Noreen Ahmed-Ullah

U of T symposium tackles carbon markets and climate finance

ullahnor — Wed, 27 Jun 2018 04:00:00 +0000

U of T symposium tackles carbon markets and climate finance

ullahnor Wed, 06/27/2018 - 00:00

Cutline

U of T's John Robinson (left) speaks to another conference organizer, lawyer Patricia Koval, a member of the School of the Environment's environmental finance advisory committee (photos by Noreen Ahmed-Ullah)

Noreen Ahmed-Ullah

Topic

City & Culture

Climate Change

Faculty of Arts & Science

Greenhouse Gas

Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

President Meric Gertler

Rotman School of Management

School of the Environment

Looking for creative ways to fund efforts to reduce its carbon footprint, the ��߲ݴ�ý brought together the financial community, university leaders, local government officials and climate change advocates for an all-day forum on carbon markets and sustainable finance.

As organizations and governments across North America try to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), U of T hopes that driving the conversation on funding climate change initiatives could have implications beyond the university.

President Meric Gertler told the gathering that the discussion was very much in keeping with U of T’s city-building efforts and its role as “an agent of change in the community.”

“The challenge of climate change is immense,” said President Gertler. “If we are to have any hope of achieving the emissions reductions necessary to avoid the worst consequences, we need to work together to explore, and then implement, the best means to achieve our climate targets.

“By offering the ��߲ݴ�ý as a case study of innovative approaches to carbon finance, we hope this conference will generate insights that will help us to meet our targets. At the same time, these insights may well be relevant to other organizations and jurisdictions also facing the challenge of financing substantial reductions in GHG emissions.”

As part of Ontario’s program to reduce greenhouse gases, U of T has set a goal to reduce emissions by 37 per cent from 1990 levels by 2030.

To meet the target, U of T has embarked on retrofitting old buildings -- many of which qualify as heritage buildings – constructing new ones with fully sustainable features, and looking at acquiring carbon offsets. Earlier this year, U of T received $26.7 million in new provincial innovation funding to launch several “green” projects.

President Gertler has also established a presidential advisory committee on the environment, climate change and sustainability. The committee has released recommendations on engaging students, faculty, staff and the external community, including initiatives to treat U of T’s campuses as a living lab so that all operational activities like new buildings, retrofits, landscaping and purchasing are evaluated for performance on sustainability metrics.

U of T has also joined two new university alliances – one led by the University of California’s 10 campuses to set GHG targets and trigger public engagement on the issue – and another led by the University of Oxford to explore sustainable finance and green investment.

With last week’s announcement that the province will be scrapping its cap-and-trade program, the university will likely need to explore alternative financing options, especially in the private sector, to fund many of the initiatives.

“It will be very important to consider how to leverage private capital,” said Tiff Macklem, dean of the Rotman School of Management, who spoke at the beginning of the forum. “It may force us to be more creative.”

Tiff Macklem, dean of the Rotman School of Management, talks about his role on the federal expert panel on sustainable finance

Other speakers included Jim Baxter, director of the environment and energy division at the City of Toronto, who talked about the city’s various green efforts and finance initiatives, including its partnership with Enwave Energy Corp. to explore low-carbon energy networks; Robert Keen, who heads Forests Ontario and talked about acquiring carbon offsets; Tim Stoate, who oversees the Atmospheric Fund’s impact investing, and designs and tests new financing options for low-carbon projects; and Shaaj Vijay of RBC Capital Markets, who discussed the use of green bonds.

Macklem, who was recently appointed by the federal government to chair an expert panel on sustainable finance, spoke about the opportunities in Canada and at U of T to help develop and test ways for the market to adapt to climate change risks, fund the transition to a low carbon economy, and “provide leadership to the world.”

“If Canada comes to the table with a financial structure, that will get some attention because we have a reputation for financial stability,” he said.

John Robinson, U of T’s presidential adviser on the environment, climate change and sustainability, who was one of the co-organizers of the conference, said he hopes that joining the Oxford University network will lead to a greater focus on sustainable finance at the university.

“There’s a lot of finance strength at Rotman, but there hasn’t been until now a focus on sustainable finance,” said Robinson, who is a professor at U of T’s Munk School of Global Affairs and the School of the Environment in the Faculty of Arts & Science. “We’re hoping all of these activities will contribute to building academic capacity on sustainability across the university.”

The forum came out of U of T’s alliance with 14 other leading research universities in North America that make up the University Climate Change Coalition, or UC3. One of the requirements for U of T to join UC3 was a pledge to reduce its carbon footprint and to develop programming to engage the Toronto region on sustainability issues.

The alliance formed after U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris Agreement on climate change. At the time, the University of California Systems’ President Janet Napolitano, the former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security under then President Barack Obama, decided to bring together research-intensive universities with local governments and business leaders to continue with strong carbon reduction goals.

Professor John Robinson leads a discussion on creative sustainable financing, with speakers including Tim Stoate, vice-president of impact investing at The Atmospheric Fund, and Rob Keen, CEO of Forests Ontario

“The only thing this announcement did was galvanize everybody in the country who is working on climate action,” said Matthew St. Clair, who is leading sustainability efforts across the 10-campus University of California system.

“You’re not alone,” he told participants. “This was a huge motivator for climate actors in the United States.”

Scott Mabury, U of T’s vice-president of university operations, said he heard a lot of good ideas at the forum, and the university will now look at, “How much can we do, what can we prioritize?”

“We now need to plan very formally how we’re going to hit the 2030 target,” he said.

Physics Professor Kimberly Strong, director of U of T’s School of the Environment, helped co-organize the conference. She said one of the takeaways was that other countries like China have significantly ambitious cap and trade programs, and Ontario now runs the risk of being left behind.

“Carbon dioxide emissions are very clearly increasing. We can see that in our ground-based measurements,” she said. “We can see it in new datasets coming out of satellite observations. We are learning more and more about the carbon cycle, and how emissions into the atmosphere interact with biosphere and oceans, and we need to be reducing those emissions.

“As a scientist, I am interested in understanding what is going on in the atmosphere, but we also need to make a change in what we’re doing. While we make the case around cultural and behaviour changes, we also need to make an economic case for reining in greenhouse gas emissions. We should be developing green technology. We should be developing financial instruments. If we don’t do that, other countries will be moving ahead, and at some point, we’re going to be left scrambling to catch up.”

Katie Sullivan, managing director at the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA), and Xiaolu Zhao, the China Climate Initiative program manager with the Environmental Defense Fund, talk about carbon markets around the world including in China and Ontario

‘Don’t expect any form of denuclearization quickly’: U of T expert on Trump's North Korean deal

ullahnor — Wed, 13 Jun 2018 15:30:48 +0000

‘Don’t expect any form of denuclearization quickly’: U of T expert on Trump's North Korean deal

ullahnor Wed, 06/13/2018 - 11:30

Cutline

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and U.S. President Donald Trump meet during a historic summit in Singapore on Tuesday (photo by Kevin Lim/The Strait Times/Handout/Getty Images)

Noreen Ahmed-Ullah

Topic

Global Lens

Donald Trump

Faculty of Arts & Science

Global

Humanities

Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

North Korea

U.S. President Donald Trump was quick to declare his landmark summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un a success. This morning, he continued on that path, tweeting, “There is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea…sleep well tonight!”

The two leaders met in Singapore on Tuesday, signing a declaration on denuclearization and reducing tensions. Trump has said Pyongyang has agreed to complete denuclearization, and that the U.S. would end joint military exercises with South Korea.

Andre Schmid, associate professor of East Asian studies in the Faculty of Arts & Science and the Munk School of Global Affairs, offers up a reality check on the pact and the history of U.S.-North Korea relations.

What’s your take on the summit and North Korea agreeing to denuclearization? Why did North Korea accede so quickly?

North Korea has a long history of calling for denuclearization as part of its diplomatic strategies. For most of its history – or, at least, ever since 1958 when the United States first introduced nuclear weapons to the Korean peninsula – these calls for denuclearization focused on the weapons of others. As North Korea developed its own weapons, its calls for denuclearization have been framed largely in a specific phrase: “denuclearization of the peninsula.” This creates an opening to contemplate the possibility of its own denuclearization but the point of this phrase, often missed by the North American media, is that North Korea never sees this in isolation and never defines it as unilateral denuclearization. Don’t expect any form of denuclearization quickly.

It’s been remarkable to watch as Trump has been completely able to frame the issue of denuclearization in the English-language media. When he first started, his policy was for a quick “win.” Remember when it was all supposed to happen – “no problem” – in six months? He changed his tune as the summit approached – evidence that he, too, can learn once in a while. But, quite incredibly, the media now uses the initial terms he set – the quick resolution – as the criteria for judging the success or lack thereof of the summit. Did any one seriously expect Trump to return after a short sit-down with Chairman Kim with a resolution to a decades-old challenge?

Should we trust North Korea to uphold its side of the bargain on denuclearization and destroying a major missile testing site? Why the change of heart in North Korea?

It’s quite clear that North Korea is willing to destroy certain facilities as well as curtail some of its experiments and testing as part of an agreement or to create a diplomatic opening for an agreement. This shouldn’t be read as a willingness either to denuclearize completely or to permit the type of verification protocols that, for example, were implemented however briefly in the Tehran deal. My guess is that we are going to have to learn to live with the fait accompli of North Korea as a nuclear state. The realistic question is how can they be limited and controlled.

Why the change of heart in North Korea? That’s the big question. In part, it is in reaction to the change of heart in the countries surrounding them – in South Korea, a president elected on a platform of engagement who is willing to be a flexible mediator; in the U.S., the swaggering bellicosity of the Trump administration, as well as the tensions with China. It’s still unclear how much, if any, impact the UN economic sanctions have had on North Korea's economy since, according to the latest assessments coming out of Seoul, the North Korean economy continues to grow. That growth relates to the greater emphasis Kim Jong-un is putting on the economy – though it’s still too early to know his intentions in this realm. Loosening the sanctions to create more possibilities for the economy is also a motivation – though, again like with so many North Korean matters, we do not know how much of a priority this is.

Another way of looking at this is that North Korea has been successfully pursuing a long-term strategy of developing nukes precisely because it was a rational and cheaper way to defend itself while offering various other negotiating possibilities on the international stage. We wouldn’t be having this summit, and North Korea would likely simply be ignored if it were not for the nukes. If you believe this, the North Korean regime’s strategy – minus the cost on segments of the population, of course – has been been what Trump likes to call a “win.”

What has the U.S. agreed to? What security guarantees is Trump talking about?

That’s another big question: What is the U.S. willing to give in negotiations. I have to admit I’m surprised that Trump gave up on the joint military exercises – something that North Korea and China have called for, for many years. You can be sure that will be insufficient for the North Koreans.

A peace treaty to end the Korean War (1950-53), which was terminated with only an armistice, would be at least a starting point.

This has been such a strange relationship, starting with threats, then an agreement to talk, then the talks being called off and then being called back on again. Can you speak to how this has all unfolded and whether this is reflective of Trump or Kim Jong-un?

North and South Korean states have a long history of tumultuous relations with many stops and starts, many hopes and many dashed hopes. Throw in Trump’s personality to that mix, and it is not surprising that an already dramatic international issue has ratcheted up the spectacle. In terms of the fundamentals, however, the same questions and struggles remain beneath that spectacle. There is still no clear path to a negotiated peace in Northeast Asia.

What does this mean for Canada?

There’s a fundamental question: What can Canada do? Since establishing diplomatic ties with North Korea in the early 2000s, we have done very little – this despite the proud tradition of our diplomatic service having worked to establish productive relations with the People’s Republic of China well before the United States. The recent Vancouver summit on North Korea, sponsored by Global Affairs Canada, offered some possibilities, which I hope will be taken up now that the United States is talking with North Korea. Of course, any initiative with North Korea will inevitably be overshadowed by our relation with Washington, D.C., especially after the debacle of the G7 summit. But if there is any issue where more actors need to be engaged, it is on the Korean peninsula. The Canadian government should be working closely with the South Korean government – the real movers on the Korean peninsula – to determine what positive role they can play.

'Just keep going': International student Eman Hammad juggled four kids and earned a PhD in engineering

ullahnor — Fri, 08 Jun 2018 04:00:00 +0000

'Just keep going': International student Eman Hammad juggled four kids and earned a PhD in engineering

ullahnor Fri, 06/08/2018 - 00:00

Cutline

Eman Hammad (second from left) graduates with a PhD in electrical and computer engineering from the ��߲ݴ�ý. She juggled her family life, research and volunteer work with the help of U of T resources (photos by Noreen Ahmed-Ullah)

Topic

Centre for International Experience

Convocation

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Global

Graduate Students

International Students

Amidst the smiles and selfies of convocation, what's often left untold is the journey – at times seemingly insurmountable – that a student takes to get here.

Juggling four children – the last one born two years ago – Eman Hammad completed her PhD dissertation in smart grid cybersecurity by tapping into the university resources around her, having her family pitch in, and simply putting her head down and forging ahead.

The 41-year-old graduates on June 19 from the ��߲ݴ�ý with a degree in electrical and computer engineering – and another degree in life.

Born and raised in a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan, Hammad lost her mom when she was just 15 years old. She went from being the top-ranked student in her high school to looking after six young siblings, the youngest of whom was 4 years old.

“Before I was 15, I had a plan – I wanted to be a professor,” she says. “But after she passed away, I couldn’t see ahead. I had to be there for my sisters and brothers. They were falling apart. Literally, I would be called from the classroom to go home because my sister was crying.

“It became easy for me to see my dreams and plans not happening. I remember I would do the household chores, stand behind the curtain and cry myself out. This was not what life was supposed to be.”

But she found resolve – a determination that continues to underpin whatever she sets her mind to.

"I can’t be weak," she remembers saying to herself. "I have to keep going. And that has been my life since then – just keep going.”

In Jordan, Hammad ignored relatives who told her to set aside her dreams and focus on her siblings. She broke barriers, becoming the first woman in her family to get a post-secondary education and become an engineer, eventually helping her younger siblings achieve their educational goals, too.
Eman Hammad outside the Centre for International Experience, where she was paired with a mentor after her arrival at U of T. The international student then went on to mentor other incoming students (photo by Noreen Ahmed-Ullah)

She moved to the U.S. after her husband, a fellow engineer, was admitted to Texas A&M University for his PhD. It was her husband who encouraged her to pursue her master’s, and with her eldest daughter a few months old, Hammad began graduate school at Texas A&M. At times, she balanced two jobs, research and two more babies before graduating in 2011.

That “keep going” philosophy came in handy when she was accepted into U of T’s PhD program. The family arrived in Toronto in the dead of winter in 2013, abandoning their light jackets for winter coats. Her husband, Abdallah, had not found work yet, and Hammad was forced to quickly learn how to secure financial aid, medical supports and child care, even as she plowed away at her research, and dealt with life – sick kids, her own two miscarriages, work and the birth of her son in 2016.

With her supervisor's support, she’d take her son into the lab with her every day for the first five months, breastfeeding and holding him while typing away at the keyboard. When he cried, it was time to take a break and take him out for a stroll. In between diaper changes, picking up the older kids from daycare and school, cooking and helping them with homework, she prepped for conference presentations, worked on papers and planned time to work on the dissertation.

When she needed help, she found resources at the university.

The Centre for International Experience initially paired her with a mentor to help ease the transition.

The Family Care Office suggested she look for a teaching assistant position for income and to cover child care costs. They helped with information on health care, daycare and scholarships. She began using the food bank at the Multi-Faith Centre.

“The idea of the Family Care Office is very simple – telling students with responsibilities, ‘You are welcome, we know what you go through. We can listen to you when you need to talk. We are here.’

“Honestly, I felt there was no excuse to not succeed at U of T. There were endless resources, and everybody was here to support,” she says.

Hammad’s story is not just about how she made it all happen, drawing on U of T resources to help balance family needs with the rigour of a PhD. It’s also about how Hammad found a way to give back to the university community.

“When I saw all this, I was like, ‘I don’t think I can only use these resources. I will be part of the resources.’

At the Centre for International Experience, she became the centre’s student advisory committee president, helping to shape content and programming and being part of a welcoming committee for high school students. Then, she became a mentor herself for incoming international students.

After getting an apartment in U of T’s family student housing, she got a job as a resident assistant, helping students and their families navigate what for many was a new culture and country. Along with another resident assistant, she helped start English speaking classes that soon became a hit with participants from Brazil, Mexico, Egypt, China, Japan, Israel and Russia.

In the engineering world, she was selected to chair the Toronto communication society chapter of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). She became the first graduate student to hold the position, which involved organizing conferences, lectures, technical talks and workshops for colleagues in the field.

“I tried for awhile not to do volunteer work,” Hammad says. “But I need a space where I can do something that is giving back, in whatever capacity, whether its professional or volunteer. It’s just feeling that I am part of a community and feeling that I connect with people on a different level.”

The Family Care Office became part of Eman Hammad's support system during her PhD at U of T

Last fall, her thesis was approved without edits – which the School of Graduate Studies says is a rare feat in engineering. Experts say her work, which received best paper recognition from a prestigious smart grid conference in 2015, is important given existing cybersecurity risks.

“Her research was very good – well above the average,” said Dimitrios Hatzinakos, a U of T professor of electrical and computer engineering, who sat on the dissertation committee. “It’s important research because it deals with security in smart grids like the electricity grid. Every day, hackers try to get into government and private systems that are very vulnerable. They could bring down a network, putting everyone into the dark and disturbing a community, or create a hostage situation. For all these reasons it’s important to have good security measures to protect the grid.”

Hammad is now working at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

So how did she get it all done?

Partly time management.

“I had to make a mental note that the time that I have for my studies is the time that my children are in school and daycare. After that, it’s family time. It’s not easy. And kids will get sick in the most inappropriate times, like when you have a presentation, or a deadline, or an exam, or when you are at a conference.”

Cooking was done on the weekends. Her husband picked up groceries, did the dishes, the laundry. Everyone had to tolerate a messy house, especially close to deadlines.

She learned not to be hard on herself.

“I am a perfectionist, but I learned good enough is good for my mental health. Because if you set a very high goal, you will feel helpless. You will feel crippled. You will not be able to do the little steps.”

She set one goal at a time.

“For me, it was a step at a time. OK, this conference paper, this journal, work on this idea, finish this semester, the next semester. If I thought about this as a PhD, and that I have three and then four kids, I wouldn’t do it. I think it makes it easier for people if they do not think about the size of the challenge, more about how one step can get you to the next step.”

Lisa Engel, who worked as a fellow resident assistant with Hammad, is also graduating this spring – but with a PhD in rehabilitation medicine. She says she learned a lot from watching Hammad.

“She is one of my parenting mentors,” says Engel. “She makes time for family while also creating high-quality research. I call her a superwoman, not ignoring one area of life but striving to manage it all.”

And, of course, there was her family.

On June 19, her husband and four kids will be on hand to watch as she receives her PhD.

“They saw me putting all this time and energy into the PhD, and they saw how important it was for me,” she says. “It’s only fair that they get to be there to see when the reward comes because they are a part of it.”

New U of T grants seek initiatives targeting the international student experience

ullahnor — Tue, 05 Jun 2018 16:43:55 +0000

New U of T grants seek initiatives targeting the international student experience

ullahnor Tue, 06/05/2018 - 12:43

Cutline

Students chat outside the Centre for International Experience on St. George Street (photo by Johnny Guatto)

Noreen Ahmed-Ullah

Topic

Global Lens

Centre for International Experience

Faculty & Staff

Global

International Students

Faculty and staff at the ��߲ݴ�ý will soon be able to compete for grants to fund initiatives that will improve the experience of international students and foster greater interaction between them and domestic students.

Joseph Wong, associate vice-president and vice-provost, international student experience, says he hopes the initiative will spark both academic and non-academic ideas.

“We want to incentivize staff and faculty to come up with great initiatives to put our international students in the best position to succeed,” Wong said. “We’re also realizing that there’s a fantastic opportunity here to really transform the whole university by getting different groups of students integrating with one another to achieve a global university.”

The university earmarked $1 million in this year’s budget for the initiatives. The three-year International Student Experience Fund will allow people to apply for either a seed grant, which will be $5,000 to $10,000 a year and intended to fund small-scale pilots, or impact funding, which could be anywhere from $15,000 to $100,000 a year and designed to scale up promising initiatives.

Applications for the smaller seed funds will be accepted on a rolling basis, but for impact grants, the application deadline is Oct. 15.

Learn more about the International Student Experience Fund

Along with enhancing the international student experience, the effort is meant to promote intercultural opportunities for both domestic and international students, so that people from one part of the world learn about others from another part of the globe in settings both inside and outside the classroom.

Ideas could range from creating initiatives to support early engagement for international students when they first arrive at U of T to courses that incorporate videoconferencing and other enhancements to provide joint courses with other international universities.

“The entire face of the university is changing,” Wong said. “We have young people coming from around the world to campus. It’s changing how we are thinking about available services and opportunities so that all students benefit.

“Demographic diversity is not enough. We need to look at how to get different groups of students to integrate with one another. Global fluency is a critical 21^st-century skill, and we want to empower and equip students with the skills and experiences to communicate across cultures.”

'It is the chance of a lifetime': Internationally trained dentists come to U of T for a shot at a Canadian dental career

ullahnor — Thu, 24 May 2018 16:08:39 +0000

'It is the chance of a lifetime': Internationally trained dentists come to U of T for a shot at a Canadian dental career

ullahnor Thu, 05/24/2018 - 12:08

Cutline

Khamsum Wangdu studied dentistry in Nepal. He immigrated to Canada in 2015 and is now in an accelerated dental program at U of T, which recognizes students' prior training and allows them to practise in Canada and the U.S. (photos by Noreen Ahmed-Ullah)

Topic

Subheadline

U of T program is the largest of its kind in the country

The path to dentistry school was a tough one for Khamsum Wangdu. Growing up in a Tibetan refugee camp in Nepal, college seemed out of reach.

He and his brother eventually got into a private dentistry school in Kathmandu, but before they could take a licensing exam to graduate, the world around them descended into chaos.

An earthquake hit Nepal in April 2015, killing nearly 9,000 people and injuring 22,000. Amidst trying to help with medical and relief efforts, Wangdu and his brother learned that Canadian authorities had expedited approval of the family’s sponsorship application.

The family moved to Canada in June 2015 and reunited with their father who had come earlier as a refugee, but Wangdu’s future as a dentist was left hanging in the balance.

It would take him 2½ years to finally get back on track to becoming a dentist. This past January, he was accepted into an accelerated program for internationally trained dentists at the ��߲ݴ�ý, which will have him graduating from the Faculty of Dentistry in 2020. His younger brother was accepted into a similar dentistry program at Dalhousie University.

“Being accepted into the ��߲ݴ�ý is not simply a dream come true, it is the chance of a lifetime,” Wangdu says.

“At one point, when I was studying in a refugee camp, I felt there were no opportunities, potential for us. You feel inferior. We knew our reality was not an easy one. But now I can sit in class with so many people from around the world, including Canada, and that gives me a lot of courage to make a difference in the lives of others.”

Students from around the world in U of T's International Dentist Advanced Placement Program (IDAPP) work in a simulation lab with second-year students at the Faculty of Dentistry

Next month, Wangdu, 29, will have completed the six-month dentistry program for internationally trained students, allowing him to join third-year students in the primary Doctor of Dental Surgery (DDS) program in September.

The ��߲ݴ�ý’s International Dentist Advanced Placement Program (IDAPP) for internationally trained students is one of the oldest in the country and the largest, with some two dozen students enrolled every year.

Students, many new immigrants, come from around the world – the Middle East, Far East Asia, Europe, South America – with varying skill sets to learn both the theory and practical aspects of modern dentistry so they can practise in Canada and the United States.

“The students that we pick, despite picking them very carefully, they still come with a wide variability of clinical experience,” says Omar El-Mowafy, head of IDAPP. “One time in the same class, I had a student from a university in the Far East who told me that she was only taught how to pull teeth out and make dentures. In the same class, I had another student who was a specialist.”

This summer, one of the program’s graduating dentists, Ahmed Heider, is a well-known orthodontist from Egypt who also was an associate professor at Cairo University. After years working on braces, he needed to prep up on basic skills like crowns and root canals.

“Foreign-trained dentists can practise in Canada only if they pass the National Dental Examining Board of Canada equivalency process or if they take an advanced placement program in a Canadian dental school,” Heider says. “To me, learning dentistry paene ab initio [almost from the beginning] and graduating from U of T was equivalent to being granted a seal of quality.”

El-Mowafy helped start the program, initially in the mid-1990s, as a continuing studies course to prepare internationally trained dentists for the boards.

“Back then, there was no mechanism in place to help internationally trained dentists who come to Canada to prepare for taking their licence exams,” he says. “They were basically on their own, which was very difficult. When they attempted to do exams, the failure rate was fairly high because there was no means to train them and prepare them for these exams.”

Shelly Bajaj (left) who was a prosthodontist in India, says she's learning that dentistry in Canada is more focused on diagnosis and prevention. Instructor Maria Hemsworth, who was trained in Venezuela, says many students have less experience in complex procedures because most people in the developing world only go to the dentist when a tooth needs to be pulled out.

In 1999, the program expanded to a two-year qualifying program where students received a certificate valid in most Canadian provinces. Seven years later, IDAPP was unveiled as a preparatory program to bring foreign-trained dentists up to speed so they could eventually join dentistry's degree-granting program. Graduates can work anywhere in Canada and the U.S.

“I think it’s important for foreign-trained dentists to have access to something like this so that if they feel like the training they had back home was inadequate or did not cover the various aspects of dentistry in a comprehensive way, they have the option to go into the program and upgrade their skills,” El-Mowafy says.

“It’s important to have a mechanism in place to allow them to get a licence. They come to us with experience from their own country, and they can provide services to communities related to where they come from.”

On a recent weekday, Wangdu sat in a simulation lab working on filling cavities on a mannequin head, carefully using his hand piece to prep the tooth. Around him worked other internationally trained dentists from India, Iran and Cuba. At the front of the room, 96 students in the second year of the mainstream dentistry program were tackling the same exercise. Instructors try to facilitate collaboration between the two, pairing up students in the two streams to become “buddies” and combining the two groups for joint labs and lectures.

Read about Wangdu and his brother in the Toronto Star

As the instructor stopped the session for a quick pop quiz on how to apply a rubber dam for a cavity in an upper anterior tooth, both second-year students and IDAPP students raised their hands to answer.

Wangdu says there's a lot to learn. “The technology and techniques are very advanced here,” he says. “But what I find here is that despite the advancement of technology, how to deal with a patient, the ethical issues like patient confidentiality are given high priority. Back in Nepal, it was not a big issue.”

Wangdu has always wanted to be a dentist – since the time his grandfather died in a refugee camp in Nepal from an infection following a bad tooth extraction. After he arrived in Canada, it was an instructor at his former dentistry school in Nepal who put him in touch with another internationally trained dentist in Canada who had studied at U of T. That contact then helped him navigate his way through the various program requirements needed to qualify.

He sees himself one day returning to the Himalayas, maybe visiting the refugee camps he grew up in to teach children and their parents, not just about dental health but about pursuing higher education. He also hopes to run his own clinical practice in Canada, working with newcomers and refugees.

“I don’t want to limit myself just for Tibetan refugees,” he says. “I want to help everyone I can.”

Khamsum Wangdu gets feedback from instructor Ahmed Alamri on his work prepping a tooth for a filling

Bob Rae on the Rohingya crisis: 'We need to be a more significant player'

ullahnor — Fri, 18 May 2018 14:33:33 +0000

Bob Rae on the Rohingya crisis: 'We need to be a more significant player'

ullahnor Fri, 05/18/2018 - 10:33

Cutline

U of T Professor Jacques Bertrand (left) speaks with Bob Rae (right) about his report on the Rohingya crisis at the Munk School of Global Affairs (photo by Noreen Ahmed-Ullah)

Noreen Ahmed-Ullah

Topic

Global Lens

Faculty of Arts & Science

Global

Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

Myanmar

Political Science

Subheadline

It’s been more than a month since the release of his final report on the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar, and Bob Rae says he’s still waiting to hear a response from the federal government.

Speaking at an event at the ��߲ݴ�ý's Munk School of Global Affairs on Thursday, the former Ontario premier and former interim leader of the federal Liberal party, repeated his call for Canada to take a lead in dealing with the humanitarian crisis that has led to more than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims fleeing violence in Myanmar for crowded refugee camps in neighbouring Bangladesh.

“We are living in a world without adult supervision,” he said. “We can’t assume anymore that some other country is going to take the lead and ride this thing through and get it done. That isn’t happening on its own.”

Rae, a U of T alumnus who also teaches a policy analysis class in the Faculty of Arts & Science, was appointed as special envoy to Myanmar last fall by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. While Trudeau has thanked Rae for his insights and said the government would outline measures in coming weeks, Rae said he has yet to hear back from Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland on any proposed measures.

His final report, released April 3, made 17 recommendations, including calling on Canada to step up humanitarian aid and development efforts. On Thursday, Rae talked about the humanitarian crisis looming with monsoon season expected to begin in June.

“This is a genuine humanitarian catastrophe, and it’s going to be even worse if we don’t address it,” he said.

“I keep coming back to our own government and saying, ‘We need to take the lead on this,’” he told the audience of academics and students. “I’m still hoping very much the government is going to respond in a creative and positive way. That’s one of the battles that I’m fighting right now.”

Rae spoke at the event with Jacques Bertrand, a political science professor who specializes in Southeast Asia and is leading a collaborative project on ethnic minorities and decentralization in Myanmar. Leading up to his report, Rae travelled to the region on several occasions, including visiting refugee camps in Bangladesh.

Wisdom Tettey named new vice-president and principal of U of T Scarborough

noreen.rasbach — Thu, 17 May 2018 19:38:49 +0000

Wisdom Tettey named new vice-president and principal of U of T Scarborough

noreen.rasbach Thu, 05/17/2018 - 15:38

Cutline

“I look forward to connecting further with the community to create opportunities, but also for the community to see the value of that partnership, as we give back to the community," said Wisdom Tettey (photo courtesy of UBC Okanagan)

Topic

Professor Wisdom Tettey, a political scientist who is a leading researcher on the African diaspora, politics and media, has been appointed the new vice-president and principal of the ��߲ݴ�ý Scarborough.

Tettey, who is currently the dean of arts and sciences at the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus, will begin a five-year term on July 1, U of T announced today.

“I am delighted at the opportunity to be part of the U of T Scarborough community,” Tettey said. “Being part of a community where there is a passion for socially and globally conscious scholarship, as well as teaching and learning, where the desire for the cultivation of global citizenship is reflected in various activities that the campus is engaged in, and where colleagues are making significant contributions to the overall direction of the ��߲ݴ�ý – that was appealing to me.”

Tettey has been at UBC’s Okanagan campus for the past seven years, initially leading the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies and then the Irving K. Barber School of Arts and Sciences. Prior to UBC, he spent 13 years at the University of Calgary and before that was at Queen’s University, where he received his PhD in political studies and began his academic career.

“I am thrilled by the appointment of Professor Wisdom Tettey as vice-president and principal of ��߲ݴ�ý Scarborough,” said Meric Gertler, president of the ��߲ݴ�ý. “As a distinguished scholar and gifted administrator, he will build on UTSC’s accomplishments working in partnership with the community, helping to foster innovation and prosperity in the Toronto region and raising the profile of U of T Scarborough both here and internationally.”

The author of several publications on Africa – including on the political economy of globalization and information technology; media, politics and civic engagement; African higher education; and the African diaspora – Tettey has looked at addressing the brain drain from the continent. In 2005, he was the lead investigator on a World Bank study on faculty retention in African universities and, last year, he received a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) award to look at human rights issues for people affected with albinism.

At the Okanagan campus, Tettey led the development of a five-year strategic plan and related initiatives to expand undergraduate research opportunities, enhance Indigenization of the curriculum, promote experiential learning opportunities and create new graduate programs.

“His experience handling complex, innovative, and forward-looking initiatives makes him perfectly suited to lead U of T Scarborough,” said Provost Cheryl Regehr.

Tettey hopes to tap into experiences from UBC Okanagan as he works with faculty and staff to develop U of T Scarborough’s priorities for the next five years. That includes continuing to build connections with the community around U of T Scarborough, building on the campus’s history of community engagement and partnerships.

“I look forward to connecting further with the community to create opportunities, but also for the community to see the value of that partnership, as we give back to the community,” he said.

He hopes to be able to use his own international experiences to encourage a global focus among students at U of T Scarborough. As an undergraduate student at the University of Ghana studying political science and Russian, Tettey spent his third year in Moscow at the height of Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost programs. Soon after, he came to Canada as an international student to pursue a master’s degree in political science.

At U of T Scarborough, the campus’s student body is made up of people from 115 different countries who actively participate in study abroad programs. Tettey sees huge potential to build on that diversity – creating more opportunities for domestic and foreign students to collaborate, as well as expanding international opportunities for students.

“Being a former international student gives me a unique perspective on that experience,” he said. “I have a good understanding of what it’s like to come from somewhere and try to integrate, but I also have an appreciation of inter-cultural competencies that are required in this world.

“As we train our students for the world, we need to make sure that they are imbued with the qualities and competencies that are needed to effectively engage the world.”

He also wants to focus on creating further collaborations between U of T Scarborough and the other two campuses – U of T Mississauga and the downtown Toronto campus – and building research opportunities across disciplines.

Mostly, he sees his role as that of a facilitator.

“I am here to facilitate the realization of aspirations and objectives that have been set by the U of T Scarborough community,” he said. “Part of what I want to be able to contribute will be a commitment to a positive, healthy working environment for faculty and staff, a healthy learning environment for students, and focusing on a collaboration across the tri campuses.

“The stronger each of us can be as a campus, the stronger we will be overall as one university.”

'I think the time is right': U of T's Kelly Hannah-Moffat on corrections reform and her new role as special adviser

noreen.rasbach — Fri, 11 May 2018 13:45:48 +0000

'I think the time is right': U of T's Kelly Hannah-Moffat on corrections reform and her new role as special adviser

noreen.rasbach Fri, 05/11/2018 - 09:45

Cutline

U of T's vice-president of human resources & equity has been named by the province as a special adviser on the correctional system (photo by Noreen Ahmed-Ullah)

Noreen Ahmed-Ullah

Topic

City & Culture

Criminology

Human Resources & Equity

Research & Innovation

For the last 25 years, Kelly Hannah-Moffat has been researching human rights issues in the correctional system.

The ��߲ݴ�ý criminology professor’s work has taken her to some of the world’s most notorious prisons and solitary confinement cells.

Here in Canada, she has testified as an expert witness in the coroner’s inquest into the 2007 death of Ashley Smith, the teen whose self-strangulation in custody became a symbol of the justice system’s inability to treat the mentally ill.

She has testified in the case of Adam Capay, which made headlines in 2016 after it was revealed that the young Indigenous man had spent more than four years in solitary confinement awaiting trial.

A new role as special adviser on the adult corrections system will allow Hannah-Moffat, who also serves as U of T’s vice-president of human resources & equity, the opportunity to tackle reforms head on. The Ontario Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services tapped her and Justice David Cole to explore how the province can improve services and conditions in solitary confinement, especially for those with mental health issues.

Hannah-Moffat believes there may be enough momentum now to drive corrections reforms, with high-profile cases emerging in the last few years of people – some with mental health issues, others from marginalized populations – dying or suffering in solitary confinement.

“I think the time is right,” she says. “You’ve got some really high-profile litigation that speaks to the damaging effects of solitary confinement. You have the Ontario Human Rights Commission that is very aware of these issues. You have civil liberties organizations calling for change. You have the public that is appalled by the treatment of some individuals in custody.

“And you have a government right now that is willing and responsive to the need for change.”

The appointment comes on the heels of a joint agreement reached earlier this year between the government and the Ontario Human Rights Commission, following the 2013 settlement in the case of former inmate Christina Jahn, who was kept in segregation for 210 days despite suffering from mental illness, addictions and cancer.

“The work of the Ontario Human Rights Commission has been essential and pivotal in driving change, particularly in terms of this appointment and this decision,” Hannah-Moffat says.

In the last three to four years, a number of legal cases have been brought through the B.C. Civil Liberties Association and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association that have called for restrictions on the use of solitary confinement, better oversight, more accountability and transparency.

The Jahn settlement led to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario in January issuing a consent order requiring that the Ontario government not use segregation for individuals with mental illness in correctional facilities, except under exceptional circumstances.

The order requires the province to take steps including implementing a system that identifies individuals with mental health issues, tracking segregation and monitoring the health of people placed in confinement. The province was also required to appoint an independent reviewer to monitor compliance, and collect and publicly report data on segregation of inmates to ensure that no one slips through the cracks.

Justice Cole will act as the independent reviewer, with a final report expected from him by September 2019. Hannah-Moffat will act as an independent expert on human rights, imprisonment and correctional policy reform for the ministry.

“So part of this role is actually an attempt to ensure that there is more transparency and data available to the public on correctional practices in Ontario,” Hannah-Moffat says. “This also happens on a broader context of Ontario looking to make some fundamental changes in corrections and to ensure that a human rights approach is considered alongside correctional concerns about safety and security.”

Hannah-Moffat, who worked as a policy adviser on the Arbour Commission inquiry into Kingston’s Prison for Women while she was working on her PhD in the mid 1990s, says she became interested in correctional issues after learning about the wrongful conviction of Steven Truscott for the murder of Lynne Harper.

Early on, she had worked in prisons as a recreation officer, and had volunteered with community organizations working with women behind bars.

“It made me very aware of the monumental effects of incarceration on people’s lives and not just those who are incarcerated but those who love people who are incarcerated like families and friends,” she says.

She also became interested in conflict resolution, mediation, tackling systemic issues leading to high incarceration rates for marginalized populations, and finding alternatives to custody and solitary confinement. She has published three books, numerous articles, served several years as president of the Elizabeth Fry Society and is co-editor-in-chief of the journal Punishment and Society.

“The experience of solitary confinement for many people is it causes a lot of emotional and psychological harm, and it’s not particularly effective at maintaining institutional safety or security,” she says. “It can lead to depression, loneliness, anxiety, aggression, a wide range of negative effects. It can exacerbate existing mental health issues.

“We really need to invest in thinking outside of the box and finding alternatives and really relying less on such punitive interventions that produce harm.”

She adds that people in incarceration have the same human rights as everyone else, yet because prisons are “out of sight, out of mind,” we have very little knowledge of what takes place inside.

“A lot of my work has been about accountability and oversight in these institutions because I think prisons need to be vigilant about the rule of law, and they need to be vigilant about the protection of human rights issues because when you’re in custody, you’re more likely to need those protections,” Hannah-Moffat says.

“The human rights afforded to people in custody are the exact same ones afforded to you and me. People can make terrible choices that have terrible consequences, but that doesn’t mean they don’t still retain the capacity to change.”

New York Times reporter who covers ISIS to speak at U of T

ullahnor — Thu, 10 May 2018 20:20:34 +0000

New York Times reporter who covers ISIS to speak at U of T

ullahnor Thu, 05/10/2018 - 16:20

Cutline

New York Times foreign correspondent Rukmini Callimachi speaks at South by Southwest last month (photo by Nicola Gell/Getty Images for SXSW)

Topic

Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

Rotman School of Management

If you’re familiar with the New York Times' new podcast Caliphate, you know of Rukmini Callimachi’s reporting style, going deep into the psyche of ISIS fighters by entering online chat rooms and travelling to liberated areas of Iraq to collect trash bags filled with Islamic State documents.

On Friday, the New York Times reporter will be at the ��߲ݴ�ý sharing what she’s learned in the last five years of covering al-Qaida and ISIS.

She will be part of a panel discussion at the Rotman School of Management, which includes Janice Stein, professor of conflict management and the founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs, and Amarnath Amarsingam, who researches extremism at the University of Waterloo.

In an interview with U of T News, Callimachi discussed how she developed her unique style of foreign reporting.

It all started when she was covering West Africa and an al-Qaida affiliate took over Mali in the chaos following a coup. Being among the first reporters to reach Timbuktu after it was liberated, she began collecting documents that showed a clear connection between the extremists in Mali and al-Qaida despite U.S. officials saying the terror group had been decimated following the death of Osama bin Laden.

“I realized there was this hole in the reporting,” she says, adding that like other reporters she was covering the war on terror by talking to Washington officials and analysts, who often were speaking to the same officials.

“Because none of us want to be accused of giving a platform to a terrorist group, we think that contacting them or telling their side of things is somehow bad. But we were getting the reporting wrong because we were going only to the group that’s fighting them, which is the West. If you were covering any other war, you would try to get the other side of the conflict. The fibre of my reporting, what makes it different, is that I’m actively trying to understand the group itself, understand them on their own terms.”

So she began interviewing ISIS fighters in prisons, “listened in” on their chatter in Telegram chat rooms and used social media to track down former fighters like a Canadian citizen who defected from ISIS. The latter, who goes by the nom-de-guerre “Abu Huzayfah,” is the subject of the 10-part series, Caliphate, which debuted April 19.

“What’s remarkable with Huzayfah’s story is that Huzayfah allows us to get behind the mask, and he shows us the struggle that he went though to basically carry out the oldest human taboo – taking another human being’s life,” she says. “It wasn’t easy for him to kill. I think he has an enormous amount of remorse for what he did.”

The podcast is meant to complement her investigation into thousands of internal ISIS documents that she recovered from five reporting trips to Iraq.

The retrieved documents have been most revealing in terms of detailing the day-to-day governance of the group's would-be-caliphate – a fact that has surprised Callimachi, the long-time foreign correspondent who has been covering the Islamic extremism beat for the New York Times since 2014.

She discovered a sales contract for a Yazidi girl who was sold from one man to another, punishments handed out to citizens including a 14-year-old boy who was jailed for laughing during prayer, and detailed documents showing that ISIS was confiscating property and land outside of Mosul that belonged to Shiite Muslims and Christians, and then renting them out to Sunni loyalists.

“There’s a proper contract between the Islamic State and the Sunni civilian where the rent is spelled out and the lease conditions are spelled out, and the lease conditions are like something from my old apartment in New York,” she recalls. “The tenant agrees that the plot can never be subletted. He must ask the Islamic State for permission before making any modifications. He must keep it clean at all times.

“When you see that – it’s always a little treacherous to make comparisons to the Nazis – but it does recall that level of precision in basically documenting their war crimes.”

Callimachi, who has been informed by the FBI on several occasions about threats made against her and her family, says she has made changes to her life. She has scrubbed the internet of any details or references about where she lives. She’s installed a security system at home. And when she travels to Iraq, she has a detailed security protocol including a security adviser who travels with her.

“It comes and goes,” she says, discussing her fears.

“I’m also aware that this is a group that preys on this very thing. They try to freak us out. That’s the whole etymology of terrorism – to create terror. In the moments that I feel fear of the irrational kind, I remind myself, ‘Rukmini, you’re just letting them win. If you let them, then they’ve got you.’”

U of T experts on police officer's conduct in Toronto van attack

ullahnor — Tue, 24 Apr 2018 20:19:12 +0000

U of T experts on police officer's conduct in Toronto van attack

ullahnor Tue, 04/24/2018 - 16:19

Cutline

A 25-year-old man has been charged after a white van collided with multiple pedestrians, killing 10 and injuring 15 others on Yonge Street in North York on Monday (photo by Cole Burston/Getty Images)

Noreen Ahmed-Ullah

Topic

City & Culture

Criminology

Faculty of Arts & Science

Psychology

U of T Mississauga

As police continue investigating Monday's van attack that killed 10 people and injured 15 others, the officer who apprehended the suspect has come under praise from supervisors and the public for how he handled the arrest.

Scot Wortley, an associate professor of criminology in the Faculty of Arts & Science, said despite being in a tense situation, with only seconds to make a decision, the officer determined the threat from the suspect did not warrant using lethal force, and instead opted for de-escalation techniques.

“The credit is due to the nature of the training and the individual officer’s ability to handle a stressful circumstance,” Wortley said. “If the video had shown that the officer had shot and killed the suspect, I think it would have been probably deemed justifiable force – that the individual was dangerous, that he was acting in a provocative manner.

“But the value of not using force is that there is a live suspect, somebody to interview, somebody that we might be able to figure out the motive for the massacre, and that might help us understand the psychology of such events and perhaps contribute to future prevention.”

U of T News spoke with Wortley, who has conducted extensive analysis of police use of force in Ontario, and his PhD student Erick Laming, who also researches police technology and use of force. Judith Andersen, an assistant professor of psychology at U of T Mississauga who is working with Peel Regional Police to help officers control their reactions under stress and improve split-second decisions, also weighed in.

Scot Wortley

What did the police officer do right in this situation?

I’ve seen the videotaped interaction between the suspect and the police officer. The result of this interaction is probably a combination of the officer’s training and his own personality. I heard the head of the police association today describe him as someone who is calm and cool under pressure, and he clearly manifested those characteristics during this encounter.

Despite the massacre that had just taken place, and I have no idea if the officer was aware of that massacre or not at the time he confronted the suspect, there's clear indication that the officer did not try to act as some kind of instrument of justice and shoot the individual under circumstances where he was clearly identified as dangerous.

Officers are trained to only use force when there's an immediate threat to themselves, to other civilians and to other officers. It looks like when the officer confronted the individual, he was able to properly ascertain that, despite threats of having a firearm, the individual was actually pulling and pointing a cellphone. He might have anticipated some mental health issues, or that this might have been a suicide-by-police scenario because the individual, according to the footage I’ve seen, kept saying, “Shoot me. Shoot me.”

It looks like the officer, under pressure with only seconds to make decisions, was able to ascertain that at that moment the threat from the suspect did not warrant lethal force, and as a result was able to use de-escalation techniques and arrest the individual without injuring him. The credit is due to the nature of the training and the individual officer’s ability to handle a stressful circumstance.

If the video had shown that the officer had shot and killed the suspect, I think it would have been probably deemed justifiable force – that the individual was dangerous, that he was acting in a provocative manner. But the value of not using force is that there is a live suspect, somebody to interview, somebody that we might be able to figure out the motive for the massacre and that might help us understand the psychology of such events and perhaps contribute to future prevention.

Are we better here at de-escalation practices than, for example, the United States?

I don’t think there's really good data that exists now. I can't provide figures which would document that Toronto police or Canadian police are much less likely to use force, but I think it is likely. That would be the hypothesis that I would have. But I do think we need better systems of research and accountability and transparency when it comes to the use-of-force cases. Definitely if you were looking at the violent crime rate, which, depending on the jurisdiction, can be many, many times higher than any jurisdiction in Canada, there's the possibility of police confronting violent offenders.

The availability of firearms is much more prevalent in the U.S. than it is in Canada, which may increase the likelihood that officers will confront armed suspects in the U.S. than in Canada. But I do not know of any differences in training. I think Toronto is a modern police service and probably has state-of-the-art training in terms of police use of force.

A woman covers her face as police shut down parts of Yonge Street Monday after a van struck pedestrians between Sheppard and Finch avenues (photo by Steve Russell/Toronto Star via Getty Images)

What about the race element? Critics have said the situation would have been very different with a racialized suspect.

That’s the million-dollar question. I think we have to step back, and we have to garner better data on those types of circumstances. I think the statistics that have been released in Canada show that Indigenous and African-Canadian individuals are much more likely to be involved in cases of police use of force, depending on the area of the country you’re living in. I've worked on a study showing over-representation of Black and Indigenous people with respect to police use of force that resulted in death between 2000 and 2006, and that over-representation was also documented in a recent CBC study. The debate is to what extent that is the result of legitimate police use of force versus illegitimate use of force. Whether or not this officer would have acted differently, if faced with a minority suspect, is an interesting question, but impossible to determine based on this case in isolation.

There's going to be different interpretations of that. The police interpretation will be that we have more violent confrontations with Black and Indigenous civilians than we do with whites, and that would explain the over-representation in use-of-force cases. Obviously at the other extreme, you look at allegations from Black Lives Matters and others, that it is due to racism and racialized fears. We can't answer these questions based on this individual case. We need a much broader research agenda in order to do that accurately. The problem is so far in Canadian criminal justice history, access to such data has been difficult if not impossible, which makes it difficult for researchers to properly address.

There’s probably many, many examples where officers face violence and confrontations with civilians and do not use force, and are somehow able to de-escalate the situation and make an arrest without harming the civilian. Those cases, however, do not garner media attention. The only reason this particular case is getting the media coverage that it deserves is because of the actions of the civilian before this police encounter, the fact that he was engaged in mass murder, and the fact that it was captured on video.

So I think when we’re looking at establishing a research agenda on these issues, it’s just as important to examine cases where police do not use force as it is to examine cases where they do.

Erick Laming

It was a very effective way of de-escalating a situation.

This happens every day. Police are trained to do this. Obviously, it’s become more highlighted in the media because there's a lot of cases where police have used lethal force or unjustified force against marginalized people. But what happened Monday, this is how a lot of cases do unfold across Canada. We are just not privy to that information. Hopefully this will change some perceptions in the public. This is actually how police deal effectively in situations like this.

He was using a vest in the situation. He had his firearm out. He was in a position that if he needed to use lethal force, he would have. He was just communicating to the individual. He also may have recognized maybe this guy could be mentally ill so obviously you have to just talk to the person.

He’s a ten-year veteran, so he’s gone through this training every year, especially the de-escalation and mental health training.

The problem is we don’t know how effective this training is. They could say we have four hours of mental health training, but what does that mean? Is it just a lecture, is it another police officer giving a lecture based on something he read in textbook? We don’t know. So that’s a problem with training. It needs more evaluation to see how effective it is.

Judith Andersen

The police response to the van attack is yet another example of the top-notch service that our police officers provide in this city. The officer correctly identified that the person did not have a weapon and he de-escalated the situation by taking the person – who was clearly a danger to society – into custody.

The person's reason for doing what he did, and whether he has a mental health concern, can be discussed after the threat to public safety has been resolved – which is exactly what a police officer's job is, and the officer did it correctly.

Noreen Ahmed-Ullah

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Read about Wangdu and his brother in the Toronto Star

Bob Rae on the Rohingya crisis: 'We need to be a more significant player'

Read more about his work on Myanmar

Wisdom Tettey named new vice-president and principal of U of T Scarborough

'I think the time is right': U of T's Kelly Hannah-Moffat on corrections reform and her new role as special adviser

New York Times reporter who covers ISIS to speak at U of T

U of T experts on police officer's conduct in Toronto van attack

Scot Wortley

Erick Laming

Judith Andersen