"The State of the City"

Brian F. Kelcey is a  policy consultant, writer and speaker based in Toronto, Ontario.

After working on environmental and land-use issues in British Columbia, and as a property tax reform advocate in Manitoba and Ontario, Kelcey served as a senior political advisor in the Ontario government from 1999-2003 in the Office of the Government House Leader, in Intergovernmental Affairs and in Ontario's Consumer and Business Services Ministry. Kelcey also served as Ontario's first-ever political advisor for transit policy in 2003 as the Ministry of Transportation took early steps to create a regional transit authority for Toronto (now Metrolinx).

In 2004, Kelcey returned to Manitoba as manager of the Mayor's Red Tape Commission in Winnipeg. He wrote the Commission's final report, which was praised by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business as a national model for municipal regulatory reform. Kelcey then served as budget advisor in the Mayor's office from 2005 to 2008, helping to deliver three consecutive property tax freezes and a series of capital budget reforms. He has served as a director on several non-profit and public enterprise boards, most recently with the Winnipeg Convention Centre.

Kelcey has a passion for film, loves gritty 20th Century noir fiction, and is a voracious reader of history. After a life spent packing boxes, he has 'three hometowns' - Victoria, B.C; Toronto, Ontario and Winnipeg, Manitoba - and he has influenced public policy from inside or outside government in all three. 

He regularly writes op-eds on urban and economic issues, with publication credits in the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, the National Post, the Winnipeg Free Press and newspapers across Canada's Sun / QMI chain. He occasionally writes from a conservative urbanist perspective for Spacing Magazine's online politics blog. In 2012, he was a guest instructor in city politics at the University of Winnipeg.