Armine Yalnizyan is a Canadian economist and writer, who was a senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives from 2008 to 2017. She appeared regularly on Lang and O'Leary Exchange, CBC's Metro Morning, and contributed regularly to the "Economy Lab" at the Globe and Mail. She is currently a Fellow with the Atkinson Foundation doing collaborative research on the future of workers in a period of technological change. Her work focuses on "social and economic factors that determine our health and well being". In 2012, the CBC described her, as one of Canada's "leading progressive economists."
Early years and education
Yalnizyan came to Canada as a child. Her parents were Armenian immigrants. Her grandparents were killed in the Armenian Genocide. She grew up in Toronto. She completed a bilingual honours degree in economics from Glendon College, a York University federated campus in Toronto, Ontario, including a year of economics at Université de Bordeaux, France. she received a Masters of Industrial Relations from the University of Toronto in 1985.
Career
One of Yalnizyan's first job as an economist was in 1980's with the Social Planning Council of Metropolitan Toronto. At that time the job market was changing and many full-time jobs were being lost. The Council had been working on the de-industrialization of Toronto as many Toronto residents sought jobs that were nonexistent. After joining the Social Planning Council, Yalnizyan published a "primer on the growing gap" that was financed by the Atkinson foundation. In 2010 she co-founded the Globe and Mail's "Economy Lab", where Canadian economists and Globe and Mail staff examine current issues in the global economy in-depth. She contributed regularly to the Globe and Mail
Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
Yalnizyan began her association with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives in 1993. By 1994, when the centre began to publish their Alternative Federal Budget, she was a research associate. In 1998, while working as lead researcher at the Toronto-based Centre for Social Justice, she completed an in-depth 148-page report as part of the Growing Gap Project, entitled "The Growing Gap: Growing Inequality between Rich and Poor." The Growing Gap Project, which was funded by Atkinson Charitable Foundation the SJC's first major project, documented the increasing income and wealth gap, the moderating role of government and potential public policy alternatives. In 2008 she joined CCPA as Senior Economist to develop the Growing Gap Project further. She remained with CCPA until 2017. She was a regular contributor to CCPA's Behind the numbers.
In 2012 she became a regular bi-weekly business commentator on the CBC's number one morning show Metro Morning at CBLA-FM in Toronto with Matt Galloway which reaches a "million listeners in the Greater Toronto Area."
''Lang and O'Leary Exchange''
Yalnizyan was a regular guest on the weekly "Big Picture Panel", a feature of CBC-TV's Lang and O'Leary Exchange with Amanda Lang and Kevin O'Leary.
Atkinson Foundation
On May 13, 2018 the Atkinson Foundation announced that Yalnizyan accepted a two-year fellowship—Atkinson Fellow on the Future of Workers—to for collaborative research on "policy innovation for inclusive economic growth in an era of rapid technological change". In August 2018 Yalnizyan was asked to beeconomic policy advisor to Deputy Minister of Employment and Social Development Canada Louise Levonia. She will continue her work on "policy responses to the changing nature of work".
Yalnizyan was honoured with the first Atkinson Economic Justice Award in 2002 and the University of Toronto's Morley Gunderson Prize in 2003.
Themes
By 2010, Yalnizyan had "tracked trends in labour markets, income distribution, government budgets and access to services for over 20 years." Her focus has been on "social and economic factors that determine our health and well being", including Affordable housing in Canada poverty in Canada, minimum wage, and basic services. In her 2017 Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives article on redistribution, Yalnizyan wrote that basic income models were market-based and focused on increasing money to access market freedom and choice. Yalnizyan stressed the health-based basic service approach through which more public services are provided that "are not contingent on income." This would provide "more freedom from the market". She cites as examples, "care provided by publicly insured doctors and hospitals and taxpayer-funded public schools dramatically reduce poverty and inequality."
In March 1999, Alberta PremierRalph Klein sent a letter of complaint to Rod Fraser, the University of Alberta's President after Yalnizyan, who was then at Toronto's Centre for Social Justice, presented a paper at the Parkland Institute's "Poverty Amidst Plenty" conference in which she used Statistics Canada data and the research of two University of Lethbridge academics to argue the gap between rich and poor in Alberta was growing faster than in any other Canadian province "despite a rapidly growing economy". In an immediate response, Klein said Parkdland Institute of being "factually challenged", "one-sided and ideologically biased." Fraser defended the Parkland Institute and free speech, saying that the "university would not be intimidated by Klein's criticism, and would continue to foster a climate of open debate."
