A champion of human rights who has been Canada’s minister of justice and attorney general, a law professor at at McGill University and an international human rights lawyer will receive the third annual Scotiabank Ethical Leadership Award this November.
Irwin Cotler (P.C., O.C., M.P.), will be presented with the award at the opening ceremonies of the Ethics in Action case competition and conference, hosted by the Rowe School of Business, on November 6.
Adjudicated by student leaders from the four schools within the Faculty of Management, the Scotiabank Ethics in Action Ethical Leadership Award recognizes Canadian leaders from a corporate, non-profit or government organizations who haave demonstrated outstanding ethical leadership within an organization, and maintained this leadership in the face of challenging situations that held serious implications and consequences for both the organization and its stakeholders.
“Irwin Cotler’s nomination stood out for his tireless, career-long efforts to advance human rights that has transformed the lives of many at home and abroad,” said Bertrum MacDonald, interim dean of the Faculty of Management.
The award is one of many that Colter has received in his career, including 11 honorary doctorates, the Order of Canada and the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal. He was the first recipient of the Roméo Dallaire Award for Human Rights Leadership and has also received the Sir Muhammad Zafrulla Khan Award for Distinguished Public Service and the 2015 Sergei Magnitsky Human Rights Award.
A constitutional and comparative law scholar, Cotler intervened in landmark Charter of Rights cases in the areas of free speech, freedom of religion, minority rights, peace law and war crimes justice. As minister of justice and attorney general, he initiated the first-ever comprehensive reform of the Supreme Court appointment process and helped make it the most gender-representative Supreme Court in the world. He also appointed the first-ever aboriginal and visible minority justices to the Ontario Court of Appeal and crafted the Civil Marriage Act, the first-ever legislation to grant marriage equality to gays and lesbians, among many other accomplishments.
An international human rights lawyer, Professor Cotler has served as counsel to prisoners of conscience including Nelson Mandela, and more recently became international legal counsel to imprisoned Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, Venezuelan political prisoner Leopoldo López, and Shi’ite cleric Ayatollah Boroujerdi in Iran. A feature article on him in Canada’s national news magazine – Maclean’s – referred to him as “counsel for the oppressed”, while the Oslo Freedom Forum characterized him as “freedom’s counsel.”
“I am very moved — and humbled — by this award, especially as the adjudication is done by Dalhousie University student leaders," says Colter. "In particular, the student focus on ethical principles and ethical leadership recalls my own parents’ value system and their injunction to me that ‘the pursuit of justice is equal to all the other commandments combined – and this is what you must teach onto the generations’. I am honoured that succeeding generations are reflecting and representing these principles."
The Scotiabank Ethics in Action Ethical Leadership Award has previously been awarded to Sir Graham Day, Chief Phil Fontaine and Richard Pound. It’s presented at the annual Ethics in Action case competition and conference, which provides business students with three ways to participate. A national contest awards prizes for the best video and written essays on the topic of ethical leadership. The student conference will be held in conjunction with the case competition November 6 & 7, 2015, at the Dalhousie campus.
The Rowe School of Business established Ethics in Action with a $1.5 million donation from Scotiabank. The student-led program is aimed at engaging business students and the Canadian business community in shaping ethical business leadership. The program is built upon the success of the Dalhousie Business Ethics Case Competition, which attracted teams of undergraduate business students from top U.S. and Canadian schools for nine years.
Learn more about the conference and register here.
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