John C. Luik was a senior fellow of the Democracy Institute. A Rhodes Scholar attached to Hertford College at the University of Oxford, he was a Senior Associate of the Niagara Institute (an affiliate of the Conference Board of Canada) with responsibility for its work in public policy and its Values and Organizational Development programmes." From 1977 to 1990 he taught philosophy and ethics at two Canadian universities, but was dismissed from each (in 1985 and 1990) for misrepresenting his academic credentials. He acted on behalf of the tobacco industry amongst others and was prominent in criticising the evidence related to the claimed links between passive smoking and cancer.