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September 16, 1940 – November 4, 2025

It is with the ���˴�Ƭ regret that the Institute of Intergovernmental Relations announces the death of Institute Fellow and former Director (2006 – 2009), Dr. Thomas J. Courchene. Tom was the founding director of the Queen’s School of Policy Studies, and one of the great treasures of Canada’s public policy community. The volume and variety of his public policy research and publications were prodigious, and one would be hard pressed to find many significant issues of Canadian public policy to which he had not made a notable contribution. Moreover, the impact of Tom’s work was augmented or magnified by the fact that he chose to work as a political economist, one who recognized the correctness of Gilpin’s observation that “The polity is much more influenced by economic developments than many political scientists have appreciated, and the economy is more dependent upon social and political developments than economists in general have admitted.” This approach and the accessibility of his writing made it relatively easy for concerned observers of public policy and its formulation to understand the policies and positions Tom advocated and see why the issues mattered.

Tom was born in Wakaw, Saskatchewan and was educated at the University of Saskatchewan, Princeton University, and the University of Chicago. His primary academic bases were Western University and then Queen’s University, where he held the Stauffer-Dunning Chair of Policy Studies and subsequently served as the Jarislowsky-Deutsch Professor of Economic and Financial Policy. He also made significant contributions as a visiting professor or scholar at multiple other universities and research institutions, both in Canada and abroad, and served on various boards and bodies. Included in the latter were terms as Chairman of the Ontario Economic Council and as a Board member of the Economic Council of Canada.

Tom’s contributions to public policy and academe have, of course, been formally recognized: He was an Officer of the Order of Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.  He was also the recipient of the Molson Prize awarded by the Canada Council for lifetime achievement in the social sciences. In addition, two of his books—including his final book, Indigenous Nationals Canadian Citizens: From First Contact to Canada 150 and Beyond, which he published with the Institute of Intergovernmental Relations in 2018—earned the Donner Prize for the best book in public policy.  Tom was also the recipient of honorary doctorates from the University of Regina, Western University, and the University of Saskatchewan.

Tom was clearly an academic who sustained an intense level of activity throughout his career. Despite this, it should be noted that he was always available both to his students and colleagues and to others who requested his assistance. This writer can attest that this generosity went back at least to his senior year as an undergraduate, when he gave up his Saturday mornings to attend my lectures in Introductory Economics, and take lecture notes for his younger brother who had a necessary Saturday job!

Thomas J. Courchene O.C., S.O.M., Ph.D., LL.D., F.R.S.C. will be missed by all who knew him.

John R. Allan

John R. Allan is a past Director of the Institute of Intergovernmental Relations; a former member of the Department of Economics at Queen's; and Vice President Emeritus, and Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Regina. 

Douglas M. Brown is an Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada. He is currently also the program coordinator of the Public Policy and Governance program at StFXU, associated with the Mulroney Institute of Government.

He has been a Fellow of the Institute of Intergovernmental Relations since 1997. From 1990 to 1993 he was the Executive Director of the Institute. From 1980-88, he held various positions in the Intergovernmental Affairs Secretariat of the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Dr. Brown is the author and editor of over 30 publications related to Canadian federalism, intergovernmental relations, and regional issues. Many of these are available from the Institute's publications list. His latest project is completing the second edition of Contested Federalism: Certainty and Ambiguity in the Canadian Federation, co-authored with Herman Bakvis and Gerald Baier.

Areas of Expertise

• Intergovernmental relations in Canada and other federations
• Fiscal federalism in Canada and other federations
• Federalism and climate change in Australia, Canada and the United States
• Canadian regional politics - Atlantic Provinces

Dr. John R. Allan is Vice-President Emeritus and Professor of Economics Emeritus of the University of Regina. Born in Glasgow, Scotland, he settled with his parents in Hamilton, Ontario, where he studied at McMaster University, obtaining a B.A. (Hons.) degree in political economy. Graduate studies in economics were pursued at Princeton University, from which he received A.M. and Ph.D. degrees. While at Princeton he was a Ford Foundation Fellow. Since completing graduate studies, John’s career has alternated between academe and government. In addition to the University of Regina, he has been a member of the economics departments at the University of Saskatchewan, Queen’s University and McMaster University. He has also served in a senior executive capacity in the federal Department of Finance, with responsibilities in the areas of fiscal policy and tax policy, and in the Alberta Treasury Department. After retiring as Vice-President at the University of Regina, he was appointed Senior Policy Fellow at the Saskatchewan Institute of Public Policy. Since returning to Kingston, John has been actively involved with the Queen’s Institute of Intergovernmental Affairs, serving as Associate Director and Interim Director. He was appointed a Fellow of the Institute in 2010.

Dr. Allan has published extensively in the field of public-sector economics, most particularly, tax policy. While in Ottawa, he chaired the Commodity Tax Review Group and the Federal-Provincial Committee of Officials on the Revenue Guarantee. He was also the senior economic advisor to the Select Committee of the Ontario Legislature on Tax Reform, and served as a special advisor to the province’s first Minister of Revenue. He was a recipient of the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal.

Dr. Kumanan Wilson (MD, MSc, FRCPC) is the Chief Executive Officer/Chief Scientific Officer of the Bruyère Research Institute, Vice-President Research & Academic, Bruyère Continuing Care, a specialist in general internal medicine and senior scientist at The Ottawa Hospital and Professor of Medicine at the University of Ottawa.  He holds the Faculty of Medicine Clinical Research Chair in Digital Health Innovation.  He is also the Chief Scientist of CANImmunize Inc., a digital immunization solutions company. 

Dr. Wilson has published extensively in the areas of digital health, immunization, pandemic preparedness, blood safety and health policy.   His work for the Institute has included examination of the role of federalism on public health policy domestically and internationally.  This has included overseeing a working paper series on public health federalism  and coordinating a conference with the WHO on public health emergency response in federal states.

Nadia Verrelli is a professor of political science at Laurentian University, and an ongoing research associate at the Institute for Intergovernmental Relations, ���˴�Ƭ. She completed her doctorate in political science at Carleton University. In her dissertation she looks at how the Supreme Court of Canada understands Canadian federalism and how this understanding was used by the Court as a variable when it rendered its opinions in four key constitutional references: the Senate Reference, the Patriation Reference, the Quebec Veto Reference and the Secession Reference. She has taught various courses , including Quebec Politics, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Identity Politics and Canadian Constitutional Law. Currently she is working on a book exploring  court and police responses to domestic violence .

Recent Publications

• Verrelli, Nadia (2017). “Searching for an Amending Formula: The 115-Year journey” in Emmett Macfarlane (ed) Constitutional Amendment in Canada. University of Toronto Press.
• Chambers, L., and Verrelli, N. “A Missed Opportunity: The Investigation of the RCMP in Matters Related to R. v. Ryan”, Canadian Journal of Law and Society, (forthcoming, 32 (1) (spring 2017))
• Baker, Richard and Verrelli, Nadia, “Smudging, drumming and the like do not a nation make”:Temporal Liminality and Delegitimization of Indigenous Protest in Canada, Journal of Canadian Studies, (forthcoming spring 2017)

Michael Topolnytsky earned his BA (Hon) in Political Science from McGill University and an MBA from INSEAD and conducts research in organizational resilience and risk management. He is currently exploring the institutional effectiveness of Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing efforts, with a focus on illicit resource flows through financial markets linked to political influencing and corruption in emerging markets, particularly Europe. Next to a professional career that has seen him serve as finance director in charge of compliance for a German unit of the Mercer group, Michael has been supporting anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine led by local and international civil society actors.

Kyle Hanniman is Director of the Institute of Intergovernmental Relations and an Associate Professor of Political Studies at Queen’s University. His research interests include Canadian, comparative and fiscal federalism and the political economy of fiscal and monetary policy, with a particular emphasis on the politics of subnational borrowing and central banks. His work has appeared in the British Journal of Political Science, the Canadian Journal of Political Science, and the Socioeconomic Review, among other outlets. He holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a BA from St. Thomas University, and prior to coming to Queen’s, he worked as a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto’s Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance. Hanniman has held visiting positions at the European University Institute and the Australian National University’s School of Politics and International Relations.

Webpage

Dr. J. Andrew Grant is Associate Professor and Undergraduate Chair in the Department of Political Studies at Queen’s University. He specializes in analyzing multilateral approaches and multistakeholder initiatives that address governance challenges in natural resource sectors. In 2009, he was the first political scientist to receive an Early Researcher Award from the Government of Ontario’s Ministry of Research and Innovation, which recognized his work on natural resource governance. His work has been published in Land Use Policy, Journal of Cleaner Production, Resources Policy, Extractive Industries and Society, Natural Resources Forum, International Journal of Environmental Studies, Social Science Quarterly, Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, and International Studies Review, among other scholarly journals. Dr. Grant has been a Visiting Scholar/Researcher at Northwestern University, USA, and University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.