MEDIA ADVISORY
For immediate release
December 15, 2006
(Toronto) - Professor Sujit Choudhry, a member of the U of T Faculty of Law, and Raj Anand, a graduate of the U of T Faculty of Law, President of the Law Alumni Association and partner at WeirFoulds LLP, have been appointed by the Ontario Government to the Board of Legal Aid Ontario, along with paralegal, Paul Dray and Toronto real estate developer, Julie Di Lorenzo.
"The Faculty of Law is very proud of its close ties with Legal Aid Ontario," says Mayo Moran, Dean of the U of T Faculty of Law. "We are delighted that one of our professors, Sujit Choudhry, and one of our distinguished graduates, Raj Anand, have been asked to make such a meaningful contribution to this important Canadian legal institution."
Legal Aid Ontario (LAO), one of the world's largest publicly funded legal aid organizations, is an independent government funded agency with a legislated mandate to ensure that low income Ontarians have access to quality legal services. Through a network of 51 area offices and 79 independent community and specialty legal clinics and 6 Student Legal Aid Services Societies, including U of T's Downtown Legal Services, LAO provides legal assistance in every region across Ontario. Each year, LAO provides legal help to over one million low income Ontarians. Board members are responsible for overseeing and evaluating all programs of the LAO, and are accountable to ensure the highest quality and most relevant service possible for LAO clients.
"I am delighted to welcome Professor Choudhry of the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, and Raj Anand, University of Toronto alumnus, to the Board of Directors of Legal Aid Ontario," says Janet Leiper, Chair of Legal Aid Ontario. "Professor Choudhry's work as an academic and his expertise in matters ranging from constitutional law, to health care, to public policy development, means that he brings a wealth of experience to his new position on Legal Aid Ontario's Board of Directors. Mr. Anand brings a broad scope of experience in his legal practice, experience as former Chief Commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, skills in administrative law, work with youth and minorities and experience in public interest advocacy for various community organizations. These appointments demonstrate that the University of Toronto is once again contributing to the provision of legal aid services to Ontario's low income population."
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For more information, please contact:
Jane Kidner, Assistant Dean, External Relations, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto
(416) 978-6702 or j.kidner@utoronto.ca
Biography
Sujit Choudhry holds the Scholl Chair at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, where he is a Senior Fellow of Massey College. He holds law degrees from Oxford, Toronto, and Harvard, was a Rhodes Scholar, and served as Law Clerk to Chief Justice Antonio Lamer of the Supreme Court of Canada. Professor Choudhry is one of Canada's leading constitutional scholars. He has published over 40 articles, book chapters, and reports. He is the editor of The Migration of Constitutional Ideas (Cambridge University of Press) and Dilemmas of Solidarity: Rethinking Redistribution in the Canadian Federation (University of Toronto Press), and is currently writing a book on the constitutional politics of Quebec secession. Professor Choudhry's op-eds have appeared in the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, the Montreal Gazette, and the Ottawa Citizen. Professor Choudhry is extensively involved in public policy development. He was a consultant to the Royal Commission on the Future of Health Care in Canada (the Romanow Commission), the National Advisory Committee on SARS and Public Health (the Naylor Committee), and the World Bank Institute at the World Bank, and was a member of a team of foreign constitutional experts on mission to Sri Lanka working with the Forum of Federations in support of the Sri Lankan peace process. Professor Choudhry was Chair of the Advisory Board of the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario. He served on the Academic Advisory Committee to the Province of Ontario's Democratic Renewal Secretariat, and was a member of the Governing Toronto Advisory Panel which re-examined the structure of municipal government in Toronto. He recently appeared as counsel for Human Rights Watch and the International Human Rights Clinic at the University of Toronto in the Almrei, Charkaoui and Harkat appeals.
Raj Anand is a partner at the WeirFoulds LLP law firm in Toronto. Mr. Anand's practice is focused on civil litigation, professional negligence and discipline, human rights, constitutional and administrative law, and labour relations. He is former Chief Commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission (1988-89), and presently acts for complainants and respondents before the Ontario and federal commissions. Mr. Anand served as a panel member on the Board of Inquiry under the Ontario Human Rights Code and the Police Services Act (1989-94), and as counsel to a number of administrative tribunals. He headed the Task Force on the Law of Trespass to Publicly-used Property (1986-87). He was a commentator on labour law and human rights issues, on "Workweek" TVOntario and Newsworld (1990-92). Mr. Anand is the first recipient of the Advocates Society's Award of Justice (1997). He chairs the Minority Advocacy and Rights Council and acts for a variety of non-governmental organizations in public interest litigation. He also represents professionals, including lawyers, in disciplinary and insurance litigation. Mr. Anand has appeared as counsel several times in the Supreme Court of Canada in both civil and constitutional cases. In May 2003, Raj was awarded the prestigious Law Society Medal. He is recognized as a leading practitioner in Toronto in the areas of Workplace Human Rights and Litigation - Public Law in the Canadian Legal Directory by Lexpert and has written over fifty articles on these issues. He is also a regular guest lecturer at the U of T Faculty of Law, where he is President of the Law Alumni Association Council.
