George R. M. Anderson

Presently a senior mediation expert with the United Nations' Mediation Support Unit, George R.M. Anderson was the president and CEO of the Forum of Federations from 2005 to 2011. He served for over thirty years in Canada's federal public service, where his positions included Deputy Minister of Natural Resources (2002-2005) and Deputy Minister for Intergovernmental Affairs in the Privy Council Office (1996-2002). He held assistant deputy minister level positions in the departments of Energy, Mines and Resources, Finance and External Affairs, as well as the Privy Council Office.

Mr. Anderson has degrees in political science from Queen's University and Oxford University, and a diploma from the École nationale d'administration in Paris. He was a fellow at Harvard University's Center for International Affairs in 1992-93. He is the author of Federalism: An Introduction (2008) and Fiscal Federalism: An Introduction (2010), both published by Oxford University Press and widely translated into other languages. Mr. Anderson is Chair of the Finance Committee and Vice-chair of the Board of Trustees of Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, a member of the advisory committee of the Mowat Centre at the University of Toronto, and a director of Ottawa Hydro.

He received the award of excellence of the federal public service for his leadership in creating the Policy Leaders Recruitment Program. He is editor of Oil and Gas in Federal Systems and Internal Markets in Multi-Level Systems: Experience of Four Federations and the European Union, both of which were published in 2011. He is married to the historian Charlotte Gray and they have three sons.