Last updated August 25, 2026
The right economist depends on what your audience needs to do with the information. A policy economist explains why a tariff works the way it does. A private-sector forecaster tells your members what to expect over the next four quarters. A global political economist puts both in a longer arc. Below is how to tell them apart, and who ProSpeakers.com represents in each category.
Key Takeaways
- Late 2026 gives an economics keynote three shocks to work with at once: the U.S. tariff dispute, elevated oil prices tied to the Middle East conflict, and a Bank of Canada holding rates steady with growth running thin.
- Match the economist to the decision, not the topic. Policy audiences want structure; business audiences want a forecast; board and executive audiences often want the geopolitical frame.
- Featured speakers include Trevor Tombe, Craig Alexander, John Rapley, David Dodge, Stephen Poloz, Don Drummond, Jeff Rubin and Mike Moffatt.
- Fees vary by date, format and location. Travel and accommodation are budgeted separately, and there is no additional charge for ProSpeakers.com’s services.
- We match speakers to your event goal at no cost to you. Our fee comes from the speaker, not from your budget.
What Should an Economics Keynote Cover in Late 2026?
Three things, and how they interact.
Tariffs. The United States imposed 50 per cent tariffs on roughly $20 billion of Canadian goods on 22 August 2026 after trade talks collapsed, and Prime Minister Mark Carney confirmed Canada will match them dollar for dollar from 8 September. Per the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, they apply even to CUSMA-compliant goods and carry no expiry date. BMO expects the measures to take about half a percentage point off Canada’s growth.
Energy. The conflict in the Middle East has kept oil prices elevated. In its June statement, the Bank of Canada said it was looking through the war’s near-term effect on headline inflation but would not allow higher energy prices to become persistent inflation.
Rates and growth. The Bank held its overnight rate at 2.25 per cent on 15 July, a sixth consecutive hold, with its July projection leaving 2026 growth at 0.7 per cent and rising to 1.8 per cent in 2027. The next announcement is 2 September.
Any economist can recite those three. The session earns its slot when someone explains what happens when all three land in the same planning cycle — and what your members should do differently as a result.
Which Economist Should You Book?
Four distinct types, and the mistake we see most often is booking the wrong one for the room.
The policy economist explains the mechanism: why a tariff has the effect it does, which sectors carry the exposure, what the fiscal arithmetic looks like. Best for public sector audiences, industry associations working on trade or regulatory files, and anyone whose members are trying to influence policy rather than react to it.
The private-sector forecaster gives the near-term commercial read: rates, borrowing costs, hiring, capital spending over the next four to six quarters. Best for business owners, financial services, and association members who need to make decisions rather than understand a system.
The global political economist works at a longer horizon: where the world order is heading and what a trade war looks like as one episode in a much larger cycle. Best for executive audiences, board retreats and thought leadership summits.
The former central banker brings institutional authority on monetary policy and financial stability, and carries weight with investment, pension and banking audiences in a way academics generally do not.
Tell us which describes your room and we will point you to the right one — including when that means recommending someone other than the speaker you first asked about.
Policy Economists
Trevor Tombe
Tombe is a Professor in the University of Calgary’s Department of Economics and Director of Fiscal and Economic Policy at The School of Public Policy. He is co-director of Finances of the Nation, a Fellow at the Public Policy Forum and a Senior Fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, and he served on the Bank of Canada’s external review panel evaluating its pandemic response.
Why Tombe resonates in 2026. He is the economist Canadian newsrooms have been calling all month. He worked through Statistics Canada’s input-output tables to estimate where the tariff damage actually lands: according to BNN Bloomberg, roughly 52,000 jobs directly at risk and another 35,000 through suppliers and service providers, with Ontario at 36,100, Québec at 18,300 and B.C. at 11,200. That province-by-province specificity is rare, and it is what makes his sessions land with regional audiences.
Speaks on: international trade and tariffs, macroeconomics and productivity, fiscal federalism, public finances and debt sustainability. Best for: association conferences, policy audiences, manufacturing and export-facing industry groups, executive briefings.
Don Drummond
Drummond spent more than two decades at the federal Department of Finance, where he was involved in coordinating federal budgets and fiscal policy, before becoming Senior Vice President and Chief Economist at TD Bank. He has since held fellowships at Queen’s University and the C.D. Howe Institute.
Speaks on: fiscal policy, public finance, taxes and debt, how public policy reaches household finances and business strategy. Best for: audiences that want the view from inside government as well as inside a bank.
Mike Moffatt
Moffatt focuses on sustainable economic growth, housing supply and industrial policy — the structural questions underneath Canada’s productivity problem.
Speaks on: housing and affordability, industrial and climate policy, regional economic development. Best for: real estate, construction and municipal audiences, and associations working on housing or industrial strategy.
Private-Sector Forecasters
Craig Alexander
Alexander is President of Alexander Economic Views and has held the chief economist role at three of Canada’s most-watched institutions in succession: TD Bank Group, as Senior Vice President and Chief Economist; the Conference Board of Canada; and Deloitte Canada, where he was the firm’s first Chief Economist. He was also Vice President of Economic Analysis at the C.D. Howe Institute, and began his career with four years as an economist at Statistics Canada.
Why Alexander resonates in 2026. His background is forecasting for people who have to make commercial decisions — bank divisions, corporate clients, boards. Sessions weigh less on what Ottawa or Washington should do and more on what the numbers mean for hiring, borrowing and margins over the coming quarters. The C.D. Howe Institute has called him one of Canada’s leading economists.
Speaks on: the economic outlook, financial market trends, trade and tariffs, productivity and competitiveness, regional and sector analysis. Best for: association AGMs, financial services and insurance, chambers of commerce, pension and benefits audiences.
See Craig Alexander’s full bio →
Jeff Rubin
Rubin was Chief Economist at CIBC World Markets for two decades and was among the first economists to forecast triple-digit oil prices, which he did in 2005. He has written several bestselling books on energy, trade and the limits of globalisation.
Why Rubin resonates in 2026. Energy is now doing as much work on the inflation picture as tariffs are, and Rubin has spent his career on exactly that intersection. He is also a genuinely contrarian voice, which makes him a strong choice when a programme chair wants a session members will argue about afterwards.
Speaks on: oil and energy markets, inflation, supply chains, the retreat from globalisation. Best for: energy, transport and resource audiences, and events wanting a provocative headline session.
Global Political Economists
John Rapley
Rapley is a political economist at the University of Cambridge who has taught at universities in Britain, the United States, Canada, France, South Africa and the Caribbean, and who founded the Caribbean’s first independent think tank, the Caribbean Policy Research Institute. Born, raised and educated in Canada, he began his academic career at Oxford’s international development department before spending two decades working in the developing world as an academic, journalist and think tank director. He contributes frequently to the Globe and Mail and is the author of Twilight of the Money Gods: Economics as a Religion and How it all Went Wrong.
Why Rapley resonates in 2026. He is the speaker to book when the tariff story is not the whole story. Drawing on his collaboration with the historian Peter Heather, Rapley sets out the parallels between the decline of the Roman Empire and the position of contemporary Western economies — arguing the West has entered the descent phase of an imperial cycle, marked by economic reversals, rising competition from formerly peripheral regions, and strain at home. For an executive audience watching a seventy-year trading relationship come apart, that framing does something a quarterly forecast cannot: it explains why this is happening at all, rather than only what it costs.
He is also the roster’s strongest fit for internationally minded audiences. His work on inequality, debt crises and global development travels well beyond Canada, which matters for associations with members or operations outside the country.
Speaks on: the shifting global order and the decline of Western economic dominance, globalisation and its reversal, inequality and debt crises, global development, the limits of economics as a discipline. Best for: executive audiences, board retreats, thought leadership summits, international associations, and conferences wanting an intellectually substantial closing keynote rather than a data session.
Former Central Bankers
David Dodge
Dodge served as Governor of the Bank of Canada from 2001 to 2008, and was previously Deputy Minister of Finance. He guided the Bank through the early 2000s downturn and is closely associated with the case for fiscal discipline.
Why Dodge resonates in 2026. With the Bank holding rates through a trade shock and an energy shock at once, an audience of investors or pension trustees will take the monetary policy read more seriously from someone who has sat in the chair.
Speaks on: monetary policy, fiscal sustainability, financial stability, the Canadian economy. Best for: investment, pension and banking audiences, board and governance events.
Stephen Poloz
Poloz served as the ninth Governor of the Bank of Canada, from June 2013 to June 2020, steering the Bank through the 2014–15 oil price collapse and the opening months of the pandemic. He had already spent fourteen years at the Bank earlier in his career, rising to Chief of its Research Department in 1992.
The part of his record that matters most in 2026 sits between those two stints at the central bank. Poloz spent fourteen years at Export Development Canada — joining as Vice-President and Chief Economist in 1999, taking on responsibility for the lending programmes in 2008, and serving as President and Chief Executive Officer from 2011 until he became Governor. EDC is the federal agency that finances and insures Canadian exporters. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada, is now a Special Advisor at Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt, chairs the advisory council of the Lawrence National Centre at Ivey, and wrote The Next Age of Uncertainty, a Shaughnessy Cohen Prize finalist.
Why Poloz resonates in 2026. No one else available in Canada combines those two seats. A tariff shock is simultaneously a monetary policy problem and an exporter financing problem, and Poloz has run the institution on each side of it. When your members ask what the Bank will do about a trade shock and what happens to exporters caught in one, he has answered both questions professionally rather than analytically. He has also stayed close to current federal and provincial policy work, including a 2024 federal working group on directing more Canadian pension capital toward domestic investment.
Speaks on: monetary policy and interest rates, trade and export finance, uncertainty and risk, the Canadian economic outlook. Best for: exporters and manufacturers, financial services, pension and investment audiences, boards, and any association whose members sell into the U.S.
Enquire about Stephen Poloz’s availability →
What Does It Cost to Book an Economist in Canada?
Fees vary widely across this group. A university-based economist and a former Governor of the Bank of Canada are not in the same band, and the same speaker will quote differently for a 45-minute virtual session than for a two-day trip to a regional conference.
Rather than publish figures that go stale, send us your date and budget and we will come back quickly with realistic options at your number — including where a lesser-known speaker would serve your audience better than a marquee name.
Travel and accommodation are budgeted separately from the speaking fee. Virtual delivery removes that line entirely. There is no additional charge for ProSpeakers.com’s services: our fee comes from the speaker, not from you.
How Far in Advance Should You Book?
Book the date early, lock the content late. Senior economists’ calendars fill six to nine months ahead for conference season, and the fall and spring AGM windows are tightest. But the substance of an economics session should be built close to the event, because the inputs move — the Bank of Canada alone has eight rate announcements a year.
If your conference falls near a rate announcement or a federal or provincial budget, tell us when you enquire. A good economics speaker will build the session around that date instead of talking past it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should we book one economist or a panel?
For most association AGMs, a single keynote with Q&A gives members a clearer takeaway. Panels of economists tend to produce competing forecasts that cancel each other out. A panel works when you deliberately want contrast — pairing a policy economist with a private-sector forecaster on trade, for example, which is a genuinely good session in 2026.
Will the content be out of date by our event?
The headline numbers will move; that is the nature of the topic. This is why we recommend confirming the date early and finalising content close to the event, and why a short call between your programme chair and the speaker about four weeks out is worth scheduling.
Can these speakers tailor to our industry or province?
Yes, and the good ones insist on it. Several — Tombe and Alexander in particular — work routinely at the provincial and sector level. Send us your membership profile and the sectors that matter most.
Are they available for virtual events?
Yes. Economic sessions work well virtually and it is often the fastest route to a date on short notice. See our virtual speakers roster.
We have a limited budget. Is an economist out of reach?
Not necessarily. Fees vary considerably across this group, and virtual delivery removes travel costs. Tell us your number and we will be straight with you about what it reaches. You can also browse speakers under $5,000.
How do we check availability?
Send us your date, audience and budget or call 416.420.4525. We typically respond within hours, not days.
Fall conference season is filling now, and economists are the first category to go in a year like this one. Browse the full roster under Business and Economy, Future Trends and Global Economy and Current Events and Political — or just tell us about your audience and let us do the matching.
Ready to book an economics speaker?
ProSpeakers.com is one of Canada’s leading speakers bureaus, based in Toronto, Ontario. Founded and led by Director Heather MacLean, ProSpeakers.com has spent over 30 years connecting organisations with keynote speakers, motivational speakers, business speakers, and entertainers for corporate events, conferences, and virtual presentations across Canada and North America. There is no additional charge for ProSpeakers.com’s services. Learn more about us.