Members of the Official Language Rights Expert Panel

The Official Language Rights Expert Panel is composed of the following members:

• Ibrahima Diallo
• Pearl Eliadis
• Yves Goguen
• Gilles LeVasseur
• Emmanuelle Richez
• Caroline Thibault
• Johane Tremblay

Biographies

Ibrahima Diallo

Originally from Senegal, Ibrahima Diallo is a full professor at the Université de Saint-Boniface, where he has been teaching since 1985. From 2000 to 2010, he was Dean of the Faculties of Arts & Sciences, Business Administration, and Social Service.

Professor Diallo has distinguished himself through his commitment to the francophone community, notably as President of the boards of the Société de la Francophonie manitobaine (2006-2011), the National Table for Community Consultation on Francophone Immigration of the Federation of Francophone and Acadian Communities (FCFA, 2014-2015), the Manitoba Immigration Council (2008-2011), and the Amicale de la francophonie multiculturelle du Manitoba (1998). Since 2022, he has been a member of the FCFA Board of Directors. Professor Diallo has also been a member of several expert groups, particularly regarding the modernization of official languages (2021) and the Advisory Committee of the Post-censal Survey on Official Language Minorities of Statistics Canada (2020-2022). He has received numerous awards and recognitions, including the Ordre des Francophones d’Amérique (2009), as well as the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal (2022) and the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal (2012) for his services to the community and the country.

Pearl Eliadis

Pearl Eliadis is a senior lawyer and a member of the Barreau du Québec and the Law Society of Ontario. Her law practice is focused on human rights, national institutions, minority rights and democratic governance. She has successfully led complex global projects for the UN and other multilateral organizations and participated in in-country missions in eight countries. In Canada, she has been retained by officers and agents of Parliament, human rights institutions, and civil society organizations on a wide range of human rights and public policy matters, including by the Office of Commissioner of Official Languages. Pearl also serves as Associate Professor (Professional) at the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University, and lectures at the Faculty of Law where she is a full member of McGill’s Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism.

Deeply engaged in civil society, Pearl has a keen interest in the relationship between human rights and minority rights. She worked to secure the rights of Francophone minorities while she was in the public service in Ontario and the rights of Anglophone minorities in Québec. She has received the 2017 "Artisane des droits de la personne" award from Equitas, the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for the Government of Canada, the "Prix de la femme" (2009, Conseil des femmes de Montréal) and the Canada 125 Commemorative Medal (Governor General of Canada). Her 2014 book, Speaking Out on Human Rights, won the Huguenot Society of Canada Award from Freedom of Expression (Ontario Historical Society). Pearl is a graduate of McGill University and the University of Oxford.

Yves Goguen

Yves Goguen is a law professor and lawyer. His research on the rights and inclusion of marginalized groups has been published in specialized journals. He has been invited to speak at academic conferences in Canada and Québec, Europe, South America, Africa, the Caribbean, and the South Pacific, including the International Academy of Comparative Law, the International Law and Society Association and the United Nations Forum on Minority Issues in the Americas. From 2016 to 2018, he served as Chair of the Association des juristes d'expression française du Nouveau-Brunswick.

Gilles LeVasseur

As a lawyer and university professor of law, management and economy, Gilles LeVasseur is actively involved in constitutional law issues, including human rights in Canada. He acted as a constitutional expert in the fields of language rights in several cases before the courts and was a legislative drafter who helped to draft the Bill declaring Ottawa a bilingual city. Over the last 30 years, he has chaired some 40 associations and committees in the fields of law, health, the army, businesses, and public administration. He is currently the President of the Institute of Public Administration of Canada.

Mr. LeVasseur holds degrees from several universities in business, economics, health, law and international affairs and human rights (BCom, Rel. Cert., BSoc, Economics, LLL, JD, MBA and LLM. LLM, Diploma in public international law) and doctoral studies (doctoral studies in constitutional law). Mr. LeVasseur is a member of 10 professional associations, including the Law Society of Ontario and the Barreau du Québec.

Emmanuelle Richez

Emmanuelle Richez is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Windsor. Her research focuses on law and politics in Canada, with a primary theme on official languages and Indigenous rights. She has published her work in specialized scientific journals such as the Canadian Journal of Political Science, the Osgoode Hall Law Journal, and the Supreme Court Law Review. She serves as a school board trustee for the Viamonde French public school system, representing the Windsor-Essex district. She is also an affiliated researcher at the Centre for Political Analysis - Constitution and Federalism (CAP-CF) at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM), an associate member of the Center for Comparative Studies and Research on Constitutions, Liberties, and the State (CERCCLE) at the University of Bordeaux, a researcher in the Courts & Politics Research Group, and an administrator of the Canadian Study of Parliament Group (GCEP).

Caroline Thibault

Caroline Thibault has been an Assistant Crown Attorney (Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General) since 1999 and holds the official designation of a bilingual prosecutor. In addition to having prosecuted a multitude of complex criminal cases, including several jury trials, she has distinguished herself with her in-depth knowledge of mental health and language rights issues.

Since 2006, Ms. Thibault has been an instructor and co-director of the Institut de développement professionnel en langue française (FLIPD). She has helped train over 1,500 justice professionals (Crown prosecutors, police officers, court clerks, legal aid lawyers, etc.) on the importance of language rights in Canada. Ms. Thibault is also a panelist for The Advocates' Society (since 2005), a lecturer at the University of Ottawa's Faculty of Law (since 2006) and co-director of the course Droit et tendances actuelles en droit criminel offered in French to Crown Attorneys. Ms. Thibault is the recipient of the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law's Teaching Excellence Award for 2020-2021, as well as the recipient of the Association des juristes d'expression française de l'Ontario (AJEFO) Order of Merit, an award given annually to individuals who have had a significant impact on the French-speaking communities in Ontario. From 2019 to 2021, Ms. Thibault was the Director of the National Justice Education Network, coordinated by the Association des collèges et universités de la francophonie canadienne. Among other things, she worked on the implementation of national initiatives aimed at improving legal services in French.

Johane Tremblay

Johane Tremblay is a graduate of the Faculty of Law of Laval University and holds a master's degree in law from Queen's University. She began her career at a private firm in Quebec City. Then, in 1987, she joined the Public Service of Canada and developed an expertise in labour law as General Counsel of the Canada Labour Relations Board (1989-2000), and subsequently in language rights as the General Counsel of the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages (2000-2017).

Her career with the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages has been rich in varied experiences and has provided her with expertise in language rights at the federal, provincial, and territorial levels. Her responsibilities as General Counsel to Commissioner Dyane Adam and Commissioner Graham Fraser included making recommendations on the advisability of intervening in court or initiating legal proceedings and defining their legal position and advocacy strategy.