Hugh Segal OC OOnt CD (October 13, 1950 – August 9, 2023) was a Canadian political strategist, author, commentator, academic, and senator.

[citation needed] At the age of 21, he was an unsuccessful Progressive Conservative candidate in Ottawa Centre for the House of Commons of Canada in the 1972 general election.

[3] As a member of the Big Blue Machine, Segal was a senior aide to Ontario Progressive Conservative Premier Bill Davis in the 1970s and 1980s, and he was named Deputy Minister at age 29.

[11] In December 2013, Segal announced his intention to resign from the Senate in June 2014, twelve years before he would reach the mandatory retirement age of 75, to accept an academic appointment as Master of Massey College in Toronto.

[13] In December 2011, the federal government appointed him special envoy to the Commonwealth with the task of convincing individual countries to sign on to the EPG's 106 recommendations.

In an earlier book, his 1996 memoir No Surrender (page 225), Segal wrote: "Progressive Conservatives cannot embrace the nihilistic defeatism that masquerades as a neo-conservative polemic in support of individual freedom and disengagement."

In a speech to the National Press Club on June 21, 1995, Segal referred to the "selfish and directionless nature of the American revolution -- which was more about self-interest, mercantile opportunity, and who collected what tax than it was about tolerance or freedom."

Segal opposed on civil liberties grounds the imposition of the War Measures Act by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in the October Crisis of 1970.

[18] Segal was appointed Master of Massey College in the University of Toronto (effective at the end of June 2014) and retired from the Senate to accept the position.

[19] He retired from the Massey College position effective June 30, 2019, five years into his seven-year term, and was succeeded by Nathalie Des Rosiers.