Issue Archive

Bracing for the pension time bomb

Cover Story

Written by Jim Middlemiss Issue Date: March 2013

Photo: Pierre Charbonneau

Fred Headon and the in-house labour law team at Air Canada have learned more about pension law in the last 18 months than most lawyers will learn in a career. Over the last decade, Canada’s national airline has been steadily hit with a series of economic hardships — from the New York terrorist attacks in 2001 to the SARS crisis in 2003 and the credit crunch in 2008 — which decimated air travel and led to a series of restructurings.

To regulate or not to regulate?

Written by Jennifer Brown Issue Date: March 2013

When the Canadian Securities Administrators issued a call last summer for comment on the potential regulation of the proxy advisory industry, it was inundated with responses from general counsel, their companies, law firms, and others who seemed to have been waiting in the shadows for a chance to vent.

The pros and cons of Alberta’s Bill 2

Industry Spotlight

Written by Vawn Himmelsbach Issue Date: March 2013

New energy legislation in Alberta is designed to streamline the process for approving oil and gas projects — a process that is notoriously complex and timely — by creating a single regulator. But not everyone is happy about the upcoming changes.

Law firm boots on in-house ground

Law Department Management

Written by Vanessa Chris Issue Date: March 2013

The majority of in-house lawyers are familiar with the term secondment — the act of hiring a lawyer from an outside firm on a temporary basis. While the concept has been around for a long time, it’s becoming more commonly used as in-house counsel suffering from budget constraints, higher workloads, and temporary leaves-of-absence look for relief.

Growing a career and a team

Professional Profile

Written by Jennifer Brown Issue Date: March 2013

Lynn Korbak has always had a guiding principle when it comes to taking the next step in her career. The work has to be challenging and it has to be a fit with her entrepreneurial spirit — sometimes that means walking away from an opportunity as she did once when caught in the middle of a major takeover. “For me, the idea has been that whatever I was going to do I wanted to make sure it was going to be a building block in my career,” says Korbak, general counsel and corporate secretary with human resources giant Morneau Shepell where she has been the head of the legal department since 2003. “The best thing I can do is fully understand our business and our strategy and our objectives and how we operate, what’s important to us, and interpret and translate the legal issues in that light because external counsel don’t know your company intimately and they can’t do that for you.”

Maturing attitudes around anti-corruption in Canada

Editor's Box

Written by Jennifer Brown Issue Date: March 2013

It’s not often that speakers at a conference are given so much real-time content to fuel their PowerPoint presentation but lately anyone speaking to the issue of anti-corruption and compliance need only turn to the daily news to spice up their slides. That was certainly the case at an anti-corruption conference held in Toronto recently when speakers practically tripped over new fodder as they left their hotel rooms thanks to the continuing saga of the SNC-Lavalin bribery scandal.

The finer points of networking

In Closing

Written by Jonathan Lau Issue Date: March 2013

The first quarter of the calendar year typically yields articles from experts extolling the importance of networking. We nod, shrug, and think to ourselves, “Yes we should go out and network!”

View 2013: Preparing for the regulatory road ahead

Cover Story

Written by Jennifer Brown Issue Date: February 2013

In the fast-paced world of Canadian business, trying to predict what will dominate the agendas of corporate law departments in 2013 can be tough, but it’s fair to say the job of in-house counsel is becoming more complex as regulatory and compliance matters dominate the headlines.

High stakes

Written by Michael McKiernan Issue Date: February 2013

Illustration: Joel Kimmell

David Hill may not have known it at the time, but he was playing a high-stakes game of poker when he sued the Toronto Catholic District School Board over a real estate deal gone bad.

Building bridges for the next generation

Professional Profile

Written by Jennifer Brown Issue Date: February 2013

Ernest Tuckett doesn’t mince words when asked how he feels diversity should be addressed in the legal profession. Tuckett is a strong advocate for promoting minorities and believes there has to be some form of consequence to get outside law firms to respond effectively. “I definitely think the carrot-and-stick approach is needed in the legal profession,” says Tuckett, who became the new general counsel for DuPont Canada last June after working for the company in the United States. “We can get the most with the carrot and show how serious we are about diversity when we make some hiring decisions based on how folks perform in that area. Certainly that’s the case in the U.S. and from what I’ve seen in Canada it could be helpful here as well. I understand the dynamics are different in the states — we can and do track numbers — whereas in Canada it seems to be mostly self-reporting.”