About Us

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Paul Deegan is is a seasoned corporate communications leader with over a decade of executive-level experience at two of Canada’s most iconic companies.

Deegan Public Strategies is a Toronto-based boutique agency specializing in public and government relations counsel. Clients include family offices, private equity firms, and corporations in the technology, financial services, aircraft leasing, environmental waste management, and consumer packaged goods sectors. Areas of focus include crisis communications, reputation management, litigation support, and fundraising support.  

From 2015 to 2018, he was Vice-President, Public and Government Affairs at Canadian National Railway Company. He had North American responsibility for CN’s relationships with governments at all levels as well as media relations, social media, corporate advertising, sponsorships and donations, community relations, and internal communications.

Mr. Deegan joined BMO Financial Group in 1996 as a policy adviser in the CEO’s office. From 2009 to 2015 – a period which included the global financial crisis and a transformative acquisition by BMO – he was Vice-President, Government and Public Relations.

Prior to joining BMO, Mr. Deegan served as Deputy Executive Director of the National Economic Council in the Clinton White House.  He worked for the Government of Ontario’s Cabinet Office. He also interned in the office of the late United States Senator Edward M. Kennedy and at the Democratic National Committee in Washington, DC.

He studied at McGill, and graduated from University of Toronto in History and Political Science. While at BMO, he completed two advanced executive programs with the Ivey/Kellogg and Rotman business schools.

Mr. Deegan is a director of the Michener Awards Foundation. He is a past director of Toronto Terminals Railway Co. Ltd., the Canadian Journalism Foundation, the Toronto Financial Services Alliance, Necessary Angel Theatre Company, Tarragon Theatre, and Aptus Treatment Centre for Complex Disabilities. In 2017, Mr. Deegan was named an Honorary Captain of the Royal Canadian Navy by the Minister of Defence. In 2018, he was appointed to the Acquisition Committee – International Art after 1900 – at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. He is married with two children.