The Honourable Geoffrey B. Gomery's Questionnaire

Under the new judicial application process introduced by the Minister of Justice on October 20, 2016, any interested and qualified Canadian lawyer or judge may apply for federal judicial appointment by completing a questionnaire. The questionnaires are then used by the Judicial Advisory Committees across Canada to review candidates and submit a list of "highly recommended" and "recommended" candidates for consideration by the Minister of Justice. Candidates are advised that parts of their questionnaire may be made available to the public, with their consent, should they be appointed to the bench. The information is published as it was submitted by the candidates at the time they applied, subject to editing where necessary for privacy reasons.

Below are Parts 5, 6, 7, and 11 of the questionnaire completed by the Honourable Geoffrey B. Gomery.

Questionnaire for Judicial Appointment

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Part 5 – Language

Please note that in addition to the answers to the questions set out below, you may be assessed as to your level of language proficiency.

Without further training, are you able to read and understand court materials in:

• English: Yes
• French: Yes

Without further training, are you able to discuss legal matters with your colleagues in:

• English: Yes
• French: Yes

Without further training, are you able to converse with counsel in court in:

• English: Yes
• French: No

Without further training, are you able to understand oral submission in court in:

• English: Yes
• French: No

Part 6 – Education

Name of Institutions, Years Attended, Degree/Diploma and Year Obtained:

• Queen's University, 1976-1980, B.A. (Hons) (Mathematics, Politics), 1980
• University of Toronto, 1980-1983, LL.B., 1983
• Oxford University, 2005-2006, B.C.L. with distinction, 2006

Continuing Education:

• Many courses offered by the Continuing Legal Education Society of British Columbia and the occasional course offered by other CLE.

Honours and Awards:

• Queen's Counsel, 2010

Academic awards:

• Dean's List, University of Toronto Faculty of Law, 1982, 1983.
• Holden Murdoch & Finlay Prize, University of Toronto Faculty of Law, 1982
• The Medal in Politics, Queen's University, 1980
• Queen's Honour Matriculation Scholarship, 1976, 1977.

Part 7 – Professional and Employment History

Please include a chronology of work experience, starting with the most recent and showing employers' names and dates of employment. For legal work, indicate areas of work or specialization with years and, if applicable, indicate if they have changed.

Legal Work Experience:

• Partner, Nathanson, Schachter & Thompson LLP: 1992 to present
• Adjunct Professor, University of British Columbia: 2012 to present
• Associate, Nathanson, Schachter & Thompson: 1990-1992
• Associate, Davis & Company: 1984-1990
• Adjunct Professor, University of British Columbia: 1984-1987
• Articled Student, Davis & Company: 1983-84
• Summer Student, Canadian Centre For Occupational Health & Safety, 1982.

Non-Legal Work Experience:

I held various part-time and summer jobs in the period 1976-81, including 2 summers working at a brush factory in Montreal, public opinion polling in Nova Scotia, light construction, house painting and yard work in Kingston and working as a research assistant to a Professor of Political Studies.

Other Professional Experience:

List all bar associations, legal or judicial-related committees of which you are or have been a member, and give the titles and dates of any offices which you have held in such groups.

• Since 2008, I have participated as a guest faculty member in the UBC Trial Advocacy Course.
• In 2008-2009, I was involved on my own and as a member of an ad hoc group of commercial litigators in making submissions concerning a major revision of the Rules of Court that became effective July 1, 2010.

Pro Bono Activities:

Other professional obligations permitting, I provide legal services pro bono at a legal aid clinic held at La Boussole, arranged through Access Pro Bono Society of British Columbia.

Teaching and Continuing Education:

List all legal or judicial educational organizations and activities you have been involved with (e.g. teaching course at a law faculty, bar association, National Judicial Institute, or the Canadian Institute for the Administration of Justice).

I teach in the Faculty of Law at the University of British Columbia as set out above.

The following is an incomplete list of my involvement in presenting continuing legal education courses:

• Case comment on Froese v Montreal Trust Co - presented to the CBA Pension Benefits Subsection (Sept 1996)
• "The Other Side of Surplus: The Courts and Pension Plan Shortfalls" - presented to the Canadian Institute Conference on Pension and Benefit Plans (Nov 1996)
• "Hockin v Bank of British Columbia: A Comment" - presented to the Canadian Pension and Benefits Institute ('CPBI') (Feb 1999)
• "Claims Against Securities Regulators" – presented to Continuing Legal Education Society of British Columbia (CLEBC) Conference on Securities Litigation (Dec 2000)
• "Emerging Issues in Pension Law" - presented to the CPBI Western Regional Conference (Oct 2001)
• Organized and chaired CLEBC Conference on Production of Documents (Nov 2002)
• "Issues in the Discovery of Documents" - presented to CLE Conference on Production of Documents (Nov 2002)
• "Recent Developments in Pension Law" - presented to Canadian Institute Conference on Employment Law (Feb 2004)
• "Claims for Misuse of Private Information" - presented to the CLEBC Conference on Tort Law (May 2007)
• Organized and chaired CLEBC Conferences on Restitution, 2009 and 2014.
• "An Overview of Restitution" and "Constructive Trust and Other Restitutionary Remedies" - presented to CLEBC Conference on Restitution (April 2009)
• "Applications", and "Case Planning" - presented to CLEBC Conference on the New Civil Rules, 2010 (April 2010)
• "Shareholders' Agreements and Other Solicitors' Issues" - presented to CLEBC course, Shareholders' Remedies 2011 (June 2011)
• "The Road Forward" - presented to CLEBC Conference, The (Not So) Civil Rules 2011 (June 2011)
• "Civil Actions for Breach of Privacy in BC and Elsewhere'" - presented to CLEBC course, Torts 2013 (May 2013)
• "Recent Developments in Class Proceedings" - presented to CLEBC Civil Litigation Conference 2014 (Mar 2014)
• "Pleading a Claim for Restitution" - presented to CLEBC Conference on Restitution (June 2014)
• "Civil Litigation Under the Current Rules" - presented to CLEBC Civil Litigation in BC Symposium: Rules, Culture and Change (Nov 2014)
• "Direct Examinations in Both Civil and Criminal Cases" - presented to CLEBC course, Direct Examination 2016 (Apr 2016)
• "Unjust Enrichment" - presented to CLEBC 'Business Disputes' courses (2011, 2016)

According to CLEBC, I made more than 30 contributions to their programs between 1996 and 2016.

Community and Civic Activities:

List all organizations of which you are a member and any offices held with dates.

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I was successively the vice-president, president and past president of the Unitarian. Church of Vancouver in the period 1999-2003. I led the Church's capital campaign in 2003. I have also participated and continue to participate in the life of that community through various committees including the Worship Services Committee, Nominations Committee, Finance Committee, Legacy Committee and Ministerial Internship Committee.

I was successively a director, vice-president, president and past president of Hostelling International - BC Region in the period 1991-96. I was a director and held various offices of Outlook Camping Incorporated in the period 1978 to 1982.

Part 11 – The Role of the Judiciary in Canada's Legal System

The Government of Canada seeks to appoint judges with a deep understanding of the judicial role in Canada. In order to provide a more complete basis for evaluation, candidates are asked to offer their insight into broader issues concerning the judiciary and Canada's legal system. For each of the following questions, please provide answers of between 750 and 1000 words.

1. What would you regard as your most significant contribution to the law and the pursuit of justice in Canada?

Over the past 33 years I have worked at being the best lawyer I can be: professional, responsible, smart, loyal, constructive, creative and careful. I've pleaded a long list of hearings, trials and appeals, and there could be a longer list of cases that were settled or went away, not to mention arbitrations and proceedings that are unreported. I've won some cases and lost others; achieved some wonderful settlements and some that were not so good, and done some of my best work in cases that were lost. I have made mistakes, some of them consequential, and tried to learn from them. Through the whole of it, I played my part in our adversarial system of justice.

Most experienced litigation lawyers could say the same. Most of us work hard and do our best for our clients. Most of us are bright, tenacious and honest. And so I rather suspect that my most significant contribution to the law and the pursuit of justice in Canada has simply been to play my part in this worthy collective endeavour. Whatever particular contribution I might point to - my involvement in this case or that - is not as important as this.

As I was graduating from law school, friends and professors predicted that I would end up as a legal academic. I thought that was probably right, but I also felt viscerally that the law could not be fully and properly understood by reading case reports and journal articles. It was something that would have to be experienced, to see how judge's reasons and statutes translated into people's decisions and their lives. I knew I had to article and then fell in love with the practice of law during my articles. The love affair took some time to mature. Late in my articles, while I was deeply embroiled in a big and complicated case on behalf of a group of 26 victims of deceptive financial advisors, I was offered a Commonwealth Scholarship to attend Oxford University for one year or two, all expenses paid. At this point I was infatuated enough with the practice of law that I turned the scholarship down reflexively. I couldn't imagine abandoning the case, and the forthcoming trial.

Four years later, I was much less sure of my commitment to the legal profession. Much of it seemed pointlessly adversarial - exchanges of positional manoeuvring through correspondence with opposing counsel - and I was doubting that my efforts at advocacy in court made much of a difference to the result. I took a year off to travel and think about my place in the world. I was wondering: is this the best I can do with such talents and efforts as I possess and have to offer in my working life?

On that trip, I spent time in a remote part of north-east Pakistan with a travelling companion, who liked me well enough but didn't think much of lawyers. I ended up negotiating with the authorities, helping my friend to navigate a foreign legal system that I hardly understood. To my surprise, I was able to accomplish this, to render helpful advice and assistance, by dint of the practical experience I had acquired as a lawyer. I came back with the insight that the most important thing I had to offer my clients and the system was not courtroom brilliance but good advice: as to their rights and how they could assert them; as to how to begin a dispute and how and when to end one; as to the exigencies and the limits of the law. Viewed in this light, I was comfortable with my role, not to prevail in my client's cause by oratory and sheer force of will, but ensure that my client's case was well and fairly put, that it was focused on what was truly in dispute, and, most of all, ensure that my client was enabled to make informed decisions while navigating a complicated landscape. This is not glamorous work, but I could not doubt its importance.

Judges have a difficult task, and lawyers make it easier. Lawyers frame and focus the dispute. Clients often want to fight about everything, and lawyers discourage that. At the same time they identify points, sometimes subtle, that should be contested. Lawyers negotiate settlements that remove cases from the system. They combine a commitment to the client's cause with a professional detachment that makes it possible to address profoundly difficult personal issues. Who is telling the truth? Who messed up? What is being concealed and is it important? Were promises broken? These kinds of questions arise routinely in all kinds of cases. I am proud of my contribution as a lawyer to the prosecution and defence of my clients' cases and I view it as my most significant contribution to the law and the pursuit of justice in Canada.

2. How has your experience provided you with insight into the variety and diversity of Canadians and their unique perspectives?

We are diverse in many different ways; the details are more or less important according to the individual. Some of the diversity of our experiences is personally felt, much is observed, and some we are blind to.

My personal experience of diversity began with my childhood as an Anglo-Montrealer in the 1960s and early 1970s, at a time and in a place where mother tongue, religion and class were hugely consequential. My English, Protestant, elementary school was repeatedly cleared in response to bomb threats, and Pierre Laporte's murder took place on my 12th birthday, the day following invocation of the War Measures Act. Coming to political awareness as an Anglophone in this climate was to become aware of oneself simultaneously as the oppressor and the beleaguered minority. It is possible to be both.

My parents divorced a few years later and my father, a lawyer, remarried. My new stepmother was a Francophone lawyer. I was fortunate in that I liked and got along with her from the beginning. Knowing French Canadians as part of my family made it impossible for me to stereotype them, as otherwise I might have. Much of my extended family remains in Quebec, moving more or less seamlessly across cultural divides.

After the divorce, my mother moved to Halifax with my sisters and I and I became a Haligonian and a Maritimer, with frequent visits to my father in Montreal. This was a different perspective on what it was to be Canadian. 'Central Canadians' were viewed with suspicion; there was a sense that Ontario and Quebec had conspired to keep the Maritimes down. The politics of language were virtually non-existent, except for mutterings about French on cereal boxes.

From high school in Halifax I went on to attend university in Kingston and Toronto. People there seemed mostly unaware that they were parties to a conspiracy to maintain economic dominance - a thesis on which I was keeping an open mind - although Torontonians manifested a confident belief that they lived in the most important place in Canada. Some of my law school classmates still do.

Having grown up comfortably middle-class, a variety of summer jobs in university exposed me to different facets of the working world. The most important was two summers working for minimum wage at a brush factory a rough neighbourhood in east-end Montreal. Many of my co-workers were my age, Francophones, some with tattoos (long before this was fashionable) or interesting scars, and this was not a summer job for them. I didn't get to know them at all, but observed them closely. It occurred to me, if it hadn't before, that I was very fortunate.

Feminism was and was not an issue in my life. It was an early intellectual interest - I was reading Germaine Greer and Simone de Beauvoir in high school and Carol Gilligan in university -without much personal weight. My family and extended family were full of strong, self-confident women. My stepmother was the medallist in her year in the law school at the Université de Montréal. I couldn't take seriously the idea that women were less capable or worthy than men, though I was raised with the gendered notion that men owed women in particular obligations of protection. It took me into my thirties and forties to appreciate things I had been blind to, such as the subtler forms of sexual discrimination and harassment experienced by women in the workplace and at large. I was assisted in this by my sisters, my wife and the ongoing legal and social conversation that has taken place.

Coming to Vancouver exposed me, for the first time, to the presence of a public 'gay' -now we would say LGBTQ - community, when I arrived here at the time of the AIDS crisis. I had close friends in university who, it had emerged, were lesbian. It seemed a personal thing to me at the time. No one I knew defined herself publicly by her sexual orientation. I became aware that there are people who do. I gradually came to appreciate debates about discrimination and harassment in this context as well.

I was raised in the Anglican Church and slipped into agnosticism in my late teens. It seemed to me that religion poses questions that cannot be answered. In my thirties, our family joined the Unitarian Church of Vancouver and I discovered, to my surprise, that I enjoyed Sunday services. I remain an agnostic -Unitarianism makes a virtue of an absence of uniformity of belief among its adherents, and it is possible to be an agnostic Unitarian -while experiencing the joys and frustrations of religious community. My involvement in this community has helped me to understand how truly important religious belief is to many people.

I have lived in five provinces, and driven across the rest and as far north as Yellowknife. I have lived and travelled outside Canada for extended periods - 7 months in 1989, and 12 months in 2005/2006 - and seen our country from the outside. I have some sense of what divides us and what unites us and am deeply proud of the Canadian experiment: the construction of a multicultural society and political culture that is truly tolerant of disagreement and differing ways of life. This can only ever be a work in progress.

Lawyers and judges are experts in disagreement. It seems to me the starting point for judging lies in understanding. The judge must understand the law, the litigants, the dispute and the context in which it arises. He or she must appreciate the parties' differing perspectives, and the reasons for the differences. The judge must try to maintain an awareness of his or her own limitations. The judge's decision must be anchored in the law, and not in a subjective sense of rightness. The correct application of the law, however, begins with understanding. I hope and believe that the experiences I have described have contributed to my capacity to achieve the kind of understanding that is necessary in a judge. I have tried and continue to try to understand people and their problems, and the law that contributes so much to our ability to live together.

3. Describe the appropriate role of a judge in a constitutional democracy.

Democracy is a principle and an aspiration: its premise is that the moral justification for the exercise of state power lies in the equal participation of all capacitated members of the community (in modern times through the selection of representatives) in the exercise of governmental power through political processes.

All democracies are constitutional democracies. Democracy is impossible without a constitution of some kind, that is, a set of rules determining who will vote and how often, how the votes will be counted, what margin will determine success, and so on. All modern democracies are representative democracies, so that constitutional rules are required to determine all these matters both in respect of the voting of citizens, and the voting of the representatives. Many modern democracies, including the Canadian democracy, are federations, featuring constitutionally entrenched representative assemblies at the national and the provincial level. In such cases, the constitutional rules must apportion responsibilities between Parliament and the provincial Legislatures. Quite apart from constitutional federalism, modern democracies inevitably feature democratically elected local governments again exercising powers according to established rules, or laws.

Constitutional government is a prerequisite to democracy, but constitutionalism, without more, is not sufficient. The United Kingdom had constitutional government long before it was democratic and the Canadian commitment to democracy was imperfect at the time of Confederation in 1867. The franchise was withheld from women, native Canadians, and persons under the age of 21. These deficits were only slowly remedied.

Constitutions are subject to interpretation. Indeed, they are particularly subject to interpretation because it is in the nature of constitutional rules that they are intended to address a broad range of circumstances and last a long time. Political stability requires that constitutional rules be difficult to change. Inevitably, constitutional rules established in one particular context come to be interpreted and applied to circumstances that could not have been imagined by the original drafters. The Fathers of Confederation meeting in Charlottetown in 1864 could not anticipate air travel, radio communication, and the Internet. Absent constitutional amendments that may not be forthcoming, someone has to decide how the existing rules will be applied in unforeseen circumstances. This is a problem of interpretation.

Judges are public officials who are granted authority under the constitution to interpret constitutional rules and other legal rules.

In some circumstances, interpretation shades into the creation of new constitutional rules. The common law is a mosaic of judicial decisions over centuries. Canadian constitutional law is a mixture of legislative texts (ranging from the Bill of Rights, 1688, an English constitutional statute imported into Canadian law, to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms enacted in 1982) and judge-made common law.

In principle, the task of interpretation could be left to elected judges, as occurs through much of the United States. However, most constitutions, including the US Constitution, limit the ability of elected representatives to determine the scope of constitutional rules that constrain their role. The US Supreme Court is not an elected body. Our constitutional tradition recognizes a broader constraint. Its premise is that legal interpretation and adjudication should be undertaken independently of politics and the exercise of political power by elected representatives.

This gives rise to a paradox. Democracy requires rules, rules require interpretation, and interpretation requires judges who are not themselves elected representatives. Canadian democracy is thus grounded in the undemocratic exercise of authority by unelected judges. And the decisions made by judges are sometimes terribly consequential.

Resolving the paradox requires that Canadian judges recognize principled constraints on their authority that are inherent in the judicial role in this country. They are trusted not to exceed these bounds.

Critical constraints are imposed by the democratic principle. Respect for democracy requires that judges approach statutory interpretation with a view to understanding and giving effect to legislative intent, so far as it can be discerned, without regard to their own views (or those of their predecessors embodied in the common law). When legislation appears to fall afoul of constitutional principle, judges should bear in mind that their role is to identify limits rather than to legislate.

Other constraints are imposed by the judicial role. Judges can only deal with the cases brought before them. Their task is to resolve a dispute according to the evidence brought forward by the parties. The fact-finding process in court is narrowly focused, and in most cases the court only hears from the parties. In making decisions, judges must bear in mind that there is much that they do not know, and be wary of attempting to decide more than they must.

Judges must honour the trust that is placed in them. They swear an oath and are trusted to resolve disputes according to law. Judges were once lawyers and lawyers are trained to identify the legal arguments that might be used to justify a client's position. Notwithstanding this training, judges must give reasons for judgment that are intellectually honest, not results-based but true to the judge's appreciation of the evidence and the authorities. Sometimes judges must decide against their instincts, because the law requires it.

The corollary is that judges must not be afraid to exercise the authority entrusted to them. Their task is to make decisions that are principled and true to the evidence placed before them, and it matters not whether the decision will be popular. They cannot respond to public criticism: they are not political actors, and must not seem to take on a political role.

None of this is easy. It requires intelligence, compassion, courage and intellectual integrity.

4. Who is the audience for decisions rendered by the court(s) to which you are applying?

There are at least five potential audiences for any decision of the British Columbia courts: the parties, non-parties caught up in the dispute, the appellate court, future judges and the legal profession, and the public.

The parties:

The parties are usually the most important audience. It is their dispute and they are the ones who framed it, led evidence, and argued it. They have a great deal at stake.

There is a great deal to be said for the suggestion that reasons should be written primarily for the benefit of the losing party. For the winner, it is often enough that it won. It is the loser that requires an explanation. Crafting reasons directed to the losing party requires the judge to truly engage with its arguments and evidence. It is a discipline, and a necessary show of respect to the party who is going to suffer a detriment as a result of the court's order.

Having said that, the conclusion is not all that matters and judicial pronouncements in reasons for judgment can carry great weight for both winners and losers. A judge's conclusion that a successful litigant acted dishonestly, was devious or otherwise morally unworthy, may turn the fruit of victory to ashes in the mouth of a successful litigant.

Non-parties caught up in the dispute:

The position of non-parties is often overlooked, but should not be. They may include victims of crime, witnesses whose evidence was not believed, former parties who settled but whose conduct remains relevant to the issues between the parties, professional advisors who led the parties to take the positions they did, and counsel. The judge's obligation to craft intellectually honest reasons for judgment will sometimes lead the judge to conclusions that causes non-parties distress.

As with parties, these considerations point to the need for caution in coming to conclusions that are not strictly necessary to the decision at hand, and to the need for circumspection in expressing those conclusions that are necessary.

The appellate court:

Judgments of the British Columbia Supreme Court can be appealed to the Court of Appeal, either with leave or often as of right. There is a legal obligation to provide reasons for judgment that are sufficiently clear and comprehensive to permit meaningful appellate review.

Future judges and the legal profession:

Judges and lawyers determine what the law requires by parsing, interpreting, following and distinguishing past decisions. While they do so on behalf of the public at large - the law belongs to everyone and not just those who are trained to analyse it - it is judges and lawyers who play the most important part in this exercise. Reasons for judgment should therefore be crafted with at least one eye to how they may be interpreted in some future case.

This is more complicated that it appears because lawyers and judges use precedent in various ways. It is not simply a matter of clearly stating one's understanding of the law and applying it to the facts found in the case at bar. Clearly written judgments contribute at one and the same time to legal certainty and the continuing development of the law.

Sometimes a judgment may be more important for what it does not decide than for what it decides. A judge may identify a point that will be open for determination in a future case, though not in the case at bar. It is probably helpful to future readers if this kind of point is clearly identified as such, as opposed to leaving it to be teased out from the facts and decision whether the opinion in question is or is not essential to the result. But this will not always be possible.

Sometimes a judgment is important for its statement of disagreement with what seems to be the law. This can happen in at least two ways. In an appellate court, disagreement may be stated in a dissenting judgment. Or, less commonly; a trial judge may express personal disagreement with a legal conclusion that is binding upon him by prior trial (or even appellate) authority. In either case, the judge is speaking to an appellate court or future judges in the hope that they may one day be convinced in the ongoing debate and dialogue that is the substance of the common law. Dissenting judgments have played an important part in the development of the law in the past, and will continue to do so.

The public:

Court proceedings take place in public and reasons for judgment are public. The public administration of justice is a virtue of a liberal constitutional state. The fact that courtrooms are open to the public and that the decisions in those cases are publicly accessible is profoundly important. The scale and intensity of public attention varies greatly from nil in many cases, to the neighbours, family and friends of those involved, to coverage in local, provincial, national or international media. It is not always possible to predict which cases will attract wide attention.

Reasons for judgment should be intelligible to the interested member of the public who lacks previous exposure to the case. They should manifest the values and principles underlying the law: fairness, reasonableness, Charter values, and so on. The reader should be able to discern what was decided, why it was decided as it was, and why that decision makes sense.

In criminal cases, particularly criminal sentencing matters, the court stands as a representative of the state to denounce criminal conduct while respecting the rights of the accused. Here the judge is speaking to the public while addressing the accused on the public's behalf, and there is a special burden on the judge to make every effort to be well understood.

5. Please describe the personal qualities, professional skills and abilities, and life experience that you believe will equip you for the role of a judge.

Professional skills and abilities

I have had the opportunity to practise commercial and administrative litigation at the highest level with partners and opponents who are leaders of the bar. This has given me a thorough grounding in civil procedure and trial practice, the common law of contracts, torts and restitution (not to mention a number of more specialized areas such as pension law and professional negligence) and an understanding of how civil disputes come into being, are presented and resolved. It has given me a practical appreciation of the consequences of civil litigation and alternative forms of dispute resolution. A trial is never more than the tip of an iceberg.

I am a competent advocate. My particular strengths lie in legal analysis and the organization of the case, and in the preparation of written argument.

The BCL programme at Oxford exposed me to current legal scholarship at a high and abstract level. Some of this - such as the course in Jurisprudence and Political Theory -had very little to do with the practice of law, yet offered me new insight into fundamental questions such as the moral claims of the law, and the role of the courts, that must be confronted by any thoughtful judge. Oxford's course in Restitution offered a thoroughgoing critique of an important class of legal problems. Over the past decade, I have built on that to develop CLE seminars and a course at UBC's faculty of law.

My other commitments permitting, I volunteer monthly at a pro bono clinic run by the Western Canada Society to Access Justice. These are 30 minute appointments with people who cannot afford legal representation. Despite the frustrations of the format, it is gratifying how often I am able to assist.

Life experience

My father was a lawyer who practiced in family law. Sunday dinners were often interrupted by telephone calls from clients with problems relating to custody and access. I have never practised family law, but I felt from an early stage that I understood a part of what family disputes were about.

My parents separated when I was 13 and divorced a year or so later. It was a civilized break up, in that both my parents did their best to be fair. Their viewpoints could not be reconciled, however, and this was a difficult lesson for me.

I have been married to the love of my life, Louise Bunn, for twenty-five years. We have two grown sons who are embarking upon their adult journeys. I speak weekly with each of my parents, now in their eighties and both in good health, and am close to other family members living in Ottawa and Montreal. I consider myself immeasurably fortunate to have these relationships. None of it, I know, is to be taken for granted.

Another area of immense good fortunate for me has been my practice environment at Nathanson, Schachter & Thompson LLP. It is a small, close-knit firm of smart, capable people of integrity. Stephen Schachter, who was my articling principal at Davis & Company in 1983/84, taught me by example how to be a competent, ethical lawyer.

Experiences that I have outlined above exposed me from an early age to political, cultural, social and religious differences in the ways we see the world and led me to reflect upon what holds us, as Canadians, together. One of the reasons my wife and I took our family to England in 2005/06 was to give our sons, then aged 10 and 13, their own opportunity to gain the perspective that comes from being an outsider.

Over the past decade, the focus of my volunteer work has been through the Unitarian Church of Vancouver. I came to the church for spiritual nourishment and a religious education for my children, and was drawn into an active role during a difficult passage in the life of the community (as occurs from time to time in all such communities). I took this on with reluctance, because I had joined the church for reasons that were, in some sense, selfish and personal, and functioning as an officer and trustee inevitably engaged me in something closer to a professional role. I should have realized from the outset that I would gain as much as I gave. My experience with the church has strengthened my belief in community, notwithstanding the inevitable frustrations.

Personal qualities

I am a serious individual though not, I think, a prig. I am hard working, self-disciplined, have a strong sense of duty and am usually patient. Though I will not rush to judgment before I have to, when the time arrives I don't often have difficulty making up my mind. My family and friends are important to me. I am intellectually curious and enjoy music and books of all kinds.

6. Given the goal of ensuring that Canadians are able to look at the justices appointed to the bench and see their faces and life experience reflected there, you may, if you choose, provide information about yourself that you feel would assist in this objective.

This is a challenging question for me as a white, heterosexually married male in his late 50s. As my sister puts it, I am 'pale, male and stale', the traditional stereotype of a judge. No one will see diversity manifested in my face or appearance. And I have lived a privileged life. I've attended elite universities, worked at soft jobs indoors, and earned a very good income.

Diversity is, I think, more than a matter of appearances, background and economic privilege. This is not to say that these things are not important - lived experience as a member of a racial or sexual minority can be terribly important - but that they are not the only important thing. What one makes of one's experiences matters very much.

For my part, I have tried all my life to understand others of different backgrounds and life experiences. I have lived and explored across Canada and in the world at large. I have, I believe, a questioning intellect and an open mind. I believe that people are individually important, in and of themselves. I believe I would bring these qualities and attitude to the bench.