States. Investigations commissioned by both federal and provincial Crowns-in-Council have been chaired by Johnston, starting with the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy in the late 1980s, followed by the National Task Force on High Speed Broadband Access, the Committee on Information Systems for the Environment, the Advisory Committee on Online Learning, Ontario's Infertility and Adoption Review Panel between 2008 and 2009, and other scientific or public policy panels. He also sat on the Ontario government's Task Force on Management of Large Scale Information and Information Technology Projects and an Ontario Ministry of Health panel investigating "smart systems." Johnston further served on various corporate boards of directors, including those of Fairfax Financial Holdings, CGI Group, Dominion Textiles, Southam Incorporated, SPAR Aerospace, Seagram's, and Canada Trust, among others, and on March 22, 2010, was named to the Board of Governors of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. He is the only non-American citizen to chair the Harvard Board of Overseers. On November 14, 2007, Johnston was appointed by Governor General Michaëlle Jean, on the advice of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, as an independent adviser and charged with drafting for the Cabinet the terms of reference for the public inquiry, known as the Oliphant Commission, into the Airbus affair. This appointment itself, however, was criticized by the independent citizens' group Democracy Watch as a conflict of interest, given that Johnston had once reported directly to Mulroney during the latter's time as prime minister. Johnston completed his report on January 11, 2008, listing seventeen questions of interest for further investigation. He did not, however, include as a subject the awarding of the Airbus contract, on the basis that this aspect had already been investigated by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, prompting criticism from opposition members of parliament and accusations that Johnston had acted as the Prime Minister's man. This intensified after it was later revealed that Mulroney had accepted $300,000 in cash from Karlheinz Schreiber, but Oliphant could not examine any possible link between that payment and Airbus due to the narrow scope of the commission's mandate. Others, though, such as Peter George, then-president of McMaster University, and subsequently the editorial board of The Globe and Mail, as well as Andrew Coyne in Maclean's, defended Johnston, detailing his integrity and independence. Johnston's role as special adviser was parodied by Roger Abbott on the January 11, 2008, airing of Air Farce Live. For