Elected in December of 2013, Hugh Segal is currently serving as the fifth Master of Massey College at the University of Toronto, where he is also a member of the Graduate Education Council and the Academic Board. He is a Distinguished Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs‎, and Co-Chair of the International Democracy-10 Forum, grouping governments and leading think tanks of the ten major liberal  democracies in the world.

As former Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister, and Associate Cabinet Secretary (federal-provincial affairs) in Ontario, he was part of the negotiating teams for both the Charlottetown Accord in 1991, and the Repatriation of the Constitution and Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982-83. He has also served as President of the Institute for Research on Public Policy in Montreal. In the Canadian Senate - where he served as an Ontario Conservative until being elected to his post at Massey - Hugh chaired the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade, and the Special Committee on Anti-Terrorism. In 2003, he was made a member of the Order of Canada. He also served as a member of the nine person Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group which proposed reforms around democracy, rule of law, human rights, gender equity, judicial independence and modernization to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Perth in 2011. Subsequently he was Canada's Special Envoy to the Commonwealth on these issues.