He was a Director of the influential C.D. Howe Institute and has also been active in numerous other corporations besides his own including SNC-Lavalin, Canfor, Southam, Swiss Bank Corp., Velan Valve Inc., Abitibi and Goodfellow Lumber Inc. He has participated in educational, cultural and charitable activities, and with his wife Gail, to date has endowed numerous eponymous university chairs in Canada including those in Economic and Cultural Transformation (Memorial University), Economic and Financial Policy (Queen's, established 1990), Environment and Health (McMaster, established 2003); Families and Work (Guelph, 2003); Religion and Conflict (Assumption University, Windsor); Public Sector Management (University of Ottawa, 2003); International Business Administration (Laval, 2000); Urology (McGill); Finance (University of Alberta, School of Business); Biotechnology (Saskatchewan, 2004); Technology and International Competition (École Polytechnique de Montréal); History (Concordia); and Public Sector Management (Ottawa, 2005), Water and Global Health (Carleton, 2016). “All these chairs are concerned with excellence,” he is quoted as saying, "something Canadians have never really espoused".