Christopher Ragan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at McGill University. He is the Chair of Canada’s Ecofiscal Commission, which launched in November 2014 with a 5-year horizon to identify policy options to improve environmental and economic performance in Canada. He is also a member of the federal finance minister’s Advisory Council on Economic Growth, which began in early 2016.

Chris Ragan is also a Research Fellow at the C.D. Howe Institute, from 2010-13 he held the Institute’s David Dodge Chair in Monetary Policy, and for many years was a member of the Monetary Policy Council. In 2009-10, he was the Clifford Clark Visiting Economist at Finance Canada; in 2004-05 he served as Special Advisor to the Governor of the Bank of Canada. In 2010-12 he was the President of the Ottawa Economics Association.

Ragan’s published research focuses mostly on the conduct of macroeconomic policy. His 2004 book, co-edited with William Watson, is called Is the Debt War Over? In 2007 he published A Canadian Priorities Agenda, co-edited with Jeremy Leonard and France St-Hilaire from the Institute for Research on Public Policy. He is the author of Economics (formerly co-authored with Richard Lipsey), which after fifteen editions is still the most widely used introductory economics textbook in Canada. Ragan also has a regular column in The Globe and Mail. Ragan teaches regularly for McKinsey & Company in its internal MBA program. He also teaches in EDHEC’s Global MBA program in France. In 2007 Ragan was awarded the Noel Fieldhouse teaching prize at McGill University.

Ragan received his B.A. (Honours) in economics in 1984 from the University of Victoria and his M.A. in economics from Queen’s University in 1985. He then moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts where he completed his Ph.D. in economics at M.I.T. in 1989. See his personal McGill website for downloads of his published research as well as his newspaper columns: https://mcgill.ca/economics/christopher-t-s-ragan

Nancy Olewiler is an economist and Professor of Public Policy in the School of Public Policy, Simon Fraser University. Prior to coming to the Economics department at SFU in 1990, she was a professor in the Economics department at Queen’s University.

Her PhD is in economics from the University of British Columbia. Nancy’s areas of research include natural resource and environmental economics and policy. She has published in academic journals, edited books, has written two widely used textbooks – The Economics of Natural Resource Use and Environmental Economics, and produced numerous reports for the Canadian federal and provincial governments on a wide range of environmental and natural resource issues, including studies on energy and climate policy, natural capital and ecosystem services, and federal tax policy. From 1990 to 1995 she was Managing Editor of Canadian Public Policy.

She is a research advisor and mentor for the Environment and Economy Program for Southeast Asia and the Latin America and Caribbean Environmental Economics Program where she helps supervise research undertaken by researchers in those regions on environmental economics and natural resource issues.  She has served on the Board of Directors for BC Hydro and TransLink.

Paul Boothe is the Managing Director for the Trillium Network for Advanced Manufacturing. He recently retired as Professor and Director of the Lawrence National Centre for Policy and Management at the Ivey Business School, Western University. His career has included university research and teaching, acting as an independent consultant to Canadian and international organizations, and serving at the deputy minister level in provincial and federal governments.

Dr. Boothe’s public sector career includes serving as the Deputy Minister of Finance and Secretary to Treasury Board for Saskatchewan (1999-2001), Associate Deputy Minister of Finance and G7 Deputy for Canada (2004-2005), Senior Associate Deputy Minister of Industry (2007-2010) and Deputy Minister of the Environment (2010-2012).

He was appointed to the faculty of the University of Alberta from 1984 to 2007.  He has authored more than 70 publications in the areas of macroeconomics, international finance, debt management and public finance. An internationally recognized scholar, he was promoted to full professor in 1991.  He founded the Institute for Public Economics in 1997.  As an independent consultant, he has worked with Canadian and international clients in the areas of monetary and fiscal policy, and public sector management.

Dr. Boothe was trained in economics at Western (Hons BA) and UBC (PhD).