Armine Yalnizyan
Senior Economist
Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
Toronto, Ont.
Armine Yalnizyan has written about labour markets and public finance for over 20 years since receiving her Masters of Industrial Relations from the University of Toronto. After 10 years as program director with the Social Planning Council of Metropolitan Toronto, she authored a ground-breaking report in 1998 on income inequality in Canada, entitled The Growing Gap. She reprised the topic of income inequality after the national economy had experienced 10 years of strong economic growth, releasing the report The Rich and the Rest of Usin 2007. Armine joined the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives as senior economist in 2008. Over the years, she has served on advisory groups to Ministers at the federal and provincial levels with respect to labour and income support policies. She has taught at York University and worked with international and domestic NGOs to advance economic justice for all. She chaired the Employment and Economy Committee of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and fought for the recognition of gender issues in the pursuit of equality. She is the honoured first recipient of the Atkinson Foundation Award for Economic Justice, and received the Morley Gunderson Prize from the University of Toronto in 2003. Armine is a founding member and steering committee member of the Progressive Economics Forum and the Alternative Federal Budget, and serves on the boards of the Public Interest Advocacy Centre and the Canadian Association of Business Economists.