Althia Raj is a national columnist with the Toronto Star, the host and senior producer of the Star’s bi-monthly politics podcast “It’s Political,” and a regular weekly panellist on the CBC The National’s “At Issue” panel and CPAC’s L’Essentiel avec Esther Bégin.

Prior to joining the Star, Althia served as HuffPost Canada’s senior editorial manager and its Ottawa bureau chief, from the news site’s inception in 2011 until its closure in March, 2021. She set up the Ottawa bureau and later ran its bilingual newsroom, overseeing its political coverage of Parliament Hill and of the National Assembly in Quebec City. In 2017, she launched “Follow-Up,” a popular politics podcast under the HuffPost banner.

In 2022, Althia was awarded the National Newspaper Awards’ John Wesley Dafoe prize for best political journalism for pieces she wrote on how the Liberals won the 2021 election campaign and on the internal dynamics of the Conservative caucus that led to Erin O’Toole’s ouster as party leader.

Althia is frequently ranked in The Hill Times list of top pundits and the 100 most influential people in Canadian politics. She has won several digital media awards for her multi-media coverage of federal election in both English and French.

Althia was a co-moderator of the 2022 Ontario election debate and a co-moderator of the 2019 federal election debate. She also organized and moderated a federal NDP leaders debate in 2017 and the Ontario PC leadership debate in 2018.

Prior to joining HuffPost, Althia was a national political reporter for Postmedia News and an Ottawa bureau reporter for QMI/Sun Media. She also worked as a network producer for CTV and as an associate producer for the CBC Radio program “The House.”

Althia is a proud Parliamentary Internship Program alumna. A graduate of McGill University, she serves on the Board of Trustees of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada. She is also a volunteer board member with the Ottawa Art Gallery. She is a past chair of the board of directors of apt613.ca, an award-winning not-for-profit arts and culture blog which she co-founded in 2008.