The Program
The Action Canada Fellowship is building leaders for Canada’s future. Over a ten-month fellowship, we offer emerging leaders from across the country, all sectors, and all backgrounds a deep understanding of the country, policy-making tools, and leadership skills so that they can be more impactful Canadian leaders.
Program Objectives
The objective of the Action Canada Fellowship is for Fellows to emerge as leaders with a deeper understanding of Canada and public policy, equipped with the tools, leadership skills, and relationships to serve their country in an impactful way.
Fellows will emerge from the program with knowledge and skills in the following areas:
- Canada: Fellows will be able to apply knowledge of major sectors, institutions, issues, and regions of Canada to deepen their understanding of current Canadian issues and policy decisions.
- Policy: Fellows will be able to explain the complexity of policymaking in Canada, a country with great diversity in needs and interests. They will create effective and responsive policy recommendations. Fellows gain an understanding of the complexity of policymaking in a country with great diversity in needs and interests. They emerge equipped with the tools to create effective and responsive policies.
- Leadership: Fellows will demonstrate the following leadership skills such as self-awareness, authenticity, and clarity of purpose. They will show confidence in their ability to have an impact within their community/country.
- Connection: Fellows will establish close ties to peers with different viewpoints from across the country, sectors, backgrounds, and generations.
Program Fundamentals
Over the course of the Fellowship year, Fellows gain knowledge and skills through two main components:
1- Study Tours and Virtual Sessions
Four immersive study tours across Canada where Fellows engage in challenging conversations with local leaders, learn about public policy, and participate in leadership skills training.
2- Public Policy Research Project
In small groups, Fellows work on a challenging policy problem related to the annual theme throughout the year. They conduct research to develop innovative policy solutions. Their work culminates in a final report and presentation to key stakeholders and government officials.
Learning Approaches
- Workshops: leadership and public policy skills training on topics like effective writing, public speaking, media relations, team building, and effective listening.
- Seminars: local and national leaders in business, government, academia, media and the arts present and engage in candid conversations with Fellows.
- Immersive Learning: on-site and behind the scenes visits to businesses (e.g. factories), government institutions (e.g. seats of parliament), cultural and academic institutions, and a broad range of communities, including First Nation, Inuit and Metis.
- Group Discussion: Fellows explore ideas and reflect on what they’ve heard with each other, to hear different perspectives, grapple with complexity, and consolidate what they are learning.
- Learning by Doing: Fellows practice the leadership and policy-making skills they learn through the policy research project, the coaching, and various responsibilities that are given throughout the Fellowship year (e.g. leading seminar discussions, writing blogs, etc.)
Curriculum
The curriculum touches on the Fellowship’s three main pillars: Canada, leadership, and public policy. Perennial content: regardless of the annual theme or destinations, some topics are fundamental to understanding Canada, public policy and leadership. These topics include media training, how the government works, public speaking, op-ed writing, federalism, etc.
Annual content: each study tour will be dedicated in part to learning about the region, its history, and its current day challenges and opportunities. Study tours and virtual sessions will also include content on the year’s theme. The year’s theme and regional trips serve as vehicles to learn about the complexities of public policy-making, leadership challenges, economic opportunities, etc. through specific examples.
Here are examples of the itineraries for recent study tours: Halifax, Whitehorse, Windsor.
Read the blogs, watch the vlogs or listen to our podcast to hear directly from Fellows about what they learned.
Whitehorse Study Tour Agenda.pdf
Annual Theme
Every year has a theme, which is a major challenge facing the country. The annual theme is chosen based on its timeliness, relevance across the country, interest for different levels of government, and potential for action. Recent themes have included: transportation, housing, immigration, and the future of work.
Applicants do not need to have any knowledge, expertise or specific interest in the theme. Rather, since the program is for emerging leaders who are curious, care about the country, and are interested in policy, we expect that applicants will be eager to learn through a case study of a major challenge facing the country and exploring potential policy responses.
How we learn
We bring forward a broad range of ideas. Leadership is a complex undertaking involving a synthesis of values, ideas, insights, and perspectives. We think good leaders are interested in understanding different ways of seeing the world, to make better choices.
We inspire action. Leadership goes beyond talking. We help Fellows identify potential areas where they can have an influence while helping them formulate the difficult questions intended to understand trade-offs.
Fellows self-reflect and learn from each other. We encourage Fellows to learn from others’ different experiences and, in turn, to share their own stories about leading in their organizations and communities.
Fellows add value. Fellows experience the very best learning resources as leaders share perspectives and hard-won practical insights. We encourage Fellows to reflect and ask thoughtful questions that add value to the session and enhance everyone’s learning. We share, collect, analyse, and appreciate different perspectives.
Fellows are responsible for their own development. Our job is to create the conditions that enable Fellows to develop. We will create space for reflection, but to be clear, growing professionally and personally over the Fellowship year is the Fellows’ responsibility.
Fellows can expect new relationships. The Action Canada Fellowship offers opportunities to develop relationships with Fellows, alumni, mentors, leaders throughout the country, and the program team.
Learning continues after the program. Most Fellows call the Fellowship life-changing, but it often takes many months or more after the year is over for them to fully realize how it has impacted them. Our hope is that these experiences and relationships will extend and expand the learning journey so that Fellows continue to develop their leadership practices.
Important Dates for this Year’s Program
To make the best use of time and resources, the program is delivered in a hybrid format with some curriculum delivered through virtual sessions and study tours focusing on experiential and collaborative learning.
The 2025-26 study tours will take place during the following weeks. Selected Fellows must attend the entirety of each study tour, which lasts 4-6 days. We endeavor to have all travel to and from study tour destinations fall within the dates below. There may be some exceptions for Fellows travelling from remote locations.
- Week of June 14-22, 2025
- Week of September 13-21, 2025
- Week of November 15-23, 2025
- Week of Feb 28 – March 8, 2026
Fellows must also attend all virtual sessions from 7-9 p.m. ET on the following Wednesdays:
- Wednesday May 28, 2025
- Wednesday Jun. 4, 2025
- Wednesday Jul. 16, 2025
- Wednesday Aug. 27, 2025
- Wednesday Oct. 8, 2025
- Wednesday Oct. 22, 2025
- Wednesday Nov. 5, 2025
- Wednesday Dec. 10, 2025
- Wednesday Jan. 14, 2026
- Wednesday Feb. 4, 2026
Featured Fellow
