Canadian Studies Announcements

In This Issue:

News from Canada

• Trump renames Lake Ontario “Lake America” after collapse of US-Canada trade talks

Campus Events

• Back-to-School Reception for Students

• “Rethinking Linking: Effects of Cap-and-Trade Integration Equilibrium on Emissions and Welfare”

• Canadian Studies Student Research Showcase

NEWS FROM CANADA

Trump Renames Lake Ontario “Lake America” After Collapse of US-Canada Trade Talks

The name of one of North America’s largest lakes has become another flashpoint in the ongoing trade dispute between the United States and Canada. On Thursday, President Trump issued an executive order directing the US government to change its official name for Lake Ontario to “Lake America”.

The move appears to be retaliation for Prime Minister Carney’s decision to walk out of bilateral trade negotiations. But it also seems to reflect the particularly bad relationship between the US president and Ontario premier Doug Ford. Ford has become a particularly harsh critic of Trump, and has been a prominent voice calling for Canada to push back harder against the US administration. This led to the two exchanging insults earlier last week after Ford praised Carney’s decision to end the talks. Trump announced he was renaming the lake shortly afterwards, presenting the justification “that we don’t expect to doing {sic} much business with Ontario any longer.”

The new name has already been implemented by US federal agencies and on Google Maps for American users. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum also revealed that Trump has personally asked Apple to change the name immediately. However, the move was met with ridicule by Canadian officials. Prime Minister Carney noted that the US president has no authority to change what Canadians call the lake, affirming that it will “always” be Lake Ontario.

The move has also faced pushback in the United States, where only 14% of Americans support renaming the lake, according to a recent poll. The governors of New York, Michigan, and Vermont announced that they would not recognize the name change. Even in the largely Republican counties that border the lake on the US side, few people expressed support for the president’s order.

The name of Lake Ontario was first recorded in 1639 and is believed to derive from an Iroquoian word meaning “Lake of Shining Waters”. The Canadian province of Ontario was named for the lake upon Confederation in 1867.

Image of Toronto by Dillan Payne on Wikimedia Commons.

UPCOMING CAMPUS EVENTS

Back-to-School Reception for Students
Th., Sept. 3 | 2:00 pm | 223 Philosophy Hall | RSVP

The Canadian Studies Program invites you to kick off the fall semester with a back-to-school meet-and-greet for students! Learn more about our program and meet other students with Canadian connections while enjoying complimentary tea and pastries. This is your chance to:

• Connect with Canadian students and friends of Canada
• Discover research funding for Canada-related projects
• Learn about upcoming events, like our lunch talks, conferences, and Canadian Thanksgiving celebration!

Please RSVP here if you plan to attend. We look forward to seeing you Thursday!

Rethinking Linking: Effects of Cap-and-Trade Integration on Equilibrium Emissions and Welfare
Friday, Sept. 4 | Noon | 241 Giannini Hall | Learn more

Conventional economic reasoning suggests that linking cap-and-trade programs creates efficiency gains by lowering costs while holding emissions constant. When cap-and-trade programs have price floors or ceilings, however, linking may increase emissions and decrease welfare. Within California and Québec, cap-and-trade linkage increased emissions by 17.5 million tons CO₂e and reduced welfare by $331 million annually – an outcome that was ex-ante foreseeable. A reformed linked market could have remained emissions-neutral while instead increasing welfare by up to $32 million annually. However, political and institutional frictions prevented such reforms from being implemented and propose that policymakers prioritized cutting emissions cheaply over equating marginal damages and benefits.

Thor Larson is a graduate student affiliate of Berkeley’s Energy Institute and the first economist at Berkeley to earn a Designated Emphasis in Energy Science and Technology alongside his PhD. His research focuses on the design of energy markets, with a special emphasis on innovation and the clean energy transition. He holds a BA, magna cum laude, in Applied Mathematics and Chemistry from Harvard.

This event is hosted by the Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics.

Tuesday, September 15 | Noon | 223 Philosophy Hall | RSVP

Learn about the research Canadian Studies funds through our Edward E. Hildebrand Graduate Research Fellowships, as recipients present overviews of their projects.

Refusing Bifurcation: Mobility, Kinship and Chinese-Indigenous Families in the Pacific Northwest Borderlands

Jessica Jiang, PhD candidate, Department of Ethnic Studies

In the late 19th-century Pacific Northwest, colonial and transpacific migration routes overlapped and often conflicted with longstanding Indigenous geographies. This talk traces several mixed Chinese-Indigenous families on the Columbia/Interior Plateau across generations, showing how these larger forces shaped their lives and movements. These families found themselves in the crosshairs of both US and Canadian policies that sought to control the movement of Chinese and Indigenous people; however, they also found creative ways to navigate and circumvent these restrictions. Drawing on both Chinese and Indigenous knowledge, practices, and relationships, mixed-descent individuals used their dual heritage to negotiate different kinship traditions, maintain their families, and protect their connections to their homelands.

The Gang Exception: Eroding Propensity Rules in Canadian Criminal Law

Reakash Walters, PhD candidate, UC Berkeley Law

“The Gang Exception” demonstrates how evidence law is applied differently for race and class marginalized accused than for other accused persons. The methodology of the article pairs a systematic content analysis of reported Canadian criminal cases with a content analysis of trial transcripts involving accused with serious charges. Admissibility decisions involving gang-related charges are compared with a separate group of non-gang cases that turn on the admissibility of bad character or propensity evidence arising from a similar set of serious charges. This design helps isolate what might be particular to how courts reason about the admissibility of gang-affiliation evidence. The article argues that the reasoning through which gang affiliation evidence is admitted departs from the principled application of the propensity framework set out in R v Handy: the probative value and prejudicial effect inquiry the rule demands is often thinned or left unstated. Further, courts engage in a unique form of reasoning not present in the comparator cases to justify admission of gang-affiliation evidence. This research further illustrates how the organizational mechanisms that shape criminal legal institutions affect systemic inequality.

Canadian Studies Program

213 Philosophy Hall #2308

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