MEDIA RELEASE
January 20, 2012, Ottawa, ON – Less than 2 years old, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute (MLI) has just been rated one of the top five new think tanks in the world and is the only Canadian institute on the list. This is the second year in a row MLI has made the list of the top 20 new think tanks globally, having debuted last year at Number 20 after a mere 6 months of operation.
The ranking was recently released as part of the 2011 Global Go-To Think Tanks Report conducted by the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program at the University of Pennsylvania’s International Relations Program.
According to MLI’s Managing Director, Brian Lee Crowley, “Being ranked one of the top five new think tanks globally drives home MLI’s central message: we are filling a hole in Canada’s democratic infrastructure created by the lack of a national think tank in the national capital working on the full range of national issues. Coming as it does on the heels of the Institute winning the big international prize for think tank publications (the Sir Antony Fisher Award) in 2011 for our first book, The Canadian Century, all of us at MLI feel more convinced than ever that the decision to launch the new Institute was the right one for Canada.”
Founded in 2010, the Institute has quickly become a source of timely and thoughtful ideas that challenge conventional wisdom and shape public policy for the better. Whether in the area of refugee policy, pension reform, fiscal discipline, healthcare transfers, or crime and justice issues, to name but a few, MLI has a proven track record of bringing the very best minds to bear on real problems, and seeing our recommendations reflected in policy changes. MLI is the only non-partisan, independent national public policy think tank based in Ottawa that focuses on the full range of issues that fall under the jurisdiction of the federal government. Our funding comes from a wide range of private sector sources, including individuals, small businesses, corporations and charitable foundations.
The 2011 Global Go-To Think Tank Rankings is the fifth such annual report. The Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program at the University of Pennsylvania’s International Relations Program has relied on the indexing criteria and process developed by James G. McGann for ranking think tanks around the world. The Program’s Rankings remain the first and most comprehensive ranking of the world’s top think tanks and have been described as the insider’s guide to the global marketplace of ideas.
