Our Board

Daniel is a criminal defence lawyer practicing in Vancouver and Edmonton. He conducts serious and complex criminal trials, regularly litigating the boundaries of civil liberties protected by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. He has challenged the Director of Civil Forfeiture in the longest running forfeiture action in BC. And he was counsel in proceedings arising from the largest money laundering investigation in British Columbia’s history, which was a catalyst for the Cullen Commission.

He has extensive experience as criminal appellate counsel in the Alberta Court of Appeal and British Columbia Court of Appeal. He has also acted for litigants at the Supreme Court of Canada more than twenty times.

Daniel is an adjunct professor at UBC’s Peter A. Allard School of Law teaching “Legal Rights under the Charter.” He has made many contributions to the legal community, including authoring papers and lecturing on the law of search and seizure for lawyers, police officers, and judges.

Daniel was appointed Queen’s Counsel in 2022, and he was inducted as a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers in 2024.

Derek was born to immigrant parents and raised in Vancouver. He grew up implicitly understanding that a society is defined by the way it protects the rights of vulnerable people and minorities. One of his first jobs was a youth worker in diversion programs for troubled youth. Now retired, he had a career with the federal government in policy related roles including program evaluation (regional lead), research on social policy issues such as labour market issues and the federal homelessness initiative.

Derek’s was active in his professional union where he served as National Director for several years, including two years as National Vice President. He participated on Collective Bargaining teams, and was active on Finance and Constitution and Bylaws committees. Locally, he was a long time steward, founding director of BC/Yukon Local, and represented members at several departments in the grievance procedure with excellent results, including issues of harassment, and health and safety.

Derek volunteers with Leadnow and with the Wallenberg-Sugihara Civil Courage Society. Derek has an MA in Economics, with a focus on labour economics and labour relations. This came with an understanding that economics is all about how members of the society relate to each other. He enjoys self propelled outdoor activities including backcountry skiing, mountaineering, hiking and sailing.

Haran is the CTO and in-house counsel for a Vancouver- based legal technology company. In previous careers he was a criminal defence lawyer and a software developer.

His role as defence counsel introduced him to seeking justice and protecting rights on an individual client level. He expanded that interest to include more systemic actions including being a founding member for both the campaign for collective bargaining rights of Legal Aid Ontario lawyers and Comdu.it, a volunteer network dedicated to sustainable development in war-affected regions of Sri Lanka. He has previously served on the Boards of the BCCLA, the Elizabeth Fry Society of Greater Vancouver, and as a steering committee member for the Law Union of BC.

His interests focus on criminal law reform, privacy, and algorithmic accountability – particularly in how these intersect with Indigenous and racialized communities.

Hasan (he/him) is a Staff Lawyer at the BC General Employees’ Union, where he practices Labour and Human Rights Law and advocates on behalf of workers. He is also the Supervising Lawyer for the Archway Migrant Worker and Poverty Law Clinics.

Hasan serves as the Advisory Director (past president 2021/2022) for the Federation of Asian Canadian Lawyers of BC, a diverse coalition of legal professionals that work to promote greater equity, justice, and opportunity for the Asian community.

He also serves as the Community Liaison for the Islamophobia Legal Assistance Hotline, a free service he helped co-found which provides free and confidential legal advice to anyone that has been discriminated against because they are Muslim or are perceived to be Muslim.

Ian Bushfield is an advocate for Humanism, science and social justice living in Vancouver. He is the current and was the first Executive Director of the BC Humanist Association. He co hosts the PolitiCoast and Cambie Report podcasts covering BC and Vancouver politics, respectively. He earned a BSc in Engineering Physics from the University of Alberta and a MSc in Physics from Simon Fraser University, and has taken BCIT courses in non profit management.

He helped found the U of A Atheists and Agnostics in 2007 and led the group until graduating in 2009. In 2008 the group successfully challenged the University’s 100 year old convocation charge as it asked students to use their degrees “for the glory of God”. From 2013 to 2015 he lived in the UK, first in Leeds then London where he worked on science advocacy and transparency campaigns at Sense About Science.

Jason Gratl is a Vancouver based litigator.  His practice is general in the sense that it includes civil, constitutional, administrative and criminal law litigation.  His practice is specialized in the sense that he looks for special problems to solve or create, avoids litigating the same case twice and often navigates uncharted territory.

Jason’s private practice has a strong probono element, with numerous interventions at all levels of Court, environmental law challenges, free expression battles, contempt of court defences, national security skirmishes and secret in camera trials.   Jason serves on the Boards of Directors of the Centre for Environmental Law and Litigation, Radix Theatre Society, and is the chair of the Canadian Bar Association Constitutional and Civil Liberties Subsection for British Columbia.  Jason is a past adjunct professor at UBC and is researching adjudicative truth-seeking in the PhD program at the University of Victoria Faculty of Law.

Karen is settler and a lawyer working on the traditional and unceded territories of the sɛmiˈɑːmuː, Q’e’yc’ey, kʷikʷəƛ̓əm, qiqéyt, and Səwaθn Məsteyəxʷ First Nations, known as Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam and New Westminster, BC. She has nearly two decades of experience in private practice doing criminal defence, civil disobedience and police misconduct cases. Her non-profit experience includes work as staff counsel for Pivot Legal Society, where she focused on grass-roots campaign work, sex work, and policing advocacy. In that role, she sat on civic committees and worked as media liaison. Her governance experience includes chairing the boards of Pivot Legal Society (2005-2007) and PACE Society (2009-2013), before stepping back to focus on her family and her practice. Karen has been a member of the BCCLA Board of Directors since 2018.

Kevin is the executive director and co-founder of hua foundation, an organization with the mission of strengthening the capacity among East Asian diasporic youth, in solidarity with other communities, to challenge, change, and create systems for a more equitable and just future. His work centres on creating opportunities for racialized communities to participate in civil society and in social change agendas on their own terms. Kevin’s work has influenced public policy and practices in areas of food security, neighbourhood planning, climate emergency, community engagement, and electoral reform. With this multi-sectorial set of experiences, Kevin is a frequent guest speaker and lecturer. Kevin often comments in the media on issues relating to ethnocultural foodways, Chinese-Canadian communities, Chinatown, race relations, and racial inequities.

As the executive director of a small non-profit, Kevin has experience directly working on and overseeing both the operational and programmatic parts of the organization. Having built several nonprofits from its beginnings, he now actively shares these experiences with others starting their own initiatives. Kevin has a keen interest in organization behaviour and how organizing and places of work can structurally be more equitable for people involved.

Kevin currently serves on committees with City of Vancouver, Vancity, Vancouver Foundation and advises a number of grassroots groups. Outside of his local community involvement and work, Kevin organizes to support the freedoms of people in Hong Kong and Taiwan. He spends his free time finessing family recipes and playing video games.

Kyla Lee’s legal practice focuses on defence of driving-related offences, and alcohol-related driving prohibitions. Kyla is actively involved in her community. She is a member of the TLABC Criminal Law Committee, the Editorial Board for The Verdict, the Board of Governors, and a former member of the Executive Committee. Kyla represents the CBA on the Criminal Law Section executive, and formerly served on The Advocate’s Society Criminal Law Practice Group. Kyla is the CLE Co-Chair and on the Board of Directors for the DUI Defence Lawyers Association. She also serves as a National Ambassador to the Universal Women’s Network. In 2019, Kyla was recognized as one of the Top 25 Most Influential Lawyers in Canada. She was awarded the Universal Women’s Network Indigenous Leader Award. Kyla was named the recipient of the DUIDLA BadAss award in 2019. In 2020, Kyla was named a regional finalist in the RBC Women Entrepreneur Awards. Kyla hosts popular YouTube series Cases That Should Have Gone to the Supreme Court of Canada, But Didn’t! and Can You Fail It and the Driving Law podcast which spread legal education and awareness. She is the author of two textbooks published by LexisNexis, Cross-Examination: The Pinpoint Method and Immediate Roadside Prohibitions in Western Canada. Kyla is a proud Métis woman.

Molly Beatrice (she/her) is a stage director and community organizer.

Paul Champ is a labour, employment and human rights lawyer in Ottawa who is also well known for public interest and constitutional litigation. Paul and his clients have established legal precedents in privacy, discrimination, freedom of association, mobility, corporate liability for human rights abuses in foreign countries, and First Nations’ health care and child welfare. Paul has appeared before the Supreme Court of Canada on numerous occasions and was lead counsel in Fraser v Canada, a landmark case on adverse effect discrimination.

Paul has fought for prisoners’ rights before human rights tribunals and the courts. He was co-counsel in the Christina Jahn case which led to province-wide reforms in Ontario meant to eliminate the use of solitary confinement for inmates with mental illness. Paul has also acted on several cases of Canadian citizens facing human rights abuses while detained abroad.

In 2010, Paul received the Reg Robson Civil Liberties Award from the B.C. Civil Liberties Association. In 2013, he was honoured by the International Commission of Jurists with the Tarnopolsky Award for outstanding contributions to domestic and international human rights.

Tristen was born and raised in Kxeen (Prince Rupert), his traditional territory as Ts’msyen and where he cultivated his deep interest for psychology, mental health and social service. An active union member, Tristen has been a part of organizing, bargaining, and other efforts alongside his career spent delivering and developing various support services. Throughout Tristen’s life and work, he has supported others with experiences of prejudice, discrimination, systemic and state violence which, in tandem with his own experiences, guided him in his approach to advocacy and activism.

Wassim Garzouzi is a labour lawyer, with a practice dedicated exclusively to the representation of unions and their members. In addition to litigating, Wassim bargains collective agreements and serves as a nominee on interest arbitration boards.

Wassim is the Past President of the Canadian Association of Labour Lawyers and is a Part-Time Professor at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law, teaching the advanced Labour Law course, in both the French and English programs. In this same role, Wassim led a successful organizing drive resulting in the unionization of hundreds of faculty members.