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Cedric May (University of Birmingham, retired)
Un homme à l’Ile de Sark
The High Commissioner for Canada, HE Mr James Wright
Innovative Excellence: Traditions and Technologies in Canada
Professor David Wall, University of Leeds, Eccles Lecture 2007,
Hunting, Shooting and Phishing: New Cybercrime challenges for CyberCanadians in the 21st Century
Dr Genevieve Tanguay, Deputy Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Economic Development, Innovation and Export Trade, Québec Government
Quebec's Research and Innovation Strategy: Staying Ahead
Plenary I: Un homme à l’Ile de Sark
A film by Isabelle Raynaud, introduced by Dr Cedric May
A brush with grace, an hour of sheer delight
‘A man on the Isle of Sark’, a documentary by Isabelle Raynaud, was shown at the Cinémathèque last February.
Is it a documentary? The work in question, while faithful to the genre, serves as a medium for a short film which quickly takes another turn, becomes a poem.
Is it a documentary? Rather a work, aesthetic in its ambition.
Exceptional!
The transition happens very quickly. It takes us by surprise.
After the showing, I immediately felt the urge to write about the experience.
What is the film about? What do we see? The tiny Island of Sark, one of the Channel Islands, charming and picturesque with its rocky headlands, inhabited by an anachronism, a feudal relic, forty farmsteads, always forty, handed down from father to son, a village, a protestant chapel, a school, old stone houses, six hundred inhabitants, a community French once (a little French is still spoken), an island answering directly to the British Crown but not to Parliament and enjoying its own laws.
This film is a piece of creative art in the pure sense of the word.
In Sark, the film-maker went to meet Cedric May, former lecturer in Quebec literature at the University of Birmingham, friend of Quebec, protestant pastor who spent three years recently on this island as minister, as his great-grandfather once did in the same place.
In this production, the documentary function is not everything, far from it. It is because this work takes such a different tack that the result is so singular.
The art of the film-maker, the editor and the other artists assembled the elements on offer, putting them in order, arranging them, condensing them, so as to bring them out as fully as possible. This process, intelligent, sensitive, apparent to the viewer, stamps it with its mark, so to speak, controls it and in fact brings it into being. The constraint is admirably contrived.
The film does not simply show us, it speaks, it makes a statement. In it, Cedric May expresses himself and a world view, a lifetime of thought unfolds in this way through a small number of phrases collected at different times. The islanders, just as true to life and endearing, express their views, too. It’s true art, that’s what I’m saying. The fields, the sea, the reefs, the rocks, the birds, the words; and Mr May speaking, so human, a sort of poet, brief comments full of meaning. The result of all this is pure magic.
No excess in this work. No image is too much, nor the time each sequence takes, managed as it is with great subtlety. No image is overdone, yet each is brought out and achieves its purpose
The context? The past preserved into the present, continued and handed on, both love and custom. Through the creative act, time is given not just a temporal but a spiritual quality.
This has to be seen on the big screen. Will we get the opportunity again? Will we see this work take its proper place? Will we even get to see it again? Perhaps we might if this film, by chance, were eventually to be accepted as a ‘Classic’, fortuitously dare I say, or as a work destined to survive. It would not be unworthy.
Pierre Vadeboncoeur, 11.4.2006
24 images: la revue québécoise du cinéma 127 (June/July 2006)
(translated C. May)
Plenary II: Professor David Wall, University of Leeds
Hunting, Shooting and Phishing: New Cybercrime challenges for
CyberCanadians in the 21st Century
Canada is a nation that has been shaped over the past 200 years by its staple industries - hunting, fishing, agriculture and mining. The information communications technologies (ICTs) that developed to support their production and distribution and subsequently augment them have also played a crucial role in the formation of the Canadian nation by
bridging its geographical isolation and connecting its remote communities. More recently, the networking of Canadian society via the Internet has further distorted the rules of time and space to bring together geographically and culturally distributed communities in ways that can leave them rooted in their traditions but now connected across a new framework of time and space to form a ‘CyberCanada’ - an idealised virtual nation free of the contradictions of physicality.
At the heart of this CyberCanada is a new staple industry, ‘knowledge production’, which is the product of active networks that create informational capital and new forms of wealth in intellectual property. But this process is not risk free because history dictates that where wealth is produced then there are also those who wish to acquire it by means fair or foul. This paper therefore addresses the new cybercrime challenges that CyberCanadians will face in the 21st Century and beyond. It will look at the major developments in information and communications technology that are transforming our world before exploring their actual impacts upon criminal behaviour. It will then focus upon the cyber crimes themselves and before predicting where the next challenges originate. Finally, it will ponder on the digital realism of cybercrimes and the intellectual questions it creates that will need to be answered in the near future.
David S. Wall is Professor of Criminal Justice and Information Technology and Head of the School of Law at the University of Leeds, where he conducts research, co-ordinates the postgraduate programmes in criminal justice studies and cyberlaw, and teaches courses in criminal justice processes, policing, socio-legal research methods, cyberlaw and cybercrimes.
David Wall worked previously at the Social Policy Research Unit, University of York (1985-6) and the Centre for Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Hull (1986-9), where he researched various regulation/ policing issues. His research interests fall within the areas of policing, criminal justice, the sociology of law, judicial administration, public law, administrative law, cyberlaw, popular culture.
After working in the private sector for three years he joined the Centre for Criminal Justice studies in the School of Law at the University of Leeds in 1992 as a research officer. He was appointed lecturer 1993, became a senior lecturer in August 1998 then professor in January 2004. He was Director of the Centre for Criminal Justice Studies between 2000 and 2005 when he became Head of the School of Law (2005-2007). In 1998, with Clive Walker and Yaman Akdeniz, he formed the Cyberlaw Research Unit.
Since arriving at Leeds, David has conducted a number of funded research projects which include a study of criminal legal aid for the ESRC (with Adrian Wood); a study of stipendiary magistrates for the Lord Chancellor’s Department (with Clive Walker and Peter Seago); a study of the use of information technology by lawyers for the University of Leeds/ Faculty of Law; a study of the means testing of legal aid for the National Audit Office. He then conducted research, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, into the socio-legal history of the chief constables of England and Wales between 1836 and 1996 (see publications). This was followed by research for the Law Society of England and Wales into client and practitioner perceptions of need with regard to quality performance indicators for legal aid delivery (with Hilary Sommerlad). In 1999 he concluded a short project, funded by the Foundation for Canadian Studies, into Circle Sentencing, a Canadian aboriginal criminal justice alternative.
Plenary III
HE Mr James Wright, High Commissioner for Canada
Innovative Excellence: Traditions and Technologies in Canada
Mr Wright assumed his responsibilities as Canadian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland on 27 August 2006. Born in Montreal, Mr Wright attended McGill University (BA, 1972; MA, 1973) before joining the Department of Foreign Affairs in 1976. With the Canadian Foreign Service, he has served in Moscow (1978-1980), Washington (1983-1987) and London (1992-1996) where he was Minister, Political and Public Affairs, at the Canadian High Commission. In Ottawa, he has worked in the Office of the Prime Minister and as Director of Personnel. From 1996-2000, Mr Wright was Director General for the Central, East and South Europe Bureau. From 2000-2004, he was the Assistant Deputy Minister for the Global and Security Policy Branch. In January 2005, following a reorganization of Foreign Affairs Canada, he assumed the position of Assistant Deputy Minister for the International Security Branch. Mr Wright also served as the Political Director.
He speaks English, French and Russian.
Mr Wright is married to Donna Thomson, and they have two children, Nicholas and Natalie.
Plenary IV: Québec’s Research and Innovation Strategy: Staying Ahead
Dre Geneviève Tanguay
Sous-ministre adjointe
Ministère du Développement économique, de l'Innovation et de l'Exportation
Gouvernement du Québec
Depuis janvier 2007, madame Geneviève Tanguay agit à titre de sous-ministre adjointe à la Direction générale de la Recherche, de la Science et de la Technologie, au Ministère du Développement économique, de l'Innovation et de l'Exportation (MDEIE). Son premier défi en tant que sous-ministre adjointe est de mettre en eouvre les mesures liées à la Stratégie de recherche et d'innovation du Québec annoncé par le Gouvernement en décembre 2006.
Pendant ses études et après avoir obtenu un Ph.D. en parasitologie de l'Université McGill en 1990, madame Tanguay a été très active en politique de la recherche et en politique scientifique tant sur la scène fédérale que provinciale. Elle a successivement occupé les fonctions d'analyste à l'Association des universités et collèges du Canada, d'analyste principale à la planification au Conseil de recherche en sciences naturelles et en génie du Canada, de secrétaire générale et responsable des communications au Fonds pour la formation de chercheurs et l'aide à la recherche, organisme provincial de financement de la recherche. Avant sa nomination récente en tant que sous-ministre adjointe elle était vice-présidente Développement du Centre québécois de valorisation des biotechnologies (CQVB), un centre de liaison et de transfert.
Madame Tanguay est active au sein de C.A. de nombreux organismes. Elle fut également présidente de l'Association des administratrices et des administrateurs de recherche universitaire du Québec de 1999 à 2000. En 2005-2006, elle était présidente de l'Association francophone pour le savoir - (Acfas), l'équivalent canadien de la BA. L'Acfas est une association forte de 6 000 membres, scientifiques provenant de tous les secteurs et disciplines à travers le Canada. En 2005, elle fut nommée par le Ministre du Développement économique, de l'Innovation de et l'Exportation, sur le Groupe de travail provincial sur la commercialisation de la recherche. Elle était membre des conseils d'administration de BioProduits Canada, de la Société pour la Promotion de la Science et de la Technologie, de BioAgral, du Centre de Transfert et de Sélection de Salmonidés et de l'Alliance pour la recherche en agroalimentaire. Madame Tanguay était également membre du Comité consultatif du Réseau Canadien d'Innovation en Biomasse. Elle a également siégé en tant que membre sur la Commission Consultative de l'Institut de technologie des procédés chimiques et de l'environnement et de l'institut pour l'information scientifique et technique, tous deux du Conseil National de la Recherche du Canada.
Actuellement madame Tanguay siège sur les Conseils d'administration des trois Fonds subventionnaires québécois (le Fonds recherche société et culture, le Fonds de la recherche en santé du Québec et le Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la nature et les technologies), sur celui du Centre de recherche industrielle du Québec (CRIQ), de GénomeQuébec et de NanoQuébec.
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