Staff

Peter Holle is the founding President of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, an award-winning western Canadian based public policy think tank. Since its founding in 1997, Frontier has brought a distinctive and influential Prairie voice to regional and national debates over public policy in areas such as core public sector reform, housing, poverty, aboriginals, consumer-focused health care performance, equalization, rural policy and much more. Of the nearly 100 recognized think tanks in Canada, Frontier is one of only 5 to make the 2008 global "Go-To Think Tanks" list published by the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program of the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. Mr. Holle has worked extensively with public sector reform and has provided advisory services to various governments across Canada and the United States. His publications have appeared in various newspapers and journals including dozens of newspapers, the National Post and the Wall Street Journal. He has a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.  He is a member of various organizations including the Mont Pelerin Society, an international organization of classical liberals. 

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Marco Navarro-Génie (BA [Hons.]  Concordia University; MA, PhD [Political Science] University of Calgary), is the Vice President, Research at the Frontier Centre.  He also teaches political science in the Department of Policy Studies at Mount Royal University in Calgary, and has taught at St. Mary’s College, Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT), the University of Calgary, and Concordia University in Montreal. His academic work focuses on radical revolutionary movements, and cultural and political identity in Latin America. His teaching and pioneering research have been recognized, respectively, by a Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award (1999) at Mount Royal University, and an Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Scholarship (2004-2006) held at the University of Calgary. He is a Fellow at the Latin American Research Centre at the University of Calgary, and is author of Augusto "César" Sandino: Messiah of Light and Truth. Dr. Navarro-Génie was a member of the Board of Directors for The International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development (Rights and Democracy) 2009-2012. He is fluent in English, French, and Spanish. He regularly comments on Canadian and Alberta politics for various local, national, and international print and broadcast news outlets that include Calgary Herald, Leader Post, Vancouver Sun, Windsor Star, National Post, Radio-Canada International, Radio-Canada, CTV News, Sun TV, and RDI.

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Darla Hooker is the Director of Development at the Frontier Center for Public Policy. She was born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba. In 1990 she completed her Bachelor of Arts Degree from the University of Manitoba and then continued her education in the field of Respiratory Therapy at the Health Science Center in Winnipeg where she worked as a Respiratory Therapist at the St. Boniface Hospital. She has been very involved with the Winnipeg Mennonite Elementary Schools; as a board member, active participant of the parent council as well as coordinating numerous fundraising events. Darla has managed youth hockey and flag football teams in the community. She has worked with a variety of organizations such as the Canadian Cancer Society Gala Ball, and more recently the Women’s World Hockey Championships.

Ben Eisen is Assistant Research Director and Senior Policy Analyst at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.  Ben holds a Masters Degree in Public Policy from the University of Toronto’s School of Public Policy and Governance.  Since joining Frontier in 2009, Ben has completed major  research papers on a wide variety of policy issues. He has authored papers on early childhood education policy, university tuition policy and Canadian fiscal federalism, among other topics. He is the lead researcher for Frontier’s two major inter-jurisdictional comparisons of healthcare system performance.   Ben has co-authored a number of policy studies about environmental policy with Dr. Kenneth Green of the American Enterprise Institute. Ben has presented the findings of his research in dozens of radio and television interviews, and his op-ed commentaries have been published in the National Post as well as in major regional newspapers including the Winnipeg Free Press, the Calgary Herald, The Gazette and the Toronto Sun.

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Joseph Quesnel is a policy analyst at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy who focuses on aboriginal matters and property rights. Based in Lethbridge, Alberta, he is from the Sudbury region of Northern Ontario, and has Metis ancestry from Quebec. He graduated from McGill University in 2001, majoring in political science and history. He specialized in Canadian and American politics, with an emphasis on constitutional law. He is completing a master of journalism degree at Carleton University, where he is specializing in political reporting. For two years, he covered House standing committees, as well as Senate committees. His career in journalism includes several stints at community newspapers in Northern Ontario, including Sudbury and Espanola. He also completed internships at CFRA 580 AM, a talk radio station in Ottawa and the Cable Public Affairs Channel. He writes a weekly column in the Winnipeg Sun and contributes to the Taxpayer, the flagship publication of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. Quesnel's policy commentaries have appeared in the Lethbridge Herald, Vancouver Sun, Globe and Mail, Financial Post, and the National Post, among others.

Steve Lafleur  is a public policy analyst currently based out of Winnipeg. He recently graduated with a Master of Arts Degree in Political Science from Wilfrid Laurier University, and is a former Research Associate at the Cascade Policy Institute in Portland, Oregon. He is currently a Contributing Editor for NewGeography.com, where he writes about a variety of public policy issues relating to North American cities. His works have appeared in publications such as The Oregonian, The National Post, The Boston Globe, The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, and Reason Magazine.

Peter McCaffrey is a policy analyst and the Saskatchewan Office Director for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

Based in Regina, he conducts research on a wide variety of municipal, provincial and federal public policy from education to the economy, civil liberties to technology.

Peter is regularly interviewed on nationwide and local TV and has appeared on dozens of radio stations across the country. He has had columns published in nationwide newspapers, is often quoted in news articles and is also an official contributor to the Huffington Post blog.

Most recently, Peter has coordinated the Frontier Centre’s Local Government Performance Index project, a study in to the financial performance and transparency of Canada’s top 100 cities. The influential project has garnered substantial media exposure and has encouraged meaningful improvements in accountability in municipal financial departments across the country

Before coming to Canada, Peter was based in New Zealand where he had significant experience in leading issue campaigns, in political campaign management and twice stood for Parliament.

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Deanna McCreery is an Administrative Assistant at the Frontier Centre. She was born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba. In 2001 she graduated from Dakota Collegiate. She has been a stay at home mother until deciding to rejoin the workforce. Deanna maintains Frontier Centre’s website. She enjoys helping out at her children’s school and volunteering her time in the community.