Biographies

The following bios have been provided by the speakers and presenters and are available in the language(s) provided.

John Anderson is the Vice President of Research at the Canadian Councilon Social Development (CCSD). John is the former Director of Research and senior economist for the Centre for Social Justice and is the author of numerous research studies on social justice issues including The High Costs of Tax Cuts (1999). Over the last year, he oversaw the publication of an impressive number of quality studies, including reports on racism and inequality that made headlines across the country.

John is a well-known player in the social justice movement in Canada. He has worked for the Ontario Federation of Labour as co-ordinator of the Technological Adjustment Research Program (TARP) and has worked on research projects for a number of key organizations including the Canadian Labour Congress and the International Labour Organization. He has also been a university professor at McMaster University and the University of Western Ontario and has been associated as a lecturer with the Labour Studies program at McMaster University since 1989.

John did his doctoral studies at the London School of Economics in England and received his Masters at McGill University in Montreal. He is fluently bilingual and has often appeared on French and English radio and television to promote social justice issues.

Caroline Andrew is a professor of Political Science at the University of Ottawa. Her research areas include municipal social policy, urban development and the role of women in local government. Among recent publications, a co-edited volume (with Katherine Graham and Susan Phillips): Urban Affairs: Back on the Policy Agenda (McGill-Queens, 2002). Community activities include membership in the Working Group on Women’s Access to Municipal Services in Ottawa, vice-president of the City of Ottawa’s Advisory Committee on French-language Services and member of the Board of the Lower Town Community Resource Centre and Inter Pares. Caroline Andrew is currently Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ottawa.

Cindy Blackstock, a member of the Gitksan Nation, has worked in the field of child and family services for over 18 years. She was a social worker with the provincial government and for a First Nations child and family service agency before assuming her current role as Executive Director of the Caring for First Nations Children Society (FNCFCS) in British Columbia in 1998.

This national organization seeks to promote and support the work of First Nations child and family service agencies and regional organizations in Canada by providing research, professional development and networking services. A key project of the FNCFCS is the First Nations Research Site which disseminates research information to First Nations service agencies and is currently coordinating three national research projects designed to benefit First Nations communities.

Cindy was honoured to participate in numerous provincial and national research projects, including appointments to the Assembly of First Nations/Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development National Policy Review Committee as well as the First Nations Summit Action Committee for First Nations Children and Families. She is a member of the Advisory Committee on the Centre of Excellence for Child Welfare and a member of the Board of Directors for the Child Welfare League of Canada.

Louise Bouchard received a PhD in the sociology of health from the University of Montreal and a postdoctoral scholarship from INSERM-U379 in Marseilles, France. She teaches in the Department of Sociology and in the PhD program of Population Health at the University of Ottawa. Her research interests include the social impact of technological change in the development of prenatal diagnosis, predictive testing for cancers, controversial aspects of the diffusion of molecular tests in clinical practice, ethical issues surrounding the use of scarce resources in dialysis, and the impact of the "ambulatory shift" on perinatal services. She also has a deep interest in population health issues, a topic which she teaches and in which she has begun to develop research projects (e.g. minority group status and health status). She is also a member of the research committee of the Centre national de formation en santé - section Hôpital Montfort.

Sharon Chisholm is currently on special leave from her position as Executive Director of the Canadian Housing and Renewal Association (CHRA). At CHRA, she is responsible for the strategic work of the association including advocacy, research, and communications. She organized Canada’s first and second tri-country conference on housing, and she was on Canada’s delegation to UN meetings in Istanbul, Nairobi and New York. Sharon has been pressing for a national housing strategy since most social housing programs were cancelled in the mid-1990s.

Sharon began her career in the social housing field in Nova Scotia in 1975, when she joined the executive of the Cape Breton Alternate Energy Society. Later, she managed the Access Housing Services Association in Halifax until 1985. During that period, she assisted in the development of over 100 community non-profit and co-op housing projects and co-authored of the Atlantic Home Plans Survey and Selection Guide. She became Housing Director for the City of Dartmouth in 1985, instituting the City’s first major housing policy and developing its Housing Demonstration Project. In 1988, she moved to Ottawa to manage the City’s housing development division, and she was responsible for the development of over 3,000 units of social housing.

In 1994, she began her current work with CHRA. Throughout her career, Sharon has believed in the power of community and she has worked extensively across sectoral boundaries on social justice issues and on building the capacity of the community sector.

Peter Clutterbuck has worked in the voluntary human services sector at the community, provincial and national levels for almost 30 years. In 2000, Peter completed almost ten years of leadership at the executive director level with the Community Social Planning Council of Toronto. Since then, he has combined a program development role with the Social Planning Network of Ontario (SPNO) with independent consulting and research. Peter assisted the Laidlaw Foundation in developing its current Children’s Agenda Program on “Building Inclusive Cities and Communities.” He conducted a series of cross-Canada community soundings last year to co-author with Marvyn Novick a policy paper on inclusive social infrastructure for Laidlaw and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. Peter is coordinating SPNO’s Social and Economic Inclusion Initiative funded by the Population and Public Health Branch of Health Canada – Ontario Region. Called Closing the Distance, this project supports community mobilization and transformative change in five regions of Ontario using the principles of population health and a social inclusion framework.

Full professor and researcher at INRS-Urbanisation, Culture et Société, Jean-Pierre Collin as acted, since 2000 as the scientific director of Villes Régions Monde, a Québec interuniversity network on urban and regional studies. For the last years, he has completed several researches, in the field of urban studies, on metropolitan government and governance, on municipal and local institutions and innovations, on municipal management and finances and on the history of Montréal and its suburbs in a metropolitan perspective. He has published articles in journals such as Journal of Urban History, Journal of Policy History, Recherches sociographiques et Urban History Review - Revue d'histoire urbaine. He has also published La Ligue ouvrière catholique canadienne, 1938-1965 (Boréal, 1996) and La Rive-Sud de Montréal. Dynamique intermunicipale et intégration métropolitaine (1998). He is a member of the group in charge of Montréal, ville-région d’Amérique, a project to produce the first original synthesis of the history of the Montréal metropolitan region (http://montreal-ville-region@inrs-ucs.uquebec.ca).

Cameron Crawford is President of The Roeher Institute, a research and development organization focussed on issues of public policy, disability, human rights and socio-economic inclusion. The Institute has published extensively on issues of disability and labour force integration, social security, social services, health care planning and service delivery, literacy and education, issues facing children with disabilities and their families, violence/abuse, the justice system, emerging technologies and inclusive approaches to service delivery in the private sector. Cameron’s work has spanned all of these areas, and he has conducted research on contract for various federal and provincial government departments, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and a range of non-government organizations including NGOs in the disability sector and corporate clients.

Margaret Dechman is the principal investigator for the Family Mosaic Project, which is co-sponsored by the Nova Scotia Department of Community Services and Human Resources Development Canada. This 20-year longitudinal research study has followed the lives of 500 Nova Scotia families from the time their first child was born in 1978 until that child reached adulthood. The project provides a wealth of information on changing family structures, education, employment, and income patterns, as well as the intricate connections between the health and well-being of mothers and their children. In addition to managing the Family Mosaic Project, Margaret has also been involved in research and policy analysis in the areas of technological change, demographic trends, gender-based analysis, and the development of social indicators. Having worked extensively with Mount Saint Vincent University, the Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women, and the Nova Scotia Department of Community Services, Margaret has had an opportunity to examine policy-relevant issues from a number of different perspectives. She is currently pursuing her Doctoral studies at Dalhousie University.

Dominique Fleury has been a research analyst for the Income Security and Labour Market Studies of the Applied Research Branch, Human Resources Development Canada since September 2000. Her main areas of research are poverty and social exclusion, with priority on five particularly vulnerable groups, such as lone-parent families, recent immigrants, Aboriginal people, people with work limitations, and unattached individuals aged 45 to 64 living alone. Dominique obtained her Master degree in economics from the Université du Québec à Montréal in 2001.

Christa Freiler is the coordinator of the Children’s Agenda program of the Laidlaw Foundation which has adopted social inclusion as the conceptual and strategic focus of its child and family policy funding program.

Christa has experience in both the voluntary sector and government in the areas of child and family policy, poverty, anti-racism, and disability. She has held senior policy advisor, research and/or advocacy positions with: the Child Poverty Action Group, a national partner of Campaign 2000; the Social Planning Council of Toronto; Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Services; Ontario Premier’s Council on Health, Well-being and Social Justice; and the Race Relations Directorate of the Ontario Ministry of Citizenship. She began her career working with provincial and national Associations for Community Living. She has an MSW in social policy (University of Toronto), and a BA in Philosophy (University of Alberta).

Grace-Edward Galabuzi is a research associate at the Centre for Social Justice in Toronto and a doctoral candidate in Political Science at York University. He is author of a report on the economic condition of racialized groups in Canada, Canada’s Creeping Economic Apartheid: The Economic Segregation and Social Marginalization of Racialized Groups (CSJ, 2001). He has worked in the Ontario government as a senior policy analyst on justice issues, and he is a former provincial coordinator of the Alliance for Employment Equity. He has been involved in many community campaigns around social justice issues such as anti-racism, anti-poverty, community development, human rights, education reform, anti-poverty, and police reform. Galabuzi is co-founder of the Toronto African Music festival (AfroFest) and host of Africa Today, a weekly radio program on CHRY.

Nathan Gilbert has been Executive Director of the Laidlaw Foundation since 1982. He has helped transform a private family foundation into a public interest foundation, which focuses resources on innovation in the fields of improving life chances for children and youth, performing arts, ecosystem sustainability, and socially responsible investment research.

Through his work at the Foundation, Nathan has developed extensive networks in the policy, research and practice fields of children's services, welfare reform, the performing arts, community arts and contaminants in child health issues.

Nathan serves as a Director of Inter Pares, Theatre Direct Canada, Philanthropic Foundations Canada, Tamarack Institute for Community Engagement and the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts. Nathan is awaiting his first appointment to a corporate board with its commensurate fees.

Prior to this appointment, Nathan was the Executive Director of the Ontario Municipal Social Services Association. He has five children between the ages of 8 and 23.

Louise Hanvey is a research consultant specializing in issues involving children and youth. She has been working on children’s issues for over 20 years and as a consultant on children’s health and well-being for the past 11 years. Louise has been the Project Director for the Canadian Council on Social Development’s report, The Progress of Canada’s Children for the past four editions, and she was the principle author of The Health of Canada's Children: A CICH Profile, Editions 1 and 2. She also facilitated the development of Health Canada's Family-centred Maternity and Newborn Care: National Guidelines and was the principle editor of that document. Louise has a Bachelor of Nursing from the University of Manitoba and a Masters of Health Administration from the University of Ottawa. In addition to her consulting work, Louise currently works with young people at the City of Ottawa’s Sexual Health Centre.

Lori Harrop is the Vice President of Public Affairs at the Canadian Council on Social Development (CCSD). This entails providing strategic advice on media reactions, advocacy efforts and public education programs. Her responsibilities also include overseeing comprehensive publication and website programs, and organizing conferences and consultations on a broad range of issues of concern to the Council, its clientele and membership. Lori recently acted as the team leader for in organizing “A New Way of Thinking? Towards a Vision of Social Inclusion”, a highly successful conference on social inclusion held in the fall of 2001.

Lori comes to CCSD from Human Resources Development Canada where she worked for several years as manager of strategic communications, focusing on issues related to the department’s social policy agenda. She is fluently bilingual and has 20 years experience in the communications/ public relations field, primarily with the Government of Canada. A native of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Lori graduated from Carlton University’s School of Journalism in 1981 and began her communications career as an information officer with Public Works Canada.

Andrew Jackson has been Senior Economist with the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) since 1989, and he is a Research Associate with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. His areas of interest include the labour market and the quality of jobs, income distribution and poverty, macro-economic policy, tax policy, and the impacts of globalization on workers and on social democratic economic policy. He has written numerous articles for popular and academic publications, and has co-authored three books, including Falling Behind: The State of Working Canada 2000.

Andrew returned to the CLC in June 2002, after a two-year leave of absence to serve as Director of Research with the Canadian Council on Social Development. He has a B.Sc. (Econ.) from the London School of Economics and a MSc (Econ) from the University of British Columbia.

Michèle Kérisit is an associate professor at the School of Social Work at the University of Ottawa. Her research concerns the exclusion of immigrant and refugee women from a public policy and intervention perspective. With a grassroots group of women, she is currently working in a participative action research on the impact of armed conflicts on the integration of francophone immigrant and refugee women in Ontario. She has also conducted research on health issues in minority francophone communities from a feminist perspective. She is currently the director of the Women’s Studies Collection at the University of Ottawa Press.

Marcel Lauzière has been an advocate for social research for 15 years. Prior to his appointment as President of the Canadian Council on Social Development (CCSD), Mr. Lauzière was Special Advisor to the President of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the principal federal funding agency for social science research. Before this, he was Director of Government Relations and then Executive Director of the Social Science Federation of Canada, and founding Executive Director of the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada.

Mr. Lauzière is a member of the Steering Committee of the National Children’s Alliance, a member of the Executive Committee and Board of Directors of the Coalition of National Voluntary Organizations, and a member of the Board of Directors of the London-based International Council on Social Welfare. He also sits on the Voluntary Sector Forum and on the Statistics Canada Advisory Committee on Social Conditions. He has been a jury member for the Humanitarian Award of the Annual Gemini Awards.

Marcel Lauzière holds a graduate degree in Canadian History from the University of Ottawa. He lives in Gatineau, Québec, with his wife and three children.

Donna Lero is a member of the Laidlaw Foundation’s Children’s Advisory Committee and has contributed to its work on social inclusion. She is Director of Research of The Centre for Families, Work and Well-Being at the University of Guelph, and is an Associate Professor in the Department of Family Relations and Applied Nutrition, where she teaches courses in Child and Family Poverty, Issues in Child & Family Welfare, and Family-Related Social Policy.

Donna has been involved in Canadian research related to quality child care and early childhood services, and work-family issues for over 25 years. Recent child care projects have focused on predictors of child care quality in day care centres and family day care homes, and critical resources to support the effective inclusion of children with disabilities in child care centres – a joint project with Sharon Hope Irwin of SpeciaLink and Dr. Kathleen Brophy of the University of Guelph. Her recent work-family studies include research on the interface of work and family in young couples, and policy priorities for income security for self-employed women.

Donna has published a variety of research studies and book chapters on work-family challenges faced by single parents, dual-earner couples, and parents of children with special needs. She is a co-author of a paper on Social Inclusion Through Early Childhood Education and Care with Martha Friendly. Dr. Lero has served as an advisor/expert panel member on a variety of government task forces at both the federal and provincial levels and she is a frequent speaker at national and international conferences on policies and programs that support work-family integration and children’s development.

Richard Lessard is a physician specializing in community health. Since 1992, he has held the position of Director of Public Health with the Montréal Regional Health and Social Services Board. He is a member of the Collège des médecins du Québec and of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. From 1980 to 1982, he was a professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences of Université de Sherbrooke’s Faculty of Medicine, and from 1982 to 1992, he headed the Community Health Department of the Cité de la Santé de Laval. He was also Assistant Clinical Professor with Université de Montréal’s Department of Social and Preventive Medicine and McGill University’s Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics.

He has presided over the International Francophone Heart Health Network since 1991 and has been the principal investigator for the Federal-Provincial Heart Health Initiative since 1992. In 1990-91, he worked for the District Health Authority in Cambridge, England, where he studied public health practices in the British national health system. In 1996, he was a consultant for the World Bank and worked on the organization of frontline health care in Mauritius. Dr. Lessard was a member of Canada’s National Forum on Health from 1994 to 1997 and worked as a public health consultant for the Department of Health and Sustainable Development of the World Health Organization in Geneva.

Ruth Levitas is Professor of Sociology at the University of Bristol, England. She writes on contemporary politics, policy and social indicators and on utopian thought. Her recent work has been on concepts and indicators of social exclusion/inclusion. She is author of The Ideology of the New Right (ed. 1986); The Concept of Utopia (1990); Interpreting Official Statistics (ed. with Will Guy 1995); The Inclusive Society: New Labour and Social Exclusion (Macmillan 1998). She co-authored, with David Gordon et al. Poverty and Social Exclusion in Britain (Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2000). She is currently involved in an international project on utopia as method in the humanities and social sciences; a critical study of William Morris; and a continuing exploration of the idea of social inclusion.

Peter S. Li is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Saskatchewan and Chair of Economic Domain with the Prairie Centre of Excellence for Research on Immigration and Integration. His research areas include race and ethnicity, Chinese Canadians, the Chinese disapora, immigration, and multiculturalism. He has published many academic papers and books, including Race and Ethnic Relations in Canada (Oxford University Press, 1999), The Chinese in Canada (Oxford University Press, 1988, 1998), The Making of Post-War Canada (Oxford University Press, 1996), Racial Oppression in Canada (Garamond, 1988), and Ethnic Inequality in a Class Society (Thompson, 1988). His latest book is Destination Canada: Immigration Debates and Issues (Oxford University Press, 2003).

Peter has served as a consultant and advisor to various federal government departments on policies of immigration, multiculturalism, race relations and social statistics. In 1994, he co-chaired an expert panel to develop strategies on the integration of immigrants. In 2001, he received the “Living in Harmony” Recognition Award from the City of Saskatoon’s Race Relations Committee, in recognition of his academic research, publication, and policy-related work, and in 2002, he received the “Outstanding Contribution Award” from the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association.

Jean Lock Kunz is senior policy research officer with the Policy Research Initiative (PRI). Prior to joining the PRI, she was Chief of Labour Market Policy at Human Resources Development Canada. Her areas of research include immigration and race relations, labour force participation, youth, and media, and some of her published works include Unequal Access: A Canadian Profile on Racial Differences in Education, Employment and Income for the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, Immigrant Youth in Canada for the Canadian Council on Social Development, and Media and Minorities (with Augie Fleras) for Thompson Education Publishing. While at HRDC, Jean co-organized a Metropolis Conversation on the social and economic integration of recent immigrants in Canada. Prior to that, she was senior research and policy associate with the Canadian Council on Social Development. Jean obtained an MA in Sociology from the University of Toronto and a PhD from the University of Waterloo.

Rianne Mahon is Director of the Institute of Political Economy at Carleton University in Ottawa. Rianne does research on social policy in Sweden and Canada, most recently from a multi-scalar perspective (Toronto/Ontario/Canada/North America child care policy compared to Stockholm/Sweden/EU). She is the co-editor (with Sonya Michel) of a recently published report, Child Care Policy at the Crossroads: General and Welfare State Restructuring (Routledge, 2002), which compares 12 countries and two “provinces – Quebec and Flanders.

Lynn McIntyre is a Professor in the Faculty of Health Professions at Dalhousie University where she has served as Dean since 1992. Dr. McIntyre holds both a medical degree and Masters degree in Community Health and Epidemiology from the University of Toronto. She is also a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Canada in Community Medicine.

In addition to her administrative duties, Dr. McIntyre continues to be an active researcher in the area of food security, investigating children’s feeding programs and child hunger in Canada. She recently completed a large study of low-income lone mothers in Atlantic Canada, and is now investigating feast and famine cycling among food-insecure women.

Dr. McIntyre has been a member of several expert groups supporting poverty issues, including the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth, the Canadian Institute of Child Health’s Child Health Profile project, and the Canadian Council on Social Development’s Progress of Canada’s Children reports. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of the National Institute of Nutrition and a member of the Advisory Board for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Aboriginal Peoples’ Health Institute.

Allan Moscovitch is Professor of Social Administration and Social Policy in the School of Social Work at Carleton University where he has been a member of faculty for more than 25 years. He was the School’s Director between 1994 and 1999.

Professor Moscovitch’s extensive professional history includes work as Director of Community Studies for the Social Research and Demonstration Corporation, Chair of the (Ontario) Minister’s Advisory Committee on New Social Assistance Legislation; Acting Director of Planning and Review for the Social Services Department at the Regional Municipality of Ottawa Carleton; Visiting Researcher at the Centre national de recherche scientifique at Aix-en-Province, France; Visiting Professor in Social Work at the University of Sydney, Australia; Research Assistant for the Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staffs in the United Kingdom; Researcher and Policy Analyst for the federal Treasury Board Secretariat.

He is the author of many publications and an honorary life member of the Ontario Association of Social Workers. He was a founder of the Canadian Review of Social Policy/Revue canadien de politique social and was its Editorial Coordinator from 1991- 2001. He has been actively involved in a wide range of national and local community service organizations. He is currently President of the Jewish Family Services of Ottawa and a Board member of the Social Planning Council of Ottawa.

Dennis Raphael is an Associate Professor at the School of Health Policy and Management and a member of the Atkinson Faculty of Liberal and Professional Studies at York University. The most recent of his over 90 scientific publications have focused on the health effects of income inequality and poverty, the quality of life of communities and individuals, and the impact of government decisions on North Americans’ health and well-being. His research projects over the past decade have included developing a model of quality of life that has seen application with adolescents, seniors, adults, persons with HIV, and those with developmental disabilities. He was also the lead investigator in developing a process for assessing community quality of life. (Information about these projects can be found at http://www.utoronto.ca/qol.)

Other projects have included: a national study of the quality of life of Canadian seniors (www.utoronto.ca/seniors); collaboration with the North York Heart Health Network to examine the role that low income and social exclusion play in the incidence of heart disease (depts.washington.edu/eqhlth/paperA15.html and www.socialjustice.org); organizing a conference on the social determinants of health in Canada; and identifying information gaps and areas of future inquiry about the that role income and its distribution plays in Canadians’ health, for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).

Graham Riches is Director of the School of Social Work and Family Studies at the University of British Columbia. His research and social policy interests focus on hunger, food security, welfare systems and the human right to food. His publications include Food Banks and the Welfare Crisis (CCSD, 1986); Unemployment and Welfare: Social Policy and the Work of Social Work, coedited (Garamond, 1990) and First World Hunger: Food Security and Welfare Politics, edited (Macmillan, 1997). He serves on the board of the Canadian Council on Social Development, is a member of the Joint Consultative Group on Food Security (Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada) and is active in the BC food security network.

Anver Saloojee is a faculty member in the department of Politics and School of Public Administration at Ryerson Polytechnic University, where he developed a course entitled “Issues in Equity and Human Rights.” Anver has done extensive research on creating inclusive teaching and learning environments and publishes in the area of employment equity. His recent publications deal with the complex issues facing racialized minority communities in Canada, and his article “Social Inclusion, Anti-Racism and Democratic Citizenship” was part of the Laidlaw Foundation’s Social Inclusion Working Paper Series.

Anver is co-editor of a “Special Issue” of the Journal of Internation Migration and Integration, which details case studies of political participation by newcomer communities in local politics in Canada, Europe, Israel and the United States. In addition, Anver co-authored a paper on the relationship between formal political participation and civic engagement. The paper, entitled “Formal and Non-Formal Political Participation by Immigrants and Newcomers: Understanding the Linkages and Posing the Questions” will appear in a forthcoming edition of Canadian Issues.

Katherine Scott is a Senior Policy Associate with the Canadian Council on Social Development in Ottawa. She has worked with the CCSD since 1995 as a researcher and policy analyst. Her employment at the CCSD builds on past experience in government, in the university, and with other research organizations, working on issues of social and economic inclusion as they affect women, children, and families. Her publications include a study of the potential impact of welfare state restructuring on women, a study of the dynamics of poverty, and articles on gender and citizenship rights. At the CCSD, she has worked as the Project Director and Principal Author of the Council’s publication series, The Progress of Canada’s Children in 1996 and 1997, and more recently wrote The Fact Book on Poverty 2000 with David Ross and Peter Smith. In 2002, she was the co-author of a study on social inclusion, employment and children, entitled Does Work Include Children? She is currently working on a book on funding for the voluntary sector in Canada. She holds degrees in political science from Queen’s University and York University.

Richard Shillington has post-graduate degrees in statistics from the University of Waterloo. He has been engaged in the quantitative analysis of health, social and economic policy for the past 30 years. His research has covered several policy fields: health manpower planning; program evaluation; income security; poverty; tax policy; and human rights. He has worked for several provincial and federal departments as well as commissions studying the economy, unemployment insurance, human rights and tax policy. He appears regularly before committees of the House of Commons and the Senate. He also provides commentaries regularly for television, radio and newspapers on issues of taxation, human rights and social policy. Internationally, Dr. Shillington has been doing work on social indicators for the Social Policy Development Centre in Pakistan and on monitoring human rights for the South Africa Human Rights Commission.

Pat Spadafora holds an MA in Social Work from Wilfrid Laurier University and has almost 30 years experience in social work and social work education. Shortly after joining Sheridan in 1992, Pat assumed the coordinator’s role in the Social Service Worker Program. In response to the demographic shift taking place in society, Pat subsequently worked with others to develop a gerontology specialization in a new social service program. From this early work there emerged the vision of an elder research centre that would build on Sheridan’s unique program strengths and conduct applied research from a psychosocial perspective. Under Pat’s leadership, the concept of the Sheridan Elder Research Centre (SERC) has evolved from a vision in 1999 to an innovative facility that will open its doors in September 2003.

Ms. Spadafora is active on a variety of local, provincial and international organizations. She was recently elected to the Board of the International Federation on Ageing (IFA) and is participating on the United Nations NGO Committee on Ageing. She is a Board member of the Ontario Psychogeriatric Association, the Ontario Network for the Prevention of Elder Abuse, and a member of numerous committees devoted to aging issues.

Jim Stanford is an Economist in the Research Department of the Canadian Auto Workers, Canada’s largest private-sector trade union. He received his PhD in Economics in 1995 from the New School for Social Research in New York, specializing in international trade, macroeconomics, and the economic impact of labour and social institutions. Prior to that, he received a M.Phil. in Economics from Cambridge University, U.K. (1986) and a B.A. Hons. in Economics from the University of Calgary (1984).

Stanford’s research on a wide range of economic topics has been published in numerous academic and popular outlets. He is the author of Paper Boom, published in 1999 by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and James Lorimer & Company. He is regularly quoted in the print and electronic media, and writes regular columns for the Globe and Mail and This Magazine. Jim Stanford lives in Toronto with his partner and two daughters.

Harvey Stevens is a senior policy analyst with the Policy and Planning Branch of the Department of Family Services and Housing in Manitoba. He has been with the branch for 12 years and is currently involved in evaluating the effectiveness of employment training programs for social assistance recipients and modeling the costs and impacts of changes to several income-tested programs provided by the Department. His work also involves designing and analyzing custom tabulations of the Census data to understand the characteristics of at-risk populations in Manitoba. He was previously employed with the Social Planning Council of Winnipeg and the Manitoba Guaranteed Annual Income Experiment. He has a Masters degree in sociology from the University of Toronto.

Dr. Leah F. Vosko holds a Canada Research Chair in the School of Social Sciences (Political Science), Atkinson Faculty of Liberal and Professional Studies at York University. She is the author of Temporary Work: The Gendered Rise of a Precarious Employment Relationship (University of Toronto Press, 2000); co-editor (with Wallace Clement) of Changing Canada: Political Economy as Transformation (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003); co-editor (with Jim Stanford) of Challenging the Market: The Struggle to Regulate Work and Income (McGill-Queen’s University Press, forthcoming); co-author (with Judy Fudge and Eric Tucker) of The Legal Concept of Employment: Marginalizing Workers (The Law Commission of Canada, 2003), as well as articles on gender and work, free trade, comparative labour and social policy and international labour market regulation.

Vosko is the Principal Investigator of a SSHRC-funded Community University Research Alliance on Contingent Work, the Principal Investigator of the Gender and Work Data-Base project (supported by the Canadian Foundation for Innovation and the Ontario Innovation Trust), the Principal Investigator of “Rethinking Feminization,” a project examining changing employment relationships at a global level, and a co-investigator on a SSHRC project on workers and social cohesion.

Jean-Pierre Voyer has been Executive Director of the Policy Research Initiative since July 2002. Mr. Voyer started his career as an economist with the Department of Finance in Ottawa. He subsequently held positions with the National Union of Government Employees, the Regional and Economic Development Secretariat of the Privy Council Office and the Economic Council of Canada, where he directed research projects relating to labour market and fiscal federalism issues. He joined Employment and Immigration in 1992 as a special adviser on income security policy and became Director General of the Applied Research Branch at Human Resources Development Canada shortly thereafter. Just before joining the PRI, he was Deputy Executive Director at the Social Research and Demonstration Corporation (SRDC), a non-profit organization devoted to social policy research and social experimentation. Mr. Voyer represented Canada on numerous occasions at the OECD and at other international meetings. He was Chairman of the OECD Education, Labour and Social Affairs Committee from 1998 to 2000. He currently sits on several research advisory committees. Mr. Voyer holds a Masters degree in Economics from Queen’s University and an undergraduate degree in Economics from Université de Montréal.

For more information about the conference, contact:
 
Sarah Zgraggen
The Willow Group
Tel: (613) 722-8796;
Fax: (613) 729-6206;
e-mail: szgraggen@thewillowgroup.com