Ahluwalia was named among Canadian Lawyer’s Top 25 Most Influential Lawyers, 2023
As a litigation practitioner in the civil litigation and Aboriginal services group at the Department of Justice Canada’s Calgary regional office, Meenu Ahluwalia navigates extensive immigration judicial review work and civil litigation files, and she has the opportunity to go to court and interact with opposing counsel and judges.
In addition to this heavy workload, she devotes a great deal of time to community leadership, including co-founding a social services agency for the South Asian community in Calgary. This agency is now celebrating its tenth anniversary.
“We took a model that has been successful in Ontario and brought it to Calgary, and then tailored the model and the programs that were offered in Ontario to the Calgary market,” says Ahluwalia. “It’s great to see that we’ve established a fiscally responsible agency providing programs and services to the people of Calgary, in that particular community.”
Ahluwalia – who was recently named among Canadian Lawyer’s Top 25 Most Influential Lawyers for 2023 – also spent seven years as a board member of the YMCA in Calgary where she supported community wellness through programs for Indigenous people and other populations in need.
In 2021, she was one of the co-founders of the South Asian Inspiration Awards – a platform to celebrate and recognize South Asian people that are doing excellent work, and prior to that she was a founding board member and chair of Punjabi Community Health Services Calgary.
Ahluwalia believes that her legal background and skillset have helped her tremendously in her community work.
“It’s nice that I don’t always have to be the lawyer on the board, but the legal skills I have – the reasoning and the ability to put things together and connect the dots – all of that does really help as an extra voice around the boardroom table,” she says.
Ahluwalia has had a broad range of legal experience throughout her 24-year career, having worked at a number of firms including two international firms and run her own regional practice before joining the Department of Justice.
Resilience has been the key to her success, she says. Not only does she bring her legal background to her board positions, but she also brings the perspective of being a single parent in the South Asian Canadian community to both her legal work, and her community roles.
“As a single parent and a woman, the law is a tough profession. It’s still quite patriarchal and stuck in the old ways,” says Ahluwalia. “Throughout my career I was constantly looking for the right fit, and gaining experience as I went along. Then I got to the Department of Justice and, at this point in my life and my career, it is the right fit. It’s been a perfect balance of really great legal work, really great mentorship, and work-life balance.”
Looking ahead, Ahluwalia aims to continue refining her skills as a litigator and doing the best that she can for her client – other government departments and agencies. She also plans to continue her work on different committees and working groups within the government, and to build her reputation as a mentor for junior lawyers. Keeping up her community work is also very important to Ahluwalia.
“It’s about finding different ways to try to use my legal education and skills to find the right balance,” she says.
Among her many accolades, Ahluwalia was recently recognized for her community work with the 2023 Calgary Community Achievement Award for Community Advocate. This year she was also awarded the South Asian Bar Association’s Community Service Award and the Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee Medal.
