The Fraser Institute: Tax Reform in Canada:  Our Path to Greater Prosperity

A Fraser Institute Conference,
October 11, 2001, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Speaker Biographies

Jason Clemens, Director of Fiscal Studies, The Fraser Institute, Vancouver, Canada

Co-author and presenter of Flat Tax:  Model for Personal & Business Tax Reform

  Jason Clemens joined The Fraser Institute in 1997 as a Policy Analyst. 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 Diploma in Economics from Simon Fraser University. In addition to his formal education, Mr. Clemens has received designations from the Institute of Chartered Bankers and completed the Canadian Securities Course. He was a co-author of The Fraser Institute's Canada's All Government Debt (1996), Bank Mergers: The Rational Consolidation of Banking in Canada (1998) and the 20% Foreign Property Rule: Increasing Risk and Decreasing Returns on RRSPs and RPPs (1999). Since joining the Institute in 1997, he has written or contributed to over twenty-five articles for Fraser Forum on topics ranging from bank mergers, to small business finance, to the role of charities in society, to tax havens. His articles have appeared in such newspapers as The National Post, The Financial Post, The Ottawa Citizen, The Calgary Herald, The Calgary Sun, The Vancouver Sun, The Montreal Gazette, La Presse and The Winnipeg Free Press. At the Institute, he is also a co-ordinator of the Survey of Investment Managers and directs studies in the Non-Profit Sector.

Bev Dahlby, Department of Economics, University of Alberta

Restructuring the Canadian Tax System by Changing the Direct/Indirect Tax Mix

Bev Dahlby has been a professor in the Dept. of Economics at the University of Alberta since 1978.  He was born at Beechy and grew up on a farm near Star City, Saskatchewan.  He attended the University of Saskatchewan, Queen's University, and the London School of Economics.  He has published extensively on tax policy and fiscal federalism.  He was a member of the Technical Committee on Business Taxation which issued its report on reforming business taxation in April 1998.  He has also served as a policy advisor to the Alberta government, worked on tax reform projects at the Thailand Development Research Institute in Bangkok, and served as a technical advisor on an International Monetary Fund mission to Malawi.  In 1998-99, he held a McCalla Research Professorship at the University of Alberta.

Joel Emes, Senior Research Economist, The Fraser Institute

Co-author of Flat Tax:  Model for Personal & Business Tax Reform

Joel Emes is senior research economist at The Fraser Institute. He is a regular contributor to the Fraser Institute's monthly magazine Fraser Forum,  and co-author of Tax Facts 10, 11, and  12, and Canada's All Government Debt (1996, 1998, and 1999  editions). His articles have appeared in the National Post, the Globe and Mail, the Calgary Herald, the Vancouver Sun and the London Free Press. Mr. Emes is also the primary researcher for Tax Freedom Day and the Institute's provincial and state-provincial fiscal comparisons, the Budget Performance Index and the Fiscal Performance Index. He received his M.A. in Economics from Simon Fraser University in 1995.

Herbert Grubel, David Somerville Chair in Fiscal Studies, The Fraser Institute

Conference Chair
Why There Should be No Capital Gains Tax

Herbert G. Grubel is Professor of Economics (Emeritus) at Simon Fraser University and a Senior Fellow at the Fraser Institute in Canada. He has a B.A. from Rutgers University and a Ph.D. in economics from Yale University (1963). He has taught full-time at Stanford University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Pennsylvania.  He has held temporary appointments at universities in Berlin, Singapore, Cape Town, Nairobi, Oxford, and Canberra.  Herbert Grubel was an elected member of the Parliament of Canada from 1993 to 1997 and served as the Minister of Finance in his party's shadow cabinet.  He has published many books and articles on economics and finance.

Kenneth J. McKenzie, Professor, Department of Economics, University of Calgary

Tax Policy in Alberta:  A Case Study

Ken McKenzie specializes in public finance, in particular tax policy and political economy.  He has published widely in these areas, and has won several awards for his research, including the Harry  Johnson award for the best article in the Canadian Journal of Economics,  the Doug Purvis Prize for research in public policy, and the Faculty of Social Sciences Research Achievement Award at the U of C.  He is a fellow of both the Fraser Institute and the C.D. Howe Institute (where he will deliver the 2001 Benefactor's Lecture in November).

Fred McMahon, Director, Centre for Globalization Studies, The Fraser Institute

Tax Puzzles in the United States:  Georgia, Massachusetts, and Michigan

Fred McMahon has consulted in South America on economic growth and written, by invitation, for the United Nations on global taxation and economic development. His main work to date has been on the question of why some economies prosper while others fail. He is the author of several books including, Looking the Gift Horse in the Mouth: The Impact of Federal Transfers on Atlantic Canada, which won the US$10,000 Sir Antony Fisher International Memorial Award for advancing public policy debate. He is the author of two other books: Road to Growth: How Lagging Economies Become Prosperous and Retreat from Growth: Atlantic Canada and the Negative Sum Economy. McMahon has prepared numerous research reports. His columns have appeared in a number of publications including Policy Options, National Post, Globe and Mail, Ottawa Citizen, Vancouver Sun, Montreal Gazette, and most major Atlantic Canadian newspapers.  McMahon has been policy director at the Toronto-based Consumer Policy Institute and senior policy analyst at the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies (AIMS), in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He is the former editor of the Bank of Canada Review, the Bank of Canada's flagship publication. Prior to that he was a journalist specializing in business and economic issues. He has an M.A. in economics from McGill University in Montreal.

Jack M. Mintz, President and CEO, C.D. Howe Institute

Luncheon Speaker
Taxing Sensibly:  Reform Approach for Canada

Jack Mintz is widely published, serves on numereous boards, and is the founding editor-in-chief of International Tax and Public Finance, a leading public economics journal.

Finn Poschmann, Senior Policy Analyst, C.D. Howe Institute

Co-author and presenter of The Merits of Tax Competition Among Canadian Jurisdictions

Finn Poschmann has been a policy analyst at the C.D. Howe Institute since January 1998. For more than a decade previous, he was at the Parliamentary Research Branch in Ottawa, where he held a number of research positions principally involved with providing economic analysis and advice to Parliamentarians and Standing Committees. He has worked in numerous areas within the field of economics, but his prime concern has been with public finance and taxation and federal provincial relations. He is particularly interested in the distributional impact of taxation and in the use of microsimulation tools in the design of tax policy, but his work also has taken him into issues related to monetary policy as well as the farther reaches of Canadian public policy. Recent publications dealt with the international monetary system and the tax treatment of retirement savings.

William B.P.Robson, Vice President and Director of Research, C.D. Howe Institute

Co-author of The Merits of Tax Competition Among Canadian Jurisdictions

Bill Robson specializes in Canadian fiscal and monetary policy. He has written extensively on government budgets and their economics effects, on pension policy, and on the Bank of Canada and inflation, including the prize-winning The Great Canadian Disinflation, coauthored with David Laidler.  Mr. Robson is a familiar commentator on economic issues in the media.

Michael A. Walker, Executive Director, The Fraser Institute

Luncheon Speaker
Size Matters Most:  Taxes, Growth and Canada's Underdevelopment

Michael Walker writes regularly for daily newspapers and financial periodicals.  His articles have also appeared in technical journals, in Canada, the United States and Europe, including The American Economic Review, the Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Public Policy, Health Affairs and the Canadian Tax Journal.  He has authored or edited 40 books on economic matters. Born in Newfoundland in 1945, he received his B.A. (summa) at St. Francis Xavier University in 1966 and completed the work for his Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Western Ontario in 1969.

Brendon Walsh, Professor, Economics Department, University College Dublin, Ireland

A Case Study of Ireland

Brendan Walsh has been Professor of National Economics at University College, Dublin since1980.  He graduated from UCD in 1961, obtained a doctorate in economics from Boston College in 1966 and taught in several US universities before returning to Ireland to take up a post at the Economic and Social Research Institute in 1969.  He has served overseas as an economic advisor with the Harvard Institute for International Development – in Iran in 1975-76 and in The Gambia in 1989-91.  He has written widely on the Irish economy and has acted as a consultant to bodies such as the ECD and the Commission of the EU.  He is a member of the Royal Irish Academy.

Thomas A. Wilson, Director of the Policy and Economic Analysis Program at the Institute for Policy Analysis, University of Toronto

Business Taxes:  An Evaluation

Thomas A. Wilson is also the Area Coordinator for Business Economics at the Faculty of Management.  Professor Wilson's research interests include fiscal and tax policy, applied macro-economic modelling, and industrial organization.  He has published numerous research papers in each of these areas.  He has also co-authored or co-edited fifteen books including recent volumes entitled Fiscal Policy in Canada (co-author with P. Dungan), Fiscal Targets and Economic Growth (co-editor with T. Courchene), The Electronic Village: Policy Issues of the Information Economy (co-editor with Dale Orr), Rationality in Public Policy: Retrospect and Prospect, A Tribute to Douglas G. Hartle (co-editor with R. Bird and M. Trebilcock), and The 2000 Federal Budget: Retrospect and Prospect (co-editor with Paul A. R. Hobson).  His consulting work has included economic forecasting, fiscal and tax policy analysis, regulation of telecommunications, and competition policy.   He received his Ph.D. and A. M. - Economics from Harvard University and his B.A. - Economics from the University of British Columbia.

[Contents]

info@fraserinstitute.ca
4th Floor, 1770 Burrard Street, Vancouver, BC, Canada, V6J 3G7
Tel: (604) 688-0221 Fax: (604) 688-8539 Book Orders: 1-800-665-3558 ext. 580

You can contact us at the above email address for any comments or information requests. Please report any dead links or technical problems.