Allan Gregg, the chair of Harris/Decima and host of TVOntario’s Allan Gregg in Conversation With, joins the Clayton Riddell Graduate Program in Political Management and the Arthur Kroeger College of Public Affairs as an adjunct professor.
Mr. Gregg was a doctoral student and lecturer in Political Science at Carleton University in the 1970s before the demands of a young family obliged him to give up his studies. He went on to found Decima Research and became pollster and strategist for the Progressive Conservative Party under Brian Mulroney, being credited as a key architect of the party’s federal election victories in 1984 and 1988. Over his career he has participated in more than 50 election campaigns on three continents.
He sold his share of Decima following the 1993 federal election, and after a sabbatical co-founded a new company, The Strategic Counsel, in 1995. He left that partnership in 2007, when he returned to Harris/Decima as chair.
He served for five years as the chair of the Toronto International Film Festival, he was one of the founders of YTV, the Canadian children’s television channel, he co-managed The Tragically Hip, and has served as chair of The Walrus Foundation, on whose advisory board he still sits. Along with Chantal Hébert and Andrew Coyne, he was a longstanding regular member of the At Issue panel on CBC’s The National until 2011, when he left to devote more time to longer-form writing.
He has maintained his relation with Carleton University and in 2001 delivered the second annual Kesterton Lecture for its School of Journalism and Communication on Parliament Hill. As an adjunct faculty member, students in the Master of Political Management program and the Bachelor of Public Affairs and Policy Management will be able to call on his counsel, experience and expertise.