Laxer 

Gordon Laxer is 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 Conservatives ruled Alberta, the Globe and Mail called Parkland Alberta’s ‘unofficial opposition’. Parkland’s mission has been to change the political culture of Alberta. Gordon is delighted that Rachel Notley, a former student, is now premier.

 

Gordon is a Political Economist and professor emeritus at the University of Alberta. He is the author of After the Sands. Energy and Ecological Security for Canadians (Sept 2015) Douglas & McIntyre http://www.douglas-mcintyre.com/book/after-the-sands. He is also author or editor of five other books, including Open for Business: The Roots of Foreign Ownership in Canada (Oxford Univ Press), which received the John Porter Award for best book written about Canada. He has published over 40 journal articles and refereed book chapters and reports.

 

Gordon is on the advisory board of the SSHRC funded "Corporate Mapping Partnership" that is researching the structure and influence of the fossil fuel corporations in Western Canada. Gordon 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).

 

Gordon is a socially-engaged, public intellectual. His 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. He has been interviewed a number of times on venues such as the CBC’s The Current, As it Happens, and the House. He served on the board of the Council of Canadians from 2004 to 2009.