David Lloyd Johnston (born June 28, 1941) is a Canadian academic, author, and statesman who served as the 28th governor general of Canada from 2010 to 2017. Johnston was the special rapporteur appointed to investigate reports of foreign interference in recent Canadian federal elections until his resignation on June 9, 2023.
Johnston was born and raised in Ontario, studying there before enrolling at Harvard University and later Cambridge and Queen's universities. He went on to work as a professor at various post-secondary institutions in Canada, eventually serving administrative roles as dean of law at the University of Western Ontario, principal of McGill University, and president of the University of Waterloo. At the same time, Johnston involved himself with politics and public service, moderating political debates and chairing commissions in both the federal and provincial spheres, his most renowned position in that field being the chairmanship of the inquiry into the Airbus affair. He was in 2010 appointed as governor general by then monarch Queen Elizabeth II, on the recommendation of then prime minister of Canada Stephen Harper, to replace Michaëlle Jean as viceroy and he occupied the post until succeeded by Julie Payette in 2017.
Johnston also served as a teacher of law at various Canadian universities, dean of law at University of Western Ontario Law School, on various boards, as commissioner of the Leaders' Debates Commission, and as Colonel of the Regiment for the Royal Canadian Regiment.
Johnston was born on June 28, 1941, in Sudbury, Ontario, to Lloyd Johnston, the owner of a hardware store, and Dorothy Stonehouse. He attended Sault Collegiate Institute in Sault Ste. Marie, where he played quarterback for the football team and under-17 hockey with future National Hockey League (NHL) members Phil and Tony Esposito and Lou Nanne. Johnston aimed to play in the NHL himself and was visited by scout Jimmy Skinner. However, upon learning from Skinner that most boys drafted would not be completing high school, Johnston's mother refused to negotiate further.
Johnston graduated from high school and moved on to Harvard University in 1959, earning his Bachelor of Arts degree, magna cum laude, in 1963. While at Harvard, under the coaching of Cooney Weiland, Johnston captained the varsity ice hockey team, was twice selected to the All-America team, and met and befriended Erich Segal, the two becoming jogging partners. In 1970, Segal wrote the best-selling novel Love Story, basing a character in the book—Davey, a captain of the hockey team—on Johnston. Johnston suffered three concussions from playing football and hockey; he was told by his doctor to either wear a helmet (at a time when they were unpopular) or stop playing hockey.
Upon completing his degree at Harvard, Johnston again looked at an NHL career, contemplating attending the Boston Bruins training camp. Instead, he attended Trinity Hall, Cambridge, obtaining a Bachelor of Laws with honours in 1965, and another with first class honours from Queen's University in 1966. During that period, Johnston married his high school sweetheart, Sharon, with whom he has five daughters. Johnston was hired by Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt, but never worked for the firm, instead taking a one-year leave of absence, which continues to today.
Johnston has had a long academic career, during which he came to specialize in securities regulation, corporation law, public policy and information technology law. After 1966, he worked for two years as an assistant professor at the Queen's University Faculty of Law and then joined the University of Toronto's law faculty, where he taught until 1974, eventually being promoted to the rank of full professor. Johnston was then appointed as dean of the University of Western Ontario Law School, serving between 1974 and 1979, at which time he was elevated to become the fourteenth Principal and Vice-Chancellor of McGill University. It was during his time in that role that he became acquainted with Pierre and Margaret Trudeau, as the Johnston children played with the Trudeau children when the families were at their adjacent cottages in the Laurentians.
It was also during Johnston's time at McGill, in 1981, that he went on the first of what would be a dozen visits to China as a university president. At an Innovation Forum held at Nanking University on 21 October 2013, Johnston described "Nanjing University [as his] second home and [his] home away from home."
Johnston stepped down in 1994 as principal of McGill to remain at the university only as a law professor until he was, in 1999, installed as the fifth president of the University of Waterloo. During that period, the couple acquired a home in Heidelberg, Ontario, and began operating an adjacent horse training ranch, Chatterbox Farm. Johnston, in 2006, along with Jim Balsillie and the mayor of Waterloo, established a Waterloo Steering Committee to "educate business leaders, academics, and citizens about the challenges Waterloo faces and engage them in setting goals for educational achievement, access to services, investment in infrastructure, and social inclusion." At the university, Johnston forged academic exchanges with universities and technological institutes. With his "strong support", the University of Waterloo established a Confucius Institute and Sino-Canadian College in partnership with Nanjing University in 2005.
Boards, commissions, and media (until 2010)
Johnston has moderated several televised leaders' debates, the first being between Pierre Trudeau, Joe Clark, and Ed Broadbent, prior to the 1979 federal election, and he returned five years later to play the same role before the election of 1984, in a debate featuring Brian Mulroney, John Turner, and Broadbent. He also moderated the provincial leaders' debate featuring David Peterson, Bob Rae, and Larry Grossman, in the run up to the Ontario general election in 1987. Johnston has also acted as moderator of two public affairs panel discussion programmes, The Editors and The World in Review, which aired in the 1990s on both CBC Newsworld in Canada and PBS in the United States.
Investigations commissioned by both federal and provincial Crowns-in-Council have been chaired by Johnston, starting with the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy in the late 1980s, followed by the National Task Force on High Speed Broadband Access, the Committee on Information Systems for the Environment, the Advisory Committee on Online Learning, Ontario's Infertility and Adoption Review Panel between 2008 and 2009, and other scientific or public policy panels. He also sat on the Ontario government's Task Force on Management of Large Scale Information and Information Technology Projects and an Ontario Ministry of Health panel investigating "smart systems." Johnston further served on various corporate boards of directors, including those of Fairfax Financial Holdings, CGI Group, Dominion Textiles, Southam Incorporated, SPAR Aerospace, Seagram's, and Canada Trust, among others, and on March 22, 2010, was named to the Board of Governors of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. He is the only non-American citizen to chair the Harvard Board of Overseers.
On November 14, 2007, Johnston was appointed by Governor General Michaëlle Jean, on the advice of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, as an independent adviser and charged with drafting for the Cabinet the terms of reference for the public inquiry, known as the Oliphant Commission, into the Airbus affair. This appointment itself, however, was criticized by the independent citizens' group Democracy Watch as a conflict of interest, given that Johnston had once reported directly to Mulroney during the latter's time as prime minister. Johnston completed his report on January 11, 2008, listing seventeen questions of interest for further investigation. He did not, however, include as a subject the awarding of the Airbus contract, on the basis that this aspect had already been investigated by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, prompting criticism from opposition members of parliament and accusations that Johnston had acted as the prime minister's man. This intensified after it was later revealed that Mulroney had accepted $300,000 in cash from Karlheinz Schreiber, but Oliphant could not examine any possible link between that payment and Airbus due to the narrow scope of the commission's mandate. Others, though, such as Peter George, then-president of McMaster University, and subsequently the editorial board of The Globe and Mail, as well as Andrew Coyne in Maclean's, defended Johnston, detailing his integrity and independence. Johnston's role as special adviser was parodied by Roger Abbott on the January 11, 2008, airing of Air Farce Live.