Executive Team

William B.P. Robson

President and Chief Executive Officer

Bill Robson took office as President and CEO of the C.D. Howe Institute in July 2006, after serving as the Institute’s Senior Vice President since 2003 and Director of Research since 2000.

He has a B.A. from the University of Toronto and an M.A. from the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University.

Mr. Robson has written extensively on government budgets, pensions, healthcare financing, and on inflation and currency issues. His work on demographic change and health care financing won an award from the federal Policy Research Secretariat, and his work on monetary policy with David Laidler has won prizes from the Canadian Economics Association and the Donner Canadian Foundation. Mr. Robson chairs the C.D. Howe Institute’s Monetary Policy Council. He has written a regular column for The Globe and Mail, and is a familiar commentator on economic issues in the media.

Mr. Robson serves as an advisor to, or director of, several education-related and public affairs organizations. He lectured on public finance and public policy at the University of Toronto from 2000 to 2003 and is a Senior Fellow at Massey College. Before joining the C.D. Howe Institute in 1988, he held positions as an economist with Wood Gundy Inc. and the federal Department of Energy, Mines and Resources.

Duncan Munn

Senior Vice President & Chief Operating Officer

Duncan Munn is Sr.Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the C.D. Howe Institute. He joined the Institute in 2000, holding increasingly senior roles culminating in his appointment as Sr. VP and COO in 2008. He oversees the daily affairs of the Institute as well as initiatives and special projects, and plays a leadership role in the strategic direction of the organization. Duncan is also a Director, and member of the Audit Committee, of Alterna Savings, a full-service financial services firm with $2 billion in assets under management, and is on the Board of Youth Challenge International, a global youth development organization. Previously, he served a number of organizations in a voluntary leadership capacity, including the Etobicoke Easter Seals Society (as Chair), the George Hull Centre for Children and Families (as a Director), and the United Nations Association in Canada (Toronto Branch). He is a graduate of the University of Toronto, where he won the Gordon Cressy Award, JS Woodsworth Award and Woodsworth Cup. Apart from his work with the Institute and in the voluntary sector, he has business interests in an investment management firm focused on real estate.

Finn Poschmann

Vice President, Research

Finn Poschmann graduated in economics from Carleton University in Ottawa in 1986 and is Vice President, research at the C.D. Howe Institute, where he has held a variety of positions since January 1998. For more than a decade previous, he was at the Parliamentary Research Branch in Ottawa, where he held a number of research positions principally involved with providing economic analysis and advice to Parliamentarians and Standing Committees.

He has worked in numerous areas within the field of economics, but has primarily been concerned with public finance and taxation and federal-provincial relations. He is particularly interested in the distributional impact of taxation and in the use of microsimulation tools in the design of tax policy, but has also worked on monetary policy issues and disparate public policy questions. Recent publications have dealt with public-private partnerships, federal and provincial tax and fiscal issues, the tax treatment of retirement savings, and Canada’s exchange rate policies.

Rowena Jeffers

Director of Accounting
and Administration

Rowena Jeffers pursued her academic career at George Brown College, graduating with a Business Administration diploma, majoring in Accounting. Ms. Jeffers has always worked in the non-profit sector, and joined the C.D. Howe Institute team in 1997, initially serving as the Senior Development and Membership Coordinator. In 2009, she was appointed Director of Accounting and Administration. In her current role, Ms. Jeffers is responsible for all accounting, administration, and information technology duties. In addition to these responsibilities, Ms. Jeffers heads the Process Improvement Committee and is a member of the Risk and GRSP Committees.

James Fleming

Editor and Vice President, Media

James Fleming is an editor and author who joined the C.D. Howe Institute in 2005 as Editor, responsible for the excellence of publications. He has BA and MA degrees from Queen’s University in Kingston. His previous positions include Vice President of Communications for Barrick Gold Corp., Managing Editor and Columnist at the Globe and Mail’s Report on Business Magazine, and Business Editor of Maclean’s magazine. The winner of two national awards for magazine writing, Mr. Fleming has also published two best-selling business books.

Hal Koblin

Director of Communications

Hal Koblin drives the marketing and communications efforts of the Institute, with a special emphasis on revenue generation. Prior to joining the Institute in 2010, he played a senior role in planning and executing the two largest fundraising campaigns in Canadian university history: The University of Toronto’s $1 billion “Great Minds” Campaign (where he served in senior roles from 1995 through 2006), and McGill University’s current $750 million appeal (where he was Senior Advisor for Strategic Communications from 2006 to 2010). He has served on the Boards of the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Counsel for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE), the Toronto Jewish Congress, and the Holy Blossom Temple Foundation and has lectured for CASE, the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP), the Canadian Council for the Advancement of Education (CCAE) and the Humber College Program in Fundraising and Volunteer Management.