The agreement will see MRIA wound down and dissolved and its assets transferred to CRIC.

Corporate members of the MRIA will be welcomed as CRIC members and support will be available to help transition individual MRIA members to join Esomar and certified market research professionals to join analytics and insights professionals’ body CAIP Canada.

The MRIA had previously closed in 2018 due to financial issues before being re-launched by a group of Canadian market researchers in 2019, despite the CRIC having been formed in the intervening period.

The CRIC  was established to represent the industry following the MRIA’s closure, and was launched by the leaders of several market research companies including Ipsos Canada, Leger Analytics and CRC Research.

Jean-Marc Léger, director at CRIC, said: “This is an important moment for the industry to regroup all the major Canadian research, insights and analytics companies and work together to implement high standards and ethics and best practices across Canada.” 

Nik Nanos, chair at CRIC, said: “This agreement creates one authoritative voice in Canada of the research, insights, and analytics industry.

“I wish to thank Jean-Marc Léger for his efforts in leading the negotiation on behalf of CRIC.”

Quito Maggi, chair at MRIA, said: “The MRIA Board and membership both voted unanimously to join forces with CRIC; we are thrilled with that decision and to work towards the betterment of the industry.”