Readers are cordially invited to the 2024 Eric J. Hanson Memorial lecture at the TELUS International Centre at the University of Alberta hosted by the Institute for Public Economics.
To register please go to this link.
This year’s speaker is Anil Arora, the former Chief Statistician of Canada from 2016 to 2024 speaking on “Data Insights for a Better Canada.”
Anil Arora is a Canadian civil servant who has been the Chief Statistician of Canada since September 19, 2016. He is the twelfth Chief Statistician since Statistics Canada was founded as the Dominion Bureau of Statistics in 1918. He first joined Statistics Canada in 1988 and has since overseen major transformations such as computer-assisted interviewing, online publishing and multi-dimensional output databases, and more recently the migration of the agency’s data holdings to the secure cloud. He led the agency during the challenging COVID-19 pandemic as it conducted the 2021 census and enhanced its statistical programs.
Prior to his role as Chief Statistician, Arora served in Assistant Deputy Minister roles for Natural resources Canada and Health Canada after spending over 20 years working for Statistics Canada. He is a sought-after public speaker, and has made several prominent speeches and presented at dozens of conferences, both domestically and internationally.
Source: Wikipedia
Time: 3:30 pm – 6:30 pm
or online via Zoom
Pre-reception: 3:30 p.m. MDT
Lecture: 4:00 p.m. MDT
Reception: 5:30 p.m. MDT
Eric J. Hanson
Eric J. Hanson was born in Sweden in 1912 . He emigrated from Sweden with his parents to an Alberta farm in 1925. In 1931 he earned a teaching certificate in the Province of Alberta and had a career as a school teacher and principal before and after attending Queen’s University, where he graduated with a BA in 1942. He completed an MA in Economics at the University of Alberta in 1946 and a PhD in Economics at Clark University, Massachusetts in 1952.
Dr. Hanson joined the Department of Political Economy at the University of Alberta as a lecturer in 1946 and was promoted to the rank of professor in 1957. He served as Department Administrator from 1952-1957 and was Head of the Department from 1957-1964, a period that saw rapid student and staff growth immediately prior to the administrative separation of the Calgary campus from the University of Alberta. He was the last Head of Political Economy before it was divided into two entities: Economics; and Political Science. Dr. Hanson went on to serve as Associate Dean of Graduate Studies for the years 1964-1967, then returned to full-time teaching until his retirement in 1974. In October 1982 he published A History of the Department of Economics which was the department project in celebration of the University of Alberta’s first 75 years.
In 1962 Dr. Hanson was named the NATO Visiting Professor for Canada. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1965, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Health (London) in 1972.
Dr. Hanson’s fields of research included the economics of government finance and the economics of petroleum. Perhaps the best known of his many writings is the book Dynamic Decade (1958) on the remarkable growth of the oil industry in Alberta. Dr. Hanson’s work always contained an optimistic and bold view of the future, a future in which brain replaces brawn and good education and intelligent planning become ever more important. He worked at many levels to help Alberta, Edmonton and the University of Alberta to prepare for such a future in his research into the financing of education in Alberta, in his work as an advisor to the cities of Edmonton and Calgary, and as an important force behind the development of the University libraries. Eric Hanson was an important figure in the development of the social science disciplines in Alberta universities and was influential in public policy formulation in the province.
Eric J. Hanson died in Edmonton on Dec. 31, 1985. The Eric Hanson lecture series recognizes the many contributions of Dr. Hanson. Lectures are sponsored by the Institute for Public Economics which is based in the Department of Economics.
Source: Institute for Public Economics, University of Alberta.