Meet our dedicated team who work tirelessly to improve the lives of Canadians and their families. Together, Institute staff, researchers and our growing network of Senior Fellows from around the world have helped make us the top think tank in Canada.
Bruce Pardy
Professor of Law, Queen’s University
Bruce Pardy is professor of law at Queen’s University, senior fellow with the Fraser Institute, and executive director of Rights
Probe (rightsprobe.org). A critic of legal progressivism and the discretionary managerial state, he has written on a range of subjects at the front lines of the culture war inside the law, including environmental governance, climate change, energy policy, human rights and freedoms, professional and university governance, property and tort theory, free markets, and the rule of law. He has taught at law schools in Canada, the United States and New Zealand, practiced civil litigation at Borden Ladner Gervais LLP in Toronto, served as adjudicator and mediator on the Ontario Environmental Review Tribunal, and has published and commented widely in traditional and online media. He is one of the co-creators of the Free North Declaration, a public petition and movement to protect civil liberties in Canada from COVID-19 irrationality and overreach.
… Read more
Tanja Porčnik
Resident Scholar (2019-20), The Fraser Institute
Tanja Porčnik was a Resident Scholar at the Fraser Institute between March 2019 and March 2020. Her work focused on
human freedom studies, with a particular attention to measuring human rights protection with multidimensional indicator frameworks.
Before joining the Fraser Institute, Porčnik was an Adjunct Scholar at the Cato Institute in Washington, DC, President of the Visio Institute in Slovenia, a Senior Fellow at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in Teaching Fellow at the Georgetown University’s American Institute on Political and Economic Systems in Prague, Czech Republic.
Her articles on human rights, law, international relations, and economic policy appear regularly in professional journals and printed media, and she is a frequent commentator on television and radio.
Porčnik is a Ph.D. candidate in Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. She holds a Master’s Degree in Political Science from University of Ljubljana and a Bachelor’s Degree in Applied Economics from University of Maribor.
… Read more
Finn Poschmann
Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute
Finn Poschmann is a Senior Fellow with the Fraser Institute focusing on a broad range of issues including taxes, government
spending, capital markets, and competitiveness. Before joining the Institute, Mr. Poschmann was the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Atlantic Provinces Economic Council, an independent, non-partisan research and educational organization. Prior to that, Mr. Poschmann spent 17 years working with the C.D. Howe Institute, acting as Vice President of Research and Policy Analysis.Over his extensive career, Mr. Poschmann has worked in numerous areas within economics, with a focus on public finance and taxation, financial services and housing finance, federal-provincial relations, and competition law and regulatory policy.Mr. Poschmann is an award-winning writer who has authored or co-authored more than 50 peer reviewed studies, in addition to countless columns for such newspapers as the National Post and The Globe and Mail, as well as academic journal articles. His work has also been cited as a source of inspiration for the Tax-Free Savings Account.Mr. Poschmann served on the Federal Advisory Panel on Canada’s System of International Taxation, among other panels and task forces. He has provided expert testimony before Parliamentary committees. He received his B.A. in economics from Carleton University.
… Read more
Joseph Quesnel
Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute
Joseph Quesnel is a Senior Fellow at the Fraser Institute. He received a BA honours in political science and history
from McGill University and is currently completing a master of journalism degree from Carleton University, with a specialization in public affairs reporting. Mr. Quesnel has over 15 years of experience in print journalism including over three years as lead staff writer at the Drum/First Perspective, a national Aboriginal publication.For close to seven years, Mr. Quesnel was a Manning intern and a full-time policy analyst at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy where he has written widely on Aboriginal, property rights, and water market issues. Some of his publications include a Canadian Property Rights Index, an annual Aboriginal Governance Index, and a study of the B.C. Nisga’a Nation. Mr. Quesnel’s work has been featured in numerous Canadian radio and newspapers outlets (Globe and Mail, National Post, Vancouver Sun, Montreal Gazette, Ottawa Citizen, and Chronicle Herald. He has been called to provide expert testimony before the Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples and the House’s Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development.
… Read more
Dr. Nigel Rawson
Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute
Dr. Nigel Rawson is a pharmacoepidemiologists and pharmaceutical policy researcher in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Educated in the United Kingdom, he holds
an MSc in statistics and a PhD in pharmacoepidemiology. Dr. Rawson has performed epidemiologic studies of the use of drugs and their outcomes for over 40 years and published more than 150 book chapters and articles in peer-reviewed journals. He is also the author of the monograph “Drug Safety: Problems, Pitfalls and Solutions in Identifying and Evaluating Risk.”Dr. Rawson held academic research positions in the United Kingdom until the end of 1989 and subsequently held professorships at the University of Saskatchewan and Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada. His research activities focused on population-based studies of the use and safety of drugs using administrative healthcare utilization data and the evaluation of issues impacting access to new drugs. Dr. Rawson has also been a senior researcher in an independent research centre in one of the United States’ largest health insurers, where he collaborated with the Food and Drug Administration on drug safety studies, and GlaxoSmithKline’s only epidemiologist in Canada, providing advice and analysis for the company’s current and developing medicines and vaccines. Between 2012 and 2020, Dr. Rawson was President of Eastlake Research Group whose mission was to create evidence-based responses to pharmaceutical and health policy issues. He continues this work as an independent researcher.
… Read more
Christopher A. Sarlo
Professor of Economics, Nipissing University
Christopher A. Sarlo is professor of economics at Nipissing University in North Bay, Ontario, as well as a senior fellow
with the Fraser Institute. He is the author of Poverty in Canada (Fraser Institute, 1992, 1996), Measuring Poverty in Canada (Fraser Institute, 2001, 2006), and What is Poverty? Providing Clarity for Canada (Fraser Institute, 2008). Some of his recent publications include Understanding Wealth Inequality in Canada, Consumption Inequality in Canada: Is the Gap Growing?, Child Care in Canada: Examining the Status Quo in 2015, and Income Inequality Measurement Sensitivities. Professor Sarlo has published a number of articles and studies on poverty, inequality and economic issues relating to the family.
… Read more
Lawrence Schembri
Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute
Lawrence Schembri served as the Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada from 2013 until his retirement in June 2022.
In this capacity, he was one of two deputy governors responsible for overseeing the Bank’s analysis and activities promoting a stable and efficient financial system. Starting in 2016, he was responsible for overseeing the Bank’s analysis of domestic economic developments. As a member of the Bank’s governing council, he shared responsibility for decisions related to monetary policy and financial system stability and for setting the Bank’s strategic direction. Mr. Schembri joined the Bank in 1997 as a visiting research advisor in what is now the International Economic Analysis Department. In 2001, he was appointed senior research director in the same department and became its managing director in 2005. In 2010 he was appointed advisor to the governor, with responsibilities for financial stability analysis and coordinating the Bank’s contribution to the Financial Stability Board. While at the Bank, Mr. Schembri was an active researcher, publishing research on exchange rate and monetary theory and policy in open economies, the international monetary system, and financial stability. A champion of efforts to promote economic literacy and Indigenous economic opportunity, he sponsored the Bank’s Governor’s Challenge undergraduate student competition and was a founding member of the Central Bank Network for Indigenous Inclusion. He currently serves on the board of the Tulo Centre of Indigenous Economics. Mr. Schembri received a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Toronto, an MSc in Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a PhD in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to joining the Bank of Canada, Mr. Schembri was an assistant professor and, later, associate professor of economics at Carleton University.
… Read more
Join Our Team!
Consider a rewarding career in the world of ideas, and join the Fraser Institute’s dedicated staff who work together to improve the lives of Canadians and their families.