Thursday, July 10, 2025

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• Keep calm, adapt, and carry on

• Doug Stinson receives Lifetime Achievement Award from CS-Can | Info-Can

• Gear up for the bike fair tomorrow and other notes

Keep calm, adapt, and carry on

By Sam Charles. This article was originally published on Waterloo News.

After emerging from the pandemic on a relatively strong footing, the Canadian economy is now dealing with considerable trade and investment uncertainty because of U.S. policies, including tariffs.

“Coming out of the pandemic, our economy was already facing a cost-of-living crisis, labour market struggling to adapt to demographic and immigration changes, business under-investment and slow-growing productivity, in addition to high inflation,” says Dr. Horatiu Rus, a professor of Economics who specializes in international trade, political economy and the environment. “Starting early this year, and due to policy changes in our largest economic partner, Canada’s challenging economic outlook has become substantially more challenging.”

Dr. Horatiu Rus.

Faced with this economic instability, Rus says individuals would be well-advised to take a precautionary stance when planning all spending, investments and savings, and should consider in the short to medium run potentially significant swings in prices, interest rates, the exchange rate and employment opportunities economy wide.

There are indications that all sides will renegotiate the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), the successor of North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which was already set to be reviewed in 2026. “Limiting the amount of tariffs faced by Canadian exporters to the U.S. is the focus of these negotiations, but more importantly, so is reducing the massive levels of uncertainty dragging down investment and thus economic growth.”

According to Rus, American protectionism is making it even more imperative for Canada to diversify its trade relations to reduce its reliance on the U.S. “On the policy side, the government is taking steps to find a negotiated solution, while, simultaneously promising to cushion the blow for exporters experiencing sharp declines in their main export market due to tariffs and working to diversify Canada’s international trade flows.”

“As a trade economist, I do not support a policy of broad tariffs,” Rus says. “The academic literature is clear on the effects of protectionism – tariffs increase prices for consumers, make intermediate goods more expensive for businesses, diminish the efficiency gains from specialization and production at scale, decrease product variety and ultimately reduce the economic potential of the economy over the long run.”

Canada and the U.S. have one of the largest economic partnerships in the world, and this latest economic squabble may have additional implications. Rus says the significant U.S. policy shift is building further divides between the two countries, including in the environmental realm. “Based on my research that investigates the interaction between trade and pollution, and trade and renewable resource exploitation, I believe there are many sustainability-related policy areas in Canada — many of them in fact under provincial jurisdiction — which will have to adapt to the new policy regime south of the border.”

The economic relationship between Canada and the U.S. has fluctuated throughout its history. More recently, the border thinned following NAFTA in the 1990s then thickened following September 11, 2001. “Like a marriage, the relationship between Canada and US will continue to weather its ups and downs, but the North American economy is highly integrated and geography dictates close trade ties going forward: it's hard to fight gravity.”

Doug Stinson receives Lifetime Achievement Award from CS-Can | Info-Can

This article was originally published on the Cheriton School of Computer Science website.

Professor Emeritus Douglas Robert Stinson has received the 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award from CS-Can | Info-Can, the national non-profit organization dedicated to representing computer science and the interests of the discipline across Canada. Since its inception in 2014, this prestigious award has been presented annually to distinguished academics in computer science departments, schools and faculties nationwide, celebrating their outstanding and sustained contributions to research, teaching and service.

“Congratulations to Doug on receiving this well-deserved recognition from CS-Can | Info-Can,” said Raouf Boutaba, University Professor and Director of the Cheriton School of Computer Science. “His seminal contributions to combinatorial cryptography have shaped the field, and his research continues to inspire and influence generations of scholars.”

As part of the award, Professor Stinson will receive a plaque and an invitation to the CS-Can | Info-Can Awards Dinner, scheduled for November 10, 2025, at York University.

Professor Emeritus Stinson: a distinguished career in combinatorial cryptography

Born in Guelph, Ontario, Professor Emeritus Stinson is a leading Canadian researcher and educator in combinatorics and cryptography, a career defined by pioneering research, exemplary teaching, and dedicated service to the academic community. He received his Bachelor of Mathematics from the University of Waterloo in 1978, followed by a Master of Science in Mathematics from Ohio State University in 1980, and a PhD in Combinatorics and Optimization from the University of Waterloo in 1981.

Professor Emeritus Stinson began his academic career in 1981 as an NSERC postdoctoral fellow at the University of Manitoba. He became an Assistant Professor in 1982, an Associate Professor in 1983, and Full Professor in 1986 at the same institution, where he was also an NSERC University Research Fellow. In 1990, he joined the University of Nebraska’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering as a Full Professor. He returned to Canada in 1998 to join Waterloo’s Department of Combinatorics and Optimization as the NSERC/Certicom Industrial Research Chair in Cryptography, a position he held until 2003. In 2002, he transferred to the School of Computer Science. He has held the title of Professor Emeritus at the Cheriton School of Computer Science since 2019.

Over his distinguished career, Professor Emeritus Stinson has been recognized with numerous awards and honours. Among them, he received the Hall Medal from the Institute of Combinatorics and its Applications in 1994. At Waterloo, he was awarded a Mathematics Faculty Fellowship from 2001–2004 and a University Research Chair from 2005–2011. In 2011, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in recognition of his contributions to cryptography and combinatorics. In 2013, he was appointed a University Professor, one of Waterloo’s highest academic honours. More recently, in 2022, he received the Stanton Medal from the Institute of Combinatorics and Its Applications for his lifetime contributions to advancing combinatorics. That same year, the Fields Institute in Toronto hosted Stinson66: New Advances in Designs, Codes and Cryptography, a weeklong conference celebrating his 66^th birthday and his contributions to designs, codes and cryptography.

Professor Emeritus Stinson’s research in combinatorial cryptography focuses on using mathematical structures to construct systems for secure communication. These systems cannot be broken, even with infinite computational resources, and therefore remain secure regardless of computational or algorithmic advances that take place, including the development of practical quantum computers. Professor Emeritus Stinson has made foundational contributions to this area, with many considered seminal. His work has also had industrial application, including the use of Reed–Solomon codes in Blu-ray disc technology.

Professor Emeritus Stinson has mentored 12 postdoctoral fellows, 17 PhD students, and 16 master’s students, many of whom have gone on to successful academic careers. With his students and colleagues, he has authored nearly 400 conference and journal papers along with several influential books. Notably, Cryptography: Theory and Practice, now in its fourth edition, is the most widely used and influential graduate-level cryptography textbook worldwide since its initial publication in 1995. As of June 2025, his publications have been cited collectively almost 30,000 times, with an h-index of 75, according to Google Scholar.

Gear up for the bike fair tomorrow and other notes

The Warrior Rec Cycling Club will be hosting a Bike Fair on Friday, July 11, from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. in the Dana Porter Arts Quad. "Bring in your bike for a free tune-up, win prizes and connect with campus and community partners for all your questions about biking," says a note from Athletics.

Organizing partners include Athletics & Recreation, Sustainable Transportation, the Bike Centre, King Street Cycles, Red Racoon Bike Rescue, Cycle WR, and many more.

The rain date for the event is Wednesday, July 16.

There are public lectures aplenty on campus today, including:

A Waterloo Institute for Sustainable Energy virtual public lecture entitled “Ending Energy-Induced Poverty: The Search for Net Positive Use Value” featuring Clark A. Miller, Professor and Director of the Center for Energy & Society, School for the Future of Innovation in Society, at Arizona State University.

"Energy is often treated as an antidote to poverty," says the talk's abstract. "Yet, for a surprisingly large array of populations around the world, the opposite is closer to the truth: energy is a leading cause of poverty. Far from alleviating economic, health, food, financial, and other forms of insecurity, energy systems too often exacerbate them. And more energy just makes the situation worse. This talk will explore how and why energy systems undermine human security and how we can reverse this problem by attending to a simple concept in future energy system design: net positive social value."

This online lecture will take place via Zoom from 1:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. There's still time to register.