Donald Stovel Macdonald was a Canadian lawyer, politician and diplomat. Macdonald was a long-time Liberal party Member of Parliament and Cabinet minister. In the early 1980s, he headed a royal commission which recommended that Canada enter a free trade agreement with the United States.

In the Canadian cabinet, the president of the King's Privy Council for Canada is nominally in charge of the Privy Council Office. The president of the Privy Council also has the largely ceremonial duty of presiding over meetings of the Privy Council, a body which only convenes in full for affairs of state such as the accession of a new Sovereign or the marriage of the Prince of Wales or heir presumptive to the Throne. Accordingly, the last time the president of the Privy Council had to preside over a meeting of the Privy Council was in 2022 for the proclamation of the accession of King Charles III. It is the equivalent of the office of lord president of the council in the United Kingdom.