Irvin Studin

Irvin Studin is a Canadian author and public policy strategist, for which he has been a professor in leading universities in North America, Asia and Europe. He is based in Richmond Hill, Ontario.

He lectures and advises around the world in a number of languages, and has published several books including on the topics of foreign policy with Russia, the global consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Canada's national role in the 21st century.

Studin worked for a number of years in the Australian Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C) in Canberra, and he principal-authored Australia’s 2006 national counter-terrorism policy.

Studin is the Founder, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of Global Brief Magazine, an international affairs publication launched in 2009 that distributes to “a heavy global readership”.^{1) 2)}

Studin worked for a number of years in the Privy Council Office, a team that assists the Prime Minister and Cabinet in implementing its vision, goals and decisions in a timely manner.³⁾

He was the first ever recruit of the Canadian government’s Recruitment of Policy Leaders programme, through which he was a member of the small team that wrote Canada’s 2004 national security policy (the country’s first).

Studin co-founded the Higher School of Public Administration in Kyiv, Ukraine.⁴⁾

Studin is President of the Institute for 21st Century Questions, a Canadian “vision and strategy tank based in Toronto, Ontario with activities around the world”. He launched the institute in 2014, the same year he opened his consulting business.^{5) 6)}

In January 2022, Studin launched the Canada Science & Policy Committee to Exit the Pandemic, aimed at “guiding the national exit strategy over the coming few months”.⁷⁾

The committee's focuses are to “bring together Canada’s medical-scientific and policy communities”; “change the psychology of the national discussion of the Covid-19 pandemic from the descriptive to the practical, and from the chaotic to the hopeful”; “give practical policy advice and briefings to exit the pandemic across all of the systems of state & society” (including “social fabric”, “institutional structure”, “national unity” and “international dynamics”; and “effectuate” several 'postular shifts' in “Canadian thinking about the pandemic and the exit strategy”.⁸⁾

Studin is chair of the Worldwide Commission to Educate All Kids (Post-Pandemic), launched with a national press conference on January 26, 2021.^{9) 10)}

Studin is President of Studin Advisory Services Inc. The company was founded in 2014 and provides “policy, governance [and] strategic advice for public and private sector clients around the world, in a number of languages.”

The Northwest Territories Department of Executive and Indigenous Affairs paid Studin Advisory Services $88,000.00 CAD for services in “Federal Engagement Strategy” between January 17, 2019 and April 30, 2019.¹¹⁾

Studin is associated with the Chaire Raoul-Dandurand en études stratégiques et diplomatiques at the Université du Québec à Montreal.^{12) 13)}

Studin holds a degree from the Schulich School of Business at York University. He completed his Master of Arts in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford between 1999-2001, where his studied with a Rhodes Scholarship. He then attended the London School of Economics (also under the Rhodes program) where he completed his Master's Degree in International Relations in 2002.

His PhD (Doctor of Philosophy, Constitutional Law) is from Osgoode Hall Law School at York University, where he was a Trudeau Scholar and won the Governor-General’s Gold Medal.

• 2021: Canada Must Think for Itself – Ten Theses for Our Country’s Survival and Success in the 21st Century
• 2021: The Consequences of the Pandemic – What Happened to the World? And What’s to be Done?
• 2018: Russia – Strategy, Policy and Administration¹⁴⁾
• 2014: The Strategic Constitution – Understanding Canadian Power in the World
• 2006: What is a Canadian? Forty-Three Thought-Provoking Responses

Studin has written for publications ranging from the Financial Times to Le Monde, Vedomosti, the Globe and Mail, National Post, Le Devoir, La Presse, the Indian Express, The Australian, the Straits Times, and others.

He co-authored an article in Sri Lanka's Daily FT discussing the educational crisis caused by COVID-19-related school closures, describing the situation as “biggest human catastrophe of the pandemic”. Studin's stance is that the economic and public health crises are outweighed by the impacts of “third bucket” children being barred from attending school with as many as “half a billion” such children likely never to have the opportunity to complete their education without intervention.¹⁵⁾

Two weeks earlier, the Toronto Sun published Studin's declaration that Premier Doug Ford “has betrayed Ontario’s youth”.¹⁶⁾ Studin explains that Ontario alone has “possibly as many as 100,000” children out of schooling altogether. “If the very long, capricious school closures of last April, which Premier Ford scandalously described as 'indefinite,' showed that the premier had no felt understanding of the massive, complex education system he was collapsing, then this week’s new round of school closures — for 'two weeks' — suggest that the premier trades in a general nonchalance about the catastrophic human impacts of education deprivation on the two-million-strong student body of the country’s largest province.”

Interestingly, Premier Ford himself had painted a very different picture of the decision-making process surrounding COVID-19 measures, including school closures. In a candid moment during a televised Q&A in March 2021, Ford had admitted that “There’s no politician in this country who’s gonna disagree with their chief medical officer. They just aren’t gonna do it. They might as well throw a rope around their neck and jump off a bridge. They’re done. I’m telling you the facts. It’s very simple.”¹⁷⁾ Karen Selick of the Western Standard described the incident by saying “for once, Ford looked like a real person who was actually saying what he believed.”¹⁸⁾