Maxime Bernier has served as the Vice-President of Corporate Affairs and Communications for the Standard Life Assurance Company of Canada. Prior to this, he was Director of Corporate and International Relations for the Quebec Securities Commission from February 1998 to January 2000, and Legislative Advisor to the Deputy Premier of Quebec from 1996 to 1998. Mr. Bernier joined the Quebec Bar in 1990 and is the author of the book Pour un taux d’imposition unique.
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Sylvain Bernier is a doctoral candidate and a lecturer at the École nationale d’administration publique (ÉNAP). He is also secretary of the Société québécoise d’évaluation de programme (SQÉP) and senior editor of the Bulletin de la SQÉP. He received his undergraduate degree in Political Science and Economics at Bishop’s University in 2000 and his Master’s in Program Evaluation from the ÉNAP in 2001. He is author of Le choix de l’école pour tous: Un projet de bons d’étude adapté au Québec (A study on school vouchers, in French with English Executive summary). He has also worked on the Report Card on Quebec’s Secondary Schools since 2001. His research interests focus mainly on public choice theories, analysis of education policies and statistical program evaluation methods.

Marcel Dutil is Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Groupe Canam Inc., which specializes in the design, manufacture and marketing of construction products and solutions in Canada, the United States, and elsewhere in the world. Mr. Dutil has been awarded honorary doctorates from the Université du Québec in Montréal, the Université de Montréal, and the Université de Sherbrooke. He is a Member of the Order of Canada and a Knight of the Ordre national du Québec.

Robert Gagné is head of the Institute of Applied Economics at HEC Montréal. He is a specialist in applied microeconomics and econometrics. His areas of research mostly involve analysis of technical progress and productivity growth, insurance fraud, and tax policy. He is a research fellow at the CIRANO and is also the author of a number of articles published in some of the profession’s top scientific journals, in particular the Journal of Econometrics and the Journal of Business and Economic Statistics. He has served as an adviser in several matters related to transport policy in Quebec and has been called as an expert witness in cases concerning the regulation of energy markets in Quebec. He recently co-chaired the consultative committee on fiscal imbalance of the Council of the Federation.
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Ian Irvine has been professor of economics at Concordia University since 1978. Mr. Irvine has published studies on public finance, taxation, health economics, income inequality, Canadian employment insurance and social assistance programs, and crime. He holds a doctorate from the University of Western Ontario and has been a visiting professor at the London School of Economics, the University of Sydney, the University of Colorado, and at University College and the Economic and Research Institute in Dublin. (High resolution photo)

John Blundell was Director General of the Institute of Economic Affairs, considered to be the most prestigious think tank in the United Kingdom, and has been involved in the creation and development of numerous think tanks and research organizations around the world. Among his many realizations, he headed the Press, Research and Parliamentary Liaison Office at the Federation of Small Businesses (1977-1982), he served as President of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation (1987-1991), co-founded and chaired the Institute for Children (1993-1997), and is currently serving on the boards of the Institute for Humane Studies (United States) and of the Institute of Economic Studies (Europe).