Laxer 

I am the founding Director and former head of Parkland Institute at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Parkland is a non-corporate research institute that does public policy research to serve the public interest. When the Progressive Conservatives ruled Alberta under Ralph Klein, the Globe and Mail called Parkland Alberta’s ‘unofficial opposition’. Parkland’s mission has been to change the political culture of Alberta.

I am a Political Economist and professor emeritus at the University of Alberta, and the author of After the Sands: Energy and Ecological Security for Canadians (Sept 2015) Douglas & McIntyre. I am also author of Open for Business: The Roots of Foreign Ownership in Canada (Oxford University Press), which received the
John Porter Award for best book written about Canada, and editor or co-editor of four other books. I have published over 50 journal articles, refereed book chapters and refereed reports.

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I was the Principal Investigator of a $1.9 million research project: Neoliberal Globalism and its Challengers: Reclaiming the Commons in the Semi-periphery (2000-2006).

I am a socially-engaged, public intellectual. My op eds have been published in the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, the Edmonton Journal, the Calgary Herald, the Montreal Gazette, the Vancouver Sun, the Province (Vancouver), the Winnipeg Free Press, the Victoria Times Colonist, the Hill Times, the Saint John Chronicle Herald, the St. John’s Telegram, Canadian Dimension, and other publications. I have been interviewed a number of times on venues such as the CBC’s The Current, As it Happens, and the House, and served on the board of the Council of Canadians from 2004 to 2009.