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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Nov. 18, 2009
OTTAWA – John Merritt of Ottawa has been chosen as the winner of the Canadian Bar Association (CBA) 2009 John Tait Award of Excellence. The award recognizes an outstanding Canadian public sector lawyer annually.
Mr. Merritt has served a variety of government and Inuit organizations over his 30-year career. He is currently the senior policy advisor for the national Inuit organization Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami and the constitutional/legal advisor for Nunavut Tunngavik, Inc. an organization that coordinates and manages Inuit responsibilities set out in the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement and ensures governments fulfill their obligations under that Agreement.
“John Merritt has played a pivotal role in advancing the rights of Canadian Inuit and in securing their future in Nunavut,” said Dougald E. Brown of Nelligan O’Brien Payne LLP, one of Mr. Merritt’s nominators. “All who were involved in the achievement of the Nunavut Land Claims Settlement and the creation of Nunavut would point to the essential and sustained contributions he made over many years.”
Mr. Merritt graduated cum laude from the University of Ottawa Law School in 1977 and was called to the Ontario bar in 1979. He became Legal Counsel at Inuit Tapirisat (the predecessor of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami) which had been established only a few years earlier to represent Canadian Inuit.
In the mid-1980s, as Special Assistant for Hon. David Crombie, then-Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Mr. Merritt made significant contributions on several policy fronts, including government land claims policy, which came under review during this period, and the possibility of creating a new Northern territory, which began to be discussed seriously. Many of the issues on which Mr. Merritt provided counsel were close to fruition by the end of that decade, and in 1989, he left the Department to resume work for the Inuit.
Working for the Tunngavik Federation of Nunavut, he played a central part in the negotiations that led to the signing and ratification of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement. He was later a key member of the Joint Government/Inuit Steering Committee which negotiated the political accord for the creation of Nunavut. Mr. Merritt obtained a Diploma in Legislative Drafting from the University of Ottawa in 1993, having received a Driedger-Pigeon Fellowship from the Department of Justice to participate in the drafting program offered there.
In December 1993, John Merritt became Legal Counsel to the Nunavut Implementation Commission. He participated in the drafting of the Commission’s major reports on the design of the government of the new territory, which was to come into existence on April 1, 1999. Since 1999, he has continued to work for Inuit organizations. Mr. Merritt has been an Inuit representative on the Nunavut Implementation Panel since 2001, the body pursuing the full implementation of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement.
The John Tait Award of Excellence will be presented by the CBA’s Public Sector Lawyers Forum at a reception at the Westin Hotel in Ottawa, Nov. 20 from 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. in the Renaissance Parlour, 24th floor. The reception is open to accredited journalists who have registered with the CBA.
The award was established in 1998 to honour, recognize and celebrate the accomplishments of public sector lawyers in Canada. The award honours the memory of John Tait, an outstanding lawyer, public servant and friend of the CBA who passed away in the summer of 1999. The event is open to accredited journalists who have registered with the CBA.
The Canadian Bar Association is dedicated to support for the rule of law, and improvement in the law and the administration of justice. Some 37,000 lawyers, law teachers, and law students from across Canada are members.
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MEDIA CONTACT:
Hannah Bernstein
The Canadian Bar Association
Tel: 613-237-2925, ext. 146
E-mail: hannahb@cba.org
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