Profile

Brian is Counsel in our Halifax office. He is a non-practising member of the Nova Scotia Bar and is a former member of the Ontario Bar. Brian was admitted to the Bar of Nova Scotia in 1963 and the Ontario Bar in 1981. He practised law with another large law firm for nearly two decades before leaving law practice to seek opportunities in the private and public sectors. In his final years of practice, he specialized in corporate and commercial law.

Brian was Assistant Principal Secretary and Policy Advisor to Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau from 1976 to 1979. He has been both a Chairman and a Director of many publicly-traded companies and income trusts. He was the founding CEO and Chairman of the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority from 2002 to 2005. He was a founding member of the federal Advisory Council on National Security in 2005. In 2000-2001, Brian was Chairman of the Canada Transportation Act Review Panel, a statutorily-mandated decennial review of Canada’s transport policies. In the 1990s, on behalf of the federal government, he oversaw the privatization of the Bay of Fundy ferry services of Marine Atlantic. For a number of years, he was a special adviser to Sypher-Mueller International — now the Jacobs Consultancy of Canada — a consulting firm in Ottawa.

Brian taught the first advanced courses ever offered in international law at Dalhousie Law School. During the United Nations Third Law of the Sea negotiations, Brian was a legal advisor to the Canadian government. He is currently an honorary fellow of the Marine and Environmental Law Institute at Dalhousie and is a research fellow at the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute in Calgary. He is the honorary president of the Dalhousie Law Alumni Association of Canada, and was the founding president of the association in 1983. He was the founding chairman of the International Centre for Ocean Development. In recent years, Brian has been the author of many learned articles on legal, security and transport subjects. For 14 years, he wrote weekly columns for a Halifax daily newspaper; his columns were carried by many national newspapers.

Brian is a former vice chairman and interim chairman of the Canada Council for the Arts, a former Director of the CBC, a former chairman of the Board of Governors of the University of King’s College, a former Governor of Dalhousie University and a Trustee of Pearson College of the Pacific. He was national chairman of the successful campaign that built a new library at King’s. He was the founding chairman of Symphony Nova Scotia and has been on the boards of many regional, national and international not-for-profit organizations and think tanks. He was made a Member of the Order of Canada in 1989.

Brian has currently authored a white paper on reforming Canada’s transportation policies based on insight and discussion with the Calgary University, School of Public Policy and presented by the Van Horne Institute. Brian will be leading discussions across Canada in 2013 on behalf of the Van Horn Institute.

Education

•  D.C.L. (Hon.) University of King’s College, (1991)
•  LL.M. University College London, (1964)
•  LL.B.  Dalhousie University, (1962)
•  B.Sc.   Saint Mary’s University, (1959)
•  Diploma in International Law, Hague Academy, (1964)

Bar Admissions

Nova Scotia (1963)

Ontario (1981)

Made Queen’s Counsel in N.S. (1978)