Services

Welcome to my conflict management services. The following are the areas of arbitration and mediation in which I specialize.

Commercial

Commercial arbitration & mediation includes virtually every imaginable sort of dispute relating to the parties’ rights or obligations in business matters. The breadth of the area is defined more easily by what it does not include than by what it does. When I use the term, I am consciously excluding family law matters, criminal law matters, labour & employment matters (see below), estate matters (see below), and anything legally required to be heard by an administrative tribunal. Everything else is fair game.

As you’ll see from my list of areas of expertise & experience, there is very little I haven’t dealt with in my years of practice. I’ve been fortunate to have the exposure I’ve had and to work with the quality of counsel and clients I’ve dealt with over those years. I’ve learned from some of the best and have taken those lessons to heart. More specifically, over the years my work has included:

Directing counsel and advising my corporate employers in all manner of corporate transactions including debt financing, subsidiary development & governance, corporate restructurings, limited partnerships, P-3 management, joint ventures (domestic and international), procurement, outsourcing, intellectual property protection, service contracts, & supply contracts.
Conducting or participating in the conduct of countless negotiations of agreements of all sorts including, multi-party logistics agreements, multi-million-dollar service agreements, IT outsourcing, litigation settlement, joint ventures.
Advising on and negotiating numerous commercial leases in my time with WAA.
Advising, leading, and helping lead corporate and not-for-profit entities through all manner of opportunities and crises that have at times combined major commercial, governance, political, public policy, and human challenges.
Litigating in every level of court in Canada, a raft of administrative tribunals, and in international proceedings.

I know what’s involved in putting together an agreement and fulfilling its obligations. I know how hard it is to capture the reality on the ground in words that still make sense months and years later. There are very few types of commercial disputes with which I would not be comfortable dealing. But if you do present one to me, I promise I will let you know.

Construction

To me, “Construction Arbitration & Mediation” is a subset of commercial work. However, it bears special mention because arbitration agreements are so common in construction contracts. It’s an area with which I became familiar through my years with the WAA which relied heavily on the CCDC suite of contracts. While I'd never hold myself out as an expert in building and designing, I do know my way around a construction contract.

Labour & Employment

As practitioners know, Labour & Employment law is its own unique ecosystem. One with which I am intimately familiar. Labour arbitration has its own substantive legal structure, practices, and precedents. Employment law has its own rich history older than but parallel to that of organized labour.

I’ve negotiated Collective Bargaining Agreements and addressed grievances under them. I led WAA’s successful legal response to various labour relations disputes arising in connection with an 11-week strike in 2017 and led our subsidiary’s successful legal response to various challenges at the CIRB related to a “common employer” application. I’ve handled Human Rights complaints and adjudicated unjust dismissal claims.

Since 2012 I’ve taught Employment Law to 2nd and 3rd year law students at Robson Hall, the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Law.

I directed the legal aspects of two restructurings at WAA and three major restructurings and downsizings of the CWB, including the 2012 reduction of 75% of our staff. I’ve advised employer and employee clients on innumerable terminations and assisted in, advised on, and drafted, innumerable HR policies and employment/independent contractor contracts of all types. I helped our team oversee the CWB’s successful withdrawal from the Federal PSSA pension plan and creation of new private DB/DC pension plan for the CWB’s 400 employees.

Arbitration is a possible – and I would say advisable – route for employment matters, specifically terminations where privacy is often of utmost importance to the parties. It’s the only route for addressing grievances related to a CBA. Either way, speed is often essential to successfully resolving workplace disputes. It’s never made sense to me that parties should have to wait many months, sometimes even years to have a dispute resolved. That’s particularly the case where the parties involved are still working together or simply trying to move on with their lives.

As for workplace mediation, it can be one of the most effective ways to resolve differences between or among co-workers before they take on a life of their own.

Estate Matters

According to a 2023 study the vast majority of Canadians know estate planning is important yet fewer than 30 percent have an estate plan and less than half have a will.

Contemplating our own demise doesn’t come naturally to most people. Talking about it with loved ones even less so. But, in the absence of those conversations and even worse, in the absence of a will or estate plan, people have no way of controlling or even knowing whether their estate will go where they want it to go. Add to that the fact that Canada is still in the midst of the largest intergenerational wealth transfer in its history, and that there are over half a million blended families in Canada and the scope for dispute is obvious.

Estate disputes are complicated. Aside from the intricacies of the law in this area, there is often far more going on under the surface than simply “who gets what” or “who’s doing what”. Family dynamics, personal circumstances, and personalities can play an outsized and often unspoken role as the dispute unfolds. Almost inevitably, the dispute will damage the relationships between or amongst family members. The longer the dispute goes on, the harder it becomes to resolve, and the more damage is done to relationships.

A court can only deal with the law and the facts relevant to the specific claim and the only certainty is that someone will win, and someone will lose. The unspoken issues and the collateral damage are beyond the court’s ability to address. However, mediation offers an opportunity for the parties to come together in a setting that can address the very issues preventing them from resolving the dispute. Mediating a dispute isn’t a panacea. The parties must still be willing to engage in the process in good faith and (hopefully) with an open mind. But if it’s successful, the savings can go well beyond the monetary.

Facilitation

I’m using the term “facilitation” as a catch-all for those situations where a group or organization needs help dealing with an important challenge or achieving a particular goal. There may not be an active dispute in play but the client(s) want an independent, outside party to guide a process to meet that challenge or achieve that goal. The process itself can take any number of forms but the common threads are to generate engagement, understanding, and (hopefully) buy-in with the ultimate outcome.