State of the City Inc.

Brian F. Kelcey is a public policy consultant and the founder of State of the City Inc. A thirty-year veteran of Canadian politics and public policy, he helped deliver three property tax freezes, increased core service investments and reform capital budgeting as budget advisor to the Mayor of Winnipeg in the mid-2000s. He was Project Manager for Winnipeg’s award-winning Red Tape Commission in 2004-2005. He also served as a senior political advisor in four portfolios — including Intergovernmental Affairs and Transportation — in Ontario’s provincial government. Most recently, as a consultant to the Toronto Region Board of Trade and then (2018-2020) as it Vice-President, Policy and Public Affairs, he led development of the Board’s policy response to the Toronto Region’s housing crisis.

Brian’s first significant political work was in 1991, organizing negotiations between loggers & environmentalists during a land-use dispute in the Walbran Valley, 180km northwest of his hometown of Victoria, British Columbia. Since then, as a senior advisor in government, a campaign leader or a public affairs consultant, Brian has influenced public policy on a complex range of urban political issues, including infrastructure finance and property taxation, sharing-economy regulation and economic development, housing and zoning policy, business regulation and civic service innovation. 

Brian has advised mayoral campaigns in three major Canadian cities, he has taught three university courses on urban affairs, and he has testified on legislation to committees at two provincial legislatures and on Parliament Hill. He is frequently interviewed by local, national and international journalists on urban political trends in North American cities, most recently by the Canadian Press on the Montreal election, and by the CBC on Toronto procurement.