Our People

Peter Holle is the founding President of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, an award-winning western Canadian-based public policy think tank. Since its founding in 1997, Frontier has brought a distinctive and influential Prairie voice to regional and national debates over public policy in areas such as core public sector reform, housing, poverty, aboriginals, consumer-focused health care performance, equalization, rural policy and much more. Of the nearly 100 recognized think tanks in Canada, Frontier is one of only 5 to make the 2008 global “Go-To Think Tanks” list published by the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program of the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia.

Mr. Holle has worked extensively with public sector reform and has provided advisory services to various governments across Canada and the United States. His publications have appeared in various newspapers and journals including dozens of newspapers, the National Post and the Wall Street Journal. He has a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He is a member of various organizations including the Mont Pelerin Society, an international organization of classical liberals.

David is a long-time supporter of the Centre’s mission. He is passionate in his role about inviting and engaging a strong national community in support of the mission of the Frontier. He believes strongly in the importance of good Public Policy for the benefit of the lives of all Canadians.

He has served in a variety of senior leadership roles within industry, government, First Nations, and education. David studied at Waterloo, Ryerson, Toronto, and undertook his Masters in Public Policy at Queen’s University.

Rodney Clifton is an editor of Frontier’s various publications.   He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba and received his B.Ed and M.Ed. from the University of Alberta, his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto, and his Fil. Dr. from the University of Stockholm. In addition, he has been awarded a Spencer Fellowship from the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement, an Rh. Award from the University of Manitoba, an R.W.B. Jackson Research Award from the Canadian Educational Researchers’ Association, and both an Edward Sheffield and a Distinguished Research Awards from the Canadian Society for the Study of Higher Education. He has written for numerous newspapers and journals, including the Canadian Journal of Education, Policy Options, Sociology of Education, the National Post, and the Winnipeg Free Press. His books include Socioeconomic Status, Attitudes, and Educational Performances: A Comparison of Students in England and New Zealand, Authority in Classrooms, Crosscurrents: Contemporary Canadian Educational Issues, and Recent Social Trends in Canada, 1960-2000. His most recent book, What’s Wrong With Our Schools and How We Can Fix Them, was published in 2010 and was written with Michael Zwaagstra and John Long.

Ian Madsen, as an investment and financial analyst based in Surrey, BC, has extensive experience in portfolio and financial analysis.

Brian Dale Giesbrecht received his education at United College and The University of Manitoba, where he obtained his LLB in 1972. He worked with Walsh, Micay, and Co., and then joined Legal Aid Manitoba in 1975 to become Senior Attorney and the first Area Director for western Manitoba in Brandon.

Appointed to The Provincial Court (Family Division) in 1976, he heard child welfare cases and general family matters until he transferred to the Criminal Division in 1989. During his career, he served on the National Family Court Committee and various provincial court committees. He was an Associate Chief Judge from 1991 to 2005, and he became Acting Chief Judge in 1993. Among the notable cases, he heard was the Lester Desjarlais Inquiry. His report strongly criticized the government’s decision to devolve child welfare responsibilities to racially-based child-care agencies. Following his retirement from the Bench in 2007, Mr. Giesbrecht has written extensively for various publications. His main theme has been the need to abolish The Indian Act and the separate systems of government that exist in Canada.

Philip Carl Salzman received his B.A from Antioch College, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, and he served as Professor of Anthropology at McGill University from 1968 to 2018.

Wendell Cox is a Senior Fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy with expertise in housing affordability and municipal policy.

In addition, Wendell is Principal of Demographia, an international consultancy based in St. Louis, Missouri specializing in regional and municipal housing policy and related planning issues. The leading global authority on housing affordability and municipal policy, Wendell is co-author of the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Index, which receives more than 1.3 million unique downloads each year. A former member of the Los Angeles Transportation Commission and Amtrak Reform Council, Wendell has consulted extensively on urban planning and transportation issues. He is the author of Toward More Prosperous Cities, a framing essay on the fundamental objectives of cities.

Susan Martinuk is a Vancouver-based Research and Communications Specialist who has been a featured columnist in Canadian newspapers for over 20 years. She has published over 1500 OpEd columns, articles, and reports on topics related to healthcare, medical technology, bioethics, and public policy. As a medical researcher, she and her colleagues achieved a world-first medical breakthrough when they were the first to visualize and record human ovulation.

Dr Marco Navarro-Génie received his education at the CEGEP de Saint-Laurent and Concordia University in Montreal, and at the University of Calgary, where he earned his doctorate. He taught at Mount Royal University, Saint Mary’s University, the University of Calgary, SAIT and Concordia University between 1993 and 2013. He is a senior fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and the President of the Haultain Research Institute, a prairie-focused public policy institute.

He is the former executive vice president at the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms and a former resident of Civitas. He served as the fourth president of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and as vice president of research at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy after his time in academe. He is a former board director of the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development. Navarro-Génie writes and comments regularly on local and national media outlets about Alberta and Canadian public policy. His academic work focuses on radical revolutionary movements and cultural and political identity.

Kenneth P. Green, D.Env. promotes more effective, more efficient, more affordable, and especially, more freedom-friendly Environment, Health, and Safety (EHS) policies across North America.
Ken has an extensive publication list of research studies, essays, opinion columns, curricular materials, and more. He has appeared often in most forms of media across North America, and he has testified before subcommittees of the US House, US Senate, and the Canadian House of Commons and Senate.

Over his 25 years in the policy world, Ken has been privileged to work with a number of freedom-friendly institutions in the United States and Canada, including the Reason Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, the Pacific Research Institute; the Frontier Center for Public Policy and the Fraser Institute. Ken is currently a Senior Fellow of the Frontier Center for Public Policy, studying the corruption of risk assessment that has badly harmed North American society, and what can be done to fix it.

From 1985-89, Leighton attended Augustana University in Camrose before transferring to the University of Alberta to complete his B.A. (Distinction) with dual majors in English Literature & History. He was awarded an essay prize in Ethics in 1988 and received the Louise McKinney Scholarship, awarded to Alberta students with the top 2% of GPA in the Province. Leighton was awarded the prestigious Legal Studies For Aboriginal People Scholarship from 1989-92, which is a national prize presented to only 10 students each year. He received early acceptance to the University of Alberta Faculty of Law in 1988 and graduated in 1992. Leighton also pursued post-graduate degrees in Business Administration (2017) and his Ph.D. (Philosophy).

Leighton began his legal career with the Federal Department of Justice, where he completed his Articles of Clerkship in 1993 before taking a hiatus to play minor league pro hockey with The Daytona Beach Sun Devils. In 1995, Leighton resumed the full-time practice of law. In 2005, Leighton founded his current practice. Leighton was admitted to the Law Society of Saskatchewan in 2004 and to the Law Society of British Columbia in 2014. Leighton has conducted hundreds of trials before Alberta Courts, and has for many years been considered one of the top criminal trial lawyers in Alberta. he has served as mentor or principal to eight articling students, two of whom went on to become Partners in GWSLLP. Leighton is also a Qualified Mediator and Arbitrator and is a member of the ADR Institute of Canada. He served as an Adjudicator in Law Society Disciplinary Hearings from 2015-2020. Leighton was made Queen’s Counsel in 2010 and was then the youngest lawyer in Alberta to hold that prestigious designation. He was the recipient of the 2013 Stars of Alberta Volunteer Award, the 2015 Legal Aid Society Access to Justice Award, and the 2019 Alberta Civil Trial Lawyers Gary J. Bigg Justice & Humanitarian Award.

Leighton was born in Regina Saskatchewan and grew up in the Kensington community of north Edmonton. Leighton is a status Indian whose Great Grandfather was once the Hereditary Chief of the Carry The Kettle or Jack Band at Sintaluta, SK. Leighton’s grandmother and great aunt were both survivors of the notorious Brandon Indian Residential School. Leighton’s father is a Treaty Indian who spent over two decades helping indigenous youth transition out of urban gangs and was the founder of The Spiritkeeper Youth Society. Leighton excelled in sports and academics, graduating with honours from Queen Elizabeth Composite High School in 1985, where he scored the highest mark in the Province on the Social Studies departmental final examination and was awarded the Alexander Rutherford Scholarship. He also played Bantam and Midget AAA hockey with the Canadian Athletic Club.

Leighton was heavily involved in the original IRS Class Action from 2004-2016 and represented hundreds of claimants in the ADR process that was part of the settlement which culminated in the Truth & Reconciliation Commission Report. He and his wife, Jennifer, are the proud parents of two sons who attend Rink Hockey Academy in Kelowna, B.C. Their family is also a proud owner and supporter of the Drayton Valley Thunder Junior A Hockey Club.

Gerry Bowler grew up in Saskatoon and earned his first two academic degrees from the University of Saskatchewan.

He received his Ph.D. in History from King’s College, London with a dissertation on Protestant political theory of the Tudor period. He is a historian with eclectic interests. His writings range from academic texts on sixteenth-century Europe to the connection between Aristotle and professional wrestling. He is the only historian whose work is included in both The Encyclopedia of Popular Culture and The Encyclopedia of the Renaissance. He was the founder of The Centre for the Study of Christianity and Popular Culture at Calgary’s Canadian Nazarene College and taught for 25 years at the University of Manitoba. Bowler is the editor of Music from Within: A Biography of Sophie Eckhardt-Gramatté (University of Manitoba Press, 1985) and The World’s Greatest Christmas Stories (Theodosian Press, 2016); and the author of Europe in the Sixteenth Century, second edition, (Longman, 1989), The World Encyclopedia of Christmas (McClelland and Stewart, 2000), God and The Simpsons: The Spirituality of Springfield, (Dare: 2001), Santa Claus: A Biography (McClelland and Stewart, 2005), Christmas in the Crosshairs: Two Thousand Years of Denouncing and Defending the World’s Most Celebrated Holiday, (Oxford University Press: 2016) and The Kindly Curmudgeon (Theodosian Press, 2016).

David MacKinnon, a native of Prince Edward Island, was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree (honours economics) from Dalhousie University and an MBA from York University.

He was awarded a Centennial Fellowship by the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and York University to study at York, Harvard, and Oxford Universities as well as the European Institute of Business Studies. Mr. MacKinnon served as Director, Planning and Economics and Executive Director, Development Strategy in the Nova Scotia Department of Economic Development from 1976 to 1981. He later served in several senior capacities in the Ontario Public Service, the Bank of Montreal, and as CEO of the Ontario Hospital Association from 1996 to 2003. Mr. MacKinnon is a Public Member of the Council of the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons and is the Chair of its Finance Committee and a member of its Executive, Complaints, and Outreach committees. He serves on several Boards of Directors, including the West Park Health Centre. He recently finished his five-year term on the Standards Council of Canada and was subsequently elected to the board of the Canadian Standards Association. He has advised the Ontario Chamber of Commerce and other Ontario organizations on fiscal federalism issues particularly on the impact of regional subsidies on recipient and source provinces.

Frances Widdowson is a Senior Fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and Associate Professor in the Department in the Department of Economics, Justice, and Policy Studies at Mount Royal University. Frances Widdowson received an Honours B.A. and M.A. in political science at the University of Victoria, and a Ph.D. in political science from York University.

She has taught at a number of universities in Ontario and the Maritimes and worked for five years as a policy analyst for the Government of the Northwest Territories. Frances uses a political economy perspective in her research on aboriginal and environmental policy, as well as the politics of religion. Her most recent publication (co-written with Albert Howard), Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry: The Deception Behind Indigenous Cultural Preservation, was short-listed for the Donner Prize. She is currently working on another book (also with Albert Howard) on the social effects of religion.

Frank Atkins recently retired as Associate Professor of Economics from the University of Calgary.

Dr. Patrick Moore is a Senior Fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy with expertise in energy, ecology, and prosperity.

Roland Renner, Telecom Policy and Regulation, has worked in telecommunications, broadcasting, and Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS).

He has participated in the transition of telecommunications and broadcasting from monopoly to competitive policy and regulatory environments and has been involved in numerous regulatory proceedings. He held management positions at Bell Canada and Telesat Canada. As a consultant he worked with PwC Consulting and Nordicity Group, he advised clients on new market opportunities in a changing regulatory climate. He has worked for both public and private sector clients in Canada, Germany, Bahamas, Trinidad & Tobago, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan.

Randy Boldt is an experienced immigration practitioner and licensed immigration consultant.

Ray McGinnis is a graduate of the Centre for Christian Studies with a B.A. from the University of Toronto, McGinnis worked as an educator in the United Church of Canada for 18 years. For two decades he taught journal writing, poetry and memoir at writing workshops at churches, health care settings, grief support groups, professional development events and retreats across North America. During the Freedom Convoy, he began to write commentaries about the government and media depiction of the protests and the invocation of the Emergencies Act. His forthcoming book discusses these protests, the public inquiry and its report. Over the past few years, Ray has been interviewed by over 150 media outlets across North America and Europe. He is the author of Unanswered Questions: What the September Eleventh Families Asked and the 9/11 Commission Ignored (2021) and Writing the Sacred: A Psalm-inspired Path to Appreciating and Writing Sacred Poetry (2005).

Larry Mitchell, Senior Fellow is a New Zealander though a Canadian by birth. He has many years active experience of commerce, chartered accounting and since the mid-nineties an immersion in local government finance and policy practice. Currently Larry is the principal of CPR Consultants a boutique Public Sector Finance and Policy advisory based in Auckland, New Zealand. His cprlifesaver-app uses data analytics to support local government performance assessment and improvement processes. Larry graduated B Com, (Auckland University) in 1967. He served as a pilot in the RNZAF before taking up public accountancy practice. Following over twenty years experience as a partner in Coopers and Lybrand’s Auckland office in 1996 he graduated Master of Public Policy (Victoria University) majoring in public sector finance. He operates his own international local government consultancy business from Puhoi, 40 km north of Auckland, New Zealand.

William Brooks is an opinion columnist for The Epoch Times and a Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. Bill earned an Honours BA in History at Loyola College, University of Montreal, as well as a B.Ed and M.Ed in the Teaching of History from McGill University. He taught in Quebec public high schools before joining Lower Canada College where he spent 25 years teaching history, economics and political science. At LCC, he was Head of the Social Sciences Department and Director of the school’s Pre-university Program. 

Elizabeth Nickson is a Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. She is an accomplished communicator, journalist, author and novelist. She was European Bureau Chief of Life Magazine in the late 80’s and early 90’s. Prior to her appointment at Life, she was a reporter at the London bureau of Time Magazine. As well, Nickson has written for The Sunday Times Magazine, The Guardian, The Observer, The Independent, The Sunday Telegraph, The Spectator (UK), Saturday Night, The Globe and Mail, The National Post, and Harper’s Magazine. Nickson’s latest book Eco-Fascists, How Radical Conservationists are Destroying Our Natural Heritage (Harper Collins, 2012), chronicles her experience with subdividing her 30-acre forest on Salt Spring Island in half and examines the excesses of the conservation movement.

Michel Kelly-Gagnon is the Founding President of the Montreal Economic Institute and a Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. Michel was one of the cofounders of the Amis de la Liberté (Friends of Liberty) in the mid-1990s, and helped relaunch the MEI as of 1997. After having been head of the MEI from 1999 to 2006, Michel was president of the Quebec Employers Council from March 2006 to December 2008, and came back at the helm of the MEI from January 2009 to April 2023. Early in his career, he practised law and then became an entrepreneur in the field of specialized business training. He served on the executive committee of the board of directors of the Quebec Workers Compensation Board (CSST) from 2006 to 2009. He was one of six Quebecers honoured in Canada’s Top 40 Under 40™ 2008 awards. The winners were chosen from among 1,100 nominees.

Over the years, he has served on several boards of directors, including that of the Canada Foundation for Innovation, which disburses several hundred million dollars a year in order to finance Canada’s scientific research infrastructure. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Atlas Network and a Trustee of The John Dobson Foundation, which supports the teaching of entrepreneurial and free enterprise thinking to the general public. Michel has been Founding President of the MEI since April 2023.

Hymie Rubenstein is a retired Professor of Anthropology at the University of Manitoba, where he taught and conducted research between 1973 and 2004. He was born in Toronto and is a triple-degree holder from the University of Toronto (B.A., M.A., and Ph.D.). His doctoral research took him to the small Eastern Caribbean country of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, where he has conducted ethnographic fieldwork ever since. This research resulted in two books, dozens of journal articles, and over 150 newspaper and Internet opinion pieces on such topics as peasant family life, community organization, labour migration, small farming, illegal drugs, and tourism. Rubenstein has also written many public policy articles on such topics as academic accountability, student performance, pay equity, and unionization.

Since 2015, he has been engaged mainly in writing opinion pieces and long-form essays about Canada’s Aboriginal peoples. He is also the publisher and editor of  the REAL Indigenous Issues Newsletter, the premier site for contrarian views about Indigenous issues, especially the operation and legacy of the country’s Indian Residential Schools. All his previously published Aboriginal works are reposted in this newsletter along with hundreds of articles from dozens of other writers.

Joseph Quesnel is a research associate at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. He received a BA honours in political science and history from McGill University and completed a Master of Journalism degree at Carleton University. Quesnel has over 15 years of experience in print journalism including over three years as a lead staff writer at the Drum/First Perspective, a national Aboriginal publication.

For almost 10 years, Quesnel was a policy analyst at the Frontier Centre where he wrote widely on Indigenous, property rights, and water market issues. He was the lead researcher for the Frontier Centre’s flagship Aboriginal Governance Index and he completed an extensive study of the B.C. Nisga’a Nation. Quesnel’s work has been featured in numerous Canadian radio and newspapers outlets. He has been called to provide expert testimony before the Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples and the House’s Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development. Joseph also served as a program manager at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, overseeing their Indigenous resource economy project.

David Beito is an associate professor of history at the University of Alabama. Much of his research has focused on the history of the non-governmental provision of public services.

He wrote Taxpayers in Revolt: Tax Resistance during the Great Depression (1989), From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fratermal Societies and Social Services, 1890-1967 (2000), and edited The Voluntary City: Choice Community, and Civil Society (2002). He has also published articles in the Journal of Urban History, Critical Review, the Journal of Policy History, the Journal of Interdisciplinary History, and the Journal of Southern History. He is currently writing (with his co-author Professor Linda Royster Beito of Stillman College), a biography of Dr. T.R.M. Howard, a black civil rights pioneer, entrepreneur, and mutual aid leader. He was recently appointed Chairman of the Alabama State Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He contributes to the Liberty and Power Group Blog at the History News Network (http://hnn.us/blogs/4.html). Professor Beito, a native of Minneapolis, Minnesota, has a Ph.D. in history from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Sir Roger Douglas was Finance Minister in New Zealand’s Labour Government from 1984 to 1988.

Johan Hjertqvist is the founder and president of the Health Consumer Powerhouse based in Stockholm, the European do-tank for better healthcare by consumer information and knowledge.

E.S. Savas is a Presidential Professor at Baruch College, City University of New York.

Graham Lane is a retired CA and has had a multifaceted career spanning almost 50 years in the public and private sectors of seven provinces as a Senior Executive and Consultant.

Wayne Anderson was born in Winnipeg and graduated from the University of Manitoba in 1963 with a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture, an appropriate degree: after he earned his MBA from York University in 1968 he became actively involved in his family’s cattle operation.

Peter Holle is the founding President of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, an award-winning western Canadian-based public policy think tank.

Cheryl Simpson is a Chartered Professional Accountant with a Bachelor of Applied Business Administration.

Ivan is a partner at the Winnipeg law firm of Gange Collins Holloway and specializes in construction law, construction litigation and commercial litigation.

John Heimbecker has been a Vice President at Parrish & Heimbecker since 1999. He graduated from MacMaster University with a Bachelor of Commerce Degree (Finance) in 1987.

Mr Kalmacoff is President and CEO of Rockmount Financial Corporation, a Calgary-based company that manages investments, develops real estate, and has interests in downstream cleantech. Its subsidiary, Rockmount Trust Company has a business plan directed at mortgage banking services for builders and developers.

Clay Dowling is President and Chief Executive Officer of Ghost Transportation Services. Prior to forming Ghost Transportation Services in 1987, Mr. Dowling spent 14 years in the transportation industry in a variety of roles from Professional Transport Operator to Regional Management.

Mr. Muys is a partner with the firm and has been with D’Arcy & Deacon since 2002. He practices in a broad range of civil litigation cases and has significant experience in creditors and debtor law, bankruptcy and insolvency law, construction law, insurance law and employment law. He has appeared in all levels of court in Manitoba and the Federal Court of Canada as well as before various boards and tribunals. Mr. Muys also has an active real estate practice and achieved the highest standing in Real Estate Transactions at the University of Manitoba Law School.

Chris is Director and co-founder of Enhanced Optimization Solutions Inc. (“EOSinc”) a private energy technology company with proven proprietary production enhancement and emission reduction processes. From 2015 to 2021 he was the President, CEO and Director of the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association a leading and respected advocate for the oil and gas industry.

As CEO and director of Connacher oil and Gas Ltd from 2013 to 2015, he headed a $1.5 billion restructuring of the oil sands company while growing production. From 2001 to 2013 Chris was a key executive of Petrobank Energy and Resources fulfilling key roles in his tenure as Senior Vice President and COO and CFO from 2004 to 2007. Petrobank operated conventional oil and gas business units in Canada and Colombia as well as Canadian oil sands and became a leading energy company on the TSX.

Other positions include Senior Client Partner with Korn Ferry where he conducted senior executive retain search in domestic and international oil and gas, technology and financial sectors; Co-Founder, President and COO Of Talon Resources an Ecuadorian and Colombia mid-stream project development operation in conjunction with PacAlta Resources; Senior Vice President and COO of Castle Energy Corporation’s Canadian crude marketing and US exploration, natural gas production and pipelines.

Chris began his career, after graduating from the University of Toronto in earth sciences with Shell Canada Ltd. from 1978 to 1993. He moved with increasing responsibility from exploration, economics, corporate planning, oil sands development and operations and natural gas marketing, culminating in the role of Director Liquids Business Center. In this role he was responsible for crude oil and liquid natural gas marketing and business development.

Chris has extensive board of director experience having served on 13 public and private boards in various capacities including Chairman.

Nick Beyak is a Canadian entrepreneur and president of the Beyak Automotive Group. After attaining his Bachelor of Business Administration, he began working alongside his father to understand and operate the family auto dealership. At a very young age Nick purchased the business and has since expanded by acquiring several other dealerships within Northwestern Ontario.

Nick has dedicated himself to creating a positive workplace that allows his staff to thrive and prosper as a result of their dedication and loyalty. The Beyak Automotive Group and its affiliated companies regularly re-invest in the communities that they do business in by providing financial support to local organizations and community projects. Nick takes great pride in the ability to make a difference for children and families in the area by supporting activities and events that will enhance their personal lives.

As an entrepreneur, Nick recognizes the need for good stewardship and wise management in all aspects of society. He believes this can be achieved by supporting and encouraging good governance while at the same time holding leaders accountable. Throughout his career, Nick has helped provide leadership and oversight by actively volunteering in various community, professional, and municipal organizations.