About the Affordability Action Council

Alexi leads the Maytree Foundations’s efforts to change social systems so that they respect, protect, and fulfill everyone’s economic and social rights. He brings experience in the intersection of human rights and public policy from his previous role leading the policy team at B.C.’s Office of the Human Rights Commissioner. He has also held multiple policy positions in the Ontario government, culminating in the role of Director of Policy to the Minister of Education. Alexi holds a master in public policy degree from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and an undergraduate degree in mathematics from Queen’s University.

Angella MacEwen is a senior economist at the Canadian Union of Public Employees and a policy fellow at the Broadbent Institute. She has worked as a labour economist in Ottawa since 2012. Angella sits on the board of Our Times magazine and Canadians for Tax Fairness, and is active with the Green Economy Network. She follows a wide range of economic issues that impact workers, such as understanding precarity and inequality in the Canadian labour market, evaluating the impact of international trade, and investigating the role of fiscal policy and tax policy on income distribution and wealth inequality. She provides expert advice to governments, both as a member of advisory panels and through parliamentary committees. Angella is co-author of the book Share the Wealth! How we can tax Canada’s super-rich and create a better country for everyone.

Armine Yalnizyan is the Atkinson Fellow on the Future of Workers and writes a bi-weekly business column for the Toronto Star. Previously, she served as a senior economic policy adviser to the federal deputy minister of Employment and Social Development Canada, and has been a member of a high-level task group on women in the economy convened by the federal ministers of Finance and Middle Class Prosperity. Armine helped shape and advance the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ Inequality Project, provided weekly business commentary for the CBC, and served as vice-president and president of the Canadian Association for Business Economics.

Brendan Haley is an adjunct professor in the School of Public Policy and Administration at Carleton University and policy director at Efficiency Canada, a research and advocacy organization focused on creating an energy-efficient economy. Previously, he was a SSHRC Banting Post-Doctoral Fellow at the School for Resource and Environmental Studies at Dalhousie University and the energy co-ordinator at Nova Scotia’s Ecology Action Centre. He played an important role in the development of the province’s energy-efficiency framework, which led to the creation of Efficiency Nova Scotia, Canada’s first energy-efficiency utility. He is a policy fellow at the Broadbent Institute and a research associate at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Caroline Brouillette is the executive director of Climate Action Network Canada. As the first francophone director of the network, Caroline works tirelessly to create strong social consensus for climate solutions that address the convergence of crises the world is faced with, both through national policy development and in international diplomacy forums. Caroline is a columnist for L’actualité, Canada’s leading French-language public affairs magazine, where she writes about climate issues. Her commentary has appeared in CBC-Radio-Canada sites, the Washington Post, Reuters, Al Jazeera and many other current- affairs television, radio and written media. She joined the climate movement in 2018, when she represented Canadian youth at the G7 summit in Charlevoix, Quebec.

The founder and executive director of Destination Zero, Catherine Abreu, is an internationally recognized, award-winning campaigner whose work centres on building powerful coalitions to advance action on climate change. One of the world’s 100 most influential people in climate policy as named by Apolitical in 2019, she has over 15 years of experience campaigning on environmental issues including 10 years in the heart of the climate movement.

Cherise Burda is the executive director of City Building TMU at Toronto Metropolitan University, where she specializes in relevant and proactive policy, strategic communications and creative engagement.Cherise’s research and activities have directly influenced policy change in Ontario and British Columbia on housing, transportation and energy. She has authored more than 40 policy reports, book chapters and academic publications, as well as dozens of magazine articles and op-eds. She previously served as Ontario director of the Pembina Institute, program director at the David Suzuki Foundation and senior researcher at the University of Victoria’s Eco-Research Chair in Environmental Law and Policy. She participates regularly in public and private sector working groups.

Evan Fraser is a professor of geography at the University of Guelph, where he helps lead the Food from Thought initiative, a multimillion-dollar research program that explores how to use big data to reduce agriculture’s environmental footprint. He works with large multidisciplinary teams on developing solutions to help feed the world’s growing population while not destroying the ecosystems on which we depend for life. He is also the director of the university’s Arrell Food Institute. A passionate communicator, Evan has written for numerous media outlets, co-produced and co-hosted radio documentaries for CBC’s Ideas, and has published two non-fiction books about food and food security, including Empires of Food: Feast, Famine, and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations, which was published by Simon & Schuster and shortlisted for the James Beard Food Literature Award.

Gillian conducts research focused on intersectionality-informed, data-driven solutions to economic and social issues in Canada. Her work in economics and public policy focuses on the design and implementation of income and social supports spanning several areas including tax policy, municipal policy, poverty policy, and access to justice. She has advised expert panels, including the BC Basic Income Panel, published in peer-reviewed academic journals, and has co-written a book on basic income. She works as a senior research associate at the University of Calgary where she continues to work on projects related to the intersectional effects of taxation, municipal housing and tax policy, and intersectional access to legal aid. Gillian holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Calgary, and a Juris Doctorate from Queen’s University. 

Lisa Rae is the director of system change at Prosper Canada and is responsible for advancing policy and advocacy efforts. Lisa has worked in public policy, advocacy, stakeholder engagement and communications for 15 years. She has held roles in membership organizations, the post-secondary education and health sectors, and in government. Lisa served as a senior adviser to the Ontario minister of Advanced Education and Skills Development and served as the minister’s lead on the co-creation and introduction of legislation recognizing Indigenous Institutes and on the transformation of Ontario Student Assistance Program.

Marc Lee is a senior economist with the British Columbia office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Marc joined the CCPA in 1998 and is one of Canada’s leading progressive commentators on economic and social policy issues. He led the CCPA’s Climate Justice Project, which published a wide range of research on fair and effective approaches to climate action through integrating principles of social justice. Marc continues to write about climate and energy policy, strategies for affordable housing, federal and provincial budgets, and economic trends. He is a past chair of the Progressive Economics Forum, a national network of progressive economists.

Mike Moffatt is assistant professor of business, economics and public policy at Western University’s Ivey Business School, and senior director of policy and innovation at the Smart Prosperity Institute. Mike’s research at the institute focuses on the intersection of regional economic development, building child-friendly, climate-friendly housing and communities, and clean innovation. Previously, he was the chief innovation fellow with the federal government, advising deputy ministers on innovation policy and emerging trends. He has also previously worked as interim director at the Lawrence National Centre for Policy and Management, director of policy at Canada 2020 and chief economist at the University of Toronto’s Mowat Centre. From 2013 to 2015, Mike served as an economic adviser to Justin Trudeau.

Nate Wallace is the clean transportation program manager at Environmental Defence. In this position, he works on decarbonizing the transportation sector, with a particular focus on electrifying light-duty vehicles, expanding public and active transportation options and building more sustainable and inclusive cities. He is a member of Transport Canada’s Zero-Emission Vehicle Council and co-chair of the Affordability Working Group. Nate has been a frequent contributor to infrastructure-related chapters of the annually published Alternative Federal Budget co-ordinated by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. His commentary on public policy issues has been published in The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and Hill Times. Before joining Environmental Defence, Nate was a policy adviser at the Canadian Urban Transit Association.

Paul Kershaw is an award-winning policy professor in the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia and founder of Generation Squeeze, which champions generational fairness to preserve what Canadians hold to be sacred – a healthy childhood, home and planet. He is the recipient of several honours from the Canadian Political Science Association and the federal government, the Academic of the Year Award from the Confederation of University Faculty Associations of British Columbia and the UBC President’s Award for Public Education through the media. Paul is committed to mobilizing evidence into action, and his work has directly shaped the federal $10-a-day child care program and the National Housing Strategy. He also helped to defend the constitutionality of pricing pollution at the Supreme Court.

Rosemarie Powell is executive director of the Toronto Community Benefits Network. She is a passionate advocate for social, economic and environmental justice. For more than 20 years she has managed and developed several innovative community programs and services to support historically disadvantaged communities and equity-seeking groups’ access to the labour market and the economy. Her community engagement work has earned her several awards.

Shaimaa Yassin is a research director at the Institute for Research on Public Policy, leading the Toward a More Equitable Canada research program, which has published studies on proposed dental care and pharmacare programs. She is also a member of the secretariat of the Affordability Action Council, a collaboration of diverse policy and community leaders that works to identify ways to help meet the basic needs of lower-income Canadians. She is a policy-oriented economist with over a decade of experience in translating challenging academic research into strategic advice for a broad audience.

Shelagh Pizey-Allen is the executive director of TTCriders, an advocacy organization of transit users that campaigns for fully accessible, frequent, dignified public transit that connects all Toronto neighbourhoods. Shelagh participated in Maytree’s Policy School in 2019 and holds a master’s degree in communication and cultural studies from York University and Toronto Metropolitan University. She has been a longtime supporter of Grassy Narrows First Nation’s fight for mercury justice.

Yasmin Abraham is president and co-founder of the Kambo Energy Group, a social enterprise that reduces energy poverty and improves housing in communities that have been historically underprioritized. She is a steadfast advocate for equity, diversity and social change, and her commitment to eliminating energy poverty has shaped much of her career over the last decade. She is a leading expert in equity-based energy and climate programming, and works with governments and utilities across Canada to design and deliver inclusive solutions.