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Trade Corridors: A Roundtable

Date: April 25, 2005

Time: 7:00 PM - 7:00 PM

Location: Park Hyatt

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We discussed that the formation of various “trade corridor” organizations reflects a profound reality that underlines the history of our relationship: North American integration has resulted not from high-level public policy nor central direction from activity that is overwhelmingly bottom-up, reflecting the vast preferences and habits of our population, from one end of our country to the other. To put it in its starkest terms, it is these habits or preferences, not the policies of government, that turned the economic axis of Canada from East-West to North-South.

Keynote: Allan Gotlieb is a senior advisor in the Toronto office of Stikeman Elliott LLP. He served as Canadian ambassador to the United States from 1981-1989. Mr. Gotlieb has written widely on international law and diplomacy. As well as serving as Under Secretary of State for External Affairs and head of the department’s Legal Bureau. Mr. Gotlieb was deputy minister for the federal departments of Communications, and Employment and Immigration as well as Chairman of the Canada Council.

Mr. Gotlieb is currently Chairman of the Donner Canadian Foundation and Sotheby’s Canada. He also serves on the advisory board of Nestle Canada, Inc. And is a Director and Trustee of Davis + Henderson Income Trust. He is a Governor of the Peter Munk Charitable Foundation and the Ontario Arts Council Foundation as well as serving on the Advisory Council of the Ontario Minister of Culture.

Mr. Gotlieb also serves as Canadian Chairman and North American Vice-Chairman of The Trilateral Commission. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Art Gallery of Ontario and Honourary Chairman of the Ontario Heritage Foundation.

He is a graduate of the University of California (B.A.), Harvard University (LL.B.), University of Oxford (M.A.) (B.C.L.), and an honorary doctor of laws at seven universities in Canada and the United States. He is an Honourary Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford.

A former editor of the Harvard Law Review, Mr. Gotlieb has been the William Lyon Mackenzie King Visiting Professor at Harvard University and Claude Bissell Visiting Professor at the University of Toronto. He was a visiting fellow of All Souls College and a Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford. He was admitted to the Bar in England as a Barrister of the Inner Temple. He is a Companion of the Order of Canada and holds the Outstanding Achievement Award of the Government of Canada.

Mr. Gotlieb’s past directorships include the Export Development Corporation, International Development Research Centre, National Film Board and a number of U.S. And Canadian international corporations including Alcan Aluminium Limited, Champion International Corporation, Suncor Energy, People’s Jewellers, AXA Assurances and a number of other companies. He was also a member of the International Advisory Board of the Bank of Montreal, the Advisory Board of the Carlyle Group (Canada), and Bank Julius Baer (Canada), the Investment Corporation of America and the International Advisory Board of Burson-Marstellar. Mr. Gotlieb was an arbitrator for both the Canada-France Tribunal on Maritime Boundaries and the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague.

Mr. Gotlieb is the author of five books, Canada Treaty-Making, Disarmament and International Law, Human Rights, Federal and Minorities (ed), Impact of Technology on International Law (The Hague Academy) and I’ll Be With You In a Minute, Mr. Ambassador. He is also the author of numerous articles on international law.