Daniel Bouchard is Director of Planning, Policy and Economic Studies and responsible for the Bio-Food Policy Secretariat at the Ministère de l'Agriculture, des Pêcheries et de l'Alimentation du Québec (MAPAQ). Previously, he was Director of Policy, Analysis and Strategic Planning (2014-2017), Director of Policy and Strategic Planning (2007-2014), Director of Planning (2001-2007), expert advisor in strategic planning, secretary of the working group "Un environnement à valoriser" and secretary of Filière agroalimentaire du Québec (1995-2001). Member of the Ordre des agronomes du Québec (OAQ), he holds a Bachelor's degree in applied sciences specialized in agro-economics from Université Laval.

A CIRANO Researcher and Fellow since 2003, Nathalie de Marcellis-Warin has been President and Chief Executive Officer of CIRANO since 2016, has been leading the Baromètre CIRANO project on risk perception in Quebec, which annually collects data on Quebecers' concerns on 47 social issues since 2011, is responsible of the CIRANO Pole on the Socio-economic Impacts of Digital Intelligence and Main Researcher of the theme Innovation and Digital Transformation. Nathalie de Marcellis-Warin is Full Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Industrial Engineering at Polytechnique Montréal. She is also a Visiting Scientist at Harvard T. Chan School of Public Health and an associate researcher at the Institute for Data Valorization (IVADO).

Holding a Ph.D. in Management Science (in risks and insurance management) from École normale supérieure de Cachan, her research interests focus on risk management and decision-making in different risks and uncertainty contexts as well as public policies. Her research combines economic analysis, cost-benefit analysis, survey data analysis, and more recently massive unstructured data analysis.

In 2008 she created the RISQH network to raise awareness and share experiences on risks management, and patient safety and quality of care in health care facilities.

She participated in the creation of the Montreal Declaration for a Responsible Development of AI.

She is also co-PI of the "Monitoring and Surveys" function at the International Observatory on the Societal Impacts of AI and Digital Technology.

She has published numerous scientific articles, several books and more than 30 reports for government and other organizations. She has given more than a hundred conferences and is regularly solicited to speak in the media.

A CIRANO Researcher and Fellow since 2016, JoAnne Labrecque is Associate Professor in the Department of Marketing at HEC Montréal. She is also Associate Member of the Omer DeSerres Chair of Retailing and Associate Member of the Carmelle and Rémi Marcoux Chair in Arts Management, and a member of the INAF.

Holding a Ph.D. in Consummer Economics from Cornell University, her research focuses on a variety of topics related to innovation in the food sector, product category management, satisfaction, value chain, sustainable development and, most importantly, analysis of consumer behavior towards various categories of food – functional, organic, fair or genetically modified – and health perceptions.

She has authored several expert reports and is a member of various boards in companies that are specifically involved in the food and retail sectors.

André Lamontagne was born in Saint-Félicien in 1960. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration from Université Laval and has training in counseling, psychotherapy and transactional analysis from the Eastwind Institute in Halifax. He also holds a Master's degree in Educational Psychology and Human Relations from Mount Saint-Vincent University in Halifax. He also holds a professional helicopter pilot's license.

Prior to entering politics, he had a career in the business world: he was the owner of three supermarkets; co-owner of a network of travel agencies with 20 offices in several regions of Quebec; president and co-owner of a management consulting firm; and owner of a company specializing in the purchase, refurbishment, resale and rental of helicopters.

He has worked as an advisor and coach for a clientele of executives, mainly from the business world. Over the years, he has also been an investor and director of technology companies in the manufacturing, e-commerce and industrial sectors.

In 2014, he made the leap into politics by getting elected in the riding of Johnson under the banner of the Coalition Avenir Québec, a role he retains thanks to his re-election in 2018. It was following this victory that the Premier honored him by appointing him Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAPAQ) as well as Minister responsible for the Centre-du-Québec region.

He loves his political duties. He gets up every morning with energy to spare and a sincere desire to help his fellow citizens and to contribute in his own way to the development and influence of Quebec.

A CIRANO Researcher and Fellow since 2014, Patrick Mundler is Full Professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Consumer Sciences at Université Laval. He is also a a regular member of the Centre de Recherche sur le Développement Territorial (CRDT)  and the Research Group on Agriculture, Territories, and Development.

Holding a Ph.D. in Economics from Lumière University Lyon 2, he is is interested in the current relation between agriculture (understood as an economic and social practice that plays a determining role in the way resources are used and territories are developed) and rural, suburban, and urban spaces. This leads him to carry out research on the interplay between agriculture and territorial development or other multifaceted social demands. Topics of interest include short food supply chains, the multifunctionality of agriculture, and the ways that agricultural restructuring is shaped by territorial factors.

After teaching economics at various agricultural schools, he became a teacher and researcher at the Collège Coopératif Rhône-Alpes from 1998 to 2001. He then led from 2001 to 2012 the Department of Social Sciences and Management at ISARA-Lyon, a school of agricultural engineering. He joined the Department of Agricultural Economics and Consumer Sciences in the Faculty of Agriculture and Food Sciences at Université Laval in January 2013.

Ingrid Peignier is Senior Director of Partnerships and Research Valorization and Projects Director at CIRANO.

A graduate engineer from École des Mines d'Alès (EMA) and holder of a master's degree in industrial engineering from Polytechnique Montréal, her fields of expertise mainly involve the identification, evaluation, management and communication of risks in various fields such as the transportation of hazardous materials and underground infrastructure failures.

A CIRANO Researcher and Fellow since 1994, Michel Poitevin is Full Professor in the Department of Economics at the Université de Montréal.

Holding a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of British Columbia, he is a specialist in information economics, incentives and public policy.

Michel Poitevin has conducted recent research on the optimal structure of a federation in the presence of local public goods. He is interested in optimal taxation in the presence of public goods in a context of fiscal competition between states or regions. He has also worked on the optimal determination of tuition fees for Quebec universities.

A CIRANO Invited Fellow since 2018, Henri-Paul Rousseau is Adjunct Professor at HEC Montréal, Visiting Professor at the Paris School of Economics and Senior Fellow of the C.D. Howe Institute. He is also an organic maple syrup producer in Dunham, Quebec.

Henri-Paul Rousseau holds a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Economics from the Université de Sherbrooke. He continued his studies at the University of Western Ontario, where he received a Ph.D. and the T.M. Brown Award for the best thesis in economics.

When he returned to Quebec, he began an academic career in 1973 at the Université du Québec à Montréal, and then, in 1975, at Université Laval, where he became Chair of the Department of Economics in 1984. He also acted as an advisor to the Canadian and Québec governments. More specifically, he was Director of Research and co-author of the Report on Savings in Québec released in 1980. As an expert advisor to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance, Trade and Economic Affairs, he also co-authored an economic impact analysis released in 1985 as part of the White Paper on Personal Taxation.

In 1986, Henri-Paul Rousseau joined the National Bank, where he held several strategic positions, including Senior Vice-President, Treasury and Financial Markets. From September 1990 to April 1991, he served as Secretary of the Bélanger-Campeau Commission on the Political and Constitutional Future of Québec. He was head of Boréal Assurances from 1992 to 1994 and then became President and Chief Executive Officer of Laurentian Bank of Canada before being appointed President and Chief Executive Officer of the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, a position he held from September 2002 to May 2008. 

From January 2009 to the end of December 2017, he served as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of Power Corporation of Canada and Power Financial Corporation. He is also a Director of several companies, including Great-West Lifeco and IGM Financial and their subsidiaries, as well as Putnam Investments in the United States. He was a Director of the Global Financial Markets Association from October 2010 to July 2014.

Henri-Paul Rousseau has served on the boards of Santander Bank since 2015, Santander Holdings USA since 2017 and Banco Santander International since 2020; he has been Chairman of Noovelia since 2018.

In 2004, Concordia University awarded him an honorary doctorate and he was elected to the Academy of Great Montrealers in the Economic Sector in 2006. That same year, on the fringe of the Entretiens Jacques Cartier - a forum for exchanges on major societal issues - the Lumière University Lyon 2 awarded him an honorary doctorate. In 2007, the Université de Sherbrooke and Université Laval awarded him the same distinction. He received the medal of Commander of the Order of Montreal in 2016 and was named a member of the Order of Canada in 2018.

Henri-Paul Rousseau has been personally involved with several social and cultural institutions and in the education and health sectors by leading several fundraising campaigns. In addition, he has been a volunteer with the Montreal Heart Institute Foundation for more than 20 years, including nine years as Chairman of the Board of Directors, a position he held until July 2018. He was a member of the selection committee for the Apogee Canada 2015 and 2016 Research Excellence Fund.

Since 2012, Henri-Paul Rousseau has chaired the Tremplin Santé Foundation, which he created to encourage healthy lifestyle habits with young people in Quebec and Canada. Since 2010, he has been founding co-chair, with businessman Charles Sirois, of Réseau QG100, a private non-profit organization whose goal is to contribute to the growth of winning companies in Quebec by accelerating their growth worldwide.

A CIRANO Researcher and Fellow since 2014, Main Researcher of the theme Sustainable Development and Agri-Food, Annie Royer is Associate Professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Consumer Sciences at Université Laval. She is also holder of the Chair in Analysis of Agricultural Policy and Collective Marketing and is Director of the Bachelor of Agricultural Economics program.

Holding a Ph.D. in Economics from the Pantheon-Sorbonne University Paris 1, she was also a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands from 2009 to 2011.

Her research program is multidisciplinary. It is oriented towards collective marketing of agricultural products, vertical coordination in food chains and value chains, producer organizations, agricultural policy analysis, quality and innovation.

A CIRANO Researcher and Fellow since 2017, Lota Tamini is Full Professor in the Department of Agri-Food Economics and Consumer Science at Université Laval. He is also Director of the Centre for Economics Research on the Environment, Agri-food, Transportation, and Energy (CREATE), Scientific Director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in International Trade and Investment (CISITI), member of the Egg Industry Economic Research Chair and member of the Institut Hydro-Québec en environnement, développement et société.

Holding a Ph.D. in Economics from Université Laval, his research focuses on international agri-food trade and agricultural policies, environmental and natural resource economics, production economics and producer behavior, market structure, animal health and production.