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.

Steven Cornish

Vice-Chair

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.

Shelley Whiting

Secretary

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

Treasurer

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.

Janet Zukowsky

Member-at-Large

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.

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).

Ron Gould - board member emeritus

Ron Gould, B.A., C.M., retired from Elections Canada in 2001 after 20 years as Assistant Chief Electoral Officer. Starting in 1984, when he was a member of the OAS and Canadian monitoring missions in El Salvador, he has participated in over 80 electoral missions in more than 50 countries. Mr. Gould has worked extensively in Latin America, Africa, Europe, Asia and is considered one of the leading world experts on the organization of elections. Mr. Gould joined the Public Service of Canada in 1955 and worked for a variety of departments and agencies including Northern Affairs, the Public Service Commission, the Department of Transport, the Treasury Board and Secretary of State. where he was the Registrar of Canadian Citizenship. In 1997, he joined the Stockholm based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) on a half-time basis. Mr. Gould was awarded the Order of Canada in 1997. He was also the recipient of the Outstanding Service Award from the Canadian Council on Governmental Ethics Laws and the Medal of Honour from the United Nations Association of Canada. Mr. Gould has authored a book entitled “A Guide for Election Observers” and was one of three authors of “Strengthening Democracy: A Parliamentary Perspective”, which was published in 1995. He has been President of the Council on Governmental Ethics. A graduate of the University of Toronto, he has followed additional studies at Laval University, Carleton University, McGill University, Queen’s University, and at the Public Service Commission in Canada. He is now carrying on his international electoral work in his private capacity as an independent expert.

Claude Rochon (in memoriam)

Claude Rochon, CANADEM Board member, has died of cancer. He was a kind, thoughtful, thoroughly ethical and commanding individual, reminiscent of the fictional Quebec Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of author Louise Penny. Going back two decades, CANADEM was privileged to have been able to deploy him to lead police reform projects around the world. Then he joined the CANADEM Board to provide our organization with direct leadership and insight. Claude Rochon MAP, started with the Montreal Police in 1966 and had a sterling career in police operations as well as in the management of personnel and budgets. Over his 33 years with the police, Claude Rochon worked his way to the top of the Montreal Police Service (SPVM). In 1998 he held the position of Director. At the end of his police career, he started working on the international police scene. With the United Nations, he was the senior advisor to the General Director of the National Haitian Police with the Mission Internationale Civile d’Appui en Haïti (MICAH) and then the head of the UNPOL unit for the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN). He also was a senior advisor to the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), with the Pearson Peacekeeping Center and for CANADEM focusing on needs analyses, training, project evaluation monitoring and project director for police matters. He has worked in Haiti, East Timor, Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Albania, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Benin, Afghanistan and Nepal. He had undergone extensive training at the Canadian Police College in Ottawa and at the National Executive Institute (FBI Academy) in the United States. He has also taught Police Management at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, at the École de criminologie de l’Université de Montréal and at the College Ahuntsic in Montreal.