Jeffrey Simpson, Former National Affairs Columnist, The Globe and Mail

Jeffrey Simpson is the most decorated journalist in Canada. An Officer of the Order of Canada, he also received seven honorary doctorates and numerous national writing awards, including the Governor-General’s Prize and the Donner Prize for the best book on public policy, the National Newspaper Award (twice) and the National Magazine Award. He also won the Hyman Soloman Award for public policy journalism, the Arthur Kroeger Award for contributions to public policy, and the Charles Lynch prize for coverage of national politics.

For 32 years, his national affairs column in The Globe and Mail was essential reading for decision-makers and informed Canadians across the country. In that column, and in hundreds of public speeches and lectures, he ranged over an enormous number of domestic and international issues, from politics to health-care, from climate-change to economic and fiscal policy, to Canadian-American relations and the Middle East. In addition to making presentations at conferences here and abroad, he moderated many conferences. He retired from column-writing at The Globe and Mail in mid-2016, but continues to lecture and speak on many of the leading issues of the day.

He has written eight books, numerous magazine articles, appeared regularly on television in English and French, and was a guest lecturer at such universities as Oxford, Edinburgh, Harvard, Princeton, Brigham Young, California and more than a dozen universities in Canada. He has been a John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California; a Skelton-Clark Fellow and Brockington Visitor at Queen’s university; a distinguished visitor at the University of Alberta; and a member of the Georgetown University Leadership Seminar.

He has been a member of the board of trustees of Queen’s University, the board of overseers of Green College, University of British Columbia; the advisory councils of the Robarts Medical Research Institute and the Richard Ivey School of Business at Western university; and the editorial board of the Queen’s Quarterly. He was vice-chairman of the City of Ottawa Library Board and was awarded the William Watkinson Award for outstanding contributions to the Canadian library community.

Jeffrey has taught as an adjunct professor at the Queen’s University Institute of Policy Studies and the University of Ottawa Law School. He is senior fellow at the University of Ottawa Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. He was a juror for the Charles Taylor Prize for non-fiction books in 2008 and for the Cundill Prize for history in 2011 and 2012. He is also a member of the Trilateral Commission.