Candidate Statement:  I am running for the board of the BC Civil Liberties Association because l believe in its mandate to preserve, defend, maintain and extend civil liberties and human rights in Canada. I am passionate about issues of social justice and equality. In particular, I have a keen interest in issues concerning the racial profiling, surveillancing, and targeting of marginalized communities in Canada. As a person of color who comes from a community that has often been the subject of discrimination and racial profiling by state and non-state actors, I hope to bring this lived experience to the board and guide its public advocacy, policy, and community engagement work. In particular, I want to build stronger ties and relationships between the BCCLA and the marginalized communities it often represents. I also want to utilize my connections/involvement in other public interest organizations and community groups to raise greater awareness about the work of the BCCLA and create opportunities for joint events, initiatives, and campaigns. I believe I have the skills, knowledge, and background of experience to enhance the capacity and work of the BCCLA board.

Summary of past or current involvement with the BCCLA:  I was a keynote speaker alongside Don Bayne at the Justice for Hassan Diab Event, organized by the BCCLA and the Justice for Hassan Diab Committee. I also moderated the Justice for Deepan Budlakoti event, organized by the BCCLA and No One Is Illegal.

Relevant experience, education, and work history: I received my Juris Doctorate in Law from the University of Calgary in 2011 and was called to the bar in British Columbia in 2012. Prior to law school, I worked in Cairo, Egypt for the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). My role at CIDA involved working with local NGOs around issues of human rights, gender equality, and labour rights. While in law school, I worked as a summer intern at the West Coast Women’s Education and Legal Education Fund. As an intern, I had the opportunity to work on the Polygamy Reference case, which went before the Supreme Court of BC. I articled at the BC Public Interest Advocacy Centre, through which I gained experience in poverty and human rights law. I also had the opportunity to facilitate public legal education workshops across British Columbia, which focused on marginalized communities learning more about their rights. I currently work as a Staff Lawyer at the BC Government and Service Employees Union, where, I advocate on behalf of workers and represent them in labour arbitrations and mediations. I am also the supervising lawyer for the Abbottsford Community Services Migrant Worker and Poverty Law Clinics. These programs are aimed at providing pro bono legal advice to individuals who are either temporary foreign workers in the lower mainland or cannot afford legal services otherwise. I am also a founding member of Critical Muslim Voices, an organization dedicated to advocating against Islamophobia in Canada and creating spaces for dialogue and community activism.

Candidate Statement:  I am a human rights and labour lawyer in Ottawa, Ontario. I have learned how organizations like the BCCLA play a crucial role in defending Canadians’ rights and democratic freedoms, often when they are most under attack. The BCCLA promotes and protects fundamental freedoms through civic education, direct advocacy and lobbying for (or sometimes against) legislative change. These are all activities I strongly endorse as both a citizen and a lawyer because history teaches us again and again that freedom requires vigilance. Personally, I regularly represent individuals and trade unions as well as organizations such as Amnesty International, the Council of Canadians with Disabilities, the Elizabeth Fry Society, and the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society. I have helped my clients to establish legal precedents in Charter rights, privacy, discrimination, prisoners’ rights, corporate accountability for abuses in foreign countries, access to information, and freedom from torture. I have been a university lecturer on the law of armed conflict, surveillance and national security, and social justice and the law. In 2010, I was honoured to receive the BCCLA’s Reg Robson Civil Liberties Award and in 2013 I was the recipient of the Walter S. Tarnopolsky Human Rights Award.

Summary of past or current involvement with the BCCLA:  I have been a Board member since 2011 but first became involved with the BCCLA in 2006 when 1 was retained to work on the Afghanistan detainees case. I was counsel for BCCLA on that matter (and its countless trips to the Federal Court and two-year hearing before the Military Police Complaints Commission) for nearly six years. I have appeared before Parliamentary standing committees on behalf of the BCCLA on the Afghan detainees issue and amendments to the Criminal Code making it an offence to wear a mask at a protest. More recently, 1 have represented the BCCLA before the RCMP Public Complaints Commission and the Security Intelligence Review Committee to bring complaints against the RCMP and CSIS for spying on environmentalists who were opposed to the Northern Gateway Pipeline.

Biography (including relevant experience, education, and work history): Paul Champ is a human rights and employment lawyer based in Ottawa. Paul and his clients have established legal precedents in Charter rights, privacy, racial discrimination, freedom of association, First Nations health care and child welfare, prisoners’ rights, and corporate accountability for abuses in foreign countries. Paul has appeared before the Supreme Court of Canada on several occasions and is invited as an expert to speak to Parliamentary Committees on issues such as policing protests, Canadians imprisoned abroad, and national security. In 2010, .Paul was honoured .to receive the Reg Robson Civil Liberties Award from the BCCLA for his work opposing the transfer of military prisoners in Afghanistan to a risk of torture. In 2013, he was honoured by the International Commission of Jurists with the Walter S. Tarnopolsky Human Rights Award for outstanding contributions to domestic and international human rights.

Candidate Statement:  What “rights” are and what basis they have in nature, morality, or law are questions underlying the pursuit of civil liberties. Coming from a background of literary theory, Continental philosophy, and law, I would argue for an “effect”-based approach to these questions: our rights are grounded in our ability to fight for them. Civil liberties, as the individual and economic rights of citizens of an increasingly sophisticated Canadian polis, are continually whittled away by political, police, and power-based strategies, as if by default. It is only to the extent that we fight to uphold and further them that they can be said to exist. It is therefore critical that we fight for them, organize for them, and use all the tools we have to push them ahead, especially where they are most lacking: in respect of Indigenous and racialized populations, prison populations, disabled individuals, queer and gender-queer individuals, women and girls, and individuals whose access to rights (or lack thereof) is compounded by intersectional factors. If elected to the BCCLA board, I intend to continue the organization’s successful focus on extending access to civil liberties to disadvantaged groups, and can bring my passion and acumen to the challenge, as well as past board experience. I am grateful to have this opportunity and thank you for considering me for a position on the BCCLA.

Summary of past or current involvement with the BCCLA:  Member for just over one year. I was a student of Andrew Irvine’s in the Philosophy department at UBC when he was president of the BCCLA, and always wanted to become involved. (In the interim, I resided outside of B.C., as far away as Sweden, Japan and Ontario.)

Biography (including relevant experience, education, and work history): Lawyer on Salt Spring Island, focusing on criminal defence, family, and some solicitor’s work. Articled in criminal defence in Toronto. Juris doctor (University of Toronto, Faculty of Law). Master of Arts (Theory, Culture, and Politics at Trent University). Combined Honours Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and Philosophy (UBC). Current member of the Board of Directors at Island Women Against Violence, which operates a transition house and second stage housing for women and girls facing poverty, violence and abuse on Salt Spring Island. Past volunteer for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association as a Legal Observer, monitoring police actions at protests; for No One Is Illegal – Toronto and its Legal Committee, conducting legal research and participating in direct action; and for Downtown Legal Services, the student legal clinic at the University of Toronto, in both the Refugee and Immigration Division and the Criminal Division. I wrote my M.A. thesis as a genealogy (in the Foucaldian sense) of security certificates, beginning from the F.L.Q. Crisis and moving to contemporary uses of security certificates to imprison usually Muslim individuals indefinitely without charge, exploring how a discourse of national security that relies on and foments racism is used to secure “economic security” in Canada. Although now based on Salt Spring Island, my long-term hopes are (1) to move B.C. to a geography-based legal clinic system, akin to that in Toronto, so that indigent populations province-wide will fall within a local catchment area and be able to access services, and (2) to increasingly practice prison law and advocate for prisoner’s rights, especially the rights of Indigenous women and other racialized prison populations.

Karen Mirsky”]

Candidate Statement:  The BCCLA strives to challenge, educate, and foster dialogue around causes that may not otherwise see the light. As someone who has dedicated my life and career to similar causes, I can’t imagine a more important place to put my energy, knowledge and skills.

Summary of past or current involvement with the BCCLA:  My understanding of civil society and a functional democracy is predicated on an informed and active citizen base. That’s how I came to the BCCLA. Initially, I followed the campaigns, attended presentations and made donations. I attended BCCLA sponsored legal conferences and referenced BCCLA publications and position papers in my various roles as private citizen, board member for grassroots organizations, and as a lawyer. Although my membership has renewed, lapsed and renewed again, the BCCLA has provided me with insight and inspiration that spans two decades.

Biography (including relevant experience, education, and work history): I am a criminal defence lawyer in private practice and have been for 13 years. Before this, I worked as a freelance writer and editor. Over the course of both careers, my interest in social justice has been a thread that has governed my personal and professional choices.

Early in my law career I worked for Pivot Legal Society as a volunteer and staff lawyer, primarily focussing on sex work advocacy in the legal context. In that role, I sat on civic committees and worked as media liaison and contact person. I chaired Pivot’s Board of Directors from 2005-2007. From 2009-2013, I accepted a board position with PACE Society, a member-driven DTES sex worker support organization. I chaired the PACE Board for two years before leaving to focus on other aspects of my life.

Outside of my law practice, I provide pro bono legal support to individuals protesting environmental issues and am well versed in the legal concepts underpinning civil disobedience and its role in society. I offer civil disobedience education on request as well as a court room advocacy.

I also provide legal support to those in Vancouver’s sex-positive community. I identify as bi-sexual and polyamorous and consider myself a part of a sexual minority. Between my personal connections and work in sex work advocacy, my connections with the sex work and sex-positive communities are extensive and well-established.

I am excited to offer my skills and experience to the BCCLA and its membership.

Candidate Statement:  I am committed to the BCCLA in particular because its mandate includes uniquely important yet often marginalized areas of work, including drug policy, police accountability and the rights of those in state custody, including in prisons, jails, immigration detention facilities, and those involuntarily held in mental health facilities. I hope to contribute my unique skill sets in human rights education, legal organizing and community outreach to strengthen this work. My experience – which includes significant work on immigration detention issues as well as the criminalization of poverty and its relationship to state violence – is well-suited to bolstering the BCCLA board’s knowledge in these areas.

Summary of past or current involvement with the BCCLA:  I have been a supporter of the BCCLA since moving to BC three years ago. I have been invited to speak at the BCCLA’s annual Human Rights Conference multiple times, where I spoke to youth on the subjects of lmmigration Detention and criminalization of racialized communities, unpacking the applicable legal and policy framework and fostering a systemic analysis of the inequality built into those systems. I have also participated in the BCCLA’s work on legal observing, which is a tool that can be used to hold state actors accountable for abuses of power.

Biography (including relevant experience, education, and work history): Ayendri Riddell is a Sri Lankan born educator, community organizer and campaign strategist based in Vancouver, Coast Salish Territories. She currently works at Amnesty International as the Regional Activism Coordinator for Western Canada. In this role she is responsible for developing and implementing strategies to mobilize Amnesty’s activist base across Western Canada and the Territories. Ayendri’s work centres on the use of liberatory pedagogies to deepen understanding and inspire collective action. She conducted extensive literature reviews on systemic inequality and built tools for root cause analysis through her former work with UBC’s Centre for Community Engaged Learning, and is continuing this work as a Master’s candidate at York University. Ayendri is committed to intersectional movement building and has been actively involved for the past 8 years in grassroots organizing on migrant rights, Indigenous rights and prison justice issues. She started to organize with the End Immigration Detention Network in response to a massive strike held by 191 migrant detainees in a maximum security prison in Southern Ontario. During that time Ayendri staffed the detention hotline, supported the legal organizing and conducted extensive research on policy positions related to immigration detention.

Candidate Statement:  In addition to being a long-time member of the Board and serving as the Treasurer, I have also served on the Finance and Building Committees. During my terms on the Board, I have worked closely with the Executive Director and President. As the BCCLA has grown in size and complexity, we have identified, in partnership with our auditors, other areas requiring increased scrutiny. In this I have been working successfully with our Operations Director to deliver greater oversight to certain aspects of our operation. In asking for your vote, it is my intent to continue in my role as Treasurer for the term, while providing insight and guidance to the Board member chosen to be my successor. I feel I still have a great deal to offer the Association.

Summary of past or current involvement with the BCCLA:  My direct experience with the BCCLA Board came when I was in my teens when my father, Bob Rowan, hosted Board meetings at our house. I was intrigued by the quality minds in attendance and equally by the nature of the topics being discussed. Civil liberties were a hot-button issue in the 1960s and 70s, and certain protections under the law that we take for granted now were but wishes and hopes then. Canada did not receive our Charter and Constitution until 1982, but still we face issues that deny people’s rights. Just last month, the Liberal Government sought to appeal our hard-won victory in our litigation challenging the terms under which Solitary Confinement is used in our penal system. I have served on the Board for over 20 years, and have been the Treasurer and served on the Executive for over 10 years.

Biography (including relevant experience, education, and work history): Although I attended the University of BC, I am neither an academic nor a lawyer. I believe this allows me to bring a different and useful perspective to the Board. Presently retired, my work background involved long periods in the residential renovation business, as well as extensive involvement in the shellfish aquaculture business in BC as an employee and as an owner. My viewpoint has thus been molded by real-life experience and decision-making that always meant working toward the best interests of the group. This has served me well.

Candidate Statement:  I have a lifelong commitment to civil liberties and equality, recognizing that they are essential to the fundamentals of democratic societies. They are at extreme risk today, given serious threats to our rights, especially in the areas of privacy, surveillance, personal integrity, incarceration, citizenship and immigration and religious intolerance. We also need to protect the rights of Indigenous and vulnerable people. My activism began in the US civil rights and anti-war movements. Throughout my legal career I represented unions and working people and fought against systemic discrimination. I worked on numerous civil liberties and human rights cases, including challenges in the US Supreme Court. I was a lawyer for the decolonization and union movement in Puerto Rico. I represented faculty in higher education and fought for academic freedom and the integrity of the university. I taught on the clinical faculty of Rutgers Law School as Director of the Labor Law Clinic. In 2000 I left private practice to become Senior Fellow of the Center for Constitutional Rights, where I advised on the Guantánamo detainees, torture claims, police abuses and systemic discrimination. I relocated to BC in 2003. I was president of the society in Powell River overseeing employment, literacy, diversity, immigrant, family and social services programs. I also worked with non-profit groups on sustainable agriculture and the arts, among many other activities. I moved to Victoria in 2015, where I work with the MAID doctors’ organization and on the Black History Awareness Society. Within BCCLA, I actively opposed the accreditation of TWU law school, defending religious freedoms while opposing compelled intolerance. I am totally committed to strengthening the BCCLA. I’ve worked to build a strong foundation to make the  Association’s legal and policy work better staffed and even more effective. Our tireless work is needed now more than ever.

Summary of past or current involvement with the BCCLA:  Supporter prior to 2014; director – 2014-present; Vice President – 2016-present. Published articles on the Carter case (MAID) in various newspapers.

Biography (including relevant experience, education, and work history): Undergraduate education – Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Legal education – Rutgers Law School (JD, 1974). Trained as mediator at Harvard University (Master’s Program on Negotiations) and Justice Institute of BC. Admitted to the bars of and practiced before several US states, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, several US federal courts and the Supreme Court of the United States. As a lawyer, represented clients on civil liberties, academic rights and freedoms, human rights and union labour since 1974. Also served as General Counsel and Assistant to the President of the NY Hotel Trades Union (AFL-CIO); Director of the Labor Law Clinic at Rutgers Law School; and Senior Fellow at Center for Constitutional Rights (New York). Relocated to BC in 2003. Worked as mediator/facilitator for non‑profits and in complex disputes in BC and USA. Served as director and officer of several non-profit and charitable boards, and currently serve on BCCLA, CAMAP (MAID doctors) and BC Black History Awareness Society boards.

Candidate Statement:  As a long-time collaborator of BCCLA’s, I would be honored to serve on its Board and believe I could bring important perspectives to the role. Like many people who work for BCCLA I’m a constitutional lawyer, but I come from the labour movement, a strategic ally for BCCLA. I have a lot of experience building national and international coalitions. I have special expertise in national security issues. But, above all, I understand tech issues. In the 21st century, I believe technology will determine our civil liberties as much, if not more, than law will. We civil libertarians are working against time when rapid advances in technology are intensifying mass surveillance, concentrations of power, and authoritarianism in ways that could quickly overwhelm our democracies. As Lawrence Lessig has warned:” … unless we understand how cyberspace can embed, or displace, values from our constitutional tradition, we will lose control over those values. The law in cyberspace-code- will displace them.” As a Board member I could help BCCLA stay informed and build necessary coalitions on vital technology and civil liberties issues.

Summary of past or current involvement with the BCCLA:  I have been a collaborator of BCCLA’s since 2005 when I was elected Co-Chair of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group (a Canadian civil society coalition of labour, professional, development, and faith-based groups focused on civil liberties and national security issues). As ICLMG Co-Chair from 2005-2010 I worked with BCCLA on numerous matters, including challenges to the no‑fly list, lobbying for the Arar and Iacobucci inquiries, and support around the Afghan detainees case. I was a featured speaker at the BCCLA 50th Anniversary celebration and a contributor to the Anniversary Festschrift. Since moving to BC in 2012 I have attended BCCLA Galas, donated money to BCCLA, attended special lectures and salons, attended several Board meetings, and arranged for BCCLA to co-sponsor a book launch lecture by Monia Mazigh at the VPL, which I organized.

Biography (including relevant experience, education, and work history): Maureen is a labour and constitutional lawyer, activist, and writer. As Co‑Chair of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, she was involved in the Arar Inquiry and a number of important Charter challenges. She spearheaded the International Campaign Against Mass Surveillance. Sponsored by ICLMG, Amnesty, the ACLU, and others, over 200 organizations signed onto its manifesto. Her article on the Anti-terrorism Act was cited extensively in the trial judgment in R. v. Khawaja, striking down the motive element in the definition of “terrorism”. Her analysis on the Khadr cases and extraterritorial application of the Charter appeared in the National Journal of Constitutional Law. Maureen has litigated cases at all court levels, including the Ontario Court of Appeal, Supreme Court of Canada, Privy Council, and House of Lords. At Gowlings’ (Toronto) she was part of a team that litigated the landmark Lavigne case, the Green Party’s challenge to the federal leaders’ debate, and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association’s challenge to the powers of CSIS. Maureen has spoken about civil liberties in many venues, including the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, the World Affairs Council, Columbia University, the Ontario Bar Association, the Canadian Labour Congress, Democracy Now, and CBC’s The National. She’s testified before Parliamentary Committees and taught National Security Law at UBC. Her book, Illusions of Security (City Lights, 2007) was an early analysis of mass surveillance. Her second book, Coding Democracy, about hackers, is being published in 2019 by MIT Press. Maureen is currently Legal Director at Hospital Employees’ Union.