Carleton’s international affairs school released a 178-page report Feb. 25 examining what future United Nations development goals could mean for Canada.
The report was jointly released with the Centre for the Study of Living Standards, a non-profit organization in Ottawa. The two groups hosted a speaking event and panel discussion on Carleton’s campus to launch the report. The event drew a crowd of approximately 50 people, many older than most students, to learn more about the report and hear from its authors.
Canada 2030: An Agenda for Sustainable Development Report is being published as the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) are about to expire, and a new set of goals, called the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) are being negotiated. The SDGs will be released in September.
The foundation of the report is that the proposed SDGs are relevant to Canada. This is contrary to how many people view the MDGs, one of the lead report authors and adjunct research professor for Carleton’s international business school Shannon Kindornay said.
“This report is an interesting one because I think it’s very original in terms of contributing to the debate about what Canada has to do with SDGs,” said Yiagadeesen Samy, an event panalist and director of the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton.
“It’s a very comprehensive report,” Samy said. “It covers everything, and no one has done this.”
The report highlights several areas where Canada can improve to meet sustainable development goals, such as the social, economic, and environmental well-being of Canada’s Indigenous Peoples and the gender wage gap.
“It’s my hope that people walk away from this thinking, first of all, A) there’s this international process happening, B) it matters for Canada, and C) here are some of the priorities for Canada,” she said.
“Our report did exactly what it set out to do,” Kindornay said, pointing to the many areas of Canadian development that the report examines.
The challenge now is getting the report to the right people such as provincial governments or the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, who the report authors have already been in contact with, Kindornay said.
The high quality of Canada’s statistical data is another one of the report’s foundations, indicating Canada’s ability to assess its own progress.
Carleton public administration student Brianne Lees, a public administration student said she attended the event because she “wanted to get a sense of what different people are saying, what different actors are saying, [and] different perspectives about the SDGs.”
The report originated at the North-South Institute before its closure last year, when the Norman Paterson School continued the project that started in March 2014.
