Shachi Kurl is president of the Angus Reid Institute, a nonprofit foundation committed to independent research. She works with public opinion data to further public knowledge and enhance the national understanding of issues that matter to Canada and the world. She has appeared on the CBC and in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Globe and Mail and the Ottawa Citizen. She spent the first part of her career as a political reporter and holds a degree in journalism and political science from Carleton University. Kurl moderated the 2021 English language leaders’ debate during the 44th federal election.

Isabelle Mondou joined the Department of Canadian Heritage in 2018 as associate deputy minister and, after serving as deputy minister for the COVID-19 Response (Communications), she became deputy minister of Canadian Heritage in 2021. Previously, she served as assistant secretary to the Cabinet (Priorities and Planning) at the Privy Council Office and as legal counsel to the Clerk of the Privy Council.

Erin O’Toole is the former leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and the former leader of the Official Opposition. He has been elected as a Member of Parliament to represent the riding of Durham four times. While in government, he served as parliamentary secretary to the Minister of International Trade before becoming Minister of Veterans Affairs. After serving as the Conservative shadow minister of Foreign Affairs for two years, Erin was elected leader of Canada’s Conservatives and became Leader of the Official Opposition from 2020 to 2022. Erin served in the Royal Canadian Air Force for 12 years. He then spent the next decade working in the private sector as a corporate lawyer for two large Canadian law firms and for one of the world’s largest consumer goods companies as the in-house counsel. To give back to the military community, Erin was one of the founders of the True Patriot Love Foundation, a charity serving military families across Canada. He is a graduate of the Royal Military College of Canada and Dalhousie Law School.

Lori Turnbull is the director of the School of Public Administration and an associate professor of political science at Dalhousie University. From 2015 to 2017, she was seconded to the Privy Council Office, first as a policy adviser in the Machinery of Government Secretariat, then as departmental liaison to the Office of the Minister of Democratic Institutions, and finally as a policy adviser at the Priorities and Planning Secretariat. She is the co-author of Democratizing the Constitution: Reforming Responsible Government, which won the Donner Prize and the Donald Smiley Prize. 

Jennifer is the President and CEO of the IRPP. She is a not-for-profit sector executive and seasoned communicator with 25 years of experience working to make complex public policy issues and politics better understood by Canadians. From 2016 to 2021, she was the Editor-in-Chief of the IRPP’s influential digital magazine, Policy Options.

Prior to joining the IRPP, Jennifer spent two decades covering national and parliamentary affairs for The Canadian Press and for CBC Television. She is the winner of three National Newspaper Awards, the recipient of the prestigious Charles Lynch Award for outstanding coverage of national issues, and most recently received three Canadian Online Publishing silver awards for her columns. In 2015, she was named one of the 10 most influential Hispanic-Canadians.

Jennifer is the co-editor with Graham Fox of the 2016 book The Harper Factor: Assessing a Prime Minister’s Policy Legacy (McGill-Queen’s University Press). Her research on the history of the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery appeared in five chapters of the 2016 book Sharp Wits & Busy Pens (Hill-Times Publishing). She has a Bachelor of Arts from Concordia University and Master of Journalism from Carleton.