The North American Free Trade Agreement was an agreement signed by Canada, Mexico, and the United States that created a trilateral trade bloc in North America. The agreement came into force on January 1, 1994, and superseded the 1988 Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement between the United States and Canada. The NAFTA trade bloc formed one of the largest trade blocs in the world by gross domestic product.
The Free Trade Area of the Americas was a proposed agreement to eliminate or reduce the trade barriers among all countries in the Americas, excluding Cuba. Negotiations to establish the FTAA ended in failure, however, with all parties unable to reach an agreement by the 2005 deadline they had set for themselves.
Steven Hillel Paikin is a Canadian journalist, author, and documentary producer. Paikin has primarily worked for TVOntario (TVO), Ontario's public broadcaster, and is anchor of TVO's flagship current affairs program The Agenda with Steve Paikin.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram is a Malaysian economist. He is a senior adviser at the Khazanah Research Institute, visiting fellow at the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, Columbia University, and an adjunct professor at the International Islamic University (IIUM).
Maude Victoria Barlow is a Canadian author and activist. She is a founding member and former board chair of the Council of Canadians, a citizens' advocacy organization with members and chapters across Canada. She is also the co-founder of the Blue Planet Project, which works internationally for the human right to water. Barlow chairs the board of Washington-based Food & Water Watch, serves on the Board of Advisors to the Global Alliance on the Rights of Nature, was a founding member of the San Francisco–based International Forum on Globalization, and was a Councillor with the Hamburg-based World Future Council. She is the Chancellor of Brescia University College at Western University. In 2008/2009, was Senior Advisor on Water to the 63rd President of the United Nations General Assembly.
Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann was an American-born Nicaraguan diplomat, politician and Catholic priest of the Maryknoll Missionary Society. As the President of the United Nations General Assembly from September 2008 to September 2009, he presided over the 63rd Session of the United Nations General Assembly. He was also nominated as Libyan Representative to the UN in March 2011. He died on 8 June 2017, having suffered a stroke several months earlier.
Tony Clarke is a Canadian activist.
Rodrigue Tremblay is a Canadian economist, humanist and political figure. He is an emeritus professor of economics at the Université de Montréal. He specializes in macroeconomics, international trade and finance, and public finance. He is the author of books in economics and politics. Tremblay's documents and archives are kept at the Center of Archives of the Quebec National Library and Archives, in Montreal, Quebec.
The Council of Canadians is a Canadian non-profit organization that advocates for clean water, fair trade, green energy, public health care, and democracy. The organization is headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario with regional offices in Halifax, Toronto, Edmonton and Vancouver and a network of local chapters across the country.
Robert Alan Pastor was a member of the National Security Council staff and a writer on foreign affairs.
Steven Starr is the producer of FLOW: For Love Of Water, and the founder of Revver.
Water exports involve exporting freshwater from one country to another. Large increases in human population and economic growth throughout the world during the twentieth century placed a huge stress on the world’s freshwater resources. Combined with climate change, they are expected to place an even greater demand on water resources in this century. Water shortages have become an international concern, and freshwater has been described as "blue gold" and "the oil of the 21st Century."
The North American Union (NAU) is a theoretical economic and political continental union of Canada, Mexico and the United States, the three largest and most populous countries in North America. The concept is loosely based on the European Union, occasionally including a common currency called the amero or the North American Dollar. A union of the North American continent, sometimes extending to Central and South America, has been the subject of academic concepts for over a century, as well as becoming a common trope in science fiction. One reason for the difficulty in realizing the concept is that individual developments in each region have failed to prioritize a larger union. Some form of union has been discussed or proposed in academic, business, and political circles for decades. However, government officials from all three nations say there are no plans to create a North American Union and that no agreement to do so has been proposed, much less signed. The formation of a North American Union has been the subject of various conspiracy theories.
The Rideau Institute is a non-profit independent research and advocacy group based in Ottawa. It focuses on foreign policy and defence policy issues.
A hot stain is a region of the world where safe drinking water has been depleted. The term may have been coined by Goldman Environmental Prize winning hydrologist Michal Kravcik. Hot stains can be found on every continent, except for Antarctica. The biggest reason for a hot stain to develop is population pressure. As the population grows, water demand increases. Although the earth is covered in 97% water, only 1% of that water is available for human consumption. Hot stains can cause great harm to a regions agricultural ability and can lead to food scarcity, famine, and even the abandonment of the region.
North American integration is the process of economic and political integration in North America, largely centred on the integration of Canada, Mexico, and the United States.
The Stiglitz Report: Reforming the International Monetary and Financial Systems in the Wake of the Global Crisis is a book on economics written by Nobel Laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz, documenting the necessary changes and reforms of the international financial institutions in the wake of the financial crisis of 2007–2008, and the subsequent Great Recession arisen from it.
Liz Marshall is a Canadian filmmaker based in Toronto. Since the 1990s, she has directed and produced independent projects and been part of film and television teams, creating broadcast, theatrical, campaign and cross-platform documentaries shot around the world. Marshall's feature length documentaries largely focus on social justice and environmental themes through strong characters. She is known for The Ghosts in Our Machine and for Water on the Table, for which she also produced impact and engagement campaigns, and attended many global events as a public speaker. Water on the Table features water rights activist, author and public figure Maude Barlow. The Ghosts in Our Machine features animal rights activist, photojournalist and author Jo-Anne McArthur.
The Sixty-third session of the United Nations General Assembly was the session of the United Nations General Assembly that ran from 16 September 2008 to 14 September 2009.
The general debate of the sixty-third session of the United Nations General Assembly was the first debate of the 63rd session of the United Nations General Assembly that ran from 23 – 29 September 2008. Leaders from a number of member states addressed the General Assembly.
