Bill Hughes
Senior Fellow
Bill Hughes is a Senior Fellow at the Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance. Bill has over 35 years of experience in finance and public policy at both the provincial and municipal levels of government. He has wide-ranging research and policy interests, including municipal financial sustainability, demographics, urban economics, the impact of planning policy on municipal finance, and the economics of water policy.
Before joining the Institute, Bill was the Commissioner of Finance and Treasurer for the Regional Municipality of York, a rapidly growing municipality in the Greater Toronto Area, where he was responsible for the Region’s operating and capital budgets, treasury functions, controllership, procurement, and information technology services.
Prior to joining York Region in 2011, Bill held senior positions in the Ontario government, mainly at the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Infrastructure. Most recently, he was the Assistant Deputy Minister of Infrastructure Policy and Planning. He chaired the Infrastructure Table of the Provincial-Municipal Fiscal and Service Delivery Review, developed the province’s first long-term infrastructure plan, and provided support to the Water Strategy Expert Panel. Early in his career, Bill also worked for both upper- and lower-tier municipal governments in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area.
Bill was a member of the board of directors of the Move Ontario Trust until its wind-up in 2017. He is a lecturer at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, where he co-teaches a course on policy development.
He has a Master of Business Administration from the Schulich School of Business, a Master in Environmental Studies from York University, a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Toronto, and has completed executive training courses from the Rotman School of Management. He is also a Registered Professional Planner.