As 2011 comes to an end and we look forward (?) to 2012, we are the LCO are celebrating not just the end of the year and welcoming the new year, but the end of our mandate and the beginning of our second five years.
Since we started project work in February 2008, we have completed four projects, one of which was the basis of the government's reforms in the division of pensions on marital breakdown (our project of the same name) and one of which has just been cited by the Ontario Court of Appeal in Vellonel (our recently released Modernization of the Provincial Offences Act). As for our four large outstanding projects, three are at the interim report stage and one at the final report stage. Yes, they have taken longer than we thought, sometimes for very good reasons (we believe that they will add to the base of knowledge and thinking about how the law addresses issues affecting older adults and persons with disabilities, for example) and for more mundane reasons (such as staff turnover). And we are moving along on the violence against women law school curriculum initiative, funded by the OWD, and under the capable management of Pam Cross.
We've commissioned papers from experts on the law and disabilities, older adults, family law and vulnerable workers; all of them are on our website on the project pages. We've mounted conferences and put on symposia and workshops, sometimes alone and sometimes in collaboration (the conference on elder law in October 2010, with CCEL and ACE). We've visited many professional and community groups with a connection to law and interest in law reform. We've received media coverage, although not as much as we hope to in the future, and are referred to often in the blogosphere.
Since we began, the LCO has benefitted from the skills and insights of our staff members: Lauren Bates, our staff lawyer, with responsibility not just for our two major projects, but for our students, who has been with us from the beginning; Julie Lassonde, who headed our family law project until she left for the very exciting opportunity to be the executive director of the first francophone women's shelter in Toronto, and Stefan Kok, her successor who completes his year with us at the end of the year; Kirsten Manley-Casimir, our research lawyer, who brought her expertise in Aboriginal issues, until she went off on leave for the birth of her second child, and Sue Gratton, her replacement who is preparing a series of papers on transition experiences for persons with disabilities; our MAG Counsel in Residence, a great group all, who have been responsible for our division of pensions project (John Hill, from Labour), the POA project (Mark Schofield, from Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, and Mohan Sharma, counsel in the Office of the Chief Justice of the Superior Court of Justice) and vulnerable workers (our current MAG Counsel, Norine Nathanson, from MAG (Criminal Division); and our OHLS Scholars in Residence (Professors Janet Walker, Roxanne Mykitiuk (who contributed to the persons with disabilities project), Poonam Puri (who headed the joint and several liability under the OBCA project), Pina D'Agostino and Aaron Dhir. I have been grateful from the day I started for the work of Janice Williams, ostensibly my Executive Assistant, but really the executive assistant for the LCO; for a few months, we were the LCO staff in our provisional location in the Computer Methods Building, until were were joined by Lauren Bates. Amanda Rodrigues brings familiarity with the web and creativity to her role as Office Assistant.
Of course, our Board of Governors is wonderful: open to innovation and enthusiastic about law reform. Our current members, under the leadership of Larry Banack (At-Large), are Gwen Boniface (LFO), Chris Bredt (LSUC), Nathalie Des Rosiers (At-Large), Adam Dodek (law deans), Stephen Goudge (judiciary), Neena Gupta (At-Large), Murray Segal (MAG) and Lorne Sossin (Osgoode Hall Law School). Joining them in January will be Mark Berlin and Maria Paez Victor (our first member who is not engaged with law in one way or another). We were also fortunate to have benefitted from the contribution of former Board members Neil Finkelstein, Bill Flanagan, Ian Holloway, Frank Iacobucci, Russell Jurianz and James MacPherson. Our Research Advisory Board has contributed in many ways, from advice about projects to community outreach, in the persons of Jeff Berryman (Windsor), Markus Gehring (Ottawa, Civil Law), Ben Hovius (Western), Lesley Jacobs, Eric Knutsen (Queen's), James Leal (LSUC), Roxanne Mykitiuk (Osgoode), Anne Marie Predko (MAG), Tony Van Duzer (Ottawa, Common Law). We thank former RAB members Constance Backhouse, Tony Duggan (U of T), Kai Hildebrandt and Janice Vauthier (practitioner).
I must make special mention of Patrick Monahan, then Dean of Osgoode, who was a driving force for the creation of a new law reform commission in Ontario, and who served as Chair of the Board until his appointment as the Vice-President (Academic) & Provost at York.
Finally, we are grateful to all the people who have served on our advisory groups (you can see who they are by looking at our project pages), who have given us feedback on our consultation papers and interim reports and who have taken part in our consultations. Our work depends on the willingness of academics, practitioners, government representatives, the judiciary and those affected by the law we are studying to give us their experience and knowledge.
And so to 2012. We have been renewed for another five years, with increased contributions from our funders. We could not ask for better partners than the Law Foundation of Ontario, the Ministry of the Attorney General, the Law Society of Upper Canada, Osgoode Hall Law School and Ontario's law deans, and York University. We are enchancing our commitment to community involvement through the creation of a new community council - I'll write more about that in the new year. We are instituting a new project proposal process involving small expert groups. The Board has approved a project on capacity and guardianship which arises out of and will allow us to build on our projects on older adults and persons with disabilities. We should be announcing other new projects in the early months of 2012. We are firmly planted in our real home at Osgoode, in the Ignat Kaneff Building.
Finally, a personal reflection on what a wonderful experience this has been for me - a terrific and unexpected way to bring together my professional experiences and commitment to change. When I met with the selection committee back in spring 2007, I said that this position would allow me to come home, home to Toronto (which I do think of as my home, despite being born in England and having lived in North Bay, Brandon, Fredericton and Calgary) and to work for change (as I did as a younger activist and in other ways). The chance to help bring a vision of law reform to fruition, one modelled on community involvement and social justice, as well as narrower understandings of law, has been a gift, one I will continue to enjoy for the next four years.
