Throughout the history of the North West, Metis people frequently used their knowledge of European, Indian, and Metis culture to mediate Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal social, diplomatic, and economic encounters. Though acknowledged in Metis historiography, this aspect of Metis identity has not been the focus of scholarly analysis, which has primarily centred on Louis Riel, Metis resistance, and ethnogenesis. By closely examining the primary documents, it is evident that the Metis interpreters present at Treaties 1 through 7 were more than merely translators. Prior to negotiations these Metis had interacted with First Nations in a variety of ways, whether in the fur trade or in missionary endeavours. Metis people were well versed in Aboriginal language and cultural traditions, skills they had employed successfully in Rupert's Land prior to 1870.<p> In drawing upon this amicable relationship between Metis and First Nations, Canadian officials in the North West recognized the positive effect of personal diplomacy on securing First Nations signatures to the treaty documents. In this thesis many examples will demonstrate that the actions of Metis people were critical in preventing violence between groups, thereby enabling the treaty process to begin. These Metis individuals moved within a middle ground of context that developed in the era prior to the 1870's, thus indicating a measure of continuity between the pre- and post transition period in the Canadian West.

The allocation of water resources is typically accomplished within the framework of water allocation systems (WAS). In general, a WAS sets priorities, applies rules, and organizes responses to a range of water allocation scenarios. This research presents a comprehensive study of water allocation strategies and provides a conceptual framework of principles and guidelines for designing, assessing, implementing and supporting WAS. The voluminous compilation of international treaties and conventions, interstate compacts, intrastate administrative documentation, and scientific/engineering literature was researched in order to identify different water allocation strategies and mechanisms. From this analysis eight fundamental areas of WAS were identified: water rights, determination of water allotment, administrative systems, reservoir storage considerations, system reliability, multiple uses, instream flow requirements, and drought management. The systematic scrutiny of these eight areas at the international, interstate, and intrastate levels defined the conceptual framework for assessing WAS. The Texas experience with regard to its Water Availability Modeling system is also reviewed with particular emphasis on the application of the Water Rights Analysis Package (WRAP) model in supporting water allocation efforts. The Lower Rio Grande WAS was used as a case study to demonstrate how the principles presented in the conceptual framework can be used to assess water allocation issues and identify alternative strategies. Three WRAP simulation studies utilizing several components of the conceptual framework were performed in order to assess the Lower Rio Grande WAS. The simulations focused on three of the major water allocation issues of the Texas Rio Grande: reallocation among uses, instream flow requirements, and drought management. The simulations showed several deficiencies in the Lower Rio Grande WAS, particularly regarding the size of the domestic-municipal-industrial (DMI) reserve and its effect on the reliability of other uses. The simulation results suggest that water from the DMI can be liberated to be used by irrigators and to support environmental flows without affecting the reliability to municipal users. Several strategies were proposed that can potentially improve the overall efficiency of the system. Nonetheless, implementing new strategies and water allocation policies in the Lower Rio Grande WAS would require considerable changes in regulation policies.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stockholm University, 2005. / Additional loose-leaf abstract of thesis inserted. "June 2005". Includes bibliographical references.

This paper examines how ex-combatants of El Salvador’s 1980-1992 civil war view post-war processes of reconciliation. I demonstrate that contrary to dominant understandings of ongoing political polarization in El Salvador, perpetuated by Salvadoran political parties, many former army and guerrilla combatants are coexisting in the same communities and working together in various ways. I show how the Salvadoran Peace Accords and the apparent political polarization has opened a space for the recreation of social networks and the creation of communities in post-war societies. I call this process “grassroots peacemaking,”emphasizing the everyday negotiations of remembering and creating new social relations in a nation torn apart by war and violence. / text

On November 9, 1995, Canada and the United States ratified the Third Protocol to the Canada-US. Income Tax Convention. The Protocol will benefit Canadians engaged in cross-border business as it eliminates many pre-existing tax barriers to trade and investment. However, the Protocol also includes a controversial Limitation on Benefits ('LOB') Article, intended to prevent treaty shopping by Canadian resident entities. This thesis will analyze the LOB Article and examine its problems and the potential pitfalls which Canadian taxpayers should be aware of when conducting cross-border trade and investment. These problems fall into five categories. First, the LOB Article is difficult to apply in practice because it contains complex tests and several undefined and vague terms. Second, the LOB Article has the potential to deny treaty benefits to entities engaged in bona fide non-treaty shopping activities. Third, Canadian resident entities which have, or plan to have, U.S. source income will be required to take into account the LOB Article's extremely complex rules and plan appropriately whenever there is a change in the share ownership of their Canadian businesses or an increase in the level of expense payments to third country residents. They will have to conduct regular reviews to ensure that they are in compliance with the LOB Article. Fourth, the LOB Article could have the unplanned effect of re-directing tax revenues from Canada to the U.S. Finally, the LOB Article violates two of the three goals of tax treaty policy: the prevention of double taxation and the promotion of stability. This thesis concludes that the inclusion of the LOB Article in the Protocol was politically and bureaucratically motivated by U.S. tax authorities' zeal to halt treaty shopping at all costs. The inclusion of the LOB Article demonstrates the preoccupation of the U.S. with eliminating treaty shopping. This preoccupation appears to take precedent over the basic goal of international tax treaties, which is the facilitation of trade and investment through the removal of tax barriers to the free exchange of capital, goods and services. Further, this thesis concludes that Canada should not have conceded to the inclusion of the LOB Article in the Protocol because its negative impact on some Canadian entities and the Canadian economy will outweigh the Protocol's potential benefits for Canada.

To be fair and equitable are aims inherent in most legal systems, whether domestic or international, but are usually tacitly stated. With respect to foreign direct investment (FDI) they constitute a standard of treatment which lacks a clear definition. Nevertheless, the recurrence of this standard in conventional instruments makes it one of the focal points of this branch of international law. / The main goal of this thesis is to explore and understand the standard of fair and equitable treatment. To understand its definition, it is first necessary to undertake a theoretical analysis of the notion. Secondly, having assessed the general meaning to fair and equitable treatment, an attempt is made to assess the difficulties which have arisen from its incorporation in Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Finally, the thesis tries to assess where the concept stands in international law and whether or not it has passed into the corpus of customary international law.

This study attempts to systematically analyze the determinants of state participation in International Environmental Agreements (IEAs). The study focuses on two core elements: (i) IEA characteristics; and (ii) state characteristics. Hypotheses for state participation in IEAs are formulated based on the two main International Relations theories dealing with cooperation – Realism and Liberalism. The study presents five different models for state participation in IEAs. The first model analyzes the influence of treaty variables, while the remaining four focus on state variables. The second and third models analyze the influence of Realist and Liberal variables respectively. The fourth model specifically focuses on variables which reflect the various socio-economic, political and logistical constraints of developing countries. The fifth model presents an integrated analysis of participation based on the previous models. Results of the study show that participation can be understood in terms of both the Realist and Liberal variables, and that there can be no rarefied partitioning of those factors on participation. More specifically, the study empirically demonstrates that state participation in IEAs is influenced by the following four main factors: (i) the impact of domestic and international institutions (ii) human development; (iii) power motivations; and (iv) IEA design. Policies proposed to increase participation in IEAs therefore have to enhance any positive influence exerted by these parameters, and mitigate their negative influences, if any.

On April 1, 2011, the Maa-nulth Treaty went into effect. Negotiated between five First Nations, the province of British Columbia and Canada, the Treaty concerned territories never before ceded on the west coast of Vancouver Island. This study utilizes the Treaty as a point of departure to explore contemporary Indigenous-Settler relations. Using digital storytelling, youth from one of the five signatory First Nations identified their priorities for their Nation in a post-Treaty era. These stories are contrasted with a discourse analysis of mainstream media coverage surrounding the Treaty and a survey of local (mainly Settler) residents’ perceptions to explore dominant perspectives pertaining to this comprehensive land claims agreement. While youths’ ideas for the future were anchored to their Indigenous cultural identity, albeit integrating technology and novel art forms, Settlers’ perspectives remained statically centered upon ill-informed strains of colonial thought premised upon socio-political and economic stereotypes. Colonialism continues to be (re)produced structurally and individually; these findings point to the need for Settlers to engage in their own processes of decolonization.

Applying market arbitrage theory on daily data, we measure the empirical financial market convergence of NAFTA’s financial markets since 1994. Radar diagram and wavelet multi-resolution analysis (MRA) scalogram movies of the statistical moments of the term interest rate differentials visualize the multidimensional convergence. From the radar movies, we find: 1) a uniform disappearance of the average forward premia; 2) a non-uniform decline of bilateral financial market risk; 3) variation of bilateral financial market pressure measured by skewness; and 4) emergence of uniform market microstructures as measured by vanishing excess-kurtosis. From the MRA movies, we find that the national term structures of interest rates converge, since the stochastic resonance coefficients of the interest rate differentials lose significance: market energy at all frequencies dissipates into “white noise.” Testing Obrimah, Prakash and Rangan’s (2009) Lemma, we find that, after 2002, higher financial flow pressure is a necessary condition for lower financial market risk. / vii, 67 leaves ; 29 cm

NAFTA's Article 2005 prescribes that the NAFTA governments, being Canada, Mexico and the US, may choose either a multilateral or a regional forum within which to solve their trade disputes. Thus, they may choose between either the new WTO dispute settlement mechanism or the NAFTA Chapter 20 dispute settlement mechanism. Nevertheless, in order to have an effective choice of forum, there is one essential condition: the subject matter of the dispute must be similar or identical, and there must be some degree of subject matter overlap in both the NAFTA and WTO provisions. The relationship between NAFTA, the WTO and GATT is complex. The core problem is whether there is a legal distinction between the GATT 1947 and the GATT 1994, incorporated into the WTO Agreement, in order to establish either NAFTA or WTO primacy. The latter-in-time treaty general rule will decide the issue. Nevertheless, a decisive conclusion cannot be drawn, as this should be studied on a case-by-case basis.