In Focus

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Program Areas Education

Fundamental Freedoms

Public Safety

National Security

Equality

Speaker Bios

The Honourable Mr. Justice William Ian Corneil Binnie

Credit: Andrew Balfour

 Born in Montreal, Quebec, on April 14, 1939, William Ian Corneil Binnie is the son of James Corneil and Phyllis (Mackenzie) Binnie. He married Susan Strickland on May 28, 1965. The couple have four children: Daniel, Matthew, Alexandra and Max. Ian Binnie received a B.A. from McGill University in 1960, an LL.B. from Cambridge University in 1963, and an LL.M. in 1988. He was the first Canadian to be elected President of the Cambridge Union Society. He obtained an LL.B. from the University of Toronto in 1965. In 2001, he received honorary doctorates of law from the Law Society of Upper Canada and McGill University

Justice Binnie was called to the English Bar in 1966, the Ontario Bar in 1967 and the Yukon Territory Bar in 1986. He was admitted to practice before the International Court of Justice in 1984 and obtained occasional calls to the Bars of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Newfoundland.

He practised litigation at Wright & McTaggart and its successor firms until 1982, during which time he acted as legal counsel to the Government of Tanzania from 1970 to 1971. From 1982 to 1986, he was Associate Deputy Minister of Justice for Canada, and he was among counsel representing Canada before the International Court of Justice against the United States in the Gulf of Maine dispute in 1984. From 1986 to 1998, he was a senior partner at McCarthy Tétrault. In 1990, he acted as Special Parliamentary Counsel to the Joint Committee of the Senate and the House of Commons on the Meech Lake Accord, and in 1991, he was again a member of Canada’s legal team before an international tribunal, against France, in the Saint-Pierre & Miquelon maritime boundary dispute. He appeared as counsel before the Supreme Court of Canada in many leading constitutional, civil and, occasionally, criminal cases. He also served as an advisor to the Government of Newfoundland on constitutional amendments to the Terms of Union, and as a part-time lecturer on aboriginal rights at Osgoode Hall Law School from 1975 to 1979, in addition to serving as a lecturer for the Law Society of Upper Canada, the Canadian Bar Association, The Advocates’ Society and other professional associations. He was elected a Commissioner of the International Commission of Jurists in April 2003 and also chaired the Rhodes Scholarship Selection Committee from 1999 to 2004. He has authored numerous publications. In 1993, he was elected a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers. He is a member of the Middle Temple Inns of Court (England) and an honorary member of the Commercial Bar Association (U.K.) and was Honorary Colonel of 426 Squadron, 8 Wing (Trenton) from 2004 to 2007.

Justice Binnie was appointed Queen’s Counsel (Ontario) in 1979. He was appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada on January 8, 1998.

Shirish Chotalia, Chair of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal

In November 2009, Ms. Shirish Chotalia Q.C., was appointed Chair of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.  Ms. Chotalia obtained a Bachelor of Arts in 1983, Bachelor of Laws (1986), Master of Laws (1991) from the University of Alberta.  She was called to the Alberta Bar in 1987.  Intermittently, since 1995, Ms. Chotalia taught courses in Human Rights Law and Terrorism and the Law at the University of Alberta Faculty of Law.

Ms. Chotalia worked principally in immigration, human rights and employment litigation.  She successfully litigated many high profile cases. These include religious accommodation for a turbaned Sikh Canadian RCMP officer (Grant v. Canada A.G. (1995) 125 D.L.R. (4th) 556  (F.C.A.) aff’d (1994) 81 F.T.R. 195 (F.C.T.D.) and exclusion of “sexual orientation” from the Individual’s Rights Protection Act, in violation of s. 15  of the Charter (Vriend v. A.G. Alta. [1998] S.C.J. No. 29 (SCC) appealed from [1996] 5 W.W.R. 617 37 Alta. L.R. (3d) 364 (Alta. C.A.).
In 2009, she litigated the discrimination and retaliation complaint of a woman seeking to become a surface rights administrator. (Walsh v. Mobil Oil (2008), 296 D.L.R. (4th) 178 (Alta. C.A)).  She successfully assisted a Filipino woman who had contracted breast cancer in Canada to successfully prevent her removal on the alleged basis of medical inadmissibility.   Other recent human rights cases include Gilmar v. Alexis Band 2009 CHRT (pregnancy discrimination and solicitor client costs) and Khiamal v. Greyhound Canada  (2009) FC 495 CanLII (racial discrimination).
She was also a Commissioner with the Alberta Human Rights Commission (1989 to 1993), a Member, CHRT (1999 to 2005), elected Bencher, Law Society of Alberta, from 2008 until her appointment.   Several books have been written by Ms. Chotalia, including The Annotated Canadian Human Rights Act1994, and Human Rights Law in Canada, 1996, and many articles about human rights law and immigration law.

Ms. Chotalia has received numerous service and professional recognition awards including Professional Female of the Year, Indo-Canada Chamber of Commerce, 2010, “Woman of the Year” and the Red Cross Community Service Recognition award.

Naheed Nenshi, Mayor of Calgary

Naheed Nenshi was sworn in as Calgary’s 36th mayor on October 25, 2010. He is a passionate Calgarian, an accomplished business professional, and a community leader with a solid track record of getting things done. He’s run a large nonprofit, he’s been a trusted advisor to corporate leaders in Canada and the US, and he literally wrote the book on Canadian cities.Mayor Nenshi spent many years at the international business consulting firm, McKinsey and Co., where he advised large telecommunications, banking, retail and oil and gas companies in corporate strategy. After leaving McKinsey, he formed his own business, the Ascend Group, to help public, private, and nonprofit organizations grow. In this role he designed major policy for the Alberta government, helped create a Canadian strategy for The Gap, Banana Republic and Old Navy and worked with the United Nations to determine how global business can help the poorest people on the planet. Mayor Nenshi was Canada’s first tenured professor in the field of nonprofit management, at Mount Royal University’s Bissett School of Business.

His real passion is to make cities, especially Calgary, work better. He’s the lead author of Building Up: Making Canada’s Cities Magnets for Talent and Engines of Development and has long put his ideas to work in Calgary. He was the Chairman of the EPCOR CENTRE for the Performing Arts, and lent his expertise to nonprofits across the city, including the Calgary Foundation, the United Way, the Coral Springs Community Association, and Brown Bagging for Calgary’s Kids. He also served on the leadership team of imagineCalgary, where he was a primary author of Calgary’s 100-year vision, and is a co-founder of the Better Calgary Campaign and of CivicCamp.

Mayor Nenshi grew up in Calgary and lived and worked in cities around the world before coming back to make his home here. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree (with distinction) from the University of Calgary, where he was President of the Students’ Union, and a Master in Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where he studied as a Kennedy Fellow.