It publishes peer-reviewed research and acts as a convenor of policy debates by organizing conferences, round tables and panel discussions among stakeholders, academics, policymakers and the general public.
[1] The institute`s current research agenda focuses on several issues including Canadian federalism and intergovernmental affairs, affordability, income support, industrial policy, skills and training, and community transformations.
This report was the product of an eight-person task force of expert practitioners and academics convened by the IRPP to advise on health care policy.
[1] Past presidents: The founding principles of the IRPP state that "the Institute should dedicate itself to impartial service of the national cultures, the various regions and the various governments of the people of Canada in its research and analysis on public policy questions.
"[4] Hilary Clark of TVO's Inside Agenda blog places the IRPP in the political centre,[7] while a report prepared by George Fetherling for the Sheldon Chumir Foundation for Ethics in Leadership describes the Institute as centre-right.
According to Lindquist, the Institute is generally perceived as a moderate supporter of the market system, free trade and limited government.
However, the IRPP is often considered to be slightly to the left because of its links to prominent Liberals and the reformist views expressed in some of its publications.
[4] The IRPP is financed by an endowment fund, to which federal and provincial governments and the private sector contributed in the early 1970s.
[4] The Institute strives to invest its own resources in all of its projects and to seek a diversity of donors, so that no single source of funding becomes indispensable.
[10] Following Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau’s commitment to establish the Institute, Ronald S. Ritchie was tasked to prepare a study in this direction.
It also recommended that the Institute seek incorporation as a nonprofit corporation under the direction of a Board of Directors composed of "a small number of distinguished citizens.
Deputy Secretary of the Cabinet Michael Pitfield qualified Ritchie's proposal of an endowment by requiring a council of trustees to be established.