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A CONTINGENCY APPROACH TO PUBLIC SECTOR PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT: THE CASE OF THE CANADIAN INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY
Get PDFOn November 13, 2023, Dr. Joe Faragone presented A Contingency Approach to Public Sector Performance Management: The Case of the Canadian Intelligence Community for this year’s West Coast Security Conference. The presentation was followed by a question-and-answer period with questions from the audience and CASIS Vancouver executives. The key points discussed were the limitations of universalistic performance management approaches, the critical need to reassess NPM reforms in Public Administration, and the necessity to explicitly define the distinctiveness of the Intelligence Community.
Received: 12-11-2023
Revised: 01-26-202
THE PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE: CANADIAN POLICING IN THE 21ST CENTURY
Get PDFOn November 14, 2023, Devon Clunis presented The Pursuit of Excellence: Canadian Policing in The 21st Century for this year’s West Coast Security Conference. The presentation was followed by a question-and-answer period with questions from the audience and CASIS Vancouver executives. The key points discussed were that Canadian policing must evolve to stay relevant in a changing society and focus on addressing socio-cultural narratives and embracing change agents; Canadian policing must adapt to serve a variety of cultures and ethnicities, emphasizing cultural sensitivity; and enhancing collaboration, community engagement, and training focused on social justice and human rights to improve policing effectiveness and community trust.
Received: 01-14-2024
Revised: 01-26-202
LESSONS LEARNED: HOW FENTANYL IS IMPACTING ORGANIZED CRIME IN NORTH AMERICA
Get PDFOn November 15, 2023, Victoria Dittmar presented Lessons Learned: How Fentanyl is Impacting Organized Crime in North America for this year’s West Coast Security Conference. The presentation was followed by a question-and-answer period with questions from the audience and CASIS Vancouver executives. The key points discussed were how fentanyl is changing how law enforcement agencies in North America deal with drug trafficking, that fentanyl is a minuscule market and overlaps with legal markets, and that the drug has become democratized with cartels playing only a limited role.
Received: 01-14-2024
Revised: 01-26-202
ROLE AND PURPOSE OF NSICOP IN CANADIAN NATIONAL SECURITY
Get PDFOn November 17, 2023, Lisa-Marie Inman, Executive Director, Secretariat, and Jennifer Kleniewski, Senior Review Analyst and Team Lead, at the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP), presented the Role and Purpose of NSICOP in Canadian National Security for this year’s West Coast Security Conference. The presentation was followed by a question-and-answer period with questions from the audience and CASIS Vancouver executives. The key points discussed were the committee's mandate to provide increased parliamentary oversight over the activities of Canadian intelligence agencies, the content and release of its annual and special reports, and the nonpartisan and representative nature of the committee's composition.
Received: 01-04-2024
Revised: 01-26-202
It's Giving Syntactic Shift: Examining the Syntactic Pattern of It's Giving "X"
Get PDFThis paper was originally written for Dr. Heather Bliss’ LING 282W course Writing for Linguistics. The assignment asked students to investigate a research question based on previous writing assignments into an experimental or argument paper. The paper uses APA citation style.
Past findings have shown that the syntactic category of slang terms often have a tendency to shift and deviate from the standard variety of the language. For example, one study exploring the syntactic category of the slang diminutive suffix “-ie” shows that when added to a verb, it forms a noun such as “munchie”—the feeling of hunger after smoking marijuana—from “munch”—to eat snack foods (Gallová, 2021). While this highlights a specific aspect of syntactic variation in slang, further research on the linguistic properties of other slang terms remains warranted. The present study shares a similar focus, aiming to determine the type of syntactic shift shown by the slang phrase “it’s giving X”, with “X” being any particular modifier of the direct object. Specifically, the inquiry addresses whether “X” adheres to a subject-verb-indirect object-direct object (S-V-IO-DO[1]) or simply a subject-verb-direct object (S-V-DO[2]) sentence pattern. To explore this, three Gen Z participants, proficient in Standard Canadian English, performed a test for syntactic distribution. The test involved using their judgment to assess whether the modifier “X” could be plugged into nine sentences featuring the subject “it’s”, the verb “giving”, with or without the addition of the term “me” as the indirect object and “vibes” as the direct object, while maintaining grammaticality. Results indicate that the modifier “X” grammatically conforms to both S-V-IO-DO and S-V-DO sentence patterns, which shows its versatility in syntactic structures.
[1] S-V-IO-DO refers to Subject-Verb-Indirect Object-Direct Object
[2] S-V-DO refers to Subject-Verb-Direct Objec
Middle Power Cyber Security Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific: An Analysis Through the Lens of Neo-Middle Power Diplomacy
No full textAs technology has advanced and our world has become increasingly interconnected, cyberspace has become a key battlefield in great-power competition. The Indo-Pacific has found itself vulnerable in this new reality – the paucity of institutions, heterogeneity in levels of development, and the region being the primary zone of US-China competition fueling these vulnerabilities. Cyberspace provides a multitude of security threats posed by states, non-state actors and state-sponsored actors. Despite this, cybersecurity takes a backseat to other security issues despite its critical importance. Using the concept of neo-middle power diplomacy, this paper examines why the limited cybersecurity cooperation among middle powers in the Indo-Pacific has taken the shape it has. This paper finds that the two most promising areas of cooperation for middle powers are through confidence building measures and capacity building measures. Through actively pursuing these two measures, middle powers can become more effective, capable, and autonomous stakeholders within the Indo-Pacific.
Received: 03-17-2024
Revised: 05-03-202
Targeting SARS-CoV-2’s Conserved Regions with Antibodies: A Strategy for Broadly Effective Vaccines and Pandemic Preparedness
Get PDFThe global challenge posed by the COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the urgent need for broadly effective vaccine strategies, highlighting viruses like SARS-CoV-2 as formidable threats to society. One promising approach to overcoming this biological peril is the development of antibodies that target a conserved region of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, a structure which mediates virus entry into host cells. Our research focuses on the spike protein’s stem-helix region, a conserved or non-mutating area at the base of the S2 subunit that anchors the spike and is crucial for viral entry. To achieve this, we take samples from vaccinated or infected individuals and employ various techniques to isolate antibody producing cells, determined to manufacture antibodies specific to the stem-helix region. The antibody-encoding gene fragments, within these cells, will be used as blueprints to further characterize and produce these unique antibodies, providing insight into their neutralizing capability and utility for vaccine development. Unlike regions of the virus’ spike prone to rapid mutation, targeting this conserved region could enhance vaccine durability and efficacy against various strains, offering a sustainable solution to current and future pandemics. This strategy not only aims to provide broad protection against different variants of SARS-CoV-2 but also serves as a valuable tool in the ongoing battle against COVID-19 and in preparing for future pandemics caused by related viruses
Exploring Lifestyle and Microbiome Factors Associated with Antibiotic Misuse
Get PDFAntibiotics save lives, but their effectiveness is decreasing as bacteria are growing more resistant to such treatments. Antibiotic resistance prevalence has been accelerating, in part by inappropriate use of antibacterial drugs, yet there is limited research on the reasons why people actually use antibiotics. This descriptive study looks at 2111 infants from the CHILD Cohort Study, a longitudinal project collecting diverse data on children and their parents from pregnancy through childhood. Parents reported reasons why their child took antibiotics, with some example responses being “suspected infection” and “viral infection”. These free-text reasons were standardized under ontologies, which are defined terms arranged by hierarchical relationships, to reduce ambiguity and inconsistencies for downstream analyses. Standardized reasons can then be placed into categories such as “incorrect”, “correct”, and “unsure” reasons for antibiotic use, and subcategories like “for viral infections”. Following standardization, a logistic regression-based analysis can be conducted to identify associations between 1892 variables (including lifestyle factors) and antibiotic misuse. Gut microbiome data is also available from CHILD infant stool samples collected at ages three months and one year. From these data, differences in diversity and abundance of gut bacterial species can be compared among and between different categories of reasons for antibiotic use. This study will explore how often antibiotics are misused in Canada and by who, along with the impact of antibiotic misuse on the gut microbiome. This can aid development of further hypotheses regarding why antibiotics are used inappropriately and what consequences this has on human health
Changes in threat/control-override delusions, substance use, and violence
Get PDFEvidence for an association between major mental illness and violence has grown over the past few decades. However, the specific findings on the nature of this relation vary drastically across studies. Given the increase of patients being treated in community settings, it is important inform appropriate decision-making practices in risk assessment. Several studies have suggested that a specific set of psychotic symptoms, threat/control-override (TCO) delusions, may explain the increased risk of violence among those with mental illness. However, studies have also shown that substance use, a significant risk factor for violence among those with and without mental illness, may largely explain relationship between TCO delusions and violence. To explore this issue, the current study will use data from the MacArthur Risk Assessment study, a prospective, longitudinal study that investigated the risk of violence among discharged psychiatric patients. Identifying and understanding the most significant risk factors is important for informing risk prevention, management, and treatment.
Faculty Supervisor: Dr. Kevin Douglas, Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser Universit