The Impact and Legacy of the TFSA
Roundtable Luncheon with Alexandre Laurin, Dr. Richard Shillington, and Dr. Lu Zhang
Sponsored by:
Alexandre Laurin, Director of Research, C.D. Howe Institute
Alexandre Laurin joined the C.D. Howe Institute in 2008 and became Director of Research in 2014.
From 1999 to 2008, Mr. Laurin worked for the Parliamentary Information and Research Service where he provided reports, analysis and policy advice to Members of the House of Commons and the Senate and to parliamentary committees on a non-partisan and confidential basis.
Mr. Laurin has authored numerous research studies published by the C.D. Howe Institute and other organizations, and he frequently contributes to public policy debates through seminars, conferences, and media appearances. He is currently a member of the Postsecondary Education Quality Assessment Board of Ontario, an arms-length advisory agency that makes recommendations to the Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities. He is also a member of Ontario’s Basic Income Pilot’s Research and Evaluation Advisory Committee, which provides strategic advice on how to best evaluate the outcomes of the basic income pilot to the Minister of Community and Social Services and the Minister Responsible for the Poverty Reduction Strategy.
He holds an MA in Economics (1998) from Queen’s University and a BSc in Economics (1997) from Université du Québec à Montréal.
Dr. Richard Shillington, Statistician
Richard Shillington has post-graduate degrees in statistics from the University of Waterloo. He has been engaged in the quantitative analysis of health, social and economic policy for the past 30 years. His research has covered several policy fields; health manpower planning, program evaluation, income security, poverty, tax policy and human rights. He has worked for several provincial and federal departments as well as commissions studying the economy, unemployment insurance, human rights and tax policy.
He appears regularly before committees of the House of Commons and the Senate. He also provides commentaries regularly for television, radio and newspapers on issues of taxation, human rights and social policy.
His proudest achievements are the awards;
- by the Statistical Society of Canada for the best Canadian Ph.D. Thesis in Statistics that year;
- by the federal government for Citizen Engagement in Policy Research;
- by the University of Waterloo's Faculty of Mathematics for Alumni Achievement.
His policy influences relate to;
- publishing research on the GIS clawback of RRSP savings, TFSAs and tax rates.
- creating pressure for auto-enrolment for OAS/GIS by highlighting the number of seniors not getting the GIS they're entitled to.
Dr. Lu Zhang, Assistant Professor, Ted Rogers School of Management, Ryerson University
Dr. Lu Zhang is an Assistant Professor of Finance at the Ted Rogers School of Management, Ryerson University. Her research interests centers around the link between finance and the economic activity of firms and households. Her work investigates the predictive ability of financial market information for economic downturns. She also studies behavioral factors driving individuals’ saving and investment decisions. Dr. Zhang received her PhD in Finance from the University of Alberta in 2015. She currently teaches Principles of Finance and Managerial Finance at Ryerson.
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