About the Mowat Centre

Research Agenda

Canada's policy agenda has stalled in recent years. Fresh research and evidence is needed to revive the national conversations about our policy choices.

The Mowat Centre is an independent, non-partisan think tank. Our research focuses on the federal policy frameworks and strategies that will most strongly affect Ontario's prosperity and quality of life in the next century. Our research is comparative, our recommendations are evidence-based and our proposals are grounded in an understanding of how government works and what makes Canada special.

Our research brings new evidence to big and long-standing questions and makes recommendations for new strategies and approaches to some of Canada's most important policy problems.

We conduct our own research, commission research from leading and emerging scholars and engage in collaborative research projects with other organizations.

We consider our research successful if it influences the public conversation, impacts the policy agenda, engages a wide audience and, ultimately, is translated into real policy changes that make Canada a more successful country.

The animating spirit of our research is to suggest new but practical ways of looking at long-standing public policy challenges, free from the constraints of short-term political pressures or policy choices of the past.

The Mowat Centre has nine research streams:

Our research so far has focused on approaches to providing income and training support to the unemployed, options for improving federal-provincial cooperation on immigration policy, supporting innovation and economic transformation through effective economic development strategies, strengthening Canadian democracy through improved representation in the Canadian Parliament and improving federal-provincial regulatory policies in the non-profit sector.