This October, SPPGA welcomes practitioner fellow Jawad Hussain Qureshi who has been the Senior South Asia analyst in the Intelligence Assessment Secretariat (IAS) of the Government of Canada’s Privy Council Office since 2009.
We caught up with Jawad to ask him a little bit about his background and what he’s looking forward to as he joins SPPGA this fall as a policy practitioner fellow:
What has been a meaningful moment in your career that underscores the need for good public policy?
To be honest, as the only South Asia analyst at PCO for the past 15 years, I keep reminding senior officials that I cover one-quarter of humanity! This has meant enormous opportunities to influence public policy making. One caveat, PCO-IAS where I work is the only secretariat at PCO – which supports the Prime Minister and Cabinet – which is a policy neutral but policy relevant secretariat. This means while I and my colleagues do not have a direct role in policy making, our vantage point at the central agency where government converges and in my role on South Asia vis-à-vis national security and foreign policy tied to Canada’s interests and relations with South Asian nations means that I have had some wonderful opportunities over the years to enrich policy making.
Whether it is supporting the PM, senior officials and the broader Canadian diplomatic and bureaucratic community on foreign visits, assessments, and briefings on developments in South Asia, and at times connecting the dots with the Canadian South Asian diaspora, I can highlight some very proud moments. One example is coordinating the various Canadian government departments in an intelligence assessment on South Asia, done through in person and electronic ‘inter-departmental experts’ groups. Before any PM trip, to help officials better understand the prevailing issues and dynamics to have actional bilateral interactions and outcomes, I have made it a practice to work on South Asia leadership profiles, memorandums (assessments), verbal briefings whilst partnering with other Canadian departments to have a comprehensive package for the PM and his delegation.
Since I helped deepen intelligence assessment sharing with key European allies beyond the Five Eyes (US, UK, Australia, NZ and Canada), a great bilateral policy outcome has been joint written assessment, visits, colloques and conferences. While this may seem like a low effort initiative, it has had a high impact in terms of building trust and sharing between likeminded allies and Canada, not just on South Asia, but all regional and thematic issues.
What are you most looking forward to engaging in as an SPPGA Practitioner Fellow?
At heart I am an academic. Even my job with the Canadian government at time feels like I am a researcher, writer, and briefer (aka a PhD student!) I am thrilled to be back at UBC especially at SPGGA. As a MAPPS graduate, the school, some of its faculty and the facilities are all remarkably familiar to me. It is a homecoming 18 years in making! I am really looking forward to engaging with the students, faculty, staff and fellow scholars. UBC is on the Pacific coast and with the Canadian government’s Indo-Pacific Strategy announced with great initiative and expectations, I would love to have SPGGA lead UBC on this pivot. I am a people person (really a social butterfly) and I am bubbling to learn, teach, and enrich myself and fellow SPPGA-ers on all things policy, intelligence, and South Asia.
I have been working nonstop for PCO for almost 15 years. This practitioner fellowship is a remarkable opportunity to take pause and reinvigorate in an intellectually stimulating environment. I know I will be making new contacts—broadening research and speaking engagement within academic, think tanks, policy groups and the private sector—and taking these new connections and purpose back to PCO-IAS.
