 While teaching at McGill, Oliver became actively interested in the left-wing Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF).When that party morphed into the New Democratic Party in 1961, Oliver was its first federal president, a post he held until 1963.He then began a six-year stint as research director of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, a body co-chaired by then Carleton University president Davidson Dunton — the man Oliver would eventually replace in 1972.