Hugh Segal
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Hugh Segal (born 1951) is a Canadian political strategist, author and pundit. Segal was an advisor to federal Progressive Conservative (PC) Leader of the Opposition Robert Stanfield in the early 1970s, and was an unsuccessful candidate for the Canadian House of Commons in the 1972 general election.
As a member of the "Big Blue Machine", Segal was a senior aide to Ontario PC Premier Bill Davis in the 1970s and 1980s.
After the 1984 federal election, Segal became an advisor to Progressive Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, serving for a period as his principal secretary. Segal is best known, however, as a witty and urbane political pundit appearing on various news shows as a commentator since the 1980s.
A Red Tory, Segal was a passionate defender of the tradition of Robert Stanfield. He debated the right-wing commentator David Frum at the "Winds of Change" conference, arguing against the merger of the Progressive Conservatives and the Reform Party of Canada. Segal ran for the leadership of the Progressive Conservatives in 1998, finishing second to Joe Clark on the first ballot.
Segal is an associate at the School of Policy Studies at Queen's University and, since 1999, has been president of the Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP), Canada's oldest, non-partisan, public policy think-tank, based in Montreal.
Despite his earlier opposition to the United Alternative, Segal has been relatively supportive of the recent merger of the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservative Party into the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC). During the 2004 election, it was revealed that Segal was one of several high-profile former Mulroney government aides chosen by Stephen Harper to be the new Conservatve Party's chief organizers of a orderly "transition to government team." The CPC ultimately lost the 2004 election.
In 2003, he was made a Member of the Order of Canada.