Board of Directors

Dan Livermore

Chair

Daniel Livermore served with distinction for more than three decades in Canada's Public Service as a diplomat and specialist in international affairs. He joined the Department of Foreign Affairs in 1975 after obtaining a Ph.D. from Queen’s University. His Ottawa-based assignments covered a range of issues from human rights to peacekeeping and included a secondment to the Privy Council Office. He had postings at the United Nations in New York, as well as Santiago, Chile, Washington, D.C., and Guatemala City. He was Ambassador to Guatemala and El Salvador from 1996 to 1999 and later served as Ambassador for the international campaign to ban landmines. From 2002 to his retirement in 2007, Mr. Livermore, was Director General of Security and Intelligence. Currently a senior fellow at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa and senior visiting fellow at the Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History at Trinity College, University of Toronto, in 2018 he published Detained: Islamic Fundamentalist Extremist and the War on Terror in Canada.

Janet Zukowsky

Vice-Chair

Janet Zukowsky B.A. is a former senior public servant and diplomat who worked in a number of federal departments including Human Resources, Immigration, Treasury Board, Foreign Affairs, and most recently the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). She has experience in the areas of personnel, industrial relations, immigration, international development and trade. She served as Director of Immigrant Settlement during the Indo-Chinese Refugee movement, as Canadian High Commissioner to Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean (1990-1994), and as CIDA Vice President heading Canadian Partnership Branch (1995-2002) with the rank of Assistant Deputy Minister. She has led a number of Canadian delegations to U.N. agency conferences and was Special Envoy to four Caribbean states in 1998 for their support in Canada’s election to the U.N. Security Council. She is currently a member of several NGO boards and committees.

Shelley Whiting

Treasurer

Shelley Whiting is a retired Canadian diplomat with extensive experience in international human rights and peace and security. She has thirty-one years of experience as an international relations expert representing Canada’s interests at home and abroad, including fourteen years at the executive level. Ms. Whiting served as Canadian High Commissioner to Sri Lanka and Ambassador to Bosnia-Herzegovina, establishing organizational priorities and directing their development and implementation for Global Affairs Canada and the Government of Canada.

Hélène Laverdière

Secretary

Hélène Laverdière holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Bath, England. After working briefly as a researcher and then as a professor in the Department of Sociology at Laval University, she joined Foreign Affairs Canada in 1992 as a foreign service officer. She was posted in Washington, D.C., Dakar and Santiago, Chile. Throughout her career, Hélène has received various distinctions, including numerous merit scholarships and the Minister of Foreign Affairs Award for her contribution to Canadian foreign policy. In 2011 she was elected as the Member of Parliament for Laurier-Sainte-Marie under the NDP banner. She was re-elected in 2015 but did not seek re-election in the 2019 election. Over the course of her political career, she has been the NDP Critic for International Cooperation and Foreign Affairs, among other responsibilities. She also sat on the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development from 2011 to 2019 and served as vice-chair during her last term.

Steven Cornish

Member-at-Large

Steven Cornish is the Director-General of Médecins Sans Frontières in Geneva, Switzerland. Previously he was the Chief Executive Officer of the David Suzuki Foundation in Vancouver, following his time as Executive Director of Doctors Without Borders / MSF Canada for over five years including during the challenging Ebola Crisis years. Before that, he was with CARE Canada; then the Canadian Red Cross; MSF Switzerland; and MSF France. His various positions have all had a focus on dealing with immediate operational humanitarian challenges. He has a BA High Honours from Carleton University and a master’s degree in global risk and crisis management from Université Paris-Sorbonne. In addition, he is a board member of Youth Challenge International, honorary board member of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment.

Paul LaRose-Edwards

Member-at-Large

Paul LaRose-Edwards founded CANADEM in 1996, and has been working in the international community for over 30 years. In a 1995-1996 study of UN field operations for Canadian Foreign Affairs, he recommended the creation of CANADEM. The Canadian government asked him to action that direct recruitment support for the UN by setting up CANADEM as an independent NGO. Apart from a leave of absence to be the UN OHCHR Representative in Jakarta, he has headed CANADEM ever since.

Prior to CANADEM he had worked in the international community for several decades. Most of his international service was in international human rights, dealing with the politics of advancing rights. With an LL.B. and LL.M. in international human rights law, Paul worked in a variety of missions and countries including Rwanda, Kosovo, Croatia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Indonesia and Afghanistan. He has been staff with NGOs such as Amnesty International, as well as on staff with the Canadian Government, the UN and the Commonwealth Secretariat. He was a consultant for an even larger grouping including the OSCE, EU and NATO. Paul’s last diplomatic post was as Representative of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Indonesia, and for four years he was the Commonwealth Secretariat’s Head of Human Rights in London UK.

A former Canadian Armoured Corps officer and Royal Military College graduate, he has and continues to do civ-mil work with various militaries including the Canadian Forces (Staff College, Peace Support Training Center); NATO civil-military training, doctrine and concept development; UK Staff College; and the US Naval War College. He and his wife Marilyn have one son, Mike.

Brettel Dawson - board member emeritus

Brettel Dawson, Professor, LL.B.(Hons), LL.M., has been a faculty member in the Department of Law at Carleton University since 1986. Between 1994 and 1999 she held the position of Chair of the Department of Law at Carleton University, during which time she was extensively involved with program and curriculum development and implementation relating to human rights, criminal justice, and conflict resolution. Much of her research has focused on the area of equality law. Since 1999, she has devoted a portion of her time to the National Judicial Institute in Ottawa. Initially she was the Coordinator (then Senior Advisor) of Social Context Education, and is currently the Academic Director at the Institute. She works with both the domestic and international programs of judicial education. She is currently involved with projects in the Philippines and Ghana. Her other professional activities in conjunction with her academic position have focused on issues of equality. Between 1997-99, she was a member of the national External Committee of the Independent Policy Research Fund of Status of Women Canada (a $1.25 million fund for policy research of national relevance promoting gender equality).