Prakesh Narayanan–Blakes

Prakash Narayanan is an Associate practising in the Business and International Trade Groups at Blakes and is also a member of the Firm's India Practice Group. He has been involved from a corporate and competition law perspective in a number of merger transactions involving major Canadian and foreign companies. He has also assisted clients with international trade matters involving cross-border movement of goods and services and compliance with WTO and NAFTA requirements. Prakash has received his LL.M. in international trade law, and has also completed an intensive course in Europe on trade law and business. He has previously worked for the Canadian International Development Agency and for KPMG, and has published a number of articles in the areas of international trade law, competition law and aspects of the commercial law in India. In 2005, Prakash taught an intensive course on India's new competition law at the National Law School of India, Bangalore. Prakash is a member of the Indo-Canada Chamber of Commerce and sits on the board of the South Asian Bar Association of Toronto. He is a fellow of the CUTS Centre for Competition, Investment and Economic Regulation in Jaipur, India, and has also been called to the bar in India.

Angel Sordi – Zsa Legal Recruiting

Angela received her Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Theatre and Psychology from Brock University in 1999. In 2002, she obtained her LL.B. from the University of Western Ontario Law School. Angela completed her articles in London, Ontario and then joined a boutique Toronto firm where she practiced in the area of civil litigation. Seeking new challenges, Angela joined ZSA as a Legal Recruitment Consultant in January 2006 and began handling recruitment assignments for many of Canada’s leading law firms and in-house legal departments. As part of her consulting portfolio, Angela has had the opportunity run a number of career management seminars at the law school level and for the Law Society of Upper Canada. She has also participated in a number of career focused symposiums and panel discussions held for law students across Ontario.

Lt.-Comm. Sandra MacLeod

Lieutenant Commander Sandra MacLeod joined the Canadian Forces in June 1982. She is a graduate of the Royal Military College in Kingston, ON, Dalhousie Law School and has completed the Laws of War International post graduate program from the University of Liverpool, United Kingdom.

Jennifer Egsgard – Board of Human Rights Watch Toronto Board

Biography forthcoming....

The Honourable John McKay P.C. M.P.

John McKay is the Liberal Member of Parliament for the riding of Scarborough—Guildwood in Ontario. First elected in 1997, he has been subsequently re-elected five times. Between 2003-2006 he served as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance and is now the senior member of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance. He also currently serves as the Vice-Chair of the Canada-U.S. Inter-Parliamentary Group.

Currently, he is the sponsor of Private Members' Bill C-300, the Corporate Accountability of Mining, Oil and Gas Corporations in Developing Countries Act (introduced February 9, 2009).

Michael Bourrassa –Fasken Martineau, LLP

Biography forthcoming....

Lee Nehring – Xstrata Plc.

Lee Nehring joined Xstrata Nickel in April 2008. She is Vice President, Sustainability and Human Resources; the portfolio includes sites in Tanzania, New Caledonia, Dominican Republic, Australia, Norway and Canada. Her career spans 30 years working in a broad cross-section of sectors: civil society organizations, government, oil & gas, and mining. Within the extractive sector, she has supported projects in Venezuela, Brazil, the Philippines, Alaska, and the McKenzie Delta; and held senior management roles in oil sands mining in Northern Alberta and copper mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Much of her work in the mining sector continues to be focused on multi-sector partnerships with Indigenous communities, local, regional, national governments, and multi-lateral organizations such as the World Bank, covering a diversity of issues: artisanal mining, security & human rights, local government capacity building and community development. Currently, she is a member of the Interim Executive Committee, The Centre for Excellence in Corporate Social Responsibility.

Robert Lovelace – retired Chief of the Ardoch Algonquin First
Nation

Robert Lovelace is a retired Chief of the Ardoch Algonquin First
Nation. He is a professor in Global Development Studies at Queen's
University. His academic interests are Aboriginal Education and Indigenous Sustainability and Ecology. Robert is an activist and writer. He also owns a small sawmill and practices sustainable forestry.

National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians, Maude Barlow

Maude Barlow is the National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians and chairs the board of Washington-based Food and Water Watch. She is also an executive member of the San Francisco–based International Forum on Globalization and a Councillor with the Hamburg-based World Future Council. Maude is the recipient of eight honorary doctorates as well as many awards, including the 2005 Right Livelihood Award (known as the “Alternative Nobel”), the Citation of Lifetime Achievement at the 2008 Canadian Environment Award, and the 2009 Earth Day Canada Outstanding Environmental Achievement Award. In 2008/2009, she served as Senior Advisor on Water to the 63rd President of the United Nations General Assembly. She is also the best selling author or co-author of 16 books, including the international best seller Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and The Coming Battle for the Right to Water.

John Bennett – Executive Director, Sierra Club Canada

John Bennett is an activist and the Executive Director of the Sierra Club of Canada. He led a group of Sierra Club delegates to the Copenhagen Climate Change conference in December where they reported on the activities in and around the conference. Prior to his position as Executive Director, Bennett was communications director for the Green Party of Canada, including the 2008 campaign in which the Greens, led by Elizabeth May, won nearly a million votes and was the only party to increase its total. From 1998-2007 Bennett served as the atmosphere and energy campaign director, and senior policy advisor at the Sierra club, where he managed environmental education campaigns; was the Club’s main spokesperson on air, energy, automotive and climate change issues; prepared fundraising proposals; and wrote position papers and research articles. As the Executive Director, Bennett brings a new approach to activism which includes a focus on the internet and social networking tools to communicate. Bennett’s experience has demonstrated the importance of collaborating with other groups and including as many people as possible, and their ideas, in whatever work must be done. This was especially obvious in the creation of the Green Budget Coalition, which analyzed federal budgets in terms of their impact on environmental concerns. He also wants the knowledge he and others have gained to be passed on to younger people, particularly those in the Sierra Youth Coalition, “to ensure there’s someone to take up the torch.”

Bennett believes that the current government, and climate change deniers, have had success by exaggerating and distorting tiny grains of truth until they amount to falsehoods. The only way to counter that is by having encyclopaedic knowledge and presenting it in a way that cuts through the information clutter. Bennett also asserts that the current financial crisis could have been a great opportunity to invest in a new economy. Instead, governments acted against change, pouring billions into wasteful spending on stimulus projects and conventional polluting industries that simply prop up an unsustainable status quo.

Lisa DeMarco – Partner, Macleod Dixon LLP

Professor Matthew J. Hoffman – Political Science, U of T

Matthew Hoffman is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. He has a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Engineering from Michigan Technological University and a Ph.D. in International Relations from the George Washington University. His research and teaching interests include global environmental governance, climate change politics, multilateral treaty-making, and complex systems analysis. In addition to a number of articles and book chapters, he is the author of Ozone Depletion and Climate Change: Constructing a Global Response (SUNY Press 2005) and coeditor with Alice Ba of Contending Perspectives on Global Governance (Routledge 2005). His current research includes a forthcoming book from Oxford University Press, Climate Governance at the Crossroads: Experimenting with a Global Response, and a SSHRC funded collaborative project (with Mat Paterson, Steven Bernstein, and Michele Betsill) on the emergence and development of carbon markets.

Graham Eiron – Associate, Torys

Graham Erion practices at the law firm of Torys LLP in Toronto where he is a member of Torys’ Corporate and Capital Markets Practice as well as the firm’s Climate Change Practice Group. Graham received his law degree from Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto and has a Masters in Environmental Studies from York University. In addition to his legal practice, Graham serves on the board of directors of Islands First, an international non-profit organization that works to build the capacity of the United Nations missions and international delegations of Pacific island countries to further their environmental and development agendas. Graham attended the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference on behalf of Islands First and helped coordinate legal research for a number of island delegations while there. Graham has also been involved with a number of other environmental organizations, has extensive pro bono international litigation experience and has published a number of books and articles on the global carbon market.

Jo-Anne Wemmers – Professor Université de Montréal and Head of the Research Group Victimology and Restorative Justice at the International Centre for Comparative Criminology

Jo-Anne Wemmers obtained her PhD from the University of Leiden (The Netherlands). Presently, she is a Professor at the School of Criminology of the Université de Montréal (Canada) as well as Head of the Research Group Victimology and Restorative Justice at the International Centre for Comparative Criminology. Professor Wemmers has published many articles and books in the area of victimology, including Introduction à la victimologie (Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal) and Victims in the Criminal Justice System (Kugler Publications). Former Secretary General of the World Society of Victimology, she is currently Editor of the International Review of Victimology as well the Journal international de victimologie.

Michelle Reyes – Outreach Liaison for the Americas, Asia and the Pacific at the Coalition for the International Criminal Court

Michelle Reyes is currently Outreach Liaison for the Americas, Asia and the Pacific at the Coalition for the International Criminal Court, based at the CICC’s Secretariat in New York. She completed her undergraduate studies in Humanities Studies in the Catholic University in Lima, Peru, and holds a Law Degree from the same university. She also holds an LLM focused on International Human Rights Law from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, in Madrid, Spain. Before joining the team at CICC, Michelle worked as Legal Advisor at the Peruvian National Committee on International Humanitarian Law, where she evaluated the implementation of IHL within the Peruvian legal system, and worked closely in drafting the implementing law of the Rome Statute for the ICC. She also conducted trainings with the Armed Forces, public authorities and general public. In the past, she has also worked at the Institute of Democracy and Human Rights (IDEHPUCP) of the Catholic University of Peru, as a legal associate, carrying out research and report writing on international criminal law and human rights law, as well as working towards the implementation of some of the recommendations made by the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Ms. Reyes has been a teacher of Public International Law, as well as of International Human Rights Law, at the Catholic University of Peru.

Diana Juricevic – Acting Director of the International Human Rights Program at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law

Prior to joining the faculty, Diana spent almost three years working on a war crimes trial in The Hague, Netherlands. Diana worked for Gregory W. Kehoe, Professor Payam Akhavan, and Luka S. Misetic on the Defence team for General Gotovina in Prosecutor v. Ante Gotovina, Ivan Cermak, and Mladen Markac before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Diana has a background in civil litigation and development economics, and human rights advocacy experience in Africa. She has developed legal aid clinics in Zambia, advised Ken Saro-Wiwa on a corporate social responsibility case against Shell Oil in Nigeria, and planned a legal strategy with Dr. James Orbinski at Medecins Sans Frontieres on a project involving the transfer of pharmaceutical technology to Sub Saharan Africa.

Diana is an Action Canada Fellow, Senior Resident at Massey College, and Visiting Lecturer at Trinity College, University of Toronto. She is also a visual artist, and is currently represented by the Elaine Fleck Gallery in Toronto. Diana was named by the Women's Executive Network in 2007 as one of the "Top 100 Most Powerful Women in Canada" and profiled in Chatelaine magazine in 2008 as one of "80 Canadian Women to Watch."

Ros Prober – President and Co-Founder of Beyond Borders

Rosalind Prober is President and Co-founder of Beyond Borders Ensuring Global Justice For Children. Beyond Borders is a national, bilingual, volunteer-driven organization. It is the Canadian affiliate of ECPAT International, a global network of more than 80 groups in 75 countries. ECPAT stands for End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes and is heaquartered in Bangkok, Thailand. Rosalind is a board member of ECPAT. Beyond Borders was founded in 1996 and has worked extensively on bringing in legislative reform on the age of consent, child sex tourism, Internet luring, and the sex offender registry. Beyond Borders' pro bono legal team intervenes in court cases to ensure that the rights of often anonymous or foreign children are protected. Beyond Borders is a founding partner of Cybertip.ca, Canada's national hotline for reporting online child sexual exploitation.

Hon. Joy Smith – MP, Anti-Trafficking Activist

Joy holds a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in education and is a popular speaker on the topic of public involvement in politics. She ran a small business for several years, and was nominated as Manitoba's Woman Entrepreneur of the Year. Joy has devoted most of her life to educating high school students in mathematics and science. She is also a best-selling author, recipient of the Hedley Award for Excellence in Research, wife and mother of six children. Before becoming MP for Kildonan - St. Paul, Joy Smith was the MLA for Fort Garry and served as critic for Justice, Education, and Intergovernmental (Urban) Affairs as well as working on the Manitoba Task Force for Building Sustainable Communities.

Joy Smith has been recognized as one of Canada's leading anti-trafficking activists. Since being elected, Joy has led the discussion of human trafficking at a national level which has resulted important changes in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. Her continued efforts to raise the issue of human trafficking on the Status of Women Committee resulted in an intensive study of the issue by the committee and the release of highly regarded report on human trafficking. One of her major achievements was the unanimous passing by the House of Commons of her Private Members Motion M-153 on Human Trafficking which called on Parliament to condemn the trafficking of women and children across international borders for the purposes of sexual exploitation and to immediately adopt a comprehensive strategy to combat the trafficking of persons worldwide. In addition, Joy Smith has been a keynote speaker at a number of Human Trafficking forums and traveled to Ukraine and Israel to further the cause to put an end to the modern day slavery.

Tamara Cherry – Journalist, Sun Media

Biography forthcoming...