{"id":21547,"date":"2013-08-08T00:01:40","date_gmt":"2013-08-08T05:01:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=21547"},"modified":"2013-08-08T07:36:49","modified_gmt":"2013-08-08T12:36:49","slug":"canadian-think-tanks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/08\/08\/canadian-think-tanks\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadian think-tanks"},"content":{"rendered":"

An interesting article in Forbes<\/em><\/a> charts the rise of Canada’s distinctive collection of think-tanks:<\/p>\n

Think Tanks in Canada have been developing policy analyses and advocating market oriented solutions for decades. Some of the oldest think tanks and advocacy groups, such as the C.D. Howe Institute<\/a>, founded in 1958, and the National Citizens Coalition<\/a>, NCC, founded in 1974, are still active. The idea for NCC developed from the success of newspaper advertorials.<\/p>\n

The first one published by Colin M. Brown in 1967 pointed out that despite not being engaged in the Vietnam War, Canada\u2019s federal government spending in the early 1960\u2019s rose at a faster rate than government spending in the U.S. Canadian civil society took notice and reacted. The Fraser Institute<\/a> was founded in Vancouver, B.C. in 1974, and its success and generosity in sharing its expertise led to a gradual but almost steady investment in think tanks across the country. Lest we forget, Canada is a big place. It is the second largest country in the world. The longest distance from east to west is 5,514 km — similar to the distance from New York City to London, or from New York City to Lima, Peru. Canada has six separate time zones and its provinces have considerable cultural and political diversity which call for a multiplicity of regional think tanks and policy efforts.<\/p>\n

The \u201c2012 Global Go To Report<\/a>\u201d devotes a section of its think tank rankings to institutes in Canada and Mexico. A growing number of Canadian free-market think tanks are appearing among the top.<\/p>\n

Fraser Institute takes the lead. It received more mentions (10) than any other Canadian think tank and ranked first in Canada and 25th in the world. It is well known for its motto: \u201cIf It Matters, Measure It.\u201d Many of its products, like the \u201cTax Freedom Day\u201d and its economic freedom indices, have been replicated across the globe. Think tanks all over the world look at Fraser\u2019s research as a guide in developing their own programs.<\/p>\n

Brian Lee Crowley, the co-author of The Canadian Century<\/em>, founded the Ottawa-based Macdonald Laurier Institute<\/a> in 2010. It ranked third in the world in the category of best young institute. As it hit the ground running with great policy products, it also managed to rank ahead of other older think tanks, including the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies (AIMS)<\/a> in Nova Scotia, founded in 1994. Crowley was also the founding president of AIMS. AIMS itself an organization that produces interesting work on market reforms in Canada\u2019s maritime provinces — a part of the country that typically prefers big government as opposed to market-oriented solutions.<\/p>\n

The Montreal Economic Institute<\/a> deserves special mention for working in one of the most challenging cultural environments. It publishes in French and English, and is the only think tank in Canada to focus its efforts entirely on Quebec. The institute was founded in 1985 but became consolidated when Michel Kelly-Gagnon, a talented intellectual entrepreneur, became its leader in 1999 and restructured the organization. Kelly-Gagnon\u2019s expertise is in high demand also outside Canada, and his team has produced tremendous materials advocating specifically for reforms to government-controlled health care.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An interesting article in Forbes charts the rise of Canada’s distinctive collection of think-tanks: Think Tanks in Canada have been developing policy analyses and advocating market oriented solutions for decades. Some of the oldest think tanks and advocacy groups, such as the C.D. Howe Institute, founded in 1958, and the National Citizens Coalition, NCC, founded […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,25,28,53],"tags":[431,704,513,290],"class_list":["post-21547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-economics","category-media","category-politics","tag-conservatism","tag-fraserinstitute","tag-research","tag-statistics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-5Bx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21547"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21548,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21547\/revisions\/21548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}