Mike Blanchfield
Director, Energy Policy and Global Affairs
Mike Blanchfield comes to the Public Policy Forum as Director, Energy Policy and Global Affairs after a decades-long career as an international affairs journalist for several major news organizations based on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. Mike has covered a range of issues from trade, defence, the environment, legal affairs, politics, diplomacy, climate change, and armed conflict. His reporting has taken him across the world, including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement that was foisted on Canada and Mexico by Donald Trump.
He has reported regularly from the United States, including the 2000 U.S. presidential election, 9/11, the 2008 rise to power of Barack Obama and the surreal encounters between Donald Trump and Justin Trudeau.
He is the co-author (with Fen Osler Hampson) of the award-winning book, The Two Michaels: Innocent Canadian Captives and High Stakes Espionage in the US-China Cyber War and the author of Swingback: Getting Along in the World With Harper and Trudeau.
He was the winner of the 2013 R. James Travers Foreign Corresponding Fellowship which allowed him to travel to Geneva and Laos to investigate the deadly, ongoing legacy of the U.S. cluster bombing of the South Asian country during the Vietnam War.
Mike has taught reporting techniques at Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication, where he received his Masters of Journalism.
He joined PPF in August 2023.