Series 4 - Employment files

1.18 m of textual records

Dr. Ostry has had a distinguished career as an economist, first as a lecturer and professor at McGill University and the Université de Montréal, then as a federal civil servant, and most recently as Director of the Centre for International Relations at the University of Toronto.

The files at the beginning of this series consist largely of correspondence and relate to the first thirty years of her career, from her first years as an instructor at McGill until she left the position of Chairman of the Economic Council of Canada in 1979.

During the 1980s, she held three important economic portfolios. From 1979-1983 she served as head of the Department of Economics and Statistics of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. She then became (1984-1985) Deputy Minister, International Trade, and from 1985-1988 she served as Ambassador for Multilateral Trade Negotiations and Prime Minister Mulroney's Personal Representative for the Economic Summit.

In the last position, she was described as "the sherpa of international summits and Canada's top shooter with the GATT" and, in her own words, was "responsible for the substance of the summit," especially those at Tokyo (1986) and Toronto (1988). This "involves a meshing of domestic policies covering the policy scope of three major multinational institutions -- the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade [GAAT] -- as well as the annual ministerial meetings of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD]."

The files assembled during this decade form the bulk of this series. They consist of correspondence (including telexes) and memoranda (often in the form of faxes), notes, articles and press clippings, working files, and reports of committees. The inter-relationship of the records is very complex, and the arrangement has been left largely as Dr. Ostry set it up.

At the end of this series are files on regional trading blocks which are arranged by topic as labelled by Dr. Ostry. Two areas covered are particularly significant. The first comprises the negotiations leading up to the European Community's 1992 single market plan, known as "Europe 1992". The second, described by Dr. Ostry as "multinational enterprise" files, address issues of strategy and technology.

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