Transforming Ecological Finance for Economic, Social, and Planetary Justice
You can read the Group of 78’s Report of the 2022 Annual Policy Conference Here
Watch the conference: Select which panel you like to watch by clicking the three lines in the top right corner of the video below
Outline
Friday, September 23: Opening session
Introduction and welcome: Roy Culpeper, Chair, Group of 78
10:00 am ET
Keynote: Jim Stanford, Centre for Future Work, “Labour Markets, Climate Change, Finance, and Fair Transitions”.
Moderator: Susan Tanner
Discussions of employment transitions as we move toward a net-zero economy often are phrased in terms of “moving people” from fossil fuel jobs toward the new jobs that will be created as that transition proceeds: taking oilsands workers, for example, and hiring them (with retraining as needed) to manufacture windmills. This conception underemphasizes the multidimensional process of labour market adjustment that could facilitate effective transitions – so long as those transitions are staged, announced well in advance, and implemented gradually. The traditional assumption that we must find ‘another job’ (perhaps one in green energy activities) for every worker currently employed in a fossil fuel role is wrong, and makes the transition process more difficult than it needs to be. In fact, labour market transitions are happening all the time. Harnessing those processes to facilitate a gradual movement away from FF work makes the task far more do-able, and could be accomplished without displacement or involuntary unemployment at all. This must be supported by measures to support retirement, relocation, and retraining, and by a general macroeconomic commitment to full employment (which makes all employment transitions easier). This narrative will be illustrated with examples from Canadian and Australian data.
11:00 am ET
Richard Kozul-Wright, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD):” Is a New Bretton Woods desirable—or possible? Reorienting Global Finance to Social and Ecological Goals”.
Moderator: Manfred Bienefeld
After the 2008–9 global financial crisis, reforms to promote stability, social inclusion, and sustainability were promised but not delivered. As a result, the global economic situation, marred by inequality, volatility, and climate breakdown, remains dysfunctional.
Now, the economic fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic offers us a second chance. Richard Kozul-Wright will argue that we must grasp it by implementing sweeping reforms to how we govern global money, finance, and trade. Without global leaders prepared to boldly rewrite the rules to promote a prosperous, just, and sustainable post-Covid world economic order – a Bretton Woods moment for the twenty-first century – we risk being engulfed by climate chaos and political dysfunction.
Kozul-Wright provides a blueprint for change that no one interested in the future of our planet can afford to miss.
12:30 ET In-person reception with lunch
2:00 pm ET
Keynote: Grace Blakeley, Tribune: “How to Save the World from Financialization”.
Host: Jen Hassum.
Moderator: Angella MacEwen
In the decade leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, booming banks, rising house prices, and cheap consumer goods propped up living standards in the rich world. Thirty years of rocketing debt and financial wizardry had masked the deep underlying fragility of finance-led growth, and in 2008 we were forced to pay up.
The decade since has witnessed all kinds of morbid symptoms, as all around the rich world, wages and productivity are stagnant, inequality is rising, and ecological systems are collapsing.
Grace Blakeley’s Stolen: How to Save the World from Financialization (2019) is a history of finance-led growth and a guide as to how we might escape it. More recently in The Corona Crash (2020) she examines how the pandemic will change capitalism. We have sat back as financial capitalism has stolen our economies, our environment, and even the future itself. According to Blakeley, we have an opportunity to change course. What happens next is up to us.
Grace Blakeley had to withdraw from the conference shortly before it started. Instead, organizers screened an 11-minute video clip of a recent talk Blakeley gave on financialization. This was followed by a commentary and discussion led by Jen Hassum and Angella MacEwen
4:00 pm ET:
Keynote: Rosa Galvez, Senate of Canada: “Aligning finance with international climate commitments”.
Moderator: Bruce Campbell
Most financial reform proposals in recent years have centered on disclosure schemes that aim to identify and quantify the financial risks of climate change for businesses, in the hope that market participants and capital flows evolve accordingly. Unfortunately, this has not happened, squandering precious time the planet doesn’t have if we aim to attain the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5˚C above pre-industrial levels. This keynote will discuss the points of intersection between the financial system and our changing climate and will emphasize the opportunity to use legislation and regulation to align private financial flows with the country’s stated emissions reduction targets. In March 2022, Senator Galvez, a pollution expert and independent Senator from Quebec, introduced the Climate-Aligned Finance Act which seeks to provide an emissions reduction reporting and planning framework for federally regulated corporations as well as hold the financial sector accountable for their financed emissions. The legislation also creates a new fiduciary duty for directors, addresses conflicts of interest, ensures boards have climate expertise, and other measures to protect the financial system from climate-related systemic risk.
Monday September 26 at 12 Noon ET:
Panel 1: Transforming the International Currency System.
From a system rife with volatility and prone to speculation, to one that strengthens domestic policy space and fosters shared prosperity.
Moderator: Eric Helleiner
Speaker: Mark Plant, Center for Global Development: “Future of the SDR”
In 2021, the IMF issued $650 billion worth of Special Drawing Rights to help countries face the financial challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. While lower- and middle-income countries (LMICS) used the SDRS to increase monetary and fiscal space, the bulk of the SDRs sit unused at central banks of advanced economies. Efforts to recycle rich countries’ SDRs to benefit LMICs have been slow. An IMF facility to receive SDRs has been established but is not yet operational. Efforts to recycle SDRs to multilateral development banks have been stymied.
This “experiment” in increasing global liquidity has raised interest in the SDR as a global monetary instrument. Should the SDR be reformed or replaced by another global currency? Discussions center on when and how to make best use of global reserves and whether a mechanism for sharing reserves is worth nurturing to be able to confront future crises more effectively.
Speaker: Matias Vernengo, Bucknell University: “Future of the Dollar”
The presentation suggests that since the end of Bretton Woods the position of the dollar as the key global currency strengthened rather than weakened, in contrast to conventional wisdom. It will analyze the reasons and the evidence for that view, and discuss how the more recent geopolitical developments, with the rise of China, and the current ongoing war in Ukraine might affect the future position of the dollar.
Tuesday September 27 at 12 noon ET:
Panel 2: Transforming Banking, Monetary, and Fiscal Policies.
Toward public institutions and policies that serve the national interest rather than international financial markets.
Moderator: Peter Venton
Speaker: Susan Spronk, University of Ottawa: “Public Banking and municipal -infrastructure”
Public banks are enjoying a modern-day resurgence in the financing for development agenda. Public banks have helped mitigate the global financial crisis of 2008-2009 and catalyze the much-needed financial investments needed to transition to a low-carbon, green economy. While there are over 900 public banks in the world, with US$49 trillion in assets, public banks have been largely underestimated as an important source of funding for municipal infrastructure. They have also been neglected by academic research and by mainstream policy organisations such as the World Bank. This presentation provides a brief history of public banking practices in the global North and South, drawing examples from the water and sanitation sector. It discusses the pros and cons of public banks as contested institutions in class-divided societies and assesses their potential for contributing to the financing needs of the Sustainable Development Goals related to water (SDG #6).
Speaker: Heather Whiteside, University of Waterloo: “Public Enterprise and the Future of Austerity”
In the wake of late twentieth-century neoliberal privatization and state restructuring, the past few decades have been a time of ‘new state capitalism’ featuring expanded public finance and market intervention, made most evident through the international resurgence of state-owned enterprises utilized in varying ways by emerging market countries, within the liberal heartland, and amongst ‘illiberal’ countries ranging from China to the Gulf states. Within Canada alone, hundreds of Crown corporations exist at all levels of government, covering a wide swath of activities: banking, development, finance, gambling, energy, heritage, housing, insurance, land, liquor and lottery, mining, pensions, public works, research, telecommunications, and transportation. Focusing on activities related to banking, finance, insurance, and real estate, Whiteside explores how public ownership has been transformed through neoliberal ideals. The new state capitalism features public corporations that encourage the financialization of the state without necessarily improving other departments’ bottom line or services for the public at large. The purpose and activities of public enterprise must be realigned to challenge fiscal restraint and clawbacks. Public enterprise could be repurposed to serve the broader public good by providing funds for social services to circumvent the (imminent) pressures of austerity, reconnecting development policies to fiscal policies, and funding public investment in national projects through revenue earned from ownership.
Speaker: John Anderson, Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, “Postal Banking in Canada”
Last year Canada Post began an experiment to introduce, in some areas of the country, some elements of postal banking. Is this an opening to bring back a full form of postal banking which existed in Canada from Confederation to the 1960s? And what should a full postal banking system look like and what could it do in a progressive economic, social, and environmental sense as is the case with postal banks in many other countries? The speaker John Anderson is the author of several major policy studies for both the Canadian Union of Postal Workers and the Canadian Postmasters and Assistants Association on postal banking and is the author of the ground-breaking CCPA study Why Canada needs postal banking.
Wednesday September 28 at 12 noon ET:
Panel 3: Transforming Financial Innovation. Toward democratizing and regulating financial innovation and technology.
Moderator: Mario Seccareccia
Speaker: Andres Arauz, Citizen Revolution Movement, Ecuador: “Democratization of Fintech”
Innovation in financial technology is here to stay. There are risks of deepening privatization, deregulation and instability if the fintech agenda is not quickly disputed by progressive forces. Big Tech oriented “open banking” could entail delivering the payments and banking system to conglomerates such as the “GMAFIA” (Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, IBM and Apple). Cryptocurrencies could divert valuable talent, energy and entrepreneurial capital into a purely speculative business. The dollarization of cryptocurrency stablecoins risks a chronic retail-sized capital flight from developing countries. There are replicable alternatives available from developing country experiences. A Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC)with an open innovation digital commons framework that stimulates locally pertinent and home-grown initiatives. An electronic Special Drawing Right (eSDR) coupled with a large and recurrent issuance of SDRs could be deployed immediately by the IMF SDR Department for the settlement of cross-border transactions which would recover the central banks’ role in the regulation of financial flows, including the link among CBDCs. These measures would have a dynamic effect in the democratization of central banks, as citizens’ daily experiences and concerns with a public utility would thus be ventilated publicly and processed politically. Financial regulators in developing countries cannot be decades behind the state of financial innovation and oblivious to currency substitution of domestic payment systems. Finally, to truly fulfill their mandates, governments and central banks have a duty to significantly invest in and coalesce a big data artificial intelligence digital commons for the regulation (“reg-tech”) and enforcement (“sup-tech”) of financial innovation (fintech), instability-inducing flows and illicit financial flows.
This presentation will briefly outline the risks and discuss developing-country experiences in India, Ecuador, China, Colombia, Paraguay and El Salvador.
Speaker: Ulrich Bindseil, ECB:“How Central bank digital currencies can effectively serve people.”
Central bank digital currencies can be seen either as a natural evolution in view of the unstoppable digitalization of payments and the good reasons to preserve the role of the central bank money or as a revolution which can change fundamentally the respective roles of central bank and commercial bank money to the benefit of the former. Actually, few parameters in the design of CBDC can make a difference on where to position it, i.e. closer to either a conservative or revolutionary innovation. The presentation will review both the fundamental choice between the two, as well as the parameters to direct CBDC in either direction. In any case, even taking the conservative attitude towards the role of CBDC, the importance of CBDC for citizens in a world of digitalised payments cannot be overestimated. Retail CBDC should be designed with the interests of citizens in mind and also address elements which are less in the focus of the private payment industry, such as privacy; being cost-free for citizens; low cost also for small merchants; offline functionality; inclusiveness. More generally, payments is a network industries in which easily few dominant players gain market power and will tend to exploit it, and the continued availability of modern central bank money to citizens limits the room for this. The presentation will moreover discuss in this context the case of the digital euro.
Friday September 30: Wrap-up panel
Thank you to our sponsors!
Central bank digital currencies can be seen either as a natural evolution in view of the unstoppable digitalization of payments and the good reasons to preserve the role of the central bank money, or as a revolution which can change fundamentally the respective roles of central bank and commercial bank money to the benefit of the former. Actually, few parameters in the design of CBDC can make a difference on where to position it, i.e. closer to either a conservative or revolutionary innovation. The presentation will review both the fundamental choice between the two, as well as the parameters to direct CBDC in either direction. In any case, even taking a conservative attitude towards the role of CBDC, the importance of CBDC for citizens in a world of digitalised payments cannot be overestimated. Retail CBDC should be designed with the interests of citizens in mind and also address elements that are less in the focus of the private payment industry, such as privacy; being cost-free for citizens; the low cost also for small merchants; offline functionality; inclusiveness. More generally, payments are a network industry in which easily few dominant players gain market power and will tend to exploit it, and the continued availability of modern central bank money to citizens limits the room for this. The presentation will moreover discuss in this context the case of the digital euro.
PROGRAM
All times are EDT, UTC -4
Friday September 23: Opening session
Introduction and welcome: Roy Culpeper, Chair, Group of 78
10:00 am ET
Keynote: Jim Stanford, Centre for Future Work, “Labour Markets, Climate Change, Finance, and Fair Transitions”.
Moderator: Susan Tanner
Discussions of employment transitions as we move toward a net-zero economy often are phrased in terms of “moving people” from fossil fuel jobs toward the new jobs that will be created as that transition proceeds: taking oilsands workers, for example, and hiring them (with retraining as needed) to manufacture windmills. This conception underemphasizes the multidimensional process of labour market adjustment that could facilitate effective transitions – so long as those transitions are staged, announced well in advance, and implemented gradually. The traditional assumption that we must find ‘another job’ (perhaps one in green energy activities) for every worker currently employed in a fossil fuel role is wrong, and makes the transition process more difficult than it needs to be. In fact labour market transitions are happening all the time. Harnessing those processes to facilitate a gradual movement away from FF work makes the task far more do-able, and could be accomplished without displacement or involuntary unemployment at all. This must be supported by measures to support retirement, relocation, and retraining, and by a general macroeconomic commitment to full employment (which makes all employment transitions easier). This narrative will be illustrated with examples from Canadian and Australian data.
11:00 am ET
Richard Kozul-Wright, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD):” Is a New Bretton Woods desirable—or possible? Reorienting Global Finance to Social and Ecological Goals”.
Moderator: Manfred Bienefeld
After the 2008–9 global financial crisis, reforms to promote stability, social inclusion, and sustainability were promised but not delivered. As a result, the global economic situation, marred by inequality, volatility, and climate breakdown, remains dysfunctional.
Now, the economic fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic offers us a second chance. Richard Kozul-Wright will argue that we must grasp it by implementing sweeping reforms to how we govern global money, finance, and trade. Without global leaders prepared to boldly rewrite the rules to promote a prosperous, just, and sustainable post-Covid world economic order – a Bretton Woods moment for the twenty-first century – we risk being engulfed by climate chaos and political dysfunction.
Kozul-Wright provides a blueprint for change that no one interested in the future of our planet can afford to miss.
12:30 ET In-person reception with lunch
2:00 pm ET
Keynote: Grace Blakeley, Tribune: “How to Save the World from Financialization”.[1]
Host: Jen Hassum.
Moderator: Angella MacEwen
In the decade leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, booming banks, rising house prices and cheap consumer goods propped up living standards in the rich world. Thirty years of rocketing debt and financial wizardry had masked the deep underlying fragility of finance-led growth, and in 2008 we were forced to pay up.
The decade since has witnessed all kinds of morbid symptoms, as all around the rich world, wages and productivity are stagnant, inequality is rising, and ecological systems are collapsing.
Grace Blakeley’s Stolen: How to Save the World from Financialization (2019) is a history of finance-led growth and a guide as to how we might escape it. More recently in The Corona Crash (2020) she examines how the pandemic will change capitalism. We have sat back as financial capitalism has stolen our economies, our environment and even the future itself. According to Blakeley, we have an opportunity to change course. What happens next is up to us.
4:00 pm ET:
Keynote: Rosa Galvez, Senate of Canada: “Aligning finance with international climate commitments”.
Moderator: Bruce Campbell
Most financial reform proposals in recent years have centered on disclosure schemes that aim to identify and quantify the financial risks of climate change for businesses, in the hope that market participants and capital flows evolve accordingly. Unfortunately, this has not happened, squandering precious time the planet doesn’t have if we aim to attain the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5˚C above pre-industrial levels. This keynote will discuss the points of intersection between the financial system and our changing climate and will emphasize the opportunity to use legislation and regulation to align private financial flows with the country’s stated emissions reductions targets. In March 2022, Senator Galvez, a pollution expert and independent Senator from Quebec, introduced the Climate-Aligned Finance Act which seeks to provide an emissions reduction reporting and planning framework for federally regulated corporations as well as hold the financial sector accountable for their financed emissions. The legislation also creates a new fiduciary duty for directors, addresses conflicts of interest, ensures boards have climate expertise, and other measures to protect the financial system from climate-related systemic risk.
Monday, September 26 at 12 Noon ET:
Panel 1: Transforming the International Currency System.
From a system rife with volatility and prone to speculation, to one that strengthens domestic policy space and fosters shared prosperity.
Moderator: Eric Helleiner
Speaker: Mark Plant, Center for Global Development: “Future of the SDR”
In 2021, the IMF issued $650 billion worth of Special Drawing Rights to help countries face the financial challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. While lower- and middle-income countries (LMICS) used the SDRS to increase monetary and fiscal space, the bulk of the SDRs sit unused at central banks of advanced economies. Efforts to recycle rich countries’ SDRs to benefit LMICs have been slow. An IMF facility to receive SDRs has been established but is not yet operational. Efforts to recycle SDRs to multilateral development banks have been stymied.
This “experiment” in increasing global liquidity has raised interest in the SDR as a global monetary instrument. Should the SDR be reformed or replaced by another global currency? Discussions center on when and how to make best use of global reserves and whether a mechanism for sharing reserves is worth nurturing to be able to confront future crises more effectively.
Speaker: Matias Vernengo, Bucknell University: “Future of the Dollar”
The presentation suggests that since the end of Bretton Woods the position of the dollar as the key global currency strengthened rather than weakened, in contrast to conventional wisdom. It will analyze the reasons and the evidence for that view, and discuss how the more recent geopolitical developments, with the rise of China, and the current ongoing war in Ukraine might affect the future position of the dollar.
Tuesday, September 27 at 12 noon ET:
Panel 2: Transforming Banking, Monetary and Fiscal Policies.
Toward public institutions and policies that serve the national interest rather than international financial markets.
Moderator: Peter Venton
Speaker: Susan Spronk, University of Ottawa: “Public Banking and municipal -infrastructure”
Public banks are enjoying a modern-day resurgence in the financing for development agenda. Public banks have helped mitigate the global financial crisis of 2008-2009 and catalyze the much-needed financial investments needed to transition to a low-carbon, green economy. While there are over 900 public banks in the world, with US$49 trillion in assets, public banks have been largely underestimated as an important source of funding for municipal infrastructure. They have also been neglected by academic research and by mainstream policy organisations such as the World Bank. This presentation provides a brief history of public banking practices in the global North and South, drawing examples from the water and sanitation sector. It discusses the pros and cons of public banks as contested institutions in class-divided societies and assesses their potential for contributing to the financing needs of the Sustainable Development Goals related to water (SDG #6).
Speaker: Heather Whiteside, University of Waterloo: “Public Enterprise and the Future of Austerity”
In the wake of late twentieth-century neoliberal privatization and state restructuring, the past few decades have been a time of ‘new state capitalism’ featuring expanded public finance and market intervention, made most evident through the international resurgence of state-owned enterprises utilized in varying ways by emerging market countries, within the liberal heartland, and amongst ‘illiberal’ countries ranging from China to the Gulf states. Within Canada alone, hundreds of Crown corporations exist at all levels of government, covering a wide swath of activities: banking, development, finance, gambling, energy, heritage, housing, insurance, land, liquor and lottery, mining, pensions, public works, research, telecommunications, and transportation. Focusing on activities related to banking, finance, insurance, and real estate, Whiteside explores how public ownership has been transformed through neoliberal ideals. The new state capitalism features public corporations that encourage the financialization of the state without necessarily improving other departments’ bottom line or services for the public at large. The purpose and activities of public enterprise must be realigned to challenge fiscal restraint and clawbacks. Public enterprise could be repurposed to serve the broader public good by providing funds for social services to circumvent the (imminent) pressures of austerity, reconnecting development policies to fiscal policies, and funding public investment in national projects through revenue earned from ownership.
Speaker: John Anderson, Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, “Postal Banking in Canada”
Last year Canada Post began an experiment to introduce, in some areas of the country, some elements of postal banking. Is this an opening to bring back a full form of postal banking which existed in Canada from Confederation to the 1960s? And what should a full postal banking system look life and what could it do in a progressive economic, social and environmental sense as is the case with postal banks in many other countries? The speaker John Anderson is the author of several major policy studies for both the Canadian Union of Postal Workers and the Canadian Postmasters and Assistants Association on postal banking and is the author of the ground-breaking CCPA study Why Canada needs postal banking.
Wednesday, September 28 at 12 noon ET:
Panel 3: Transforming Financial Innovation. Toward democratizing and regulating financial innovation and technology.
Moderator: Mario Seccareccia
Speaker: Andres Arauz, Citizen Revolution Movement, Ecuador: “Democratization of Fintech”
Innovation in financial technology is here to stay. There are risks of deepening privatization, deregulation and instability if the fintech agenda is not quickly disputed by progressive forces. Big Tech oriented “open banking” could entail delivering the payments and banking system to conglomerates such as the “GMAFIA” (Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, IBM and Apple). Cryptocurrencies could divert valuable talent, energy and entrepreneurial capital into a purely speculative business. The dollarization of cryptocurrency stablecoins risks a chronic retail-sized capital flight from developing countries. There are replicable alternatives available from developing country experiences. A Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC)with an open innovation digital commons framework that stimulates locally pertinent and home-grown initiatives. An electronic Special Drawing Right (eSDR) coupled with a large and recurrent issuance of SDRs could be deployed immediately by the IMF SDR Department for the settlement of cross-border transactions which would recover the central banks’ role in the regulation of financial flows, including the link among CBDCs. These measures would have a dynamic effect in the democratization of central banks, as citizens’ daily experiences and concerns with a public utility would thus be ventilated publicly and processed politically. Financial regulators in developing countries cannot be decades behind the state of financial innovation and oblivious to currency substitution of domestic payment systems. Finally, to truly fulfill their mandates, governments and central banks have a duty to significantly invest in and coalesce a big data artificial intelligence digital commons for the regulation (“reg-tech”) and enforcement (“sup-tech”) of financial innovation (fintech), instability-inducing flows and illicit financial flows.
This presentation will briefly outline the risks and discuss developing-country experiences in India, Ecuador, China, Colombia, Paraguay, and El Salvador.
Speaker: Ulrich Bindseil, ECB: “How Central bank digital currencies can effectively serve people.” ”
Central bank digital currencies can be seen either as a natural evolution in view of the unstoppable digitalization of payments and the good reasons to preserve the role of the central bank money, or as a revolution that can change fundamentally the respective roles of central bank and commercial bank money to the benefit of the former. Actually, few parameters in the design of CBDC can make a difference on where to position it, i.e. closer to either a conservative or revolutionary innovation. The presentation will review both the fundamental choice between the two, as well as the parameters to direct CBDC in either direction. In any case, even taking the conservative attitude towards the role of CBDC, the importance of CBDC for citizens in a world of digitalised payments cannot be overestimated. Retail CBDC should be designed with the interests of citizens in mind and also address elements which are less in the focus of the private payment industry, such as privacy; being cost-free for citizens; low cost also for small merchants; offline functionality; inclusiveness. More generally, payments is a network industries in which easily few dominant players gain market power and will tend to exploit it, and the continued availability of modern central bank money to citizens limits the room for this. The presentation will moreover discuss in this context the case of the digital euro.
Friday September 30: Wrap-up panel
Thank you to our sponsors!
 Roy Culpeper, Chair, Group of 78 Roy Culpeper is an Honorary Senior Fellow of the University of Ottawa’s School of International Development and Global Studies, Adjunct Professor at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University, and a Fellow of the Broadbent Institute. He is Chair of the Group of 78, and founding Chair of the Coalition for Equitable Land Acquisitions and Development in Africa (CELADA). From January until May 2011 he was Fulbright Canada Visiting Research Chair at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. Previously he was President and Chief Executive Officer of The North-South Institute, Ottawa. Earlier in his career, he was an official at the World Bank in Washington, the federal Departments of Finance and External Affairs in Ottawa, and the Planning Secretariat of the Government of Manitoba in Winnipeg. Roy Culpeper obtained his Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Toronto. He has published widely on the issues of international development, finance and global governance. |
 Jim Stanford is Economist and Director of the Centre for Future Work. He divides his time between Vancouver, B.C., and Sydney, Australia. Jim is one of Canada’s best-known economists. He served for over 20 years as Economist and Director of Policy with Unifor, Canada’s largest private-sector trade union (formerly the Canadian Auto Workers). He is quoted frequently in the print and broadcast media, and contributes regular commentaries to the Toronto Star, Global National news, and CKNW Radio. He is also the Harold Innis Industry Professor in Economics at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, and an Honorary Professor in the Department of Political Economy at the University of Sydney. Jim received his Ph.D. in Economics from the New School for Social Research in New York. He also holds an M.Phil. in Economics from Cambridge University, and a B.A. (Hons.) in Economics from the University of Calgary. Jim is the author of Economics for Everyone: A Short Guide to the Economics of Capitalism (second edition published by Pluto Books in 2015), which has been published in six languages. Stanford has written, edited or co-edited six other books, and dozens of articles and reports in both peer-reviewed and popular outlets. He has provided research and advice through numerous federal and provincial government panels and inquiries on economic policy, innovation, jobs, and social policy. Jim is recognized for his ability to communicate economic concepts in an accessible and humorous manner. |
 Susan Tanner, Vice-Chair Group of 78; Secretary, OREC; Chair, G78 Climate Change and Environment Working Group Susan Tanner, L.L.B., M.E.S., L.L.M While holding senior positions in both Federal and Ontario governments Susan has maintained an active role in the non-profit community. In 1982, Susan was the founding chairperson of LEAF (Legal Education and Action Fund) to promote the rights of women under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In 1995, Friends of the Earth (FoE) Canada accepted a UN Environmental Prize for work on the Montreal Protocol done under her leadership. Susan continues to be actively involved with organizations such as Ottawa Renewable Energy Coop, Women for Nature (Nature Canada) and Group of 78. Government positions included: Senior Advisor to the Deputy Minister of Justice on Gender Equality and Diversity; Forum Lead, WUF Habitat Jam; Member of the Ontario Environmental Assessment Board; Vice-Chair, Social Assessment Review Board; and mediator for the Ontario Grievance Settlement Board. She holds a Masters of Environmental Studies and a Masters of Law. |
 Richard Kozul-Wright, is the director of United Nations Conference on Trade and Development’s (UNCTAD’s) globalization and development strategies division. He has worked at the UN in both New York and Geneva and published widely on economic issues, including in the Economic Journal, Cambridge Journal of Economics, Journal of Development Studies, and the Oxford Review of Economic Policy. He has co-written books such as The Resistible Rise of Market Fundamentalism with Paul Rayment and co-edited volumes of Transnational Corporations and the Global Economy; Economic Insecurity and Development; Securing Peace, Climate Protection and Development; and Industrial Policy. He also co-edited Transforming Economies: Making Industrial Policy Work for Growth, Jobs and Development published by the International Labour Organization. He holds a PhD degree in economics from the University of Cambridge in the UK. |
 Manfred Bienefeld, Professor Emeritus, School of Policy and Public Administration Manfred A. Bienefeld is emeritus professor in the School of Public Policy and Administration at Carleton University. His current research interests include, development policy, wages/employment, commodity/capital markets, human capital, technology/industrialization, development and the environment, development in a historical perspective, his area interests include Africa, Canada, the Pacific, and East Asia and his issue interests include: the debt crisis, protectionism, industrial policy, planning, privatization, and the “newly industrializing countries.” He has edited (with Jane Jenson and Rianne Mahon) Production, Space, Identity, Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press 1993. |
 Grace Blakeley Grace Blakeley studied philosophy, politics, and economics at St Peter’s College, Oxford, then obtained a master’s degree in African studies at St Antony’s College, Oxford. After graduating, she worked as a management consultant for KPMG in their Public Sector and Healthcare Practice division. Blakeley then worked as a research fellow for a year at the left-wing think tank, Institute for Public Policy Research in Manchester, specializing in regional economic policy. She joined the magazine New Statesman in January 2019 as its economics commentator, writing a fortnightly column and contributing to the website and podcasts. Her articles for the magazine included support for a Green New Deal. Her first book, Stolen: How to Save the World from Financialisation, was published by Repeater Books on 10 September 2019. Blakeley became a staff writer for the democratic socialist magazine Tribune in January 2020. She sits on the Labour Party’s National Policy Forum, which is responsible for policy development. Blakeley’s second book, The Corona Crash: How the Pandemic Will Change Capitalism, was published in October 2020. |
 Jen Hassum assumed the role of Executive Director at the Broadbent Institute in September 2021. In the last two decades, she led teams at the municipal, provincial, and national levels. She is recognized as an innovator in building online community and mobilizing users to real-world action. Most recently as the Publisher of PressProgress, she helped oversee its growth into an award-winning national news organization read by millions of Canadians. Over the years, her work has contributed to historic electoral victories, winning new organized workplaces and helping win important public policy gains for working-class people. She studied history at York University and the University of Toronto and lives in Cambridge, ON with her partner and two young kiddos. |
 Angella MacEwen Angella MacEwen is the Senior Economist at CUPE, where her focus is on the impacts of social policy and broader economic trends for workers, especially climate policy and international trade and investment treaties. A research associate with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives since 2006, Angella is a regular contributor to their Alternative Federal Budget. She’s also a policy fellow with the Broadbent Institute, and sits on the steering committee of the Progressive Economics Forum. She holds a Masters in Economics from Dalhousie University and an undergraduate degree in International Development Studies from Saint Mary’s University in Halifax. |
 Senator Rosa Galvez The Honourable Rosa Galvez is an environmental engineer, an independent senator, and the President of the Parliamentary Network on Climate Change of ParlAmericas. She was a professor at Laval University in Québec for over 25 years and was Chair of its Civil and Water Engineering department from 2011 to 2017. She specializes in pollution control, water and wastewater treatment, watershed management, sustainable development, municipal and hazardous waste, site remediation, impact assessment, and climate risk to infrastructure. At the Senate of Canada, she is a member of the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance and the Senate Standing Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources which she chaired during the 42nd Parliament. In 2021, she was the sponsor in the Senate of the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act, providing an accountability framework for the Canadian federal government to achieve its net-zero emissions goal by 2050. She was also the recipient of the Clean50 Award 2021 for her parliamentary work on climate and the environment. In March 2022, she published a white paper on (now Toronto Metropolitan University, legislation to help guide Canada’s financial sector in its transition to a net-zero economy. |
 Bruce Campbell is former Executive Director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. He is an adjunct professor, at York University, Faculty of Environmental Studies; and Senior Fellow, at Ryerson University (now Toronto Metropolitan University), Centre for Free Expression. He is the author of The Lac-Mégantic Rail Disaster: Public Betrayal Justice Denied, James Lorimer, 2018. He is the author of The Petro-Path Not Taken: Comparing Norway with Canada and Alberta’s Management of Petroleum Wealth, CCPA, January 2013, and a recent commentary comparing the two countries on climate action. |
 Mark Plant is co-director of development finance, a senior policy fellow, and chief operating officer of Center for Global Development (CGD) Europe. His appointment to CGD follows a long career at the International Monetary Fund, where he was most recently the director of Human Resources. Prior to that, Plant worked extensively with African countries, culminating in his appointment as deputy director of the IMF’s African Department. He also held a range of senior positions in the Strategy, Policy, and Review Department, where he had oversight of the IMF’s policies towards low-income countries, including its work on the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI) and the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative. Before joining the IMF, Plant held senior positions in the US Department of Commerce and at the General Motors Corporation. He began his career teaching economics at the University of California, Los Angeles. |
 Matías Vernengo is Professor at Bucknell University. He was formerly Senior Research Manager at the Central Bank of Argentina, Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Utah, and Assistant Professor at Kalamazoo College and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He has been an external consultant to several United Nations organizations like the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, the International Labor Organization, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, and the United Nations Development Program, and has six edited books, two books and more than one hundred articles published in scientific peer-reviewed journals or book chapters. He specializes in macroeconomic issues for developing countries, in particular Latin America, international political economy and the history of economic ideas. He is also the co-editor of the Review of Keynesian Economics and co-editor in chief of the New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. |
 Eric Helleiner is a Professor in the Department of Political Science and Balsillie School of International Affairs at the University of Waterloo. His recent books include The Neomercantilists: A Global Intellectual History (2021), The Status Quo Crisis: Global Financial Governance after the 2008 Meltdown (2014), and The Forgotten Foundations of Bretton Woods (2014). |
 Susan Spronk teaches at the School of International Development and Global Studies at the University of Ottawa. Her research focuses on the impact of neoliberalism on the transformation of the state and social policy, and the rise of anti-privatization movements in Latin America and South Africa. She is also a research associate with the Municipal Services Project, an international research project that focuses on policy alternatives in municipal service delivery in Africa, Asia, and Latin America (http://www.municipalservicesproject.org). Her articles have appeared in Studies in Political Economy, Water Alternatives, Latin American Perspectives, International Labor and Working Class History, amongst others. Her most recent book in English and Spanish is Public Water and Covid-19: Dark Clouds and Silver Linings (with David A. McDonald and Daniel Chavez). |
 Heather Whiteside is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Waterloo and Fellow at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, Canada. Her research on the political economy of the state, privatization, and fiscal finance has been published in journals including Canadian Public Administration, Economic Geography, Review of International Political Economy, Studies in Political Economy, and Urban Studies, and through six books including Varieties of Austerity (2021), Canadian Political Economy (2020),and Capitalist Political Economy (2020). Heather is also currently working on grant-funded projects related to colonial era joint-stock royal charter companies in English North America and public enterprise solutions for post-pandemic recoveries. |
 John Anderson is a Senior Researcher with the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada. He represents PIPSC on the Canadian Labour Congress Task Force on Automation and Artificial Intelligence which will present its report in the fall of this year. Prior to this, John was an independent researcher who wrote the major studies on postal banking for the Canadian Union of Postal Workers and several reports for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives including one on regulating the digital giants. He also has been the Director of Policy and Research for the Federal NDP as well as Director of Policy for the Canadian Co-operative Association and Research Director for the Canadian Council on Social Development, as well co-ordinator of the Technological Adjustment Research Project for the Ontario Federation of Labour. He taught Labour Studies at McMaster University for 13 years. He is a frequent op-ed contributor to major dailies. He has a BA and MA from McGill University. |
 Peter Venton Peter Venton, MA (Econ) is an economist and lead of the Canadian Pugwash Group’s “Global Issues Project” which focuses on the search for socioeconomic and environmental threats to human security. Prior to his retirement in 2009, Peter was a senior economist in the Ontario Government’s Ministry of Finance for 25 years. His work included analyzing and advice on federal, provincial, and municipal taxation and fiscal policies, federal-provincial finance, and provincial-municipal finance. Since his retirement, he has published articles on political economy that include: “Radical Changes in Canadian Democracy for Ecology and the Public Good” (2015) “Pope Francis’s Ethics for Democratic Capitalism and the Common Good” (2017) “Towards World Federalism for International Peace and a Sustainable Environment” (2018) “The Political Economy of Managing Without Growth.” (2020) “The Politics of Climate Change Since the US Golden Age of Democracy and Capitalism” (2022) |
 Andrés Arauz Galarza is an Ecuadorian politician and economist. From 2015 to 2017 he was Minister of Knowledge and Human Talent during the presidency of Rafael Correa from 2015 to 2017.[3] He also was Minister of Culture in March and April 2017 following the resignation of Raúl Vallejo. In August 2020 he announced that he would be a candidate for President in the 2021 general election. On 7 February 2021, he won the majority of the votes in the first round of the election and advanced to the run-off against Guillermo Lasso. In the April run-off, Lasso would go on to defeat Arauz. He was born in Quito. He earned a Bachelor of Science from the University of Michigan and a doctorate in economics from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. |
 Ulrich Bindseil is Director General Market Infrastructure and Payments at the European Central Bank (ECB), a post he has held since November 2019. Previously, he was Director General Market Operations (from May 2012 to October 2019) and head of the Risk Management Division (between 2005 and 2008). He first entered central banking in 1994, when he joined the Economics Department of the Deutsche Bundesbank, having studied economics. His publications include, among others, Monetary Policy Operations and the Financial System, OUP, 2014; Central Banking before 1800 – A Rehabilitation, OUP, 2019; Introduction to Central Banking (with A. Fotia, Springer, 2021).[RC2] |
 Mario Seccareccia Professor emeritus at the Department of Economics, University of Ottawa Mario Seccareccia is a professor emeritus at the Department of Economics, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada where he taught for forty years, from 1978 to 2018, in the fields of macroeconomics, monetary theory, labour economics, history of economic thought, and economic history areas in which he has also published extensively. Indeed, he has published over 100 academic articles in scientific refereed journals or chapters of books and has authored or edited a dozen books/textbooks and monographs. He has also edited or co-edited some 40 special issues of journals. Also, some of these publications are of an interdisciplinary nature and cover many areas of political economy. An example is Monetary Economies of Production: Banking and Financial Circuits and the Role of the State Co-edited with L.-P. Rochon. (Edward Elgar, 2013) Mario Seccareccia has been Visiting Professor at several universities in France (Université de Bourgogne, Université de Grenoble, Université Paris 13, and Université Paris-Sud) and in Mexico (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)), and he participates regularly in policy debate in both Europe and North America. |