This series documents Professor Safarian’s involvement with two organizations, the Canadian-American Committee (1972-1992) and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (1991-1997).
The files for the Canadian-American Committee begin with membership and executive committee lists (1972-1992) and with correspondence with Edward English, director of research for the Canadian Trade Committee (1962-1965) and with the Canadian-American Committee itself, from the time Professor Safarian was first invited to attend a meeting in 1965 until he formally became a member of its executive committee in 1972. The emphasis in the subsequent correspondence is on committee work, including its product specialization task force and a subcommittee on world product mandate. There are also files containing minutes of confidential meetings for the years 1957, 1980 and 1991-1993. The files on the Canadian-American Committee end with Professor Safarian’s personal notes on the Committee meetings and a file of his expenses.
Professor Safarian resigned from the Canadian-American Committee in September 1993 because of the increased demands of his workload at the University of Toronto in the Centre for Industrial Studies, the Faculty of Management and, especially, the Canadian
Series 3: Professional activities (continued)
Institute for Advanced Research. The bulk of the files on the CIAR date from 1988, though the correspondence regarding appointments dates from 1982. They document Professor Safarian’s involvement with the CIAR’s Economic Growth and Policy Program, dating from its inception in 1988. There are detailed files on most aspects of the Program’s activities, including appointments to it, the work of its advisory committee, Professor Safarian’s relationship with two CIAR presidents, Fraser Mustard (1991-1996) and Stefan Dupré (1996-1997), and with the Program’s directors, Richard Lipsey (1991-1996) and Elhanan Helpman. Professor Safarian maintained general files on Lipsey and Helpman containing correspondence, memoranda, and notes, along with files specifically on Lipsey’s views on focus and development.
These files are followed by others containing correspondence, notes, memoranda, background reports and draft agendas for meetings of the Economic Growth and Policy Program, but not the minutes themselves. The minutes follow in folders labelled by Professor Safarian as “personal minutes/notes”. These files, in turn, are followed by others labelled “interactions among members of executive meetings”; they contain correspondence, memoranda and other commentary on matters being discussed. In all cases, the arrangement is chronological within each grouping.
The next files in this series begin with one on support for the Program by the Canadian Pacific Railway, followed by files on the Program’s Working Papers and Reprint Series, covering the years 1993-2001. The next files document the five year review of the Program (1996), and visits by Lipsey and Safarian to Montreal (1992), the Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT) (1994), the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris in the autumn of 1994, and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCATD) in Geneva in December-Jaanuary1994/1995.
The series ends with files of presentations by Professor Safarian and/or Elhanan Helpman to the board of the Research Council of the CIAR in 1995 and 1996; presentations by Professor Safarian to the Economic Growth and Policy Program between 1991 and 1994, and four addresses by him on behalf of the Program to outside venues between 1992 and 1995. The files contain correspondence, memoranda, notes and drafts of papers. The arrangement is chronological within each category.