OTTAWA, JULY 31:  The University of Ottawa is planning to build Canada’s first School of Government to be a “national, non-partisan and independent resource.”

“Our intention is that the School will occupy a unique place in the Canadian academic firmament, contributing to both teaching and scholarship in ways that will be unmatched,” Allan Rock stated Tuesday.

It would also actively be a partner with other schools of public policy in Canada and internationally, the university’s president wrote in an email to the Citizen, “accelerating discovery and refining insights through the sharing of information and the exchange of views.”

Rock has received a presentation on how the prestigious Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., operates as plans for the U of O’s proposed school were refined.

Officials are currently evaluating the “best design approach to the creation of the School,” he wrote. The university hopes to launch the institution next year and enrol the first cohort of students in September, 2015.

The bilingual “comprehensive research university” is better positioned than any other school in Canada to play host to such a facility, Rock stated.

The former Liberal cabinet heavyweight said U of O has “deep and long-standing links with federal departments,” which provides “a strong basis for the interaction with government that will be essential to the School’s success.”

Just Monday, the university announced that it had named Kevin Page, Canada’s former federal parliamentary budget officer, to a three-year posting as the Jean-Luc Pepin Research Chair on Canadian Government.

Page’s experience in the public service “will be a major asset in developing the taxation and governance projects we have planned,” Rock stated in the press release announcing the appointment.

(Page has said he hopes to set up a new fiscal studies institute at the university that would provide analysis on issues facing all levels of government. The university stated that Page intends to work toward the creation of a new institute “dedicated to taxation issues.”)

Rock also pointed to the university’s location in the capital, and “next to government and our national institutions as well as embassies from the world over.”

The faculty, he stated, is diverse and increasingly international, with “respected scholars, accomplished researchers and outstanding teachers.

“By gathering together and consolidating the relevant talents that already reside in our various faculties and their departments, we will give profile and prominence to the outstanding scholars and practitioners who are already here, as well as adding to them through international recruitment,” he wrote.