The Government of Canada, in collaboration with The University of the West Indies, Mona Campus hosted an Ideas Forum, at the Mona Visitors’ Lodge and Conference Centre on June 23 & 24, 2008 aimed at facilitating independent policy discussion on the core issues affecting Caribbean development. The forum, which was a follow-up to the successful forum held in Barbados in 2007, discussed issues related to the promotion and advancement of regional security; educational capacity and sustainability; governance, citizenship and accountability; and economic growth and entrepreneurship.

The Ideas Forum was co-chaired by Jonathan Fried, Executive Director for Canada, South America and the Caribbean at the IMF and Professor Gordon Shirley, Pro Vice Chancellor and Principal of the Mona Campus. They were joined by some 70 carefully selected participants preeminent in academia, the private and public sectors, regional, international and non-governmental organizations, who engaged in workshop sessions to discuss issues around the four selected themes. It is intended that the many recommendations emanating from the discussion would be distilled among policy makers and academia.

In the closing plenary where these recommendations for concrete action were discussed, participants agreed that widespread consensus building was critical to ensuring that the recommendations were implemented at the national and regional levels. The Forum agreed also that the issues of capacity constraints at both the government and private sector levels that negatively impact security, education and governance reforms as well as economic growth, would necessitate a common regional approach to solving them.

In his summation at the end of the 2-day proceedings, Professor Gordon Shirley who also co-chaired the first Forum in his capacity as Jamaica’s Ambassador to Washington, reaffirmed the UWI’s commitment to working with the international funding agencies and regional and national institutions represented at the Forum to foster regional development.

The Ideas Forum was facilitated with sponsorship from CIDA, the Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS), the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) and the cable provider FLOW. It is expected that the next Ideas Forum will take place in 2009 in a Caribbean country to be determined.