Raj Anand is a senior lawyer who has acted as an investigator, mediator and adjudicator on issues including human rights, employment, academic and non-academic conduct, labour relations and professional matters. He is currently the Chair of the Law Commission of Ontario.

 

As an adjudicator, mediator, decision maker, case manager and/or policy reviewer, Raj has served as:

• Chief Commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission (1988-89)

• Founding Chair of the Ontario Human Rights Legal Support Centre (2008-10)

• Member of the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (1989-94)

• Member and panel chair of the Law Society Tribunal Hearing Division and Appeal Division (2007 to present)

• Co-Chair of the University of Toronto Tribunal (1991-2006), and

• Panel chair of the Board of Inquiry under the Police Services Act (1993-95).

 

He was appointed by the Attorney General to investigate and recommend legislative action on the law of trespass to public properties as it affected young people and minorities. More recently, Raj has conducted investigations for universities, trade unions, non-profit employers, governmental bodies and statutory tribunals. He has also lectured, written and provided training on human rights and investigative issues for regulatory bodies, universities, private employers, trade unions, and school boards. Raj has also undertaken policy initiatives and developed and written internal policies in a wide range of institutions including law firms, private employers and universities.

 

Raj’s work as counsel has involved issues in post-secondary institutions including staff and professor discipline, tenure and promotion, union disputes and human rights investigations and litigation. He has also advised human rights offices in several universities from time to time.

 

Raj has litigated, mediated or adjudicated cases involving persons in same sex relationships, Indigenous persons, individuals with physical or mental disabilities, single mothers, social assistance recipients, persons living in poverty, religious and racialized minorities and children and the elderly. He has also represented the Ontario and Canadian Human Rights Commissions and has handled human rights and constitutional cases in five provinces and at every level of adjudication, from human rights commissions and arbitration tribunals to the Supreme Court of Canada.

 

From 2007 to 2019, Raj was an elected Bencher of the Law Society of Ontario, the regulator of lawyers and paralegals in Ontario. In this capacity he acted as Vice Chair of the Equity and Aboriginal Issues Committee from 2011-2018. He also headed the reform of the Law Society’s disciplinary tribunal system in 2011-12 and the Law Society’s investigation, consultation and regulatory measures from 2012 to 2017 to address systemic racism in the legal and paralegal professions. He also worked with faculties of law on issues including human rights, articling and curriculum requirements. As a member of the Law Society Tribunal he sits alone or chairs three or five member panels in French and English language cases and has issued written reasons for decision in more than 200 discipline, capacity, good character, and interlocutory suspension hearings and appeals. He also conducts dozens of pre-hearings each year, in order to settle, streamline and case manage cases, often involving self-represented litigants and in-house Law Society counsel.

 

Raj has served on the boards of two legal clinics, Legal Aid Ontario, the Advocates’ Society, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, the Minority Advocacy and Rights Council and Pro Bono Ontario.

 

Raj has received lifetime achievement awards from the South Asian Bar Association, the Federation of Asian Canadian Lawyers, the Indo-Canada Chamber of Commerce and the Ontario Bar Association; the first Advocates’ Society Award of Justice; the Law Society Medal; an Arbor Award from the University of Toronto, a teaching fellowship from the Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights at the University of Toronto, and a McMurtry Fellowship at Osgoode Hall Law School. For the last 20 years he has taught The New Administrative Law in the LL.M program at Osgoode Hall Law School.