Who We Are

Staff

Fraser Institute Senior and Visiting Fellows

Michael Walker, President, Free Market Research Foundation, and Senior Fellow
Michael Walker was the executive director of the Fraser Institute from its inception in 1974 until September 2005. Before that he taught at the University of Western Ontario and Carleton and was employed at the Bank of Canada and the Federal Department of Finance. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Western Ontario and his B.A. at St. Francis Xavier University.

As an economist, he has authored or edited 45 books on economic topics. His articles on technical economic subjects have appeared in professional journals in Canada, the United States and Europe, including the Canadian Journal of Economics, the American Economic Review, the Journal of Finance, the Canadian Tax Journal, Health Management Quarterly, Weltwertschaftliches Archiv and Health Affairs. His principle concern as the founding Executive Director of the Fraser Institute has been to promote the examination and use of competitive markets as a method for enhancing the lives of Canadians.

He is the co-founder, with Milton and Rose D. Friedman, of the Economic Freedom of the World project which is now a collaboration of institutes in 70 countries and produces the annual Economic Freedom of the World Index. The Index is one of the most widely cited such measures in the current academic literature.

Professor Eugene Beaulieu, Senior Fellow
Dr. Eugene Beaulieu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Calgary. Dr. Beaulieu joined the department after completing his Ph.D. at Columbia University in New York City in 1997. Dr. Beaulieu's research examines the political economy and distributional consequences of international trade policy in Canada and the United States. He was awarded the 1998 Petro-Canada Young Innovators Award to study the impact of CUSTA and NAFTA on closures of manufacturing plants in the United States and Canada. More recently, Dr. Beaulieu was awarded a three-year SSHRC grant to conduct research on the history of the political economy of Canada's trade policy. Dr. Beaulieu held the 2003 Killam Resident Scholar and sits on the Academic Advisory Council to the Deputy Minister of International Trade in the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade for the Government of Canada.

Jason Clemens, Senior Fellow
Jason Clemens is the Director of Research and Strategic Development at the San Francisco-based Pacific Research Institute. Prior to joining PRI in 2008, Mr. Clemens held a number of staff positions with The Fraser Institute over a 10-plus year period, including Director of Research Quality, Director of Budgeting and Strategic Planning, and Director of Fiscal Studies. He has an Honours Bachelors Degree of Commerce and a Masters’ Degree in Business Administration from the University of Windsor as well as a Post Baccalaureate Degree in Economics from Simon Fraser University. He has published studies on a wide range of topics including taxation, government spending, labour market regulation, banking, welfare reform, and economic prosperity. His articles have appeared in such newspapers as The Wall Street Journal, Investors Business Daily, The National Post, The Globe & Mail, The Toronto Star, The Vancouver Sun, The Calgary Herald, The Winnipeg Free Press, The Ottawa Citizen, The Montreal Gazette, and La Presse. Mr. Clemens has been a guest on numerous radio programs across the country and has appeared on the CBC National News, CTV News, CBC Business Newsworld, CBC’s CounterSpin, Global TV, BCTV, and Report on Business TV as an economic commentator. He has appeared before committees of both the House of Commons and the Senate as an expert witness. In 2006, he received the prestigious Canada’s Top 40 Under 40 award presented by Caldwell Partners and the Globe and Mail as well as an Odyssey Award from the University of Windsor.

Martin Collacott, Senior Fellow
Former Canadian Ambassador, Martin Collacott studies issues related to terrorism. Mr. Collacott has 30 years of distinguished service in the Department of External Affairs for Canada. His assignments included Director General for Security Services and in this capacity he was responsible for the coordination of counter-terrorism policy at the international level. He represented the Department of External Affairs in Indochina, Hong Kong, Lagos, and Tokyo. During the late 1960s, he served as the Chinese-speaking member of the Canadian negotiating team which established diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China. Later in his career, Mr. Collacott was appointed as High Commissioner to Sri Lanka, Ambassador to Syria and Lebanon, and as Ambassador to Cambodia. In the course of these assignments he had major responsibilities for the delivery of immigration and refugee programs.

Alan Dowd, Senior Fellow
Alan W. Dowd is a Senior Fellow of the Fraser Institute, conducting research into defense and security, and the Senior Editor of fraseramerica.org. He is a contributing editor with The American Legion Magazine. His writing also has appeared in Policy Review, Parameters, The Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, Military Officer, The Baltimore Sun, The Sacramento Bee, The Detroit News, The Washington Times, The Washington Examiner, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The American Enterprise, The Jerusalem Post, The Financial Times Deutschland, World Politics Review, American Enterprise Online, National Review Online, and Weekly Standard Online, among others. Before joining the Fraser Institute, Mr. Dowd was a senior fellow with the Sagamore Institute and, earlier, director of the Hudson Institute’s corporate headquarters. He has served as director of constituent services for a US congressman and adjunct professor at Butler University. He holds a B.A. with high honors in political science from Butler University and an M.A. in philanthropic studies from Indiana University.

Professor Stephen T. Easton, Senior Fellow
Stephen T. Easton is a professor of Economics at Simon Fraser University. He received his AB from Oberlin College and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Recent works published by The Fraser Institute include Privatizing Prisons (editor, 1998), The Costs of Crime: Who Pays and How Much? 1998 Update (with Paul Brantingham, 1998), and Rating Global Economic Freedom (editor, 1992). He was also co-author of A Secondary Schools Report Card for British Columbia (1998), The 1999 Report Card on British Columbia’s Secondary Schools, Boys, Girls, and Grades: Academic Gender Balance in British Columbia’s Secondary Schools (1999), and The 1999 Report Card on Alberta’s High Schools, and continues to advise on the Institute’s series of school report cards. His editorials have appeared in many other newspapers across the country.

Nadeem Esmail, Senior Fellow
Nadeem Esmail is the Fraser Institute’s former Director of Health System Performance Studies and Manager of the Alberta Policy Research Centre. He completed his B.A. (Honours) in Economics at the University of Calgary, and received an M.A. in Economics from the University of British Columbia. While on staff at the Institute, Nadeem authored or co-authored more than 30 comprehensive studies and more than 150 articles on a wide range of health care topics including waiting lists, international comparisons of health care systems, hospital report cards, medical technology, and the physician shortage. His articles appeared in newspapers across North America including the National Post, Globe and Mail, National Review Online, and Wall Street Journal. He has also spoken internationally on health care policy and reform.

Professor Tom Flanagan, Senior Fellow
Tom Flanagan is a professor of political science at the University of Calgary and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He has written extensively on Canadian politics and history. His most recent book, First Nations? Second Thoughts (2000), won the Donner Prize for the best book on public policy and the Donald Smiley Prize for the best book on Canadian government and politics in its year of publication.

Jonathan Fortier, Senior Fellow
Jonathan Fortier earned his MPhil and his doctorate at the University of Oxford. He is interested in how liberty and free markets (and related concepts such as individual rights, property, law, spontaneous order, decentralization, individual choice) find expression in literature and the arts. Dr. Fortier was a Fellow with Liberty Fund for three years, taught for two years at Bishop's University, and is now the Senior Director of Academic Initiatives at the Institute for Humane Studies in Washington, DC. As a Senior Fellow, Dr. Fortier works on a variety of different projects with The Fraser Institute.

Gordon Gibson, Senior Fellow
Gordon Gibson received his BA (Honours) in Mathematics & Physics from the University of British Columbia and his MBA from Harvard Business School followed by research work at the London School of Economics. His current areas of study include federalism, governance, and aboriginal/non-aboriginal relations. Mr. Gibson has also written Fraser Institute books and monographs that include, Plan B: The Future of the Rest of Canada, Thirty Million Musketeers, Fixing Canadian Democracy, Comments on the Draft Nisga’a Treaty, A Principled Analysis of the Nisga’a Treaty, Principles for Treaties, and his most recent study Challenges in Senate Reform: Conflicts of Interest, Unintended Consequences, New Possibilities. In 2002, He was commissioned by the BC Government to design the Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform. His report was substantially adopted (with amendments as to size) and the Assembly process is now successfully completed. The Assembly architecture is currently the subject of extensive world-wide study as an innovative technique in tackling difficult public policy problems. His columns appear frequently in the Vancouver Sun, Winnipeg Free Press and the Globe & Mail. He has served as Assistant to the Minister of Northern Affairs, then Executive and later Special Assistant to the Prime Minister, and then ran in three federal elections. In addition, he was elected twice to the B.C. Legislature and served as both MLA and Leader of the British Columbia Liberal Party. He is currently on the Board and Chair of the Audit Committee of the Westshore Terminals Income Fund.

Wilf Gobert, Senior Fellow, Energy Studies
Prior to joining The Fraser Institute, Wilf Gobert previously held positions as Principal, Director, Vice-Chairman, and Managing Director of Research for Peters & Co. Limited. Founded in 1971, Peters & Co. is an independent, fully integrated investment firm which has specialized for 35 years in investments in the Canadian oil, natural gas, and oilfield services industries. Mr. Gobert has been an oil industry financial analyst since 1976 and consistently ranked among the top ten analysts in the industry.

Throughout his career at Peters, Mr. Gobert’s responsibilities included research analysis of Integrated Oil companies and Senior Producers. He has advised the Government of Alberta on the National Energy Program and the Government of Newfoundland on the Hibernia oilfield development. He is a former member of the Alberta Securities Commission, Financial Advisory Committee. Mr. Gobert has a B. Sc. (Honours) degree in Mathematics from the University of Windsor, an MBA from McMaster University and a CFA designation.

Dr. Herbert Grubel, Senior Fellow
Herbert G. Grubel is Emeritus Professor of Economics from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. He has a BA from Rutgers University and a Ph.D. in economics from Yale University. He has taught full-time at Stanford University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Pennsylvania. He has also had temporary appointments at universities in Berlin, Singapore, Cape Town, Nairobi, Oxford, and Canberra. Dr. Grubel was the Reform Party Member of Parliament for Capilano-Howe Sound from 1993 to 1997, serving as the Finance Critic from 1995 to 1997. He has published 16 books and 180 professional articles in economics dealing with international trade and finance and a wide range of economic policy issues.

Csaba Hajdu, Senior Fellow
Csaba Hajdu is the principal of Paprika Consulting Inc., which provides economic research and statistical services primarily for the forestry industry in Western Canada. He earned his BA (Honours) and MA degrees in economics from Simon Fraser University, as well as a diploma in forestry from his native Hungary. He has engaged in doctoral studies in economics at the University of Western Ontario and Simon Fraser University. Mr. Hajdu has worked in the forestry industry over a thirty-five year career as an economist. He was the Director of Research for two associations: Forest Industrial Relations, FIR, and the Pulp and Paper Employee Relations Forum, PPERF (1978-2004). Prior to that, Mr. Hajdu was Chief Economist of MacMillan Bloedel (1970-78) and Research Economist at Hedlin Menzies and Associates (1969-70). His work involves analyzing issues affecting the forestry industry in logging, sawmilling and pulp and paper. He comments on market conditions, profitability, investment, productivity and labour costs. As well, he authors or contributes to government submissions and represents the industry publicly in Canada and internationally, and has served on many industry committees.

Michael Harris, Senior Fellow
Michael Harris became the twenty-second Premier of Ontario following a landslide election victory in June 1995. His plan — the Common Sense Revolution — struck a chord with people across the province who were tired of big government, wasteful spending, rising welfare rolls, and rising unemployment. In his first term as Premier of Ontario, he proved that he was not afraid to make tough choices needed to put Ontario back on track. Four years later the voters of Ontario re-elected Mr. Harris, making him the first Ontario Premier in more than 30 years to form a second consecutive majority government. He then served the people of Ontario until 2002.

Claudia R. Hepburn, Senior Fellow
Claudia Hepburn is the founder of the Children First School Choice Trust, Canada’s first privately funded, province-wide school choice program, and the former Director of Education Policy research at the Fraser Institute. She is the co-author of Let The Funding Follow the Children: A Solution for Special Education in Ontario, The Canadian Education Freedom Index, Learning from Success: What Americans Can Learn from School Choice in Canada, the editor of Can the Market Save Our Schools and the author of The Case for School Choice: Models from the United States, New Zealand, Denmark and Sweden. She is a frequent media commentator on education issues, and her articles have appeared in Fraser Forum and newspapers across Canada. She has a BA in English from Amherst College in Massachusetts, and an MA and B.Ed from the University of Toronto.

Jerry Jordan, Senior Fellow
Jerry Jordan is president of the Pacific Academy for Advance Studies and the former president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. Mr Jordan holds a Ph.D. in economics from U.C.L.A. and has worked in government, academia, and commercial banking. He is a member of the Mont Pelerin Society, was a member of President Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers, as well as having served on the board of directors of the National Association of Business Economists and the U.S. Gold Commission.

Ralph Klein, Senior Fellow
Ralph Klein is the former Premier of Alberta and is currently a senior business advisor with Borden Ladner Gervais LLP and Executive Professor of Public Policy at the University of Alberta School of Business. After several years as Mayor of Calgary during which he oversaw Calgary’s hosting of the 1988 Winter Olympic Games, Mr. Klein entered provincial politics, winning election to the Alberta legislature in 1989. Later that year he was appointed Environment Minister. In 1992, Mr. Klein ran for and won leadership of the governing Alberta Progressive Conservative Party. He was sworn in as Premier later that year and in 1993, he led the party to electoral victory and formed the Alberta provincial government. Mr. Klein won several more elections and governed as Premier of Alberta until his retirement in 2006. During his time as Premier, Mr. Klein is best known for downsizing the Alberta government, balancing the budget, paying off the province’s debt, and overseeing the economic boom spearheaded by development of the Alberta oil sands.

Professor Rainer Knopff, Senior Fellow
Rainer Knopff received his BC from McMaster University and his MA and Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. His research interests include public law, civil liberties and political thought. He is the author and co-author of several books, including The New War on Discrimination, with Tom Flanagan, Federalism and the Charter: Leading Constitutional Decisions, with Peter H. Russell and F. L. Morton, and The Charter Revolution and the Court Party, also with F. L. Morton. His current projects include Courting Controversy, a book that explores the rhetorical strategies used by courts to manage highly contentious public issues.

Preston Manning, Senior Fellow
Preston Manning served as a Member of the Canadian Parliament from 1993 to 2001. He founded two new political parties—the Reform Party of Canada and the Canadian Reform Conservative Alliance—both of which became the official Opposition in the Canadian Parliament. Mr. Manning served as Leader of the Opposition from 1997 to 2000 and was also his party’s critic for Science and Technology. Since retirement from Parliament in 2002, Mr. Manning has released a book entitled Think Big (published by McClelland & Stewart) describing his use of the tools and institutions of democracy to change Canada’s national agenda. He has also served as a Senior Fellow of the Canada West Foundation and as a Distinguished Visitor at the University of Calgary and University of Toronto. Mr. Manning is currently a Senior Fellow of the Fraser Institute for which he has co-authored theCanada Strong and Free series of books. He is also President and CEO of the Manning Centre for Building Democracy (http://www.manningcentre.ca/), a national not-for-profit organization supporting research, educational, and communications initiatives designed to achieve a more democratic society in Canada guided by conservative principles.

Professor Ross McKitrick, Senior Fellow
Professor McKitrick holds a BA in economics from Queen's University, and an MA and Ph.D. in economics from the University of British Columbia. He was appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Guelph in 1996 and Associate Professor in 2000. His area of specialization is environmental economics and policy analysis. He has published scholarly articles in The Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Economic Modeling, The Canadian Journal of Economics, Environmental and Resource Economics, and other journals, as well as commentaries in newspapers and other public forums. His current research areas include empirical modeling of the relationship between economic growth and pollution emissions, the impact of economic activity on the measurement of surface temperatures, and the climate change policy debate. Professor McKitrick has made invited academic presentations in Canada, the US and Europe, as well as professional briefings to the Canadian Parliamentary Finance Committee, and to government staff at the US Congress and Senate. He is the co-author, with Professor Christopher Essex, of Taken By Storm: The Troubled Science, Policy and Politics of Global Warming. Taken By Storm was the runner-up for the prestigious 2002 Donner Book Prize.

Professor Jean-Luc Migué, Senior Fellow
Jean-Luc Migué (Ph.D., American University, Washington, D.C.) has been Professor of Economics at the School of Public Administration at Laval University, researcher at the Bank of Canada and at the Economic Council of Canada, and Chairman of the Editorial Board at the Montreal Economic Institute. In 1994, he received the Silver Medal of the Sir Antony Fisher Memorial Award for his book on Federalism and Free Trade, published by the Institute of Economic Affairs in London, Great Britain. He has contributed numerous articles to national and foreign journals, including The Canadian Journal of Economics, l'Actualité économique, The Cato Journal, The Journal of Law and Economics, La Revue économique, Public Choice, La Revue Française de Finances Publiques, Hacienda Publica Espanola, andle Journal des Économistes et des Études Humaines. He is a member of the Mont Pelerin Society and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

Professor Lydia Miljan, Senior Fellow
Lydia Miljan is a former Director of the Institute's Alberta Policy Research Centre and the National Media Archive. She is currently an Associate Professor, Department of Political Science at the University of Windsor. She holds a Ph.D. in political science specializing in politics and the media. One of her first studies at the Institute was a controversial content analysis on CBC television and the Globe and Mail's coverage of the free trade agreement. Since that initial study, she has conducted over 80 content analyses on television, radio and newspaper coverage of public policy issues. Her analysis of issues ranging from free trade to privatization, from health care to women's issues, and from elections to referendum campaigns, has made her a most sought-after media critic. This body of work has been printed in almost every newspaper in the country, and she has been a guest on many open-line talk shows and television programs in Canada and the United States. Dr. Miljan's tenure at the Archive has received international recognition as well. She is a member of an international organization who assess media coverage in their own countries. She was awarded the H.B. Earhart Fellowship in 1996.

Alexander Moens, Senior Fellow
Alexander Moens is a professor of International Relations at Simon Fraser University. Dr. Moens focuses on the strategic political assessment of executive and legislative decision-making in the United States, focusing on those areas that affect Canada, particularly in the area of trade. Dr. Moens has published books and articles on American presidential decision-making, and on North American and European security issues. In 1992, he served in the Policy Planning Staff of Canada’s Foreign Affairs Department, and in the spring of 1999 he was a visiting fellow at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. He is also a researcher with the Council For Canadian Security in the 21st Century. In addition, he has conducted various research projects supported by NATO, The European Union, the Foreign and Defence Departments of Canada, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Dr. Filip Palda, Senior Fellow
Filip Palda is full professor at the École nationale d'administration publique. He earned his Ph.D. in economics at the University of Chicago. He has written two books for the Fraser Institute (Election Finance Regulation in Canada: A Critical Review, and Home on the Urban Range: An Idea Map for Reforming the City) as well as co-authoring three Tax Facts books and pioneering for the Fraser Institute, along with Isabella Horry, the survey method of estimating tax incidence. He is also editor of five Fraser Institute books (Essays in Canadian Surface Transportation, Its no Gamble: The Economic and Social Benefits of Stock Markets, L'État interventionniste : le gouvernement provincial et l'économie du Québec, Provincial Trade Wars: Why the Blockade Must End, and The New Federalist), and the author of over a hundred Fraser Forum articles as well as the author of the Public Policy Source paper The History of Tobacco Regulation: Forward to the Past. He has written a dozen articles in the National Post, has published with the World & I, as well as being cover author for the Next City magazine. In addition to his work for the Fraser Institute, professor Palda is the author of more than 20 articles in refereed economic journals and is a high-scoring author on the RepEc website of economic working papers. He is best known for his work on exposing the self-interest politicians hold in crafting election finance laws and for his discovery of the displacement deadweight loss of tax evasion.

Professor Chris Sarlo, Senior Fellow
Christopher A. Sarlo is Associate Professor of Economics at Nipissing University in North Bay, Ontario. He is the author of Measuring Poverty in Canada (2001) and Poverty in Canada (1992, 1996a). He is also a regular contributor to Fraser Forum and has published a number of articles and reports on the issue of poverty.

Donald R. Wentworth, Senior Fellow
Donald R. Wentworth is Professor Emeritus of Economics at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, WA. He has published several articles on teaching economics, coauthored a college economics textbook and coauthored several publications containing lesson plans and curriculum recommendations for teaching economics. He has received numerous awards for his teaching and publications including the Freedoms Foundation Leavey Award, the Burlington Northern Foundation Faculty Achievement Award, and the National Council on Economic Education Leadership Award.

In addition he has served as the Environmental Education Director for PERC: The Center for Free Market Environmentalism and conducted numerous workshops for teachers of economics in Canada and the United States.