PRESIDENT

Marco Navarro-Génie

Marco Navarro-Génie, BA (Concordia University), MA, PhD (University of Calgary) is the founding president of the Haultain Research Institute.

Dr. Navarro-Génie was born in Nicaragua and grew up as an adolescent in Montreal, where he fled the communist regime that strangles his native country to this day. In search of broader horizons, he moved to Alberta in 1990. After two decades in academe, he joined the free-market public policy world. Before the founding of the Haultain Institute, he was the fourth President of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies (AIMS) based in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Navarro-Génie is co-founder and Director of Nurses for Sustainable Care (NFSC). He is former director of the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development (Rights and Democracy), and served as president of CIVITAS (2017-2019).

Dr. Navarro-Génie taught political Science in the Department of Policy Studies at Mount Royal University in Calgary, at St. Mary’s College, Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT), the University of Calgary, and Concordia University in Montreal. Dr. Navarro-Génie comments regularly in local, national and international media on issues of government, politics, and public policy. He is author of hundreds of articles, several policy reports, and three books. His latest book, co-written with Barry Cooper, is Canada’s COVID: The Story of a Pandemic Moral Panic (2023).

Senior Fellow and Chair of the Board of ADVISORs

Barry Cooper

Barry Cooper, a fourth generation Albertan, was educated at Shawnigan Lake School, the University of British Columbia and Duke University, where he received his doctorate in 1969.  He taught at Bishop’s University, McGill, and York University before coming to the University of Calgary in 1981.  For the past thirty-five years he has studied western political philosophy, both classical and contemporary.  Much of his teaching has focused on Greek political philosophy whereas his publications have been chiefly in the area of contemporary French and German political philosophy.  Over the years he has spent considerable time in both countries, teaching and doing research. 

Dr. Cooper’s other area of continuing interest has been Canadian politics and public policy.  Here he has brought the insights of political philosophers to bear on contemporary issues, including the place of technology and the media in Canada, the on-going debate over the constitutional status of Quebec, and the precarious status of Canadian defence and security. 

He is the author, editor, or translator of 37 books, most recently Canada’s COVID: The Story of a Pandemic Moral Panic (2023), and has published nearly 200 papers and book chapters. 

Senior Fellow AND ADVISOR

Travis D. Smith

Travis D. Smith is Associate Professor of Political Science at Concordia University in Montreal. He studied at McMaster University and at Harvard University. Professor Smith is principally interested in the intersection of politics, religion, and science, especially in early modern political philosophy. He is also interested in the relationship between storytelling and education. His publications include examinations of the ideas of Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, and Alexis de Tocqueville. He is the author of Superhero Ethics (Templeton Press) and co-editor of Flattering the Demos (Lexington Books). 

ADVISOR

Sara MacIntyre

Sara MacIntyre is currently President & CEO of Vuca-Sera Inc., working on government, media relations, communications and business strategic support for medium sized companies in oil, grain, gas and telecommunications.

ADVISOR

Christopher Primeau

Christopher Primeau serves as the Chief Operations Officer for the Impact Society and is the lead for project implementation and organizational development at Goodpin.

ADVISOR

Trevor Shelley

Trevor Shelley is an Albertan currently living in the desert southwest. He is Assistant Teaching Professor and Associate Director at the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University. He is author of Globalization and Liberalism: Montesquieu, Tocqueville, and Manent (Notre Dame University Press, 2020), and co-editor of Citizenship and Civic Leadership (Lexington, 2022) and Renewing America’s Civic Compact (Lexington, 2023); he has also written numerous articles and book chapters on various themes in political thought.