Economic Outlook 2025: A Director’s Recap

By: Jeff Chan, LCERPA Director

On February 12th, 2025, Lazaridis Hall at Wilfrid Laurier University played host to the economics department’s annual marquee event, Economic Outlook. For the past several iterations of this event, the director of the Laurier Centre for Economic Research and Policy Analysis (LCERPA) has chosen a theme around which to centre a panel discussion moderated by the director, with 1-2 guest speakers serving as panellists. As the new incoming director of LCERPA, I had chosen immigration as our topic for 2025, which turned out to be an issue which mattered quite a lot by February 2025, with the Canadian restrictions to immigration, caps on international students, and the turbulence across the border serving as big pieces of the economic narrative for 2024 and early 2025.

This year, we invited two excellent speakers who provided their distinct but equally well-informed opinions on immigration. Professor Jennifer Hunt is an academic economist who has written many of the economics profession’s most well-cited and important works on the economics of immigration. In addition, Professor Hunt has put her knowledge into practice and served as the Chief Economist of the US Department of Labo(u)r. Our second speaker, Pedro Antunes, has also had a distinguished career as an economist. The current Chief Economist of the Conference Board of Canada, Pedro has amassed a huge amount of experience as an economic forecaster and in speaking to the press about economic issues of the day. Our two guests were chosen precisely because their contrasting work and life experiences would provide a more all-encompassing viewpoint of how immigration and the economy, and society more generally, might intersect in Canada.

Despite a once-in-a-season snowstorm that prevented many attendees from making it to Laurier for Economic Outlook, 275 attendees (virtual and in-person) came out to listen to our speakers answer hard-hitting questions about immigration; this represented a 16% increase from our previous year’s Economic Outlook audience size, perhaps reflecting the relevance of immigration as a top-tier issue in Canada in 2025. Our speakers fielded a series of questions prepared by me as the moderator, sharing their expertise on a range of questions from misinformation concerning immigration, policies around international students, and the recent turn in public opinion against immigration in Canada. We also had a great audience who asked some very thoughtful and intelligent questions, including some from our very own students. For those who couldn’t make it on the day, a Youtube video of the whole event is available, so check it out here!

Our guest speakers also served as special judges for our poster award, given to the best poster amongst the student exhibitors who graciously agreed to present their research in poster form at the reception after the panel discussion. Our judges were very impressed with the quality of the work, and had some difficulty in deciding which posters would receive prizes. Ultimately, Nithin Kumar received our inaugural best poster award for Economic Outlook for his work looking at EV adoption in the US. Lana El-Masry was our runner-up, putting together an excellent poster showcasing her research on trust of international versus domestic students. We also had amazing submissions from Rhea Sen, Madison Aquino, and our Bank of Canada competition team (Kyle Arndt, Gabor Cseke, Lana El-Masry, Cheryl Li, Miraide Palmer). These students represent the best of our economics undergraduates and what they can do, so keep an eye on them as they go on to do amazing things!  

LCERPA, as the host and organizer of Economic Outlook, is grateful for the support of the Lazaridis School, particularly our Dean, Kyle Murray. The event would also have been disastrous without the highly capable event planning expertise provided by the Lazaridis marketing team, particularly Patrycja Gadomski-Cebo and Braeden Etienne. LCERPA, future Economic Outlook events, and our students has also benefitted enormously from the support of alumni, members of the community, and other members of the Laurier family all around the world. If you would like to join them in supporting LCERPA, a link to donating is here: http://laurieralumni.ca/economics

Did you know Laurier’s economics department has a newsletter that you can subscribe to? Sign up at: https://bit.ly/lednewsletter . You can check out all of our articles hot off the presses as they come out on the site (accessed through the link) as well!