Dr. Enid Slack

Director

The Director of the Institute is Dr. Enid Slack, one of Canada's foremost experts in municipal finance. Enid has been working in this field for over 40 years and is respected nationally and internationally for her research on municipal finance and governance.

Enid was appointed Special Advisor to the Greater Toronto Area Task Force in 1995, a member of the Who Does What Panel in Ontario in 1996, Co-Chair of the Learning Opportunities Grant Panel in 1997, Special Advisor to the Mayor's Task Force on Homelessness in 1998, a member of the City of Toronto's Business Reference Group on tax policy in 1999, a member of the Working Group of the Toronto City Summit Alliance in 2003, and a Commissioner on the Property Tax Policy Review Commission for the City of Vancouver in 2006-07 and again in 2013-14. In 2009-10, she chaired the Municipal Port Property Taxation Fairness Commission in Metro Vancouver, and chaired the Intergovernmental Committee on Economic and Labour Force Development (ICE) from 2000 to 2014. She was a member of the Premier’s Community Hubs Framework Advisory Group in 2016-18. Enid is currently a commissioner on the Intergovernmental Fiscal Relations Commission and a member of the Advisory Board of the International Property Tax Institute.

Enid consults on municipal finance and governance issues with governments and international agencies such as the World Bank, IMF, UN Habitat, Asian Development Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the International Growth Centre (at Oxford and LSE). She has consulted in Canada as well as Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, India, Mexico, Mongolia, the Philippines, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda. She has advised on property taxes, intergovernmental transfers, the division of expenditures and revenues among levels of government, metropolitan governance, municipal boundary restructuring, and other local finance and governance issues. Enid has published numerous books and articles on urban public finance. Recent publications (co-edited with Richard Bird) include Financing Infrastructure: Who Should Pay? and Is Your City Healthy? Measuring Urban Fiscal Health. Enid received her B.A. in Economics from York University (Glendon College), and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Toronto. In 2012, she received the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal for her work on cities.