At a meeting of the House of Commons’ international trade committee earlier this month, Leon Benoit, the Conservative chairman, ordered me to stop my presentation as an invited witness. My remarks, he ruled, were not relevant. When his decision was successfully challenged by other members of the committee, Mr. Benoit adjourned the meeting and left the room. I was astonished.
Gordon Laxer is the Co-Director of Parkland Institute, a non-corporate, research network at the University of Alberta. Parkland is a highly visible institute in Alberta’s heartland, that the Globe and Mail once called Alberta’s ‘unofficial opposition’. Gordon is Parkland’s founding Director. He was The Director from 1996 to June 2011.
He is a Political Economy professor and has published over 34 journal articles and book chapters. Gordon is author or editor of five books, including Open for Business: The Roots of Foreign Ownership in Canada, which received the 1992 John Porter Award from the Canadian Sociology Association for best book written about Canada. Gordon was the Principal Investigator of a 6-year, $1.9 million research project: Neoliberal Globalism and its Challengers: Reclaiming the Commons in the Semi-periphery, the comparative Study of Canada, Australia, Mexico and Norway.
