Charter
A bilingual constitution
The founding constitution is enacted in English and French at full parity — neither a translation of the other.
About
About
Kingsmere Institute was founded in 2026 to take a long view of itself — and to ask the country to do the same.
The institute was founded on a simple wager: that Canada is ready for an institution that thinks in decades, reads in two languages, and answers to its charter before any term.
We are deliberately small, deliberately patient, and deliberately rooted in one place — the National Capital Region, where the country’s public life is conducted.
How we are governed
Governance
A founding board
A small board of governors holds the institute to its charter and its long horizon.
Independence
Patient and independent
Endowed to think in decades, the institute answers to its charter before any government or term.
Leadership
The founding office.
Dr. Augustus J. Macphail
Founding President
Public Policy
A scholar of the Westminster tradition, Dr. Macphail convened the founding board and chairs the institute’s first academic council.
Founding Board
Those who answer for the institute.
The Hon. Béatrice Lépine
Chair, Founding Board
A former jurist who holds the institute to its charter and its long horizon.
Sir Reginald A. Cawdor
Vice-Chair
A patron of the liberal arts and the institute’s founding library.
Dr. Priya Nair
Governor
An economist who advises on the institute’s endowment and its independence.
M. Jean-Philippe Aubin
Governor & Treasurer
Stewards the institute’s accounts and its founding gift.
The institute’s work is felt before it is argued: in a seminar read entire, a lecture delivered in the open air, a degree that means the same thing at year ten as on the day it is conferred.
Read the founding brief.
The institute publishes its constitution and governance in both official languages.