Catherine Swift

Catherine Susan Swift is a hyper-partisan anti-union conservative propagandist and former Chair of the Board of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.^[1][2] She is currently the spokesperson for Working Canadians, a neo-conservative, anti-union not-for-profit organization dedicated to analyzing and disseminating information on the purported negative impact excessive union influence is having on the Canadian economy and society.

Swift studied at the University of Toronto and Carleton University in Ottawa, receiving a B.A. (Honours) in Economics in 1977 and an MA in Economics in 1980.

Swift has a background with the Canadian federal government from 1976 to 1983, in the Departments of Consumer and Corporate Affairs, Industry and Communications. She was Senior Economist with the Toronto-Dominion Bank from 1983 to 1987.

Swift joined the Canadian Federation of Independent Business in 1987. She became President in 1995, CEO in 1997, and Chair in June 1999. For the CFIB, Swift coordinated policy issues at the federal and provincial level, and she represented CFIB to government and civil society members.

Swift is a former president of the Empire Club, and in May 2015 she abruptly resigned as a director of the relatively conservative, but nominally non-partisan C.D. Howe Institute due to her involvement in the highly partisan Working Canadians anti-union neo-conservative organization,^[3] the Canadian Youth Business Foundation, ^[4] and SOS Children's Villages Canada.^[5] She is also the current President of the International Small Business Congress.^[6]

As the head of CFIB, she was widely published in journals, magazines and other media on issues such as free trade, finance, entrepreneurship and issues facing small business owners, particularly female entrepreneurs. She contributed the article in The Canadian Encyclopedia entitled Small Business,^[7] and once wrote for Canadian newspaper, The Globe and Mail, about small business.

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