6 Potential New Sister City Partnerships for Edmonton

Commemorative stamp featuring Edmonton's Harbin Gate (source: CTV News)

Edmonton, it is often said, has an identity problem. In spite of the fact that the city is regularly ranked as among the best places in the world to live, it is still a place that most of humanity has never heard of or is barely aware of. And most of the people who know of it, if we're honest, probably think it's a boring, colourless frozen wasteland whose most interesting features are a giant shopping mall and a has-been hockey team.

In defence of the rest of the world, however, it should be noted that Edmontonians have, until recently, not done a particularly good job dispelling this notion. The latter half of the twentieth century saw the Alberta capital fall asleep at the wheel as its downtown core died, its stature as a transportation hub faded, its once vibrant community of corporate head offices disappeared and Calgary became the uncontested economic engine of the province. All the while, Edmonton's notoriously self-deprecating denizens failed to trumpet the city's enduring treasures - its festivals, orchestras, green spaces, universities and research institutes, world-leading construction companies etc. - and as such Edmonton became Canada's Lost City of Atlantis, somehow just off the map.

Fortunately, the Edmonton zeitgeist has changed dramatically since the dawn of the Mandel era in 2004. Edmonton's downtown is vibrant again, the airport is booming, the city's architecture is bolder and more imaginative than ever, public transit is at last being prioritized and the economy continues to thrive. Nevertheless, Edmonton's dream of becoming a global trade and logistics hub continues to be hindered by the city's lack of global profile. People simply don't know who we are as a city.

There are many things we could be doing as a city to change that, some of which might seem frivolous on the surface. One possible tactic would be to expand current our sister city partnerships. While many cities have numerous city twinning arrangements, Edmonton has only four such partnerships, specifically with Gatineau, Quebec, Nashville, Tennessee, Harbin, China and Wonju, South Korea. Of these, Edmonton's partnership with Harbin, the economic hub of China's northeastern Heilongjang Province, has proven the most economically fruitful, with the two cities signing a tourism and business cooperation agreement in 2011.

What other cities around the world would befit a sister city arrangement with Edmonton? Here are six suggestions.


1) Adelaide, Australia

Source: hubaustralia.com

With the notable exception of its famously sublime climate, Adelaide, the capital city of the state of South Australia, is arguably the world city that most closely resembles Edmonton. Its population is virtually identical to Edmonton's, as is its status as Australia's fifth largest city. It also serves a similar transportation and logistics role to Edmonton as the main air gateway to Australia's vast mining operations in the country's geographic centre. Want more parallels? It's also home to a thriving arts and culture scene, including the biggest fringe festival in the southern hemisphere. And as I pointed out in my recent post on Edmonton's airport predicament, it's also a city that has faced some of the same hurdles as Edmonton in building connections with the outside world. Adelaide - it's more or less Edmonton in the subtropics.


2) Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine



Source: Wikipedia

Why the hell do we not have a sister city in the ancestral homeland of at least one out of every ten Edmontonians? While other Canadian cities have entered into civic partnerships with Ukrainian counterparts (Toronto with Kiev, Winnipeg with Lviv and Vancouver with Odessa), Edmonton, one of the most Ukrainian cities outside the Motherland has notably not done so. The central Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk would seem to be an obvious choice. Not only does it not yet have a Canadian sister city, this riverside metropolis is of a similar size and economic profile to Edmonton. It is also a major educational centre in Ukraine, whose many post-secondary institutions include the National Mining University, a world-leader in resource extraction technology.


3) Concepción, Chile

Source: ab-imagensincriveis.blogspot.com

While it scarcely compares to the city's Ukrainian contingent, Edmonton's 3,000-strong Chilean community, most of whom came as refugees during the early Pinochet years, maintains an outsized presence within the city's Latin American population. Chilean accents dominate Spanish-language radio in Edmonton and empanadas and ceviche share shelf space with perogies and kubasa in the city's 'ethnic' grocery stores. Which Chilean city would be the best fit with Edmonton? The southern city of Concepción, with its metro population of just over one million, its renown as a "university town" (it's home to 15 universities) and its thriving music scene, would be a strong candidate.


4) Astana, Kazakhstan



Source: Wikipedia

A little-known fact about the Ukrainian diaspora of the late nineteenth century is that at the same time thousands of Ukrainian farmers migrated to the west, ultimately settling in the Canadian prairie provinces, an equally substantial contingent migrated eastward, settling in the steppes of what is now Akmola province in northeastern Kazakhstan. Today Kazakhstan is an independent republic that bears more than a passing similarity to Alberta, with its mountain and prairie vistas, extreme climate, multiethnic population and fast-growing economy dominated by oil and gas. At the centre of Akmola province is the country's new capital city of Astana, Kazakhstan's northern metropolis - and its Edmonton. (Almaty, the country's largest city to the south, is very much its Calgary.) Edmonton's architecture may not be as garish as Astana's, but the cities' roles, and the countries' historical and economic parallels, would make for an intriguing pairing.


5) Pasig City, Philippines

Source: Wikipedia

Of Alberta's total immigrant population of around 644,000, nearly 70,000 - about 11 per cent of the total - are of Philippine origin, making them the largest single immigrant group in the province. Edmonton's Filipino population is over 26,000, representing nearly three per cent of the city's total population. If Ukraine represents the city's ancestral past, the Philippines clearly represents its present. So who would we partner with in the land of Jeepneys and adobo chicken? With Winnipeg partnered with the Manila proper and Vancouver with Quezon City, that leaves Makati and Pasig among major Metro Manila cities without a Canadian partner. Makati, with its major agglomeration of banks and corporate head offices, might be a better match with Calgary, with Pasig, a major educational centre, home to the highly respected University of Asia and the Pacific, would be a logical partner for Edmonton.


6) Juba, South Sudan

Source: ssdnnetwork.com

Edmonton's increasingly diverse citizenry includes around 3,000 immigrants from the recently independent republic of South Sudan. The vast majority came to Canada as refugees in the late-1990s and early 2000s during the worst of Sudan's torturously long and cruel north-south civil war. As a relatively new contingent from a country still beset by instability and destitution, Edmonton's South Sudanese population retains a strong vested interest in their beleaguered homeland. Some have even returned to South Sudan to help set up infrastructure, while others continue to lobby on behalf of the country's people, which last month faced renewed unrest. A sister city partnership with the capital city of this young nation, especially one with strong ties to Alberta, would send a strong signal of solidarity to a country still struggling to survive.

10 Sexiest World Leaders of 2013 (File Under Shameless Fluff)

Hottie meets hottie at Government House in Bangkok in November 2012 (Source: www.gawker.com)

Happy New Year! Just about every blogger out there has at least one new year's resolution. Mine is to have more fun here on Brush Talk and to write more 'fun' posts. Yes, there are still a myriad 'serious' issues pertaining to writing and communications that I intend to dig into in the coming months, but when it comes down to it I get the best responses from posts that are lightweight, funny, irreverent and fun to read. December's 'How To Drive Like An Edmontonian' was easily my most popular post of all time. And here I was expecting a barrage of angry rebuttals from Edmonton motorists convinced that they and their fellow citizens don't drive like complete lunatics. How wrong I was!

In keeping with the spirit of fun, my first post of 2013 is dedicated to all the world leaders out there who have raised the bar for politicos everywhere in the sex appeal department. Back in November 2011 I wrote a post entitled 'Gross National Sexy' in which I outlined ten ways in which Canada could boost its international sex appeal. One of the steps I suggested was simply "Do something about Stephen Harper," in which I insinuated that our current prime minister, while he has his admirable qualities, is sadly among the last world leaders any of us would like to see sprawled out on a tiger rug in our living room with champagne and strawberries at the ready and an Isaac Hayes album throbbing away on the stereo. Sorry.

It's not that Stephen Harper is a physically unattractive man. Sex appeal is more than this. The late Québec premier René Lévesque was hardly an Adonis, but he had more sex appeal in his perpetually cigarette-clutching middle and index fingers than Harpo has in his entire body. By contrast, recent US presidential contestant Mitt Romney, while a superficially decent looking man, makes Harper look like a suave Casanova. Sometimes politicos get sexier in their autumn years, as Hillary Clinton's smoky foreign policy-cured mezzo voice and new-found party girl persona clearly show. Other leaders lose their sex appeal over time. Vladimir Putin's Slavic Chuck Norris schtick has grown ever more tiresome as his Stalinist tendencies have become harder to overlook. Similarly, Binyamin Netanyahu's once appealing Zionist boy scout image has taken a hit by his new-found friendship with Israel's far-right.

Sex appeal is like good writing: it's undefinable and subjective, but you know it when you see it. So who are the dreamiest among today's world leaders? Here are my top ten candidates, in no particular order.

1) Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck

During his 34-year reign as King of Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuck oversaw the transition of his remote Himalayan kingdom from a medieval backwater to a fast developing South Asian economy with an increasingly democratic political culture. In 2006 he abdicated in favour of his then 26-year-old son, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, the fifth and current Dragon King (Druk Gyalpo) of Bhutan. The young king has continued in his father's footsteps, strengthening the country's democratic institutions, promoting public works projects and forging tighter trade relations with neighbouring India. And with his teen idol looks and charming demeanour, the 'People's King' has been a PR godsend to the Bhutanese people, with his 2011 marriage to his radiant commoner bride Jetsun Pema breaking hearts from Bangkok to Tokyo.

2) Yingluck Shinawatra

Between 2008 and 2010, Thailand was rocked by political and social upheval driven by a West Side Story-like rift between rival Red Shirt and Yellow Shirt factions, which threatened to roll back the country's previously impressive economic gains. Then in 2011, the Thai people elected Yingluck Shinawatra, the younger sister of controversial exiled former PM Thaksin Shinawatra, unseating the dashing but ineffectual Abhisit Vejjajiva and ushering in a new era of uneasy reconciliation and renewed economic growth. While Yingluck's first two years at the helm of Thai politics have hardly been faultless, the US-educated former telecommunications executive has thus far proven an adept economic steward and a canny reconciliator in spite of her divisive family ties. And at the very least the Reds and Yellows can agree that their current prime minister, with her Catherine Zeta-Jones-meets-Michelle Yeoh looks, is easy on the eyes.

3) Jens Stoltenberg

Prior to the horrific shooting spree on Utøya Island in Norway in July 2011 and the concurrent bomb blast in Oslo, few people outside Scandinavia had heard of Jens Stoltenberg. The Norwegian Prime Minister's tearful address to the nation following the massacre and his inspiring exhaltation to his people to respond with 'more openness' and 'more democracy' put his chiselled profile and charismatic demeanour firmly in the public eye and solidified his country's international reputation as a place that, while disgustingly successful, is definitely too nice to inspire hatred. It certainly helps when you have a leader like Stoltenberg, a former left-wing radical turned pragmatic socialist father figure with dreamy eyes and Nordic Hugh Jackman looks. It's hard to hate a country with a leader this handsome!

4) Helle Thorning-Schmidt

In the same year that Jens Stoltenberg rose to public prominence with his plea to his fellow countrymen not to abandon their social democratic principles, another left-leaning Scandinavian hottie made waves of her own. Elected in October 2011, Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt got straight to work reversing the conservative course set by her neoliberal predecessor Anders Fogh Rasmussen, relaxing restrictions on immigrants and asylum seekers and increasing welfare funding while pledging to increase Denmark's level of renewable energy to 45 percent of the nation's total by 2025. The former Danish representative to the European Parliament has also positioned herself as a staunch supporter of European integration and stronger economic ties with now-autonomous Greenland. One could do far worse than this feisty blonde Marcia Cross lookalike at the helm.

5) Enrique Peña Nieto

While the jury is still out on Mexico's newly elected president, it can at least be said that Enrique Peña Nieto has the option of becoming a telenovela star should his political career bite the dust. Inaugurated in 2012, the boyishly handsome leader of the centre-left PRI played an instrumental role in reviving the fortunes of Mexico's longstanding 'government party' and ridding it of its reputation as being corrupt, authoritarian and out of touch. Peña Nieto has made big promises to the Mexican people, which include government-sponsored life insurance for single mothers, a universal pension program for seniors over 70 and the creation of a national paramilitary police force aimed at combatting the country's vicious drug cartels. How well he does at fulfilling any of these promises remains to be seen, but at the very least he'll look guapo trying. 

6) Julia Gillard

There's something about those Aussie chicks - an intoxicating combination of convict-blooded sunburnt sex appeal and zero bullshit tolerance forged over centuries of putting up with their insufferably macho male counterparts. And after two years of a 'Sheila' in power in Canberra, Julia Gillard's fellow Aussie womenfolk have had much to celebrate. After usurping former ally Kevin Rudd in a palace coup, she has since galvanized her reputation as a man-slayer by publicly upbraiding her opponents for sexism and injecting a heavy dose of feminismo into Australia's frat-boy parliamentary culture. Her record has been uneven, receiving criticism from LGBT groups criticizing her for her unresponsiveness on same-sex marriage while being applauded by environmentalists for her Green Energy Bill. Love her or hate her, the flaming redhead with the acid tongue has certainly kept life interesting Down Under.

7) Goodluck Jonathan

When Goodluck Jonathan was sworn in as President of Nigeria following the death of his predecessor Umaru Yar'Adua in early 2010, his given name sounded more foreboding than fortuitous. He was after all taking the helm of one of the world's most chaotic countries - an oil-rich but strife-torn poster child for the term 'resource curse'. Three years later he's still there, having won a contentious but internationally recognized election in 2011, and with the national economy growing at a steady clip he looks like he might be around a while. What does it take to be the successful leader of a hard-boiled West African petrostate with difficult ethno-religious relations and endemic corruption? This mild-mannered former marine biologist does it with a winsome smile, a seductive Niger Delta accent and a wardrobe reminiscent of Miles Davis circa 1979. In this land of '419' scammers and Afrobeat bad boys, being able to rock the fedora is definitely a plus!

8) Andry Rajoelina 

In 2009, a confusing sequence of events in Madagascar saw Andry Rajoelina, a babyfaced former DJ, event organizer, mayor of the capital city of Antananarivo and Ralph Macchio impersonator, oust the unpopular conservative president Marc Ravalomanana with a crane kick to the head in a coup d'état, thus becoming the world's youngest president the age of 34. At the outset few in the international community took him seriously, and his early move to ratify the country's constitution so as to lower the minimum age for presidential candidates from 40 to 35 did little to inspire international confidence. Nevertheless, the teen heartthrob president enjoys widespread support, particularly among the urban poor in the capital city who helped vault him to power, and the past few years have seen the international community warm up to him. Still, one can only assume he still gets asked for ID at NYC nightspots when he visits the UN.

9) Laura Chinchilla

With its stunning beaches, lush rainforests, pacifistic tree-hugging people and sensuous lilting dialect, Costa Rica was already one of the world's sexiest countries when it elected the glamourous Laura Chinchilla as its first female president in 2010. Blessed with a style that's half Condi Rice, half Eva Longoria, the socially conservative but fiercely environmentalist Chinchilla has had a rough ride since becoming president, facing a crisis on the Nicaraguan border and drafting an unpopular fiscal reform plan that aims to reduce the country's $997 million deficit while faced with growing economic disparity and rising crime. Environmentalists love her for her government's moratorium on oil exploration and emphasis on ecotourism while social progressives and many women hate her staunch opposition to abortion and the Morning After Pill. But all agree she looks great as head of state.

10) Barack Obama

Sigh. America's current commander-in-chief has received brickbats from conservatives on a multitude of fronts since assuming the presidency in 2008, but nobody has ever faulted him for lack of sex appeal. He's even managed (as far as is known) to be a poster boy for marital fidelity, something which the sexy presidents of yesteryear have had some difficulty with. It's little wonder that a commanding 55 percent of American women voted for Obama in the 2012 election, with unmarried women backing the president by a remarkable 38 percentage-point margin over Mitt Romney. Granted, the fact that the GOP's leading Neanderthals could barely last a week without making some boneheaded remark about rape and women's anatomy was an important factor in this outcome. But the contest between the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz and the sinewy, hoop-shootin', honey-and-Bourbon-voiced hunk with the beautiful family was, in the end, no contest. Sexy won. Hands down.

Россия, мы вас любим! 10 Reasons Why Russia Deserves More Love

Brush Talk is now a full five months' old, and as such has been around just long enough to have developed certain viewer trends. This month has been by far the busiest to date, traffic-wise, owing in no small part to a certain ranty post about a certain viral video campaign. Suffice it to say I'll be scouring the intertubes for the next viral video phenomenon lest my readership drop off the face of the earth in the coming months.

Over the first five months of Brush Talk's existence, one of my biggest mysteries has been this blog's apparent small but consistent following in Russia. Canada of course commands the lion's share of this blog's readership, followed by the United States, but Russia has consistently ranked at number three, significantly outranking both the UK, where I have family and friends, and Japan, a country where I lived for six years, have many friends and continue to accord outsized attention on in this blog.

Why this is the case is a mystery to me. I've never been to Russia in my life. I'm not aware of my having any friends or contacts there, although I do have a few expatriate Russian friends in this country. And I've barely written about Russia on this blog, and the few times I have haven't exactly been flattering. I wrote about the Russian government's official web portal in my December post on The Best and Worst of Government Web Design basically to say that I thought it sucked, and then two months later wrote about the Nord-Ost Hostage Crisis within the context of botched crisis communications.

And yet, people in Russia continue to follow my blog. I have no idea why. Perhaps because I've pissed them off (although my Russian following emerged well before the web portal and Ost-Nord posts). Perhaps it's a small group of Russians with a bizarre obsession with Canadian PR students and their travails, much like David Hasselhoff's German followers, only weirder. It has even occurred to me that brushtalk might be an obscene word in Russian, although I've found no indication that this is the case. (I did look it up.)

In Soviet Russia, the space hotel books you!

But whatever the reason, I am touched that I have a following in the land of cosmonauts and vodka shots. After all, these are a people who are tough to impress. As such, I would like to take this opportunity to make clear to any Russians reading this post that while I may have been critical of certain aspects of Russian government communications in the past (which frankly pales in comparison to the things I write on Facebook about our current prime minister here in Canada), I have nothing but total respect and admiration for your country's contributions to our global civilization and culture. When it comes to civilizations that leave me awe-struck, the land of Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky and t.A.T.u. is way up there. I sincerely hope to visit someday, but for now I'll have to content myself with my top ten list of things I love about Russia.

10) The world's sexiest-sounding language

There's a reason why Russians have always made such great movie bad guys and femme fatales. The Russian language - and the Russian accent - just sounds so freakin' bad-ass, the perfect combination of sexy and sinister. Byutiful, dahlink!

9) Baltika Beer

Only sold in one place in Edmonton, to my knowledge - the Liquor Depot on Jasper Avenue. Trust me, it's worth the trip.

8) Dmitri Shostakovich

He suffered for his art like few ever have, penning exploratory music through the horrors of Stalin's purges and the 'Great Patriotic War' with the fear that he could be whisked away to the Gulags at any time for falling foul of the government. His Fifth Symphony, which premiered in 1937, literally saved his ass, and still stands the test of time as a phenomenal work.

7) Excellence in science and academia - against all odds

27 Nobel laureates is nothing to sneeze at, especially for a country whose modern history is one best characterized by catastrophic warfare, tyranny and economic turmoil.

6) Russian Tea

Vodka may be the beverage most closely associated with Russia, but nobody does tea better than the Russians. Steeped in silver samovars, flavoured with lemon and sweetened with jam, Russian tea culture puts the Brits to shame and gives the Japanese a run for their money.

 

5) Environmental activism - against all odds

Source: Radio Free Europe

The Russian government may not be winning any awards these days for promoting a 'green' agenda, but Russia's grassroots enviro-crusaders, whose causes range from the Siberian tiger to Lake Baikal, are some of the toughest activists you'll find anywhere. The campaign to save the historic Khimki Forest outside Moscow has seen ugly repression in recent years, but tree-loving Muscovites are not backing down.

4) Anton Chekhov

Anyone who believes that the Russians have no sense of humour has evidently never seen The Festivities, Uncle Vanya or, for that matter, George F. Walker's brilliant bastardized riff on The Three Sisters in his early piece of dramaturgical terrorism Beyond Mozambique. A lifelong medical doctor with a penchant for extreme travel and black humour, Chekhov was part Monty Python, part Ernest Hemingway, all classic Russian badass.

3) The only real space program

In spite of the minor inconvenience that their main launch facility is situated in the now independent republic of Kazakhstan, the Russians remain the masters of outer space, or more specifically the masters of putting human beings into outer space. While some have criticized the Russian government for devoting up to 50 percent of the country's space budget to manned space travel, it goes without saying that if the shit really hits the fan on this planet, it's the Russians that will be in charge of transportation to the nearest habitable planet. And in the meantime, the Russians have big plans for space tourism - for those with a hell of a lot of money to burn.

2) Architecture and Design

From St. Basil's Cathedral to the opulent underground passageways of the Moscow Metro to the capital's ultramodern International Business Centre, no country does design to quite the extreme as the Russians do. "We're going to hell in a handbasket but we're looking good doing it" might well be the official design slogan of a country where even the most decrepit Siberian outposts have a certain vintage Star Trek-type charm. And then there's all the cool Soviet-era typefaces. Gotta love it!

 

1) Resilience, come hell and high water (or some combination thereof)

Far be it for me to trivialize the horrendous ordeals that the Russian people have been forced to endure over the past century-plus. Nevertheless, the fact that theatre troupes remained active amid the wholesale economic collapse of the early 1990s and that composers, choreographers and poets continued to work amid the terrifying climate of Stalin's purges says something about this place. One can only hope that this country's great creative spirit doesn't have to suffer the same tortures in the 21st century that it did in the 20th. And yes, I realize this is an intrinsically paradoxical statement, but in the words of V.I. Lenin, deal with it, comrades!

The Best and Worst of Government Web Design

What government websites tell you about the places they represent

I've long been fascinated by the way in which countries and other jurisdictions market themselves to the outside world, and how certain governments seem to put more effort in putting their best foot out first to the world. As a graduate student at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies a number of years back I took part in several international culture festivals in which I helped man the 'Canada booth', which gave me a glimpse into how certain governments (through their embassies) put forth more of an effort than others in helping their student ambassadors put on a good show.

In one instance, I was seated next to a Kenyan colleague who had been given what seemed to be half a museum full of beautiful posters and artwork, wood crafts, musical instruments, Maasai beadwork and other assorted treasures. (It also helped that he brought homemade Mombasa-style beef samosas, which were amazing!) By contrast, our embassy gave us a pathetic box full of maple leaf pins and cheesy posters of Banff National Park and whatnot. Even a box of Timbits and a Bryan Adams album would have been better. Totally disheartening!

When I asked my Kenyan friend about the glut of schwag he had received from his embassy, he explained that the staff at the Kenyan embassy in Tokyo was largely new following the end of Joseph arap Moi's long authoritarian rule in Kenya and that the new staff were a fired up, ambitious bunch who were keen to make a good impression. And when I asked him what he thought of my embassy's contribution to our pathetic little booth, his response was something like "Canada already has a great reputation in the world. I guess they feel they don't have to try."

This exchange stuck with me long after my time as an overseas scholar and into my current studies of public relations at Grant MacEwan University. Recently, though, I've become very much interested in another aspect of countries' PR armamentarium, namely their websites. Government websites essentially serve two basic purposes - to help deliver information to their own citizens both within the country and abroad and to serve as cyber-embassies to the world. Like embassy collateral marketing, a great national web presences makes a great impression. A crappy one does the opposite.


O hai. I can has usability.

How does Canada measure up in terms of web design? In typical form, it's a pretty middle-of-the-road affair. Usability-wise, the Government of Canada's official website is pretty intuitive and user-friendly. However, there's certainly no sex appeal to it. (See my November 3 post entitled 'Gross National Sexy', which addresses this issue.) There's no real flavour or style to it, anything you could really call distinctively 'Canadian'. As for the Government of Alberta's official web portal, the site works fine but its incessant adulation of the oil sands starts to get pretty tiresome.

So who are the winners and losers in the global contest for usability and cyber-élan supremacy? From what I've seen, the worst offenders in the web butchery department generally fall into two categories: the very poorest places on earth and the very richest. When it comes to the most disadvantaged and dysfunctional places on earth, it's hard to be critical - after all states that can't feed their people can't rightfully be expected to invest in expensive web design. But there are some for whom there is absolutely no excuse for bad design, and the only reasonable explanation is an pervading sense that they don't need it.

On the flipside, the best government websites seem to come from middle-income countries eager to bolster their reputations (much like Kenya) or countries otherwise sensitive to their international image.

Here are five of the very worst:

1. Zimbabwe

Simply awful, and not helped by the fact that the landing page features a particularly Hitlerian headshot of President Robert Mugabe. Retina-scarring flickering, nausea-inducing colours and a mid-1990s-style banner that moves so fast you can barely read it. The news section appears to be little more than the president's to-do list, including ominous references to 'land reform'. At least there's a 'Feedback Form' which seems to work, although who knows who is in charge of receiving said feedback. Possibly Mugabe himself.

2. Afghanistan

The Taliban may have been removed for power for almost a decade now, but you wouldn't know it from Afghanistan's government website. The harrassed photo of President Karzai with a faceless man in military fatigues standing behind him is not exactly inspiring. The site appears to not have been updated since 2004 with the exception of the 'Afghanistan News' portal, which has the appearance of an entirely different website. (It isn't.) Lastly, what is particularly eyebrow-raising about this site appears to be only available in English. No Dari, Pashtun or Tajik. Remind me again whose government this is. 

3. Tonga

You would think a languid island paradise like Tonga would be able to come up with something better than this nightmare of clashing fonts and colours, cataract-inducing banner displays and dizzying array of indecipherable menus. Definitely the work of a committee, possibly involving the entire population of Tonga. There is some decent photography and design bits here, but the ensemble is so chaotic and so jarring that you can barely tell. With different fonts and an overhauled colour scheme this might actually be a decent website - it's hard to tell - but the designers' total fixation on the national red-and-white colour scheme coupled with the clashing features makes it a total eyesore.

4. Russia

Not the worst offender of all, but a country with this much wealth and clout ought to do better. A bland, dull affair that looks like a relic of the Soviet era (with a particularly nefarious looking Vladimir Putin peering over the banner with a Montgomery Burns-type expression on his face), this site looks like the website equivalent of a regional Russian airline. And yes, it crashes with the same regularity. Add to this the fact that the landing page is basically Putin's filofax and you have a less than inspiring online presence for the government of the Russian Federation.

5. New Zealand

Really??? Is this the best the terrestrial stand-in for Middle Earth can do? Not an image in sight on the landing page. Nothing whatsoever to rest your eyes on. Just rows and rows of text and links. Extremely disappointing. Mind you, their official tourism website (http://www.newzealand.com/) is much better, but there's no excuse for a web portal this unattractive from a well-to-do beauty queen of a country like this.

And five of the best:

1. Brazil

Ahhhh.....Brasil! The country's official government website is truly a work of arts, a website whose underlying message is "We're still the sexy country we've always been but now we're also getting our sh*t together - developing the economy, reducing poverty and protecting the environment!" Beautiful colours, embedded videos, photo albums and a rotational banner trumpetting the best of the country's scientists, artists, athletes and other beautiful people. A cyber-stroll down Copacabana Beach.

2. Taiwan

It's hardly surprising that a high-tech nation with a perpetual sense of national identity crisis like this one would want to put its best cyber-foot out first. And they succeed with flying colours. With the visual richness of a National Geographic feature and immaculate design, the site makes the island quasi-nation look like the most alluring place on earth. Note the inclusion of images of Aboriginal Taiwanese on the landing page - a feature very much in keeping with recent Taiwanese government attempts to address this community's longstanding marginalization.

3. Costa Rica

Another Latin American standout, this 'presidential' portal of the government of Costa Rica is a delightfully interactive social media-oriented site that seamlessly blends serious policy papers with Flickr components and embedded videos of Costa Rican school children and town hall meetings discussing rainforest preservation and ecotourism. The only detraction to this site is that it appears to only be available in Spanish, but the design is so intuitive that it is navigable even with the most basic udnerstanding of the language. Current President Laura Chinchilla is said to be a social media maven - and it shows.

4. Poland

While much of the former Eastern Bloc remains mired in drab Soviet-style design, Poland's official web portal is an absolute masterpiece. The Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs website, entitled 'Do You Know Polska?' (http://www.doyouknowpolska.com/), was voted Website of the Year in the 2011 Webstar Festival, and indeed the rest of the government's web network is similarly inspired. From tributes to Polish films to slideshows on traditional glass baubles, every page is a visual feast, and the fact that it's available in nine languages (including Arabic and Mandarin) is quite impressive.

5. Botswana

Zimbabwe and Botswana may be geographic neighbours, but when it comes to web design the two countries couldn't be further apart. While not at all flashy, the Government of Botswana's official web portal is aesthetically pleasing, immaculately organized and easy to navigate. There's no social media optimization here, but when it comes to what a website is above all supposed to do - deliver information as directly and clearly as possible - this site could scarcely be better. And the country's official tourism site (http://www.botswanatourism.co.bw/) is beautiful!

Fresh Off The CCCJ Press!

The Canadian is the quarterly magazine produced by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Japan. Their fall issue featured an article of mine on Canada's growing Aboriginal business sector - and its recent move towards bona-fide 'nation-to-nation' trade with China, Japan and other East Asian countries.

Trade Winds Across the Pacific

Canada’s Aboriginal business sector is growing in strength and ambition – and East Asia is increasingly paying attention.

It is tempting to wonder what western Canada would look like today if the Chinese had stayed put. Chinese historical records indicate that a monk named Hwui Shan sailed northward around the Bering Strait and along the northwestern coast of North America a full millennium before Columbus’ voyage, and modern scholars have presented further evidence of pre-Columbian Chinese exploration of the continent. Needless to say no lasting relationship between China and indigenous North Americans came of this contact, but with Asia once again at the forefront of international trade, this relationship that never was looks to gain a second shot at life.

This summer saw a major breakthrough in Asian-Aboriginal relations with the launch of the First Nations-China: Transforming Relationships strategy, which in November will send a trade mission of some 100 First Nation, Métis and Inuit business leaders from across Canada on a four-city tour of China. The announcement received extensive coverage in Canada’s daily newspapers, as it not only underscored China’s new-found status as an apex export market for Canadian natural resources, but more importantly signalled the arrival of Aboriginal Canada on the world stage as an economic powerhouse in its own right.

While China’s rise has received outsized media attention over the past decade, the other story, that of the economic ascendency of Aboriginal Canada, remains as little known to most Canadians as it does to the outside world. The clichéd view of Canada’s original inhabitants as a tiny, beleaguered minority clinging to the fringes of confederation remains stubbornly prevalent, but holds little water nowadays. Canada’s Aboriginal population currently stands at around 1.2 million, surpassing all but three of Canada’s metropolitan centres, and is growing at a rate 1.5 times that of the rest of the population. Aboriginal people also claim sovereignty over a vast patchwork of reserves and traditional territories that account for over half of Canada’s total land mass, and much of the country’s resource wealth.

And while the social and economic ills that have plagued Aboriginal communities for generations remain enormous challenges, hard-won legal and political battles by native bands in the 1980s and 1990s presaged a new generation of Aboriginal entrepreneurs with unrivalled access to Canada’s resource wealth. The effect has been truly transformative. A recent study by Toronto Dominion Bank estimated the total revenue of First Nations households at $24 billion in 2011 (up from $12 billion in 2001), and is expected to rise to $32 billion by 2016.

Just as the Aboriginal economic footprint has been growing slowly over the past two decade, so too have Aboriginal Canada’s international economic engagements. Japan-Canada Oil Sands (JACOS) Ltd. has been active in northern Alberta since the late 1970s and over the past decade has cultivated strong ties with First Nations and Métis Settlements in the Fort McMurray region, with counterparts from China and South Korea following suit. British Columbia’s coastal First Nations have also been at the forefront of cultivating economic ties with Asia (and China in particular) in fisheries, forestry and mining, with the Vancouver-based Native Investment & Trade Association (NITA) taking a leading role in promoting Aboriginal-Asian economic relations in the early 2000s.

Author, entrepreneur and NITA President Calvin Helin asserts that current constitutional law makes it advantageous for companies to work directly with Aboriginal people. “Companies know they have to consult with First Nations,” explains Helin, the son of a hereditary Tsimshian chief from BC’s northwestern coast. “This burden is on industry and it can slow down projects. Companies are now realizing that they can get around this by working directly with First Nations.”

While the legal environment has without doubt played a central role in fostering international business conducted by First Nations, it is Aboriginal peoples’ inseparability from and commitment to their land bases that has made them key stakeholders in the Canadian economy. “The resources the world needs are found on First Nations’ traditional lands,” says Mel Benson, former director of the Fort McKay Group of Companies and current Suncor board member from central Alberta’s Beaver Lake Cree Nation. “We’ve got the raw product and we’re also part of its history. (Asian companies) are matching that with business experience and capital, and when that works, the opportunities are limitless. What we’re looking for as First Nations is economic certainty, same as industry and government.”

Helin echoes this view, adding that First Nations’ dual vested interest in economic development and preservation of their land make them uniquely suited for the role of stewards of the country’s resource economy. “We’ve been here for 10,000 years, and we’re not going anywhere. We want development, but at the same time we’re not going to destroy our own backyard. In the future, Aboriginal people are going to play a huge role in footing the cost of running Canada.”

While mutual economic need has been the primary driving force behind the convergence of East Asia and Canada’s First Nations, factors beyond simple economics hold the promise of long-lasting relationships across the Pacific. Although Aboriginal culture remain a largely unknown quotient in much of East Asia, tourism is doing much to change this, and interest in Aboriginal culture in Japan, China and elsewhere is on the increase. And in a similar fashion, Aboriginal entrepreneurs involved in Asia-Pacific business have become increasingly cognizant of the resemblances between Asian and Aboriginal Canadian culture.

“In our culture, the emphasis has always been on relationship-building rather than simply on money and details, same as in Asia,” says Helin, a well-known Japanophile and a Shudokan karate expert, who sees commonalities everywhere, from respect for elders to gifting protocols to non-verbal communication. “My coastal people are particularly ‘Asian’ with our emphasis on formalities, rank and status, but you see many commonalities across all Aboriginal societies.”

After over a century of struggle against cultural suppression and economic marginalization within confederation, Canada’s Aboriginal people find themselves in the odd position of building relationships with the emerging power bloc of the 21st century. However, this legacy of marginalization, coupled with growing concerns about environmental degradation – particularly in traditional territories adjacent to the oil sands – has imparted Aboriginal business leaders with a deep sense of caution. Many Aboriginal leaders remains adamantly opposed to industrial development on their lands, and those who do support it advocate a cautious approach.

“The problem moving ahead is making sure these are truly joint ventures,” asserts Mel Benson. “This kind of business is new to us, and if we’re not careful we’re going to get sidelined. But there are a lot of small partnerships on the ground now, with China, Korea and Japan, and as long as there’s capacity building and direct cash flow, I think it’s going to work.”

While reticence on the part of Aboriginal leaders is understandable, this new wave of trade missions and partnership does indeed hint at a new chapter in Aboriginal Canadian history, one characterized by mutually beneficial relationships in keeping with the original spirit of the Treaties and genuine ‘nation-to-nation’ exchange.