Eugene Lang
B.A., M.A., M.P.A., M.Sc.
Eugene Lang is Vice President, Bluesky Strategy Group and co-founder of Canada 2020: Canada’s Progressive Centre. Since joining Bluesky in 2009 Lang has been providing strategic public affairs counsel, research and analysis, and professional writing services to clients in the aerospace, transportation, mining and exploration, electricity and telecommunications sectors. He has also consulted on projects for several federal government departments and agencies, including Industry Canada, Agriculture Canada, Western Diversification and NSERC.
Lang has eighteen years experience at senior levels in the public and private sector, most recently as Director, Government Affairs, Bell Canada Enterprises. Prior to joining Bell, Lang served twelve years in the federal government in senior advisory roles, including; Chief of Staff to two Ministers of National Defence, Chief of Staff to the Secretary of State (Finance), Senior Economist, Finance Canada, Senior Policy Advisor (Economic) to the Deputy Prime Minister of Canada and Policy Advisor to the Solicitor General of Canada. In 2006-07, he was a Visiting Fellow at the Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto.
An award winning and best selling author and commentator, Lang has co-written two books on Canadian public policy and published over sixty articles and essays. A frequent contributor to the Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star and The Ottawa Citizen, Lang’s writings have also appeared in The Montreal Gazette, The Calgary Herald, The Edmonton Journal, The Vancouver Sun, The Windsor Star, The Leader Post, Policy Options, e-Merge, The Walrus, The Mark News, iPolitics and The Hill Times. In 2008 his book The Unexpected War: Canada in Kandahar (co-authored with Janice Stein) won the Writer’s Trust Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for a book of outstanding literary merit that enlarges understanding of contemporary Canadian political and social issues. The Unexpected War was also short-listed for the 2008 Donner Prize for the best book on Canadian public policy, was named one of the Globe and Mail’s top 100 books of the year, and was made into a documentary film for Global Television News.
Lang has appeared widely as a commentator, including on CBC radio and television, Radio Canada, Radio Canada International, CPAC and CTV, and he has been frequently cited in Canadian and foreign newspapers, including the International Herald Tribune, Bloomberg and the London Daily Mail. He has lectured at Queen’s University, The University of Ottawa, Royal Military College, Glendon College and the Royal Canadian Military Institute. Lang was among the first expert witnesses invited to appear before the Manley Commission on Canada’s future role in Afghanistan.
Educated at University of Western Ontario (B.A., M.A.), Queen’s University (M.P.A.) and the London School of Economics (M.Sc.), where he studied as a Chevening Scholar, Lang lives in Ottawa with his wife Camielle Edwards Lang and their two children Leah and Joshua.