Michael Adams
Michael Adams is the president of the Environics group of research and communications consulting companies which he co-founded in 1970. In 2006 he founded the Environics Institute for Survey Research, where he also serves as President.
Mr. Adams is also the author of six books, including: Sex in the Snow: Canadian Social Values at the End of the Millennium (1997); Fire and Ice: The United States, Canada and the Myth of Converging Values, (2003); and Unlikely Utopia: The Surprising Triumph of Canadian Pluralism (2007). Fire and Ice won the prestigious 2003/04 Donner Prize for the best book on Canadian public policy and was selected in the fall of 2005 by the Literary Review of Canada as one of the 100 most important books ever published in the country.
Michael Adams is a noted commentator on social values and social change in North America. He is a popular public speaker, offering topical, entertaining talks elaborating the data presented in his books. Michael’s speaking repertoire includes a long-range look at the evolution of Canadian public opinion on a range of issues from public policy to national identity and diversity.
Michael holds an Honours B.A. in Political Science from Queen's University (1969) and a M.A. in Sociology from the University of Toronto (1970) and was named as one of the 100 most influential people in Canadian communications according to Marketing Magazine’s Power List 2005. In 2008 Michael Adams was appointed to the Ontario Premier’s Climate Change Advisory Panel and was made a Fellow of the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association, the highest honour which can be bestowed upon a member, for his contribution to marketing and survey research in Canada. In the spring of 2009, he received an honorary Doctor of Letters from Ryerson University in Toronto. In 2016 he was awarded the Order of Canada for his contributions in public opinion research.