The Right Honourable Kim Campbell, P.C., C.C., O.B.C., Q.C., Chairperson
The Right Honourable Kim Campbell served in 1993 as Canada’s 19th Prime Minister. Prior to becoming Prime Minister, she held various Cabinet positions, including Minister of State for Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, Minister of National Defence, and Minister of Veterans Affairs. She was the first woman to serve as the Prime Minister of Canada, the Minister of Justice, the Minister of National Defence, as well as the first to serve as Minister of Defence of a NATO member country.
Ms. Campbell was the Canadian Consul General in Los Angeles from 1996 to 2000, and later taught at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government from 2001 to 2004. She was also chair of the Council of Women World Leaders, and past president of the International Women's Forum. From 2004 to 2006, Ms. Campbell was Secretary General of the Club de Madrid, an organization of former presidents and prime ministers of which she is a founding member.
From 2014 to 2018, Ms. Campbell devoted much of her time to serving as the Founding Principal of the new Peter Lougheed Leadership College at the University of Alberta. Ms. Campbell continues to speak on a wide variety of topics through her participation in the American Program Bureau and the National Speakers Bureau. She is a trustee of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence at King's College London, and serves on several corporate and non-profit boards, and advisory committees, including Equal Voice, a Canadian organization devoted to achieving gender parity in the Canadian House of Commons.
Ms. Campbell previously served as chair of the advisory board for Supreme Court of Canada judicial appointments in 2016, 2017, and 2019.
Erika Chamberlain, LL.B., PhD, Member
Erika Chamberlain was appointed Dean of Law at the University of Western Ontario in 2017, following five years as Associate Dean (Academic). She graduated with a gold medal from Western Law in 2001 and joined the faculty in 2005. Prior to her appointment, she served as a law clerk to the Honourable John C. Major at the Supreme Court of Canada, and was called to the Bar of Ontario in 2002. She obtained her doctorate from the University of Cambridge.
Professor Chamberlain has authored numerous articles on tort law, with a particular focus on the tort liability of public authorities. She is a founding member of Western’s Tort Law Research Group and was a co-organizer of the Sixth Biennial Conference on the Law of Obligations in 2012. In 2019, she became the general editor of the Canadian Cases on the Law of Torts.
She has also published extensively in the field of impaired driving law and alcohol-related civil liability, and has provided research and advocacy to MADD Canada since 1999. Her work in this field has been cited by the Supreme Court of Canada, and has influenced legislative amendments at the federal level and in several provinces and territories.
Professor Chamberlain has been named Professor of the Year twice by the Student Legal Society, and named three times to the Teaching Honour Roll by the University Students’ Council at Western. She is currently Western’s Academic Colleague to the Council of Ontario Universities, and is a member of the Ontario Universities Council on Quality Assurance.
Professor Chamberlain was nominated to the advisory board for Supreme Court of Canada judicial appointments by the Council of Canadian Law Deans.
The Honourable Louise Charron, Member
Justice Louise Charron received her primary and secondary education in Sturgeon Falls, Ontario. She received a B.A. from Carleton University in 1972 and a LL.B. from the University of Ottawa in 1975. Called to the Ontario Bar in 1977, she practised law with the firm Lalonde & Chartrand from 1977 to 1980, mostly in civil and criminal litigation. She served as Assistant Crown Attorney for the Ottawa-Carleton Judicial District from 1978 to 1988. She was a lecturer in the French common law program of the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law from 1978 to 1985, and joined the faculty as Assistant Professor until 1988.
Justice Charron was appointed a District Court Judge and Local Judge of the High Court of Justice of Ontario in Ottawa in 1988 and Judge of the Ontario Court of Justice (General Division) in 1990. An educator at heart, she has been actively involved in moot courts and in continuing education for judges and lawyers, and was Associate Director of the National Judicial Institute from 1994 to 1996.
Justice Charron was appointed Judge of the Court of Appeal for Ontario in 1995 and Deputy Judge of the Nunavut Court of Justice from 1999 to 2004. She was appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada in 2004.
She has received Honorary LL.D.s from the Law Society of Upper Canada in 2004, Nipissing University in 2005, and Laurentian University in 2006. She was elected as Honorary Fellow in the American College of Trial Lawyers in 2007. Justice Charron retired from the Supreme Court of Canada in 2011.
Justice Charron was nominated to the advisory board for Supreme Court of Canada judicial appointments by the Canadian Judicial Council.
Signa A. Daum Shanks, Member
Signa A. Daum Shanks, originally from Saskatchewan, is Métis and a trained lawyer, law professor, and historian. A member of the Ontario Bar Association, she is the elected Toronto representative on its Board of Directors and has been part of the Board for three years. She is also a member of the Indigenous Bar Association. Currently Associate Professor and Director, Indigenous Outreach at Osgoode Hall Law School, she has taught the courses Torts, Law and Economics, Game Theory and the Law, Indigenous Peoples and Canadian Law, and Comparative Indigenous Legal Traditions. Before working at Osgoode Hall Law School, Dr. Daum Shanks was an Assistant Professor at the College of Law of the University of Saskatchewan, and held various teaching appointments at the University of Saskatchewan's Department of Indigenous Studies, the First Nations University of Canada, the University of Alberta's Faculty of Native Studies, and the University of Toronto's Canadian Studies program. She has also taught at the summer program for incoming Indigenous law students hosted at the Indigenous Law Centre in Saskatoon, and has been as an instructor in the Nunavut Law Program in Iqaluit.
Within the legal profession, Dr. Daum Shanks has worked at the Department of Justice Canada, Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada, and Saskatchewan Justice, as well as with the Toronto office of a national law firm, and the criminal appeals division of the Ministry of the Attorney General of Ontario. Before starting law school, Dr. Daum Shanks also worked at a national Indigenous organization and as a historical researcher for a legal academic.
Dr. Daum Shanks holds a PhD in history and an M.A. from the University of Western Ontario, a B.A. (Hons) from the University of Saskatchewan, an LL.B. from Osgoode Hall Law School, and an LL.M. from the University of Toronto. She also studied at the École de langue française et de culture québécoise de l’Université du Québec à Chicoutimi. She was able to clerk at the Land Claims Court of South Africa through her participation in Osgoode Hall Law School’s Intensive Program in Aboriginal Lands, Resources and Governments.
She was appointed by the United Nations as a participant in the annual United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. She is also actively involved in the Indigenization of learning processes at Osgoode Hall Law School and York University.
She has received recognition and funding for many of her research and professional efforts. In 2020, Dr. Daum Shanks received the President’s Award from the Women’s Law Association of Ontario, and an Alumni of Influence Award from the University of Saskatchewan. She was also appointed a Senior Fellow at Massey College.
Dr. Daum Shanks was nominated to the advisory board for Supreme Court of Canada judicial appointments by the Canadian Bar Association.
David Henry, Member
David Henry holds a Bachelor’s degree in economics and politics, and a Bachelor’s degree in criminology from the Université de Montréal, in addition to having completed its graduate-level microprogram in social administration. From 2005 to 2009, he worked in the fields of psychiatry and justice for an intermediate resource providing housing to people with mental health issues, and as a community outreach worker for offenders under provincial jurisdiction with serious and persistent mental health issues. Since 2009, he has been working with the Association des services de réhabilitation sociale du Québec and became its Chief Executive Officer in 2016.
Mr. Henry was appointed to the Board of Directors of the Ordre professionnel des criminologues du Québec in 2017. Since then, he has been elected to represent the Montréal region, and was appointed vice-chair.
Jill Perry, Member
Jill Perry is the second vice-president of the Council of the Federation of Law Societies of Canada (FLSC), and has been the representative for Nova Scotia on the Council since 2018. She chairs the FLSC’s National Committee on Accreditation and Continuing Legal Education Programs Committee. She also sits on the FLSC’s Canadian Common Law Program Approval Committee. She has been a member of the steering committee for the national Action Committee on Access to Justice in Civil and Family Matters since 2017.
Ms. Perry served as president of the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society (NSBS) from 2015 to 2016. She was first elected to the NSBS Council in 2007 as a member for Cape Breton District, completing three consecutive terms in that position prior to her election as vice-president. She has chaired, and been a member of numerous NSBS committees.
Ms. Perry is the managing lawyer (family) with Nova Scotia Legal Aid in Sydney, Nova Scotia, where she has worked as a staff lawyer since 2001. Her practice focuses on representing respondents in child protection proceedings. She is the past chair, and a current member, of Nova Scotia Legal Aid’s Children and Family Services Act Committee.
Called to the Bar of Nova Scotia in 2001, Ms. Perry received a LL.B. from the University of Victoria in 2000, an M.A. in history from Memorial University of Newfoundland in 1997, and an undergraduate degree in history from McGill University in 1994.
Ms. Perry’s community work has included coaching soccer for young children and serving on boards of community organizations. She has been a board member with the YMCA of Cape Breton since 2017. Ms. Perry was appointed to the Queen’s Counsel of Nova Scotia in 2018.
Ms. Perry was nominated to the advisory board for Supreme Court of Canada judicial appointments by the Federation of Law Societies of Canada.
Beverley Noel Salmon, O.C., O. Ont., Member
Born in Toronto, Beverley Noel Salmon is the daughter of a Jamaican immigrant, and a fifth generation Canadian of Scottish and Irish descent. Ms. Salmon began her Registered Nurse training at Wellesley Hospital in 1950 and completed a certificate in Public Health Nursing at the University of Toronto in 1954. She then served for two years as a Victorian Order Nurse in Toronto, and began her nursing career in 1956 in Detroit. During this period, she became involved with the civil rights movement, which inspired her to continue her work as an activist when she returned to Toronto in the 1960s.
Ms. Salmon sought to improve race relations through her involvement with anti-racism training and initiatives – first as a founding member of the Urban Alliance on Race Relations, and later as co-founder of the Black Educators Working Group. In 1985, she became Toronto’s first Black woman municipal councillor, representing North York, and then Metro Toronto until her retirement from municipal politics in 1997. She was also the first Black woman to serve as a Commissioner on the Ontario Human Rights Commission. Ms. Salmon worked with the Race Relations Committee of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, and served on the Board of the Toronto Transit Commission from 1989 to 1994. She was also a member of the Ontario Status of Women Council, and a Board member of the Obsidian Theatre Company.
For her lifetime of civil rights activism and public service, Ms. Salmon received many awards and honours. These include the African Canadian Achievement Award for Excellence in Politics in 1995, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities Roll of Honour and an honorary doctorate of Laws from Ryerson University in 1999, the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012, the Order of Ontario in 2016, and the Order of Canada in 2017.