Peter MacKinnon
Board Director
Interim Executive Director, School of Public Policy, University of Calgary; past President of the University of Saskatchewan
In 2012, Dr. Peter MacKinnon stepped down following thirteen years as President of the University of Saskatchewan after serving as Dean of Law for ten years at the same institution. Since 2012, he has served for two years as the inaugural Prime Ministers of Canada Fellow at the Public Policy Forum in Ottawa, and for another two years as interim President of Athabasca University. He also served as interim President of Dalhousie University in 2019.
Dr. MacKinnon is an Officer of the Order of Canada, a King’s Counsel, and a recipient of a Canadian Bar Association (Saskatchewan) Distinguished Service Award. He holds honorary degrees from Queen’s, Dalhousie, Victoria, Ontario Tech, Regina, and Memorial universities. From 2003 to 2005, he was Chair of Universities Canada, formerly the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada. He currently serves as interim Executive Director, School of Public Policy, University of Calgary.
Dr. MacKinnon has written many scholarly legal articles, commentaries, and reports. He is co-editor of three books, and the author of two recent volumes on university leadership published by the University of Toronto Press: University Leadership and Public Policy (2014) and University Commons Divided: Exploring Debate and Dissent on Campus (2018). The latter was shortlisted for the Donner Prize (best public policy book by a Canadian) in April 2019. His latest manuscript, Canada in Question: Exploring Our Citizenship in the Twenty-First Century, was published by the University of Toronto Press in 2022. Dr. MacKinnon is a native of Prince Edward Island and is admitted to the Bar of Ontario and the Bar of Saskatchewan.