Founder(s) | Michel Kelly-Gagnon |
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Established | 1987 |
CEO | Daniel Dufort |
Budget | $2,280,927.00; [1] 2016 |
Location | Montreal, Quebec, Canada |
Website | iedm.org |
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Conservatism in Canada |
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The Montreal Economic Institute (MEI) is a non-profit research organization (or think tank) based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It aims at promoting economic liberalism [2] through economic education of the general public and what it regards as efficient public policies in Quebec and Canada through studies and conferences. Its research areas include different topics such as health care, education, taxation, labour, agriculture and the environment. Its studies are often mentioned in the media.
The MEI was incorporated in July 1987, after being created by a group of Québec intellectuals and businessmen as the continuation of the Institut économique de Paris à Montréal (which was directed by economists Pierre Lemieux). MEI's activities soared in the late 1990s with the nomination of Michel Kelly-Gagnon as executive director. The institute rapidly established a leading place in debates on economic policy in the province of Quebec and managed to attract leading academics. Several members of its board of directors and many of its fellows play a significant role in Quebec's economy as entrepreneurs or intellectuals. [3]
Maxime Bernier served as its vice president, from May to November 2005, before he became federal Minister of Industry. Bernier explained that his role at the Institute was mainly fundraising and act as an advisor to Kelly Gagnon. [4] Tasha Kheiriddin also briefly occupied this position from March to September 2006, before moving to the Quebec branch of the Fraser Institute. From February 2007 to October 2009, the vice president was Marcel Boyer, professor of economics at the University of Montreal. The vice president is currently Jasmin Guénette, former director of public affairs who came back after spending two years at the Institute for Humane Studies in Virginia.
Paul Muller was president of the MEI from 2006 to 2012 and former policy adviser to leader of Action démocratique du Québec, Mario Dumont. [5] [6]
From 2000 until 2008, the MEI prepared a ranking of Quebec high schools published in L'actualité magazine every fall.
In 2009, Kelly Gangon returned to the MEI as president and moved the organisation from a $269,342 [7] deficit for financial year ending December 31, 2008 to a $153,188 [8] surplus (as of December 31, 2009) in the context of a severe recession
During 2012 Quebec student protests, their office was damaged by militants who disapproved of their positions. [9]
MEI recruited Joe Oliver, the former Minister of Finance in Stephen Harper's Conservative Party of Canada government, as a 'Distinguished Senior Fellow' in 2016. [10]
Youri Chassin, who was the research director from 2012-2017 was elected as MNA for Saint-Jérôme. [11] [12]
The MEI states that it does not participate in partisan activities. Its public interventions are meant only to analyze the relevance of public policies, their costs and benefits, and their impact on individuals and on private and public organizations. Our work remains the same regardless of who proposes or opposes specific policies. [13]
While it rejects characterizations such as "right-wing" and "libertarian," MEI advocates policies in line with economic liberalism, [2] [10] [9] such as loosening Quebec’s labour laws, increasing the transparency of labour union financing, merit pay for teachers, and ending Canada Post's monopoly on letter delivery, as well as a general downsizing of the state. [9]
The MEI states that it maintains a wall between its researchers and its donors. According to the MEI's website, publications and videos are not submitted to donors or their representatives for approval or editing before they are released. [13]
MEI is a registered Canadian charity and Kelly-Gagnon has said that 65-70% of MEI's funding comes from foundations, with an additional 15-20% coming from individuals and the remainder coming from corporations; it does not accept funding from the public sector. [10] [13] Its 2015 budget was $2.3 million, and had a full-time staff of 12 as of March 2016. [10] Its tax returns indicate that major support comes from the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, the Donner Canadian Foundation, and the Chase Foundation of Virginia. [10] [14] It has also received funding from the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. [15]
Commentators often characterize it as Quebec's equivalent to the Fraser Institute [2] [10] [15] and a voice of fiscal conservationism in Quebec. [9] Former MEI vice president Tasha Kheiriddin placed it in the same group as the Fraser Institute as well as the National Citizens Coalition, Frontier Centre for Public Policy, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, and the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies. [2] An analysis of social networks on Twitter by the Institute for Research on Public Policy found that MEI is one of the Canadian think tanks with the highest "right-wing" scores, along with the Manning Centre, the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, the C.D. Howe Institute, the Canada West Foundation, and the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies. [16]
Another former MEI vice president, Bernier stated the institute influenced him as an Industry Minister by giving him the experience to learn about public policies and how to implement good public policies. [4]
Their reasoning was also questioned on several occasions by the Institut de recherche et d'informations socio-économiques,. [17] [18] [19] Ethan Cox, a political organizer and writer, has said that "MEI is part of the same problem they have with money in the U.S. political process: corporate interests who can outspend critics have too much influence in our political process." [10]
The Parti Québécois is a sovereignist and social democratic provincial political party in Quebec, Canada. The PQ advocates national sovereignty for Quebec involving independence of the province of Quebec from Canada and establishing a sovereign state. The PQ has also promoted the possibility of maintaining a loose political and economic sovereignty-association between Quebec and Canada. The party traditionally has support from the labour movement; however, unlike most other social democratic parties, its ties with organized labour are informal. Members and supporters of the PQ are nicknamed péquistes, a French word derived from the pronunciation of the party's initials.
The Quiet Revolution refers to a significant period of socio-political and socio-cultural transformation in French Canada, particularly in Quebec, following the election of 1960. This period was marked by the secularization of the government, the establishment of a state-administered welfare state known as the état-providence, a shift in political alignment toward federalist and sovereigntist factions, and the eventual election of a pro-sovereignty provincial government in the 1976 election. While the Quiet Revolution is often associated with the efforts of the Liberal Party of Quebec's government led by Jean Lesage and, to some extent, Robert Bourassa, its profound impact has influenced the policies of most provincial governments since the early 1960s.
Mario Dumont is a Canadian television personality and former politician in Quebec, Canada. He was a Member of the National Assembly of Quebec (MNA), and the leader of the Action démocratique du Québec (ADQ), from 1994 to 2009. After the 2007 Quebec election, Dumont obtained the post of Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly.
The Fraser Institute is a libertarian-conservative Canadian public policy think tank and registered charity. It is headquartered in Vancouver, with additional offices in Calgary, Toronto, and Montreal. It has links to think tanks worldwide through the Economic Freedom Network and is a member of the free-market Atlas Network.
Le Téléjournal is the umbrella title used for the television newscasts aired on the Ici Radio-Canada Télé broadcast network. Le Téléjournal has been used since 1954 as the title of the network's flagship newscast, originating from Montreal, Quebec. It is considered the French language equivalent of the English-language CBC's The National.
Atlas Network, formerly known as Atlas Economic Research Foundation, is a non-governmental 501(c)(3) organization based in the United States that provides training, networking, and grants for libertarian, free-market, and conservative groups around the world.
The Progressive Conservative Youth Federation (PCYF) was the constitutionally enshrined youth body of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. When the PC Party and the Canadian Alliance merged in 2004, a formalized youth group was rejected by delegates at the founding convention of the Conservative Party in Montréal by a vote of 51% to 49%. As a result of that vote, PCYF ceased to exist.
Maxime Bernier is a Canadian politician who is the founder and leader of the People's Party of Canada (PPC). Formerly a member of the Conservative Party, Bernier left the caucus in 2018 to form the PPC. He was the member of Parliament (MP) for Beauce from 2006 to 2019 and served as a Cabinet minister in the Harper government.
Tasha Kheiriddin is a Canadian public affairs commentator, consultant, lawyer, policy analyst and writer.
The Canada Development Corporation was a Canadian corporation, based in Toronto, created and partly owned by the federal government and charged with developing and maintaining Canadian-controlled companies in the private sector through a mixture of public and private investment. It was technically not a crown corporation as it was intended to generate a profit and was created with the intention that, eventually, the government would own no more than 10% of its holdings; it did not require approvals of the Governor-in-Council for its activities and did not report to parliament. Its objectives and capitalization, however, were set out by parliament and any changes to its objects decided upon by the Board of Directors had to be approved by parliament.
The Conservatoire de musique du Québec à Québec (CMQQ) is a music conservatory located in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. Founded by the Quebec government in 1944, it became the second North American music institution of higher learning to be entirely state-subsidized. The conservatoire is part of a network of 7 conservatories in Quebec, the Conservatoire de musique et d'art dramatique du Québec (CMADQ), and was the second school in the CMADQ network to be established. Orchestra conductor Wilfrid Pelletier served as the school's first director from 1944 through 1946. The current director is Jean-Fabien Schneider.
Michel Kelly-Gagnon is a Canadian lawyer and businessman born in 1971. He graduated in law from the Université de Montréal and was admitted to the Quebec Bar in 1994. He is currently the president and CEO of the Montreal Economic Institute.
Pierre Lemieux is a Canadian economist whose writings straddle economic and political theory, public choice, public finance, and public policy. He lives in Maine.
Françoys Joseph Arthur Maurice Bernier was a Canadian pianist, conductor, radio producer, arts administrator, and music educator. He served as the music director of the Montreal Festivals from 1956 to 1960 and was an active conductor and a producer for CBC Radio during the 1950s and early 1960s. He was the General Director of the Orchestre Symphonique de Québec from 1960 to 1966 and then the orchestra's Music Director from 1966 to 1968. He was also active as a teacher of conducting at a number of universities, notably serving as the first director of the Music Department at the University of Ottawa.
Germain Belzile was an economist born in Chicago, Illinois. Both his parents were from Quebec (Canada). He held a bachelor's degree in Mathematical Economics from the Université Laval and a M.Sc. in economics (macroeconomics) from the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). He did further doctoral studies in economics at UQAM. He specialized in macroeconomic theory, macroeconomic policies, money and banking, and international economics.
Nathalie Elgrably-Lévy is an economics teacher and a writer. She holds an M.Sc. in Commerce from HEC Montréal, with a specialization in applied Economics and a thesis on the federal budget deficit. Elgrably-Lévy is primarily interested by the evaluation of public policy.
Populism in Canada has been part of the country's political culture through its history and across the political spectrum. Populist parties and movements have included the Canadian social credit movement which achieved electoral strengths in Western Canada and to some extent in Quebec in the early to mid 20th century, and the Reform Party of Canada which became the largest conservative party in Parliament from a base in Western Canada in the 1990s.
Adrien D. Pouliot is a Quebec lawyer, businessman and politician.
Youri Chassin is a Canadian politician, who was elected to the National Assembly of Quebec in the 2018 provincial election. He represents the electoral district of Saint-Jérôme as a member of the Coalition Avenir Québec.
Alain-G. Gagnon CC CQ CRC is a Montreal-based scholar who serves as President of the Royal Society of Canada and Vice-President of the International Association of Centers of Federal Studies. Since the 1980s, when he published his first major academic works, Gagnon has been an active participant in debates surrounding the constitutional status of Québec amid struggles for sovereignty and negotiations to reform Canada's federal system. He is a well established figure in the study of Québec and Canada and in the theorization of contested systems of national recognition.
The Montreal Economic Institute is a lone voice of classical liberal sanity in Quebec
The Koch brothers' Claude R. Lambe Foundation also funds the Montreal Economic Institute, the Fraser Institute's ideological counterpart on the east coast. ... The John Templeton Foundation ... also awarded the Montreal Economic Institute its 2004 Templeton Freedom Award Grants for Institute Excellence