2022 Convention Keynote Speaker: Althia Raj
UBCM is pleased to welcome award-winning journalist Althia Raj as the keynote speaker at our 2022 Convention. Ms. Raj is a national columnist with the Toronto Star, the host/producer of the bi-monthly podcast, It’s Political, and a regular weekly panellist on CBC’s At Issue panel.
Before joining the Toronto Star, Raj served as HuffPost Canada’s senior editorial manager and Ottawa bureau chief for a decade. She set up the Ottawa bureau and later ran its bilingual newsroom, overseeing its political coverage of Parliament Hill and the National Assembly in Quebec City. In 2017, Raj launched Follow-Up, a politics podcast that she hosted and produced.
Raj was a co-moderator of the 2022 Ontario election and 2019 federal election debates. She also organized and moderated the federal NDP leaders debate in 2017 and the Ontario PC leadership debate in 2018.
Since 2015, Raj has been ranked in The Hill Times list of the top 100 most influential
people in Canadian politics. She has won several digital media awards for her multi-media election coverage in both English and French. In 2022, Raj was awarded the National Newspaper Awards’ John Wesley Dafoe Award for Politics for her work covering the Liberal's 2021 election campaign and the internal dynamics of the Conservative caucus, which led to Erin O’Toole’s removal as leader.
Prior to joining HuffPost, Raj was a national political reporter for Postmedia News and an Ottawa bureau reporter for QMI/Sun Media. She also worked as a network producer for CTV and as an associate producer for the CBC Radio program, The House.
Raj is a proud Parliamentary Internship Program alumna and graduate of McGill University. She serves on the Board of Trustees of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada. Raj is also a volunteer board member with the Ottawa Art Gallery and a past chair of the board of directors of apt613.ca, an award-winning not-for-profit arts and culture blog that she co-founded in 2008.