Michael Adams cofounded Environics Research Group in 1970 and served as president for several decades. During the 1980s, the firm expanded rapidly and included partnerships with CROP Inc. in Quebec, Environics West in Calgary, Kaagan Research in New York, American Environics in San Francisco, Environics Communications (now Proof), Environics Lipkin, a motivational firm and Environics Analytics, the country’s largest geo-demographic data analytics consulting firm.

Environics was the first official pollster for Canada’s national newspaper, The Globe and Mail, in the 1980s and subsequently conducted polls for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, CTV, the Toronto Star and others.

Mr. Adams is also the author of seven books, including: Sex in the Snow: Canadian Social Values at the End of the Millennium (1997); Fire and Ice: The United States, Canada and the Myth of Converging Values, (2003); American Backlash (2006), Unlikely Utopia: The Surprising Triumph of Canadian Pluralism (2007) and most recently Could It Happen Here? Canada in the Age of Trump and Brexit (2017). Fire and Ice won the prestigious 2003/04 Donner Prize for the best book on Canadian public policy and was selected in the fall of 2005 by the Literary Review of Canada as one of the 100 most important books ever published in the country.

In 2006 he founded and serves as president of the Environics Institute for Survey Research, Canada’s first not for profit public interest survey research centre. The Environics Institute sponsors and conducts relevant and original public opinion and social research on issues of public policy and social change. The Institute has conducted a number of groundbreaking projects, including the first major survey of Muslims in Canada, the Urban Aboriginal Peoples Study (UAPS), and the Black Experience Project in the Greater Toronto Area and is most widely known for its continuation of the regular Focus Canada surveys which first began in 1976, the country’s largest and oldest public opinion tracking survey.

In celebration of its 10th anniversary, the Environics Institute published Committing Sociology, a curated collection of published commentary and articles on Canadian values and society based on the Institute’s research.

Michael Adams holds an Honours B.A. in Political Science from Queen’s University (1969) and a M.A. in Sociology from the University of Toronto (1970). In 2008 he was made a Fellow of the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association (the highest honour which can be bestowed upon a member) for his contribution to marketing and survey research in Canada. In 2009, he received an honorary Doctor of Letters from Ryerson University in Toronto, now Toronto Metropolitan University.

In December 2016, Michael was awarded the Order of Canada, the country’s highest civilian honour in recognition of his contributions to public opinion research and his work in helping Canadians understand who they are as a country and a people.