The Consumers Council of Canada is pleased to announce its participation in the Canadian Partnership for Public Policy-Oriented Consumer Interest Research, which will develop a Canadian interdisciplinary network of researchers and practitioners interested in consumer interest research and to support the conduct and dissemination of such research.

The partnership has an end objective to improve public policy approaches to the well-being of consumers.  Partnership activities will focus on:

• Conducting rigorous policy-oriented research to benefit Canada and its consumers;
• Training graduate students to help build the next generation of PPOCIR expertise; and,
• Sharing PPOCIR results broadly with both academic and non-academic audiences.

The project unites a multidisciplinary group of academics from universities across Canada.  It involves partners from major federal and provincial government organizations with responsibilities for consumer policy, Canada’s main consumer groups, and private sector representatives.  A complete list of members is available on the PPOCIR Partnership website, at http://ppocir.uwaterloo.ca.

The PPOCIR initiative is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council through a Partnership Development Grant.