Robert Steiner

Steiner is the former Vice President of Bell Globemedia, which at the time was the parent company of The Globe and Mail and CTV.¹⁾

Steiner was employed as a business strategy executive at Boston Consulting Group, where he continues to earn money as a keynote speaker.^{2) 3)}

BCG is a member organization of the World Economic Forum.⁴⁾

Steiner also served as health and public health policy advisor and principal speechwriter for Paul Martin, during his Liberal Party leadership campaign and transition to being Prime Minister of Canada in 2003. He subsequently advised the Prime Minister’s Office and Cabinet on the creation of the Public Health Agency of Canada in 2004. In 2000, Mr. Steiner had managed the Liberal Party of Canada’s new media campaign in the period leading to and during the federal general election, working for Prime Minister Jean Chrétien.⁵⁾

Steiner is on the faculty for Maytree Policy School, teaching journalism and advocacy to not-for profits. The program “introduces tools and opportunities to hone skills in influencing public policy”.⁶⁾

Steiner is a member of the Secretariat of the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table, and in this role, receives compensation from the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto, and Public Health Ontario.⁷⁾ He is also a member of the Behavioural Science Working Group, who were chosen “based on their specific expertise in behaviour change, spanning behavioural medicine, health, clinical and social psychology, behavioural economics, and implementation science. Public Health leaders joining the group were invited based on their expertise in promoting health-protective behaviours and vaccination.”

Steiner has no medical or science background whatsoever.

Steiner has been employed as a Mentor for the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation from 2019-2021.^{8) 9)}

Steiner is employed as a journalism instructor for Rhodes Scholars at the University of Oxford.¹⁰⁾

Steiner is the Director of the Dalla Lana Fellowship in Global Journalism within the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto.¹¹⁾ From 2006 to 2010, he served as Assistant Vice President of the University of Toronto in charge of Strategic Communications.¹²⁾

He also played an important role in the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, overlapping with colleague Michael Ignatieff who was a Member of Parliament from 2006 until 2011, and even became Liberal Leader, and Leader of the Official Opposition.^{13) 14)} Ignatieff later went to work for George Soros’ Open Society Foundations.¹⁵⁾ He is also a member of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada, serves as Centennial Chair of the Project on Global Ethics at the Carnegie Council on Ethics in International Affairs in New York, and President and Rector of the Central European University (CEU), Budapest.^{16) 17)}

Steiner formerly wrote for the Wall Street Journal as global finance correspondent with postings in New York, Hong Kong and Tokyo, where he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, won two Overseas Press Club awards and the Inter-American Press Association Award.^{18) 19)}

Steiner created a company, Whitehall Principal Advisors, which he supposedly ran while advising Paul Martin on the creation of the Public Health Agency of Canada. The company has since been shut down, and it’s unclear what it ever did. His LinkedIn profile describes it as working on “complex writing projects for public and private sector chief executives, based on strategic policy and communications advice.”²⁰⁾ According to Corporations Canada, it was dissolved in 2008, and was delinquent for years in filing annual returns.^{21) 22)} It is possible it was used as a way to pay for services rendered while advising Paul Martin on PHAC.²³⁾