2016 Zenith Award Winners

|
Marc-André Blanchard is an esteemed lawyer from Québec who in April became Canada’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations. In this role, Ambassador Blanchard works to advance Canada’s interests, promote international development, security and human rights, and to keep our government informed on multilateral issues. Prior to his appointment, Ambassador Blanchard had been the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of McCarthy Tétrault LLP, one of the country’s most prominent law firms. He also has a long history of political involvement, as the former president of the Québec Liberal Party and, more recently, as a member of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s transition team. Ambassador Blanchard holds several degrees including a Master's in Public Administration and a Master’s in International Affairs from the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs. He is a Lexpert Rising Stars alumnus, and in 2013 was named one of the 25 most influential lawyers in Canada by Canadian Lawyer.
|
Justice Kael McKenzie became Canada’s first openly
transgender judge in 2015. He is a member of the
Manitoba Métis Nation and served in the Canadian Armed
Forces. Before taking up his judicial appointment, Justice
McKenzie served five years as a Crown prosecutor in family,
commercial and civil law. He has been an active member of
the legal and LGBTQ communities and co-chaired the CBA’s
sexual-orientation and gender-identity conference for three
years. He has served on the Manitoba Women’s Advisory
Council and was president of the Rainbow Resource Centre.
He also advocated for Bill 18, which enabled gay-straight
alliances in Manitoba high schools. His appointment was
recognized as a victory for quality, equality and diversity on
the Manitoba Bench.
With the shortage of articling positions after the global
financial crisis, the RBC General Counsel Group (GCG) showed
important insight in seeing the specific threat to minority
groups already struggling to find positions. In response,
GCG created the RBC Aboriginal Articling Program in 2011.
Never having taken on articling students before, much
thought was given to providing the same level of education
and experience as a traditional law firm. Accordingly, GCG
formed partnerships with Bay Street firms, including Dentons,
and each RBC Aboriginal Articling student has spent 10-
12 weeks working in the Toronto litigation department of
Dentons, participating in all aspects of the Dentons student
professional development curriculum. The student is also
invited to participate in RBC’s professional development
sessions and a knowledge-management lawyer at RBC helps
ensure Law Society CLE requirements are fulfilled.
Zeïneb Mellouli promotes fundamental rights through
constant work involving the Canadian Charter of Rights and
Freedoms and the Québec Charter of Human Rights and
Freedoms. She helped Lawyers Without Borders draft its
protest in the case of Raif Badawi, who was sentenced in 2012
to a decade in prison and 1,000 lashes for criticizing Saudi
Arabia’s clerics. Zeïneb works to effect diversity and change
through the Canadian and Québec Maghreb Associations, the
ethno-cultural diversity committee of the Montréal Bar (2011
to 2014), the Montréal Bar’s inclusive profession forum and
the Groupe de travail-forum sur la diversité ethnoculturelle,
which promotes diversity in large Québec law firms. She is
also a member of the board of the Fondation du Centre de
réadaptation Lucie-Bruneau, raising money for integration of
individuals with physical disabilities.
The Indigenous Blacks and Mi’kmaq (IB&M) Initiative is the
result of efforts by African Nova Scotian communities and
Mi’kmaq First Nations to obtain access to legal education
and the legal profession and to address racism in the justice
system. These efforts led to Dalhousie University’s study
entitled “Breaking Barriers: Report of the Task Force on Access
for Black and Native People.” These efforts coincided with the
work of the Royal Commission on the Donald Marshall, Jr.,
Prosecution, which recommended that the IB&M Initiative
“receive the financial support of the Governments of Canada
and Nova Scotia, and the Nova Scotia Bar.” Through the hard
work and persistence of the Advisory Board, community
members, directors, students, faculty and staff, the IB&M
Initiative grew to become a model for access to legal
education and the legal profession.
Anthony Morgan is an advocate for the rights of black citizens
through regular columns in leading Toronto newspapers and
other publications. Anthony is the author of the Universal
Charter on Media Representations of Black Peoples, which
challenges the media to more closely examine its coverage
of black people and communities. He has also been a
leader in the decades-long fight against police carding
of citizens, which has been applied in a disproportionate
and discriminatory fashion against black citizens and other
minorities. New rules now require police to state their reasons
for requesting identification; inform anyone who voluntarily
complies of their right not to give identifying information; and
provide everyone they stop with a document that includes
the name and badge number of the officer.