Dr. Michael Walker, founder and former longtime executive director of the Fraser Institute, has been appointed to the Order of Canada, the cornerstone of the Canadian Honours System, which recognizes outstanding achievement, dedication to the community and service to the country.

Dr. Walker dedicated his life to the Fraser Institute and changed the world through measurement. There was a time when Canadians believed that the private marketplace was an unreliable economic institution and the path to increased prosperity was through increased government action.

Today, Canadians think differently about government.

They no longer believe that government is capable of being the principal source of growth and driver of social progress, largely due to Dr. Walker efforts. He built a world-class organization that precisely measures and broadly communicates the impact of replacing markets with government intervention on the lives of regular Canadians.

The Institute’s ideas and measurements have spread around the world, and the general level of understanding and debate about the impacts of economic freedom and government action are much more advanced than when Dr. Walker (along with T. Patrick Boyle) founded the Fraser Institute in 1974.

“Dr. Walker’s diligence, commitment to excellence, and sense of purpose created a truly unique organization,” said Niels Veldhuis, president of the Fraser Institute. “The principles of independence, non-partisanship and empirical measurement were forged by Dr. Walker 40 years ago and are the bedrock reason for the Institute’s continued success.”

The Fraser Institute is ranked the number one Canadian think-tank, and 17th among all think-tanks worldwide, by the 2015 Global Go To Think Tank Index published by the University of Pennsylvania and released at The World Bank in Washington, D.C.

“Being recognized as the top think-tank in Canada and one of the top 20 think-tanks in the world speaks volumes about the impact Dr. Walker has had here in Canada and around the world,” Veldhuis said.