ORIAS

Directors

Dan McCarthy 

Associate Professor, University of Waterloo

A faculty member with the Waterloo Institute of Social Innovation and Resilience (WISIR) as well as an Associate Professor and Associate Chair Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Environment and Resource Studies at the University of Waterloo. His interdisciplinary academic background has focused on exploring the utility of complex systems-based approaches to understanding and intervening in linked social, ecological, epistemological systems.  He has strong research interests and partnerships that relate to fostering adaptive capacity, social and environmental justice and social innovation in the field of environmental policy. He works closely with several First Nations groups in both northern and southern Ontario as well as conservation and environmental movement organizations in the Greater Toronto Area, Ontario.

Graham Whitelaw

Associate Professor, Queen's University

Graham has over 20 years of experience in the land use and environmental policy fields, 10 of those with the Land Use Policy Branch, Ontario Ministry of the Environment. He has extensive consulting experience providing services to government and the NGO sector and is an accomplished facilitator bringing innovation to the policy development process through public engagement processes. He completed my PhD in the School of Planning, University of Waterloo in 2006 and joined Queen's University in 2007. He is currently a volunteer Director with the Save the Oak Ridges Moraine Coalition as well as ORIAS.

Debbe Crandall

Debbe Crandall has lived in Caledon since 1967 minus years traveling and living elsewhere.  She has been involved with Save the Oak Ridges Moraine Coalition since 1990, its executive director since 1999 and its representative on a number of provincial initiatives concerned with landscape-scale conservation planning and regional growth management issues.  Debbe was appointed to the Oak Ridges Moraine Advisory Panel in 2001, which developed the framework for Oak Ridges Moraine legislation, the Central Ontario Smart Growth Panel in 2002, the Greenbelt Council in 2006 and rotating positions, including Chair, on the Oak Ridges Moraine Foundation. She has a B.Sc. with a major in geology and a yet-to-be completed MES at the University of Waterloo.  With colleagues from Queens and Waterloo universities, Debbe is a founding director of ORIAS – the Oak Ridges Institute for Applied Sustainability.  In 2016 Debbe and her three sisters started Mount Wolfe Farm on their family’s 90 acres, a sustainable farm that marries ecosystem protection, amazing food production, community well-being and an enhanced love of the land.