Linda McQuaig

Linda Joy McQuaig is a Canadian journalist, columnist, non-fiction author and social critic.

She first came to prominence as a reporter for her work investigating the Patti Starr affair.

She went on to write a series of books and newspaper columns focusing on corporate influence in economic and social policy, with the National Post newspaper describing McQuaig as "Canada's Michael Moore".

McQuaig was born in September 1951 to a middle-class Toronto family that she has described as opinionated and interested in politics.

Her father Jack, who she has called "politically conservative but with a strong sense of social justice", is founder of the McQuaig Institute of Executive Development and has written a half-dozen books on leadership and personal development.

McQuaig's mother Audrey was also trained as a psychologist, but gave up her career to raise McQuaig, her sister and brothers.

From the ages of seven to nine, McQuaig wrote and published the one-page DeVere Weekly, a newspaper named after the street in Toronto on which her family lived.

From 1963 to 1970 McQuaig attended Branksome Hall, a Toronto private girls school where she became president of the debating society and twice led her school to victory at the Ridley invitational debating tournament, and from which she graduated with the Governor General's medal for academic achievement.

Later she attended the University of Toronto, where she worked for the student newspaper The Varsity and served as co-editor in chief with Thomas Walkom.

In the 1970s McQuaig and four friends co-owned a house they called The Pit in Toronto's east end, where they hosted frequent house parties and dinners for friends in academia, media and the arts.

McQuaig graduated from the University of Toronto in 1974 with a BA, specializing in History and Political Theory.

In 1974 she was hired as a full-time reporter by The Globe and Mail newspaper.

In 1976 she lived for a year in Paris, where she learned French and wrote a never-published novel.

In the mid-eighties McQuaig and two female friends created The Make-Out Game, a boardgame she has described as "a satire on the different ways men and women approach sex."

In the early nineties she married criminal defence lawyer Fred Fedorsen, with whom she has a daughter.

In 1977 she became a story producer for CBC Radio's As It Happens.

In 1979 she went to Tehran to freelance for the CBC, The Globe and Mail and Maclean's magazine, covering the aftermath of the Iranian revolution that overthrew the Shah.

In 1981 she joined Maclean's as a senior writer, and in 1982 took a leave of absence to cover the 1982 Lebanon War from Lebanon, Israel and the West Bank.

In 1983 McQuaig wrote a two-part piece for Maclean's with its then-assistant business editor Ian Austen investigating whether Canadian financier Conrad Black had tried to inappropriately influence the Attorney General of Ontario to stop an investigation into his attempted takeover of Ohio-based Hanna Mining Company.

Years later, Black described McQuaig in his Toronto Sun column as a "weedy and not very bright leftist reporter" who writes "sophomoric, soporiferous left-wing books", and told host Peter Gzowski on CBC Radio that McQuaig deserved to be "horsewhipped".

Later McQuaig was retained as a freelance columnist for Black's National Post newspaper.

In 1984, McQuaig returned to the Globe as a political reporter, where she first came to national prominence in 1989 for uncovering the Patti Starr affair, in which former Ontario Place CEO Patti Starr was found to have illegally used charitable funds to make political donations, and for which McQuaig was awarded a Centre for Investigative Journalism Award and a National Newspaper Award.

Her first book, Behind Closed Doors (1987), relates the history of the fight over tax policy in Canada, detailing how members of the financial elite have effectively maintained and extended control over the country’s tax policy, to their own benefit.

In 1991, she was awarded an Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy to study the social welfare systems in Europe and North America.

The Quick and the Dead (1991) relates the story behind the Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the United States, and its negative impact on Canada.

This resulted in the Atkinson Foundation publishing, in 1992, a 51-page special report by McQuaig called Canada's Social Programs: Under Attack.

Since 1992 McQuaig has written an op-ed column in the Toronto Star and has supported herself through a combination of freelance writing, speaking engagements and royalties from her books.

Her best-selling 1993 book The Wealthy Banker's Wife compared the social welfare systems of Europe with those of the United States, and showed how Canada, traditionally in the middle between the two extremes, was increasingly veering towards the US model.

The marriage ended in 1994.

McQuaig first worked as a journalist while a student at University of Toronto, initially writing and then co-editing, The Varsity, a year in each role.

Her 1995 book, Shooting the Hippo, topped The Globe and Mail national best-seller list for more than two months.

It argued that politicians and the business community had misled the Canadian public with claims that rising social spending was driving up the national deficit, thereby requiring the government to slash social spending.

The book disputed the seriousness of the deficit and argued that the deficit's prime cause was the Bank of Canada’s anti-inflation policy, which had dramatically pushed up interest rates and driven the country into recession.

On 6 August 2013, McQuaig announced that she would seek the nomination of the New Democratic Party to run in the pending Toronto Centre by-election.

On 15 September she won the nomination on the first ballot.

The election to replace Bob Rae was won by Liberal Chrystia Freeland.

McQuaig ran again in the 2015 federal election losing to Liberal Bill Morneau.

During that campaign, she was denounced by Prime Minister Stephen Harper after she stated on a CBC-TV program that much of the oil from the Athabasca oil sands would have to be left in the ground if Canada was to meet its climate change targets.

McQuaig is best known for her series of books and newspaper columns that describe how the corporate elite has managed to shape government economic and social policy in ways that have harmed the public interest.

In October 2016, one of McQuaig's books, Shooting the Hippo: Death by Deficit and other Canadian Myths, was named by the Literary Review of Canada as one of the 25 most influential Canadian books of the past 25 years.