As a Puget Sound area native who grew up only a few hours from the border—and someone whose great-grandparents immigrated originally to Vancouver, B.C. from Europe—Canada has long intrigued me. I even took a vacation a few years ago to do a brief home stay in a francophone household in Montréal. When I heard about the FLAS program, applying for a fellowship through the Jackson School’s Canadian Studies Center seemed a great way to combine my interest in international natural resources, finance, and tax with study of a country that has captured my interest. I’m currently on the staff of the law school’s Washington Journal of Environmental Law & Policy and am writing an article for that publication on how changes in the North American utilities industry may affect new agreements between the U.S. and Canada. More specifically, I’m curious about how deregulation of electricity markets by state and provincial governments starting in the 1980s and the implementation of NAFTA in the 1990s may play a role in determining new terms of the Columbia River Treaty in 2014. The FLAS has provided a really exciting opportunity to both study more French and gain a deeper understanding of Canadian federalism.
Funding for FLAS Fellowships is provided by a Center allocation from International and Foreign Language Education, U.S. Department of Education. Visit our FLAS page: http://jsis.washington.edu/canada/flas/.