Canadian Population Society Annual General Meeting Minutes
Friday June 2, 2006, York University
PRESENT: Rajulton Fernando, Gustave Goldmann, Laurie Goldmann, Edward Ng, Teresa Abada, Yimin (Gloria) Lou, Zheng Wu, Ravi Verma, Edward Shin, Eddie Ebanks, Rod Beaujot, T.R. Balakrishnan, Barry Edmonston, Zongli Tang, Margot Almond, Russell Wilkins, Margaret Michalowski, Martin Cooke, Amir Erfani, Zenaida Ravanera, Daniele Belanger, Mary Jane Norris, Alan Simmons, Don Kerr, Weiguo Zhang, Huilgol Pralhad
AGENDA
1. Adoption of the Agenda - Carried
2. Visitors from CFHSS – Diane Belanger gave a brief presentation on the achievements of the Federation during the year. This year was a record breaking attendance of nearly 8100 delegates. One of the goals of CFHSS is to target graduate students and through the help of department heads to encourage them to join the various associations. CFHSS is also planning on the idea of affiliate memberships for various organizations that share common interests, as a way of increasing memberships, e.g. The Association of Canadian Deans in Education.
It was announced that the CPS Meetings during the 2007 Congress will be on May 31st, June 1st and June 2nd at the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, which is hosting the Congress in conjunction with their Centennial celebration. Future meetings will take place at the University of British Columbia (2008), Carleton (2009) and starting again from Atlantic Canada in 2010.
On the area of Advocacy: SSHRC is still seeking the nomination of President. There are currently two Vice Presidents, recently created which in turn should encourage more lobbying. The current Federal Budget allocated to SSHRC is around $6M.
Jean-Claude Guedon talked about the Open Access for Journals. He lauded the “brave” step taken by CPS to go for Open Access; this should serve as an example and model for other associations that are still hesitating to take the bold step. CFHSS will continue working with the agenda calling for developing tools, networks and software to increase access to research done by members of various associations.
3. Approval of the Minutes of June 3, 2005 (London)
- Moved by Eddie Ebanks, seconded by Rod Beaujot and Ravi Verma. Carried
4. Report of the President (Rajulton Fernando)
a) It was recommended by the Council last year that we look into the possibility of pursuing electronic ballot for next year’s election, which might increase the participation of members in exercising their voting rights. Such a step required an amendment to the Constitution Article 8.2. We conducted a mail ballot on this amendment in February-March. Most of those who replied were in agreement for the amendment, with the exception of 4 people who requested for paper ballots.
Accordingly, the CPS election was held electronically. The list of elected officers and councilors for the year 2006-2008 are as follows:
- President: Gustave Goldmann
- Vice-President: Zheng Wu
- Secretary-Treasurer: Edward Ng
- Council Members: Daniele Belanger, Martin Cooke, Kevin McQuillan,
Barbara Mitchell, Zenaida Ravanera, John Zhao, and Melissa Moyer (student rep).
Rajulton expressed his congratulations to the newly elected officers Applause
It was also noted that the participation through electronic ballots was not that much different from the paper ballots. A question was asked how many actually voted. A total of 57 members voted for this year’s election.
b) This was a hectic year for everyone, especially the vice president, secretary treasurer, and the various committees who accomplished so much in such a short time. Thanks to all of them who contributed their time and energy in making our associations vibrant.
c) This year our Society is pleased to honor Doug Norris with an award for his contributions to the field of demography. Rajulton noted that the initial suggestion came from outside CPS, asking whether our association was going to honor Doug Norris on his retirement from Statistics Canada. I brought this to the attention of the Council, and the Council has absolutely no hesitation in approving the suggestion to honor a colleague of ours who has done so much, not only to our association but also to the entire demographic and scientific community.
d) We shall make awarding a CPS colleague for his/her outstanding contributions to Canadian Demography a tradition in our future meetings, not necessarily every year. First of all we need to agree on a few criteria for evaluating a member’s contributions and a committee can work on this. Therefore, Rajulton put a motion to the Assembly that an Awards Committee be appointed whose mandate will be to work out the details and criteria for nominating a member for CPS Award. Seconded by Daniele Belanger, Motion passed.
e) On matters related to On-Line Access, there has been much progress and in fact the CPS webpage is performing very well. Not all members are aware of the messages sent through YahooGroups. Everyone is encouraged to subscribe to the Yahoo Groups because all non-official communications are sent through the Yahoo Groups. It was assured that the CPS mailing list is completely private and is not available for distribution.
f) The on-line membership has also improved during the last year and it has helped boost our membership. We have also made some changes on the on-line web page so that when members log in to renew their membership, all previously stored information will be made available, there is therefore no need to reenter the same information year after year.
g) In Memoriam: A message was passed to the Yahoo Groups relating to the passing away of Jean Dumas. Anatole Romaniuc was asked to do a write-up on his professional and personal life. Rajulton also wrote a letter to Jean’s wife, Cecile, and family to express condolence on behalf of CPS. Cecile replied saying “Thank you on behalf of my loved ones who greatly appreciated reading this “homage”.
h) Rajulton acknowledged all those who worked closely with him, including Gustave Goldmann who has done a tremendous job in spite of other overwhelming commitments, Teresa Abada who took over the position of Secretary-Treasurer, and to the Chairs of all the committees.
5. Report of the Secretary-Treasurer (Teresa Abada)
During the year 2005, our revenue was $13,039, but our expenditures were $23,350, which exceeded our revenues by $10,311. Some of the major expenditures included:
- expenses during the annual meetings at Western, which on the whole amounted to $8089.31
- additional financial support provided to the Editor of the Canadian Studies in Population to make ends meet during the last year.
Our revenue was lower because of delay in getting the SSHRC travel grant and the FCD Journal subsidy for 2005 due to problems in creating the bank account by the new treasurer of FCD. This amount should be received during the year 2006. We also did not receive such a large grant from CIDA as in 2004.
Balakrishnan asked if there was a way to reduce the expenditures especially since the budget estimates for 2006 indicate a deficit.
Allan Simmons suggested the revision of the budget estimates as a condition for approval of the financial statement for 2005.
Margot Almond asked if there was a contingency plan in the event that the expenditures exceed the revenues by $4300.00. After some discussion, the following recommendation was made to the Secretary-Treasurer: “In advance of AGM, members will like to see the budget for the following year that includes the contingency fund as well.”
Rod Beaujot suggested that the secretarial and office expenses be paid every year rather than every two years as is the practice now since 2001.
6. Report of the Vice-President (Gustave Goldmann)
Gustave reported that we had a total of 56 paper submissions for various sessions. Of these, 46 were accepted, 3 were formally rejected, and 7 withdrew. There were a number of last minute drop-outs this year. This situation needs to be seriously addressed as it is not fair to those whose submissions were rejected because there was no room on the program and it creates much work for the organizers.
Of the 69 people who have registered so far, there were a total of 40 regular members, 14 were non members. There were also 15 students of which 4 were declared members, 2 were non-members and 9 did not declare whether they were members or non-members. Gustave suggested to the Assembly that we look into the possibility of differential registration fees for members and non-members.
We also had a poster session and reception this year, supported by the 2006 CIDA-CFHSS Collaborative Program (up to $3000). A keynote address by Guillermina Jasso of New York University (supported by a grant of $1000 from the CFHSS) and a presidential address along with CPS Awards have also been scheduled during regular sessions. It was recommended by the International Committee that the poster session be a regular part of the conference. Gustave has also tried his best to get a promise of support for around $4000 from various agencies.
The workshop for the Analytical Methods included 3 presenters: a) Analysing and exploiting pooled cross-section data – presented by Dwayne Benjamin, University of Toronto; b) The conceptual and methodological complexities of event history analysis – presented by Benoît Laplante, INRS Urbanisation, Culture et Société; and c) The application of chain graph models – presented by Rajulton Fernando, University of Western Ontario.
7. Report of the Committees
a) FCD (Russell Wilkins)
Russell announced the new executive for the FCD:
- President – Russell Wilkins
- Vice President – Laurent Martel
- Secretary – Monica Boyd
- Treasurer – Yves Pepin
The FCD directory is being updated all the time.
The FCD conference in Montreal in November 2005 was a success and it is expected that two issues from Cahier Québécois de démographie and the Canadian Studies in Population will be devoted to publishing the papers from that conference.
FCD will continue to promote the activities of both organizations. The "Colloque international de l'AIDELF" (Association internationale des démographes de langue française) will be held in Quebec City during the last week of August 2008, at the Musée de la Civilisation.Monday August 25, the daybefore the opening of the main conference, willbe a "Journée de la démographie canadienne", for presentations featuringdemographic research from the host country, organized by the Federation of Canadian Demographers (FCD). The presentations that day can be in either English or French.Tuesday through Friday are for the French-language presentations on a theme yet to be decided. On Saturday following the conference there will bea group excursion to either the Île d'Orléans or the Charlevoix region. Based on past experience, Laurent Martel (Vice-President of the FCD and organizer of the AIDELF conference in Quebec City) expects 150-200 participants. Québec City and the surrounding region is awonderful place to visit in late August. Why not "joindre l'utile à l'agréable" and combine participation in the Canadian Demography Day (or the entire conference) with a few days ofvacation in this historic region? In any case, mark these dates in your calendar. As the conference approaches, more information will be available on the AIDELF website (www.aidelf.org).
b) International Committee (Alan Simmons)
In September 2005, the Committee conducted a survey of all CPS members with respect to their current international interests, activities and plans. They received 57 responses and the following highlight the results of the survey:
There was a broad interest in comparative studies and research on other countries. The topics were quite varied including HIV/AIDS, fertility, family and life course transitions, ageing, and internal migration and urbanization. The responses included specific suggestions on activities that CPS might undertake to support and stimulate international and comparative studies in the future. The Committee used these findings to request the Vice-President, Gustave Goldmann, to arrange for a plenary session on Immigration and the Changing Characteristics of Cities (US and Canada). The outcome of this endeavor was the keynote address given by Guillermina Jasso.
The mandate of this committee ends in June 2006. The committee would be willing to continue the works already started, except for a few changes in the tasks assigned to various members.
c) Student Paper Competition (Don Kerr)
The winner of the 2006 student paper competition is Yimin (Gloria) Lou for her paper ‘What Happens to the Healthy Immigrant Effect: The Mental Health of Immigrants to Canada.’ Don featured the salient points of this paper and congratulated Yimin for a good job. The award will be given to Yimin during the session on CPS Awards next day.
d) Membership Committee (Teresa Abada)
Teresa Abada reported that for 2005, we had a total of 179 members - a slight increase from 161 members in 2004. This can be attributed to the establishment of the on-line registration system designed by Leverus Inc. It was also noted that as part of the membership drive, we wrote to numerous Centres of Excellence across Canada, inviting them to join our association. Thanks to Kelly Phythian who provided the list of all these centres.
e) CPS Newsletter (Martin Cooke)
Marty urged everyone to send him any current news and acknowledged Pascale Beaupre for her work on the newsletter.
f) CPS Web (Sue Shiel, presented by Rajulton Fernando)
It was reported that both the CPS and the Journal’s web sites got a lot of hits. In June, we started to use a free web-based web statistics program called StatCounter. The online membership registration was established in 2005. Last year, 39 members registered using the system and this year the number increased to 71.
g) Journal Committee (Rod Beaujot)
Rod reported that our main objective of transition to electronic publishing has exceeded expectations, thanks to Suzanne Shiel and Wayne McVey. Not only has Vol 32 been distributed on-line, but the bulk of articles since 2002 (Vol 29) are now available on-line. A note has been sent to IUSSP, AIDELF and PAA, asking to announce the “open access” availability of CSP on-line.
Rajulton represented smaller associations at the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences consultation on “open access.” We very much support this CFHSS/SSHRC initiative.
On matters related to “Open Access”, the CPS council agreed that the CPS members be consulted to decide how to serve those who wish to receive hard copies of the journal. A survey will be conducted later this fall regarding this issue. Towards this end, the following motion was presented to the Assembly: “Given the interest to have Canadian Studies in Population continue as an “open access” journal, that CPS Council be authorized to consult the membership and to decide how to serve CPS members who wish to receive hard copies of the Journal.” The motion was passed unanimously.
The next SSHRC application will be in 2007. The Journal Committee will help the Editor in making this application. There has been dissatisfaction with the SSHRC process in the previous review of journals for funding.
The Journal Committee invites all those who present their papers during the Meetings to send articles to Canadian Studies.
h) CFHSS (Margaret Michalowski)
The annual business meeting of the General Assembly of the CFHSS took place on November 26-27 in Ottawa. The highlights included matters related to Open Access, namely how to facilitate open access for research, advantages and disadvantages. It was noted that while most supported the open access there was no consensus on how to ensure that it means the access to quality work.
The location of the Congress for 2007 will be held in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and ideas were put forth on how to attract attendance. There will be a number of Spanish researchers next year, and given this international presence, the Congress hopes to attract a large number of delegates.
i) 2001 Census Edited Volume (Barry Edmonston)
Barry reported that McGill University Press has expressed strong interest in publishing the Census volume. The volume, expected to be published this year, is intended as a summary of what is known about Canada’s population, using the 2001 Census. There will be a total of 18 chapters. So far 12 have been completed, 4 expected to be completed soon, and 2 still in progress.
Other Business
Rajulton expressed thanks to everyone for all the work done. Applause.
Adjournment (6:30 PM)
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