of T’s School of Public Policy & Governance and the Munk School of Global Affairs will be merging into the newly named Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.

“We are very pleased to announce the amalgamation of these two dynamic schools,” said Provost Cheryl Regehr. “The Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy will significantly enhance the university’s outstanding national and international reputation in research, teaching and societal impact in the areas of global affairs and public policy. We see each field of study reinforcing and complementing the strengths of the other, ensuring the school’s status as an intellectual and academic powerhouse.”

The idea of merging the two schools first came up two years ago after similarities in programs increasingly appeared in subject areas such as migration policy, cybersecurity and digital governance, and innovation. After a robust consultation process over the past year, the Faculty of Arts & Science determined there was a strong academic rationale and broad support for combining the two schools.

“There’s a lot of opportunity that grows out of the blurring of boundaries between global affairs and public policy,” said David Cameron, dean of the Faculty of Arts & Science. “As political developments in Europe and America have demonstrated, the policy environment is becoming characterized by multilateral challenges with global consequences. To offer a fully rounded degree in public policy, you have to set it in the context of this global reality today.”

He cited the global migration crisis as an example. From a global affairs perspective, faculty and students might look at migration and movement of migrants from war-torn and poverty-stricken areas, and the porousness of national borders. From a local or state perspective, immigration and resettlement are a significant policy challenge.

Similarly, in the case of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the federal government is renegotiating the free trade deal, and the pace and timing of the NAFTA negotiations is increasingly driven by global politics. But, said Cameron, the issue is also of great concern to the provincial government and local municipalities that house a Ford or Toyota plant.

He said unlike many organizational consolidations, the goal here was not to reduce costs and save money.

“The issue was not to fix something that was broken. They are both in their own right great success stories, excellent professional programs,” Cameron said. “It really is an academic rationale that is driving this.”

The Munk School of Global Affairs and the School of Public Policy & Governance (SPPG) each admit up to 90 students a year for their professional master’s programs, with SPPG offering an undergraduate major in public policy. It also houses the Mowat Centre, an independent think tank that informs the Canadian public policy agenda.

The Munk School also offers undergraduate programs such as Munk One and Peace, Conflict and Justice, and is home to regional centres on Asia, Europe-Russia-Eurasia and the United States, as well as internationally and nationally recognized research labs such as the Citizen Lab.

Both schools have competitive and rigorous professional programs that produce students for complementary sectors. A Master of Global Affairs from Munk often leads to jobs in the private and public sectors, and in non-governmental organizations, think tanks, and foundations. A Master of Public Policy from SPPG often lands jobs in the public sector in Canada for graduates of this program.

While the fields of study and degree-granting programs will remain intact, there will be significant benefits to students, including eventually shared elective courses, extensive development of internships and job placements, and expanded alumni networks.

The Faculty of Arts & Science will launch a search for a new director almost immediately, with Randall Hansen serving as interim director. A working group will help to ensure a smooth transition.

The university is hoping to tap into a new recruitment climate brought on by everything from the election of U.S. President Donald Trump to post-Brexit concerns, and a buzz about Canada and Toronto.

“It’s a moment of opportunity for us,” Cameron said. “This is a first-class North American research-intensive university in a great city, a very diverse and tolerant city. A number of forces have put us in a nice position to be attracting talent. We are very conscious of that, and trying to take advantage of it.”

'A failed presidency': Best-selling author of 'Fire and Fury' on Donald Trump

ullahnor — Thu, 08 Mar 2018 20:14:51 +0000

'A failed presidency': Best-selling author of 'Fire and Fury' on Donald Trump

ullahnor Thu, 03/08/2018 - 15:14

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From left to right, Michael Wolff talks at U of T in a discussion moderated by School of Public Policy & Governance Director Peter Loewen (photos by Lisa Sakulensky)

Noreen Ahmed-Ullah

Topic

Michael Wolff’s exposé Fire and Fury paints a picture of a White House in turmoil, and on Wednesday the bestselling author was at the ��Ƶ unpacking a chaotic first 100 days of a president who thrives on conflict.

Speaking to a packed crowd at Convocation Hall, Wolff recalled a moment when Donald Trump was still on the campaign trail.

“I asked him, what’s your goal here?” Wolff said. “He said in a very straightforward way, ‘to be the most famous man on Earth.'”

Over the course of an hour, Wolff painted a picture of a man who rules the White House like a reality TV show – and has achieved his goal.

“His success at holding everyone’s attention in this job goes not to politics but to reality television,” Wolff said. “The nature of reality television is conflict. You have to manufacture and produce and sustain conflict in every show.

“The more conflict you have the more successful you are. Essentially, that’s the way he’s run this presidency. Every tweet is designed to produce conflict.”

A crowd at Convocation Hall listens to Michael Wolff

Wolff was speaking at U of T as part of the David Peterson Public Leadership Lecture Series, organized by the School of Public Policy & Governance. The talk, titled “Facts Stranger Than Fiction: Michael Wolff on Reporting From Inside the Trump White House,” was moderated by Peter Loewen, associate professor of political science and director of SPPG.

A columnist for Vanity Fair and the New Yorker and a biographer of Rupert Murdoch, Wolff worked his way into the White House by doing a piece on Steve Bannon. When he then raised with Bannon the idea of documenting Trump’s first 100 days, Bannon arranged a meeting with Trump.

“I said to Trump, ‘I’d like to come into the White House as an observer,’ and Trump thought I was asking for a job – deputy assistant observer,” Wolff joked, drawing laughs from the audience.

“I said, ‘I’d like to write a book,’ and you could just see his face deflate, that this was possibly the most uninteresting proposition that had ever been made to him. I said it would be great because you know you have to have a book. And he said, ‘OK, yeah, sure, whatever.’”

Wolff described entering the White House as a visitor every day, waiting to meet with staff who would inevitably break their appointments with him. Eventually he became familiar, a fixture on a West Wing couch. That’s when people began talking to him, Wolff said.

As the White House began unraveling, people turned on each other – and turned to him, to unload.

“In all the time I was there, I think I never asked anyone a single question except maybe, ‘How’s it going?’ I became a kind of black hole where people just began to narrate their experiences.”

Michael Wolff's 'Fire and Fury' uncovers the behaviour of U.S. President Donald Trump and the staff of his 2016 presidential campaign and White House. The book's title refers to a quote by Trump about the conflict with North Korea

Eventually, Wolff decided that the story before him was about staff moving from a state of certainty to “bewilderment, and that became confusion, and that became disillusionment and that became incredulity and maybe fear.”

What struck him, Wolff said, was how few people really knew Trump before the election. Even Bannon told him that he didn’t think he had spoken to Trump for more than 10 minutes on the campaign trail.

Asked by Loewen to say what White House staffers were certain about at the beginning, Wolff responded facetiously: “He had been elected president – I think that is what they were certain about.”

The audience chuckled.

Sam Nunberg, a former Trump aide now in the news for defying special counsel Robert Mueller’s subpoena, described Trump as “an idiot,” Wolff said.

“He’s a different kind of idiot because he’s the president of the United States…He’s an idiot you can’t forget about.”

Althia Raj, Ottawa Bureau Chief for Huffington Post Canada, and Joseph Heath, professor of philosophy, public policy and ethics, asked Wolff to talk about his reporting and criticism of the book’s credibility and Wolff’s recreation of scenes.

Wolff said a chapter in the book detailing Bannon’s rants came straight from a tape recorder – he was recording the conversation.

“I don’t think I filled in anything,” he said. “Everything was something I witnessed, or something somebody else who I had reason to trust witnessed.”

When asked if Trump will survive to the end of his term, Wolff said, “I don’t think so.”

“I think it’s a failed presidency. I think the contribution of my book is to open up the discussion of the nature of the failure. He, literally, as everyone around him understands, can’t do his job. And he’s not going to rise to the occasion of doing his job.”

Trump came into the office ready to fight the institutions of Washington D.C., but eventually, “the institutions will win,” Wolff said.

Michael Wolff (second from left) was joined in the discussion by (from left to right) Professor Joseph Heath, Ottawa reporter Althia Raj and SPPG director Peter Loewen

What were the Iran protests really about? U of T experts decided to find out

noreen.rasbach — Mon, 29 Jan 2018 21:50:26 +0000

What were the Iran protests really about? U of T experts decided to find out

noreen.rasbach Mon, 01/29/2018 - 16:50

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Iranian students demonstrate at the University of Tehran on Dec. 30, the third day of protests (photo by STR/AFP/Getty Images)

Topic

Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

Iran

Why did so many Iranians take to the streets for demonstrations in late December and early January? And did the protests that took place in 80 cities and towns have widespread support in Iran?

Experts at the ��Ƶ decided to ask the only people who could really answer these questions – Iranians themselves.

In an opinion piece published in the Globe and Mail, Peter Loewen, the director of the School of Public Policy & Governance at the ��Ƶ, Janice Stein, the founding director of U of T’s Munk School of Global Affairs, and Farhaan Ladhani, the director of the Digital Public Square at the Munk School, outlined how they were able to do so.

"The Digital Public Square at the Munk School at the ��Ƶ partners with a Canadian technology firm, RIWI, which uses an 'intercept' method to survey individuals in any country that has internet access," the authors write. In the end, they were able to survey 1,054 Iranian adults between Jan. 5 and 9

The results: "The protesters and their supporters are still very much in the minority," the authors write. The survey found only 27 per cent of respondents agreed when asked if they supported the protesters. Forty-five per cent disagreed, with 30 per cent saying they neither agreed nor disagreed.

The survey also found that the Iranians who supported the protests did so for three major reasons: "a lack of confidence in the government, a belief that corruption is rampant and, in a result that surprised us, a belief that life was better before the revolution."

Read the full piece in the Globe and Mail

This fallacy may explain why U.S. Republicans have made some unpopular decisions: U of T experts

geoff.vendeville — Fri, 12 Jan 2018 18:38:52 +0000

This fallacy may explain why U.S. Republicans have made some unpopular decisions: U of T experts

geoff.vendeville Fri, 01/12/2018 - 13:38

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Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell listens as Senate Republican leaders speak following the vote on the motion to proceed on health care legislation on July 25 (photo by Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)

Geoffrey Vendeville

Topic

Faculty & Staff

Humanities

Political Science

Research & Innovation

Have you ever sat through a long, boring movie even though it was terrible from the start?

Then you may have demonstrated the same decision-making bias that helped motivate the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress to pursue unpopular policies last year.

Writing in the Washington Post, Lior Sheffer, a U of T PhD student, and Peter Loewen, an associate professor in the department of political science and director of U of T's School of Public Policy & Governance, say politicians may be even more prone to the “sunk-cost fallacy” than ordinary people. That's the term for when people pursue a questionable course of action not because it's the prudent or rational choice, but because they have already invested time, energy or other resources into it.

Sheffer and Loewen base their conclusion on research they did with experts at the University of Michigan, University of Antwerp and Hebrew University.

They conducted face-to-face interviews with hundreds of incumbent legislators in Canada, Belgium and Israel. The politicians were asked to fill out electronic surveys questioning decision-making about normal matters of policy, such as budgetary decisions and government loans. The researchers posed the same questions to thousands of ordinary citizens for comparison.

The results? “We find that politicians show a significantly stronger pull toward the sunk-cost fallacy than do ordinary citizens,” Sheffer and Loewen write in the Post. “We also find that politicians are no better than citizens in other ways.” For example, legislators are just as susceptible to “framing effects,” meaning they change their choices depending on whether a question is worded to emphasize potential gains or losses, even if the choices themselves don't change.

The research, published recently in the American Political Science Review, points to “the role of psychological drivers in outcomes that we normally ascribe to cold interest-based calculus,” Sheffer and Loewen say.

“Perhaps when citizens elect representatives we should ask ourselves what reasoning skills those candidates bring with them to the table, and what kind of outcomes they are likely to produce as a result.”

Read the full analysis piece in the Washington Post

Bob Rae headed to Myanmar as Canada's special envoy for the region

ullahnor — Tue, 31 Oct 2017 16:01:33 +0000

Bob Rae headed to Myanmar as Canada's special envoy for the region

ullahnor Tue, 10/31/2017 - 12:01

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(photo by Johnny Guatto)

Topic

Alumni

Victoria College

Former Ontario premier and interim leader of the federal Liberal party Bob Rae is travelling to Myanmar and Bangladesh this week to gather facts on what the United Nations has called the world's fastest growing refugee crisis.

Named last week as Canada's special envoy to Myanmar, Rae, an alumnus, teaches a policy analysis class in the first-year Vic One program in the Faculty of Arts & Science.

At the Oct. 23 announcement with Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland in Ottawa, Rae said he will begin diplomatic efforts immediately.

“It's important for me to try and get at the reality of the situation and to share that with Canadians as soon as I can,” he said. “I also think it's going to be important for us to bring as much to bear as we can to our international efforts. It's not just one country that's going to solve this problem. It's going to be the effort of many different countries and all of us working in concert together.”

His mandate is until the end of January, when he'll be submitting an independent report with advice for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on how Canada should respond to the crisis, which has led to 900,000 Rohingya leaving Myanmar for neighbouring Bangladesh, according to new United Nations figures. Most of those refugees have fled since the end of August after ethnic violence erupted in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine state. Human rights monitors and Rohingya refugees say the army and Rakhine Buddhist vigilantes forced them to flee their homes.

In Canada, there's been public pressure for the federal government to strip Myanmar's de facto leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi, of honorary Canadian citizenship.

“I don't pretend to be somebody who can work miracles,” Rae said, during last week's news conference. “I do think it's worthwhile for us to keep on as many paths as possible in reinforcing the messages about the extent of the crisis within Myanmar which is causing this extraordinary exodus of over half a million people since August. This is an urgent situation that's going to require a massive humanitarian intervention, and I think the more we can do to reinforce that, the better we are.”

Read about a U of T medical resident working with refugees

U of T task force on city hall reform featured in Toronto Life

ullahnor — Thu, 20 Jul 2017 19:41:52 +0000

U of T task force on city hall reform featured in Toronto Life

ullahnor Thu, 07/20/2017 - 15:41

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A city hall task force launched by U of T recently made recommendations on how to reform municipal government in Toronto (photo by Thomas Hawk via Flickr)

Topic

Toronto Life features a School of Public Policy & Governance (SPPG) task force that recently released recommendations for reforming city hall.

The task force, launched by U of T's Gabriel Eidelman, an assistant professor at SPPG, released a report titled “A Practical Blueprint for Change” that makes 14 recommendations such as capping council meetings to 12 hours and restricting councillors’ questions to staff.

Read the article

Millions of Canadians could lose jobs to automation, U of T's Mowat Centre reports

Romi Levine — Tue, 22 Nov 2016 19:47:10 +0000

Millions of Canadians could lose jobs to automation, U of T's Mowat Centre reports

Romi Levine Tue, 11/22/2016 - 14:47

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An automated sorting area at a distribution centre in England (photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

Romi Levine

Author legacy

Romi Levine

Topic

Mowat Centre

Subheadline

In the next 10 to 15 years, between 1.5 million to 7.5 million jobs in Canada could be at risk, affecting even lawyers, doctors and engineers

As technology advances, occupations from truck drivers to lawyers are at risk of becoming at least partly automated, bringing about higher unemployment and more temporary workers.

A report released today by the Mowat Centre says that, over the next two decades, millions of Canadians could be out of jobs. The Centre is part of the ��Ƶ’s School of Public Policy & Governance.

Read Huffington Post story on the report

U of T News spoke with Sunil Johal, one of the authors of the report, about how Canada can adapt social policies to deal with dramatic shifts in the job market.

Is the rise of precarious work a symptom of an economic downturn or are there other factors?

I think there’s more to it than business cycles at this point. We’re seeing longer-term trends around precarious employment and non-standard work increasing over 20-year periods now. That’s something that outlives a three-to-four year economic downturn.

The main difference now from 20 to 25 years ago is the technological element to this. I think we’re seeing the rise of automation, robotics, artificial intelligence, the gig economy – all of these things together are culminating in a labour market that is far more precarious, far more task-based and in many cases, far more job-free.

How will automation affect Canadian workers?

The broader impacts of automation are yet to be seen. Companies are still figuring out how to leverage this new technology in a way that’s to their benefit that may impact jobs in a negative way.

We looked at a number of studies that have examined what potential job losses could look like in Canada. It’s a fairly broad range, but at the low end you’re looking at 1.5 million jobs in Canada and at the high end, you’re looking at about 7.5 million jobs that could be at risk of automation. That is a big number but, even if you take the low end of that, over the next 10-15 years that’s a lot of people.

The labour market in Canada right now is roughly 18 million.

That’s a game changer. We talk in the report about the fact that in the global financial crisis, Canada lost roughly 400,000 jobs. We’re talking double, triple or quadruple that number at the low end of these estimates.

Do the federal or provincial governments have policies in place to support workers at risk of losing their jobs to automation?

No, the social infrastructure is not in place right now for this type of major change to our economy. We can even argue that in the status quo current state of play in Canada, for many people, programs like employment insurance, the health care system and childcare are insufficient today. If they get worse in the labour market in the next five to 15 years, absent significant changes, those programs are not sufficient to meet the needs of Canadians in terms of coverage, quality of coverage and fundamentally, how they’re designed.

Are there examples of good social policy that Canada can learn from?

We set out a number of recommendations and options in terms of what governments might want to think about to modernize our social infrastructure.

One of the interesting ones was Denmark’s model of labour market training and support. They have a model called the “flexicurity” model – providing both flexibility and security to workers.

It’s much easier for Danish companies to hire and fire people – up to 25 per cent of Danes in the private sector switch jobs every year. There are significant levels of income replacement for unemployed workers – up to 90 per cent income replacement for workers and much higher levels of investment in training and skill support than we see in Canada.

In a world where more disruptions are happening more quickly, we would argue the Danish model is much more nimble and supportive and much more in-tune with the 21st century labour market than Canada’s model, which you could characterize as a very good model in the 1960s but not such a good model in 2016.

As we saw in the U.S. election, election cycles mean politicians can attempt to back-track on policies. What assurance do we have that long-term policies will stay in place to support at-risk workers?

The one thing that’s happening with technology that makes me optimistic that we can actually see changes – that there is a policy window for governments to do something about this – is the fact that technological disruption is not just going to be impacting those at the low-end of the income scale.

We’re going to see doctors, lawyers, engineers – all kinds of white collar professionals potentially see their job impacted in some way by these changes. That gives a much broader constituency of support for the necessary investments and program adjustments that’ll be needed in the coming years.

U of T’s Tony Dean appointed to Senate

lavende4 — Mon, 31 Oct 2016 20:37:29 +0000

U of T’s Tony Dean appointed to Senate

lavende4 Mon, 10/31/2016 - 16:37

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Tony Dean: “I am honoured that the Prime Minister has nominated me to serve in the Senate during this important period of reform” (Photo by Marie Boutilier )

Terry Lavender

Author legacy

Terry Lavender

Topic

Our Community

Senate