Leadership Programs

Activating 68 Years of Experiential Leadership Development
Canada and Commonwealth regions have a responsibility to cultivate ethical, efficient, and responsible leaders. Commonwealth Leaders Dialogue Canada (CLDC) offers unique leadership opportunities through cross-sector, experiential programs. Our focus on critical thinking, emotional intelligence, and technology deployment helps enable leaders to make positive change within local and global communities. It started with HRH The Duke of Edinburgh in 1956 and 300 people from across the globe, coming together to discuss human challenges of industrial communities. Today, it continues under the presidency of HRH The Princess Royal, Princess Anne, and through a committed network of alumni and volunteers.
Our History
As a global leadership development organization, the Commonwealth Leaders Dialogue Canada (CLDC) is the Canadian arm of The Duke of Edinburgh’s Commonwealth Study Conferences. The Canadian Board of Directors is piloted by the global charity President, HRH The Princess Royal, Princess Anne.
HRH The Duke of Edinburgh founded the Commonwealth Study Conferences in 1956, when 300 emerging leaders from across the Commonwealth and from all sectors of society met to discuss the human problems of industrial communities.
The first Commonwealth Study Conference was, in the words of its founder HRH Prince Philip, “an extraordinary experiment”. It set out to provide an opportunity for people from all over the Commonwealth and all walks of life to leave behind their usual roles and, with a diverse group of people, examine the relationship between industry and the community around it.
The purpose was not to produce high sounding resolutions and weighty conclusions but to challenge the participants’ assumptions; to give them the chance to examine real situations and the issues arising from the interaction of businesses, their employees and the communities in which they operated. The members were, at Prince Philip’s insistence, to be “people who appeared likely to be in the next generations of leaders so that when the time came for them to take important decisions they would have the benefit of what they had discovered on the Study Conference to help them.”
Although the first conference was conceived as a “one-off”, its participants found it such a worthwhile experience that they determined to make it available to subsequent generations. Since 1956, conferences have been hosted in Australia, Canada, India, Malaysia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
As well, a number of regional conferences, modeled on the proven success of the Commonwealth Study Conferences, have also been organized:
- UK Interim Conferences
- Governor General’s Canadian Leadership Conferences
- Emerging Pacific Leaders’ Dialogues
- Caribbean Canada Leaders’ Dialogues
The Canadian alumni who attended the first conference were so impressed with the lessons and the values instilled in them that they collaborated on holding the second conference in Canada. To-date, Canada has funded and hosted 10 conferences, growing the alumni network to over 10,000 participants .

Study Group Chairs taking a photo for the 1980 CSC in Canada.
– HRH The Duke of Edinburgh, Founder of the Commonwealth Study Conferences

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