Kimble Ainslie

Kimble F. Ainslie is a public policy analyst, pollster, market researcher, author and former political organizer based in Ontario, Canada.

Ainslie has a PhD in Political Science from York University, as well as degrees from the University of Western Ontario and Queen's University.

He was a paid political consultant in Southwestern Ontario for the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario in the early 1990s, and in 1994 helped to form the Reform Association of Ontario. He later criticized the Progressive Conservative government of Mike Harris as being overly centrist, pragmatic and bureaucratic.

Ainslie conducted polling for the federal and provincial Tories and municipal candidates & incumbents from 1985. He became involved with the Reform Party of Canada in 1993, and worked on polling for that party.

He attempted to establish an official provincial wing of federal Reform in 1994 as co-founder of Reform Ontario with Reg Gosse. Reform Ontario was denied party status by provincial election authorities in 1995.

Ainslie has argued that Mike Harris and federal Reform Party leader Preston Manning arranged a secret deal in 1994, wherein Manning agreed not to agree to a provincial Reform Party of Ontario and thus split the right-wing vote with Harris's Tories. In return, some federal Reform supporters were allowed to run provincially as Progressive Conservatives. Ainslie had no involvement in this arrangement, as he had already created the Reform Association to run candidates in the 1995 election.

The Reform Association ran 15 Independent candidates in London, Stratford-Perth, Huron, Kitchener-Waterloo and in Metropolitan Toronto. Ainslie let his name stand in the riding of Huron. On May 16, 1995, Preston Manning placed advertisements in daily newspapers across Ontario repudiating Reform Ontario. Ainslie ended up in 5th place with 207 votes; Reform Ontario in March had previously attracted 10% of the vote across Ontario.

Ainslie later moved to the United States of America and became active in economic development consulting and research.

Five years later, he was appointed as "senior research analyst" for the James Madison Institute in Tallahassee FL, and a year later "entitlements analyst" at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C..

He has been president and chairman of Nordex Research since its founding in 1985. Its predecessor company was Nordex Group, a public management consulting firm founded in 1977.

Ainslie has also worked for the Fraser Institute and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, and was an occasional editorial writer for the National Post in 2002. He has written extensively on small business and venture capital policy in Canada, and on Canadian urban transportation, medical transportation and privatization, business and government, municipally-funded sports stadium, social policy, charter schools and the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

As Entitlements Policy Analyst for the Cato Institute from 2001-2002 wrote on U.S. welfare reform and workforce development policy. Ainslie has criticized U.S. President George W. Bush for both lowering "work participation" requirements for welfare, and for pressuring single mothers on social assistance to commit to marriage. His articles have appeared on Fox News, CBS.com, the Independent Review. From 1985 to 1995 was a frequent commentator on talk radio in London, Ontario and later a contributor to LondonFog, a local blog

From 2003 to 2005 he was a consulting executive to a ground transportation company in London, Ontario. Ainslie has since taught political science and public administration at universities in United States and Canada. In August 2007, The Copenhagen Institute and Nordex Research published his book Financing the Gap: Small Capital and State Economic Development in Canada, 1943–2005, 432 pages.

From 2007 to 2008 Ainslie served as full-time intervenor at the Ontario Energy Board where he presented on 15 rate and policy cases.

In 2010, he developed a nationally innovative, online civic engagement model, a project that later attracted 770 registrants and more than 2600 submissions over a 7-month period in a major municipality in Southwestern Ontario on matters related to the environment, conservation and the economy. He continues his professional practice in market research, public opinion polling, and consulting.