New Western scholarships will help stimulate policy dialogue in Canada

Scholarships to honour the Commander of the Royal Canadian Navy

As Remembrance Day approaches, and given all that is going on in the world at the moment, it seemed like the right time to tell you all about two scholarships that I recently launched at The University of Western Ontario.

When I was appointed over a decade ago as the Honorary Captain of the Royal Canadian Navy, the mission was straightforward, and didn’t require me to take on 25 foot waves in the North Atlantic. As someone working in the venture space, my day job has been to provide growth capital to companies in the Innovation Economy, both at my own firm and at CIBC, following the bank’s acquisition of Wellington Financial in 2018. 

Over the past two-plus decades, my team and I have helped create and preserve thousands of jobs across Canada, the United States and overseas.  I also spent eight years as Chairman of the Toronto Port Authority, operator of the very popular Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, which led to my appointment in 2014 by Stephen Harper to be the inaugural Chairman of the Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority – tasked with launching the construction of the most important trade link between Canada and our largest trading partner. 

These diverse roles have given me a bird’s eye view into how entrepreneurs create jobs, how our economy works, and how public agencies can have a tangible, positive impact on the lives of the citizens and stakeholders they serve.

My mandate as an Honorary Captain is, in part, to help connect the RCN with the business community, providing the Navy with a forum to engage with community-minded Canadians such as yourself.  If we lived in Victoria or Halifax, we would see our RCN ships transiting to-and-from their worldwide deployments every time we drove by the harbour.  It would be highly likely that our neighbours, perhaps even a parent, sibling, or child would be proudly serving our nation in a white uniform. 

For those of us in Central Canada, we’re not living that life, with sea air in our lungs. Most non-coastal areas of urban Canada just don’t have that type of regular, personal exposure to the RCN.  By establishing two scholarships in land-locked London, Ontario, my hope is to help fund research that will connect the dots for Canadians between your family, the Navy’s mission, and its important impact on the Canadian economy, Arctic sovereignty, the free movement of our exports on the high seas, disaster relief, capacity building in Africa, even our local schools.

The RCN has proven for more than 100 years that Canada has an important role to play on the oceans of our planet. That role has evolved since the Battle of the Atlantic during the Second World War, when Canada had 373 fighting ships and more than 90,000 men serving in uniform.  

And yet, in some ways, nothing has changed for your typical Master Sailor.  It wasn’t that long ago that HMCS Edmonton returned from the Eastern Pacific Ocean on a counter-terrorism mission. Over the course of a few months, EDMONTON worked with the U.S. Coast Guard and DEA seizing drugs off of Central America, where the financial proceeds invariably go to narco-terrorist organizations.  In one bust, her crew seized 755 kilograms of cocaine, with an estimated street value of $49.5 million.

Money that isn’t going to finance terrorism.  And that cocaine didn’t reach the shores of North America. And whether we like it or not, there are people out there who would very much like to reap the financial reward when that cocaine gets into our local schools. For everyone with a child or grandchild in a local high school, College or University, there is a direct link between you and the Royal Canadian Navy’s drug interdictions in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific. 

All thanks to our sailors and airmen and women, and the Mulroney government of 35 years ago that committed the funds to build the ships that are now available for these necessary missions. But our Nation’s interest isn’t served solely by these distant deployments.

The prospects of a commercially viable sea passage across the top of the Arctic basin — connecting the rich economies of northern Europe and Asia — may be here very soon. The prospect of greatly increased economic activity will bring with it increased risks of marine incident and environmental accident from shipping, while affording to others the opportunity to mask their criminal activity at sea or ashore.

There are ample reasons for the Canadian Forces to hasten the delivery of sea, land and air capabilities that will permit us to operate in the Arctic persistently, effectively and safely. I need not add other global tensions around Taiwan, Ukraine, or the Middle East, for example, to remind us all how important it is that Canadian governments of every stripe have the luxury to deploy — should the need arise — mission-ready naval ships in times of crisis.

Just think how unsafe the world would be today if NATO powers didn’t have the capability to forward-deploy a variety of ships, simultaneously, when our allies need us.

While my proximity to the RCN gives me the luxury of regular insight into all the good things that our Sailors are doing on behalf of Canadians, these two scholarships are designed to financially assist Grad students as they tackle important policy questions — the types of questions that our Parliamentarians and public officials need to think about in a very dynamic international security climate. The idea for this initiative came from my HCapt. colleague Nik Nanos, who launched something similar a few years ago at Carleton University. As for the name, I have come to deeply admire several of the RCN’s Commanders over the years, including VAdm Angus Topshee, the current incumbent — and this was a small way to honour, in perpetuity, the service that they and their families have provided to our nation.

The first scholarship is the Commander of the Royal Canadian Navy Ontario Graduate Scholarship. It is awarded to full-time graduate students at the Masters or Doctoral level based on academic achievement and research merit. Preference will be given to candidates conducting research in the areas of Policy and Evaluation, Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Ethics in either Political Science, Law, Journalism and Communication, and History graduate programs. The OGS program is currently matched 2:1 by the Ontario government, which increases the value of the annual scholarship to $15,000 over a 5 year period. The first recipient was a Western Poli Sci Ph.D. candidate.

The second scholarship is the Commander of the Royal Canadian Navy Graduate Student Award. This smaller, more traditional scholarship is also given to full-time graduate student at the Masters or Doctoral level. I’m still raising money for this Award, but the first recipient for the 2022/23 school year was a Law Ph.D. student by the name of Loyce Mrewa.

The RCN’s motto is Ready Aye Ready, which I think should resonate with every Canadian entrepreneur; you just never know what tomorrow morning will bring.

MRM

(this post, like all of my blogs, is an Opinion Piece, reflecting a personal view that is not reviewed by anyone involved with the RCN prior to publication)