Canadian Lawyer

30 M a r c h 2 0 1 4 w w w . C A N A D I A N L a w y e r m a g . c o m Tuckett sits on the leadership team for the company and has the most business-focused role of the legal department. In Toronto, he reports to the president of DuPont Canada, and within the legal department to the associate general counsel in the U.S. Being from Delaware, he says he thinks it has made it easier for him but the Canadian contingent take the same initiative. In terms of supporting a satellite office, in Canada business leaders tend to report to people in the global leadership of that business and decisions are made on a broader scale, not just what's "right for the country," he says. "We can respond to unique opportunities here but we don't always get to make decisions based on what's right for Canada," he says. "There may be a great opportunity for an acquisition but it isn't going to happen because Canada wants it to happen, it's going to have to be because the global business unit is going to see it as a value-add and want to spend the money." feeling AbAndoned S ome in-house counsel say they have avoided working for U.S. or global companies because they are con- cerned about feeling short-staffed or not in control of their own departments. Often, there's a general sense laws are similar in Canada and the U.S. so the Americans can handle any issues rather than adding head count. "I don't think they are wrong about the second issue, but we have to keep in mind this is a foreign country with different laws and rules — not just in the employment arena but in subtle ways in competition law and with things like CASL (Canada's Anti- Spam Law) — that in my mind, I think if you have a large enough revenue base in Canada you need a [legal] presence in Canada," says Tuckett. Cheryl Foy is general counsel at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology and was previously general counsel at Tundra Semiconductor Corp. in Ottawa. She says her pref- erence has always been to work in a Canadian head office environment for cultural and legal reasons because she has heard from colleagues who have worked for subsidiaries of U.S. companies there is "always a discussion about whether your judgment on the law can be right given the differences in the law." "I've been in the reverse experience of being at the head office with U.S. subsidiaries where you often run into employ- ment law issues and that's always an interesting cultural shift," she says. "Our benefits and termination schemes seem com- pletely foreign. U.S. companies can get into trouble if they fail to appreciate some of those nuances." Being at arms-length from the head office can definitely be a challenge says Nicole Chen, legal counsel with AMEC in Vancouver. With a head office based in the U.K., she says it is sometimes difficult to implement U.K.-specific policies and procedures and vice versa. AMEC is a U.K.-based consult- ing engineering company with many international offices. In Canada, AMEC's operations are split into separate divisions Our delegated task team: Aaron Z. Makovka, Jean-Maxim Lebrun, Joël Brassard, Marie-Claude Jarry, Pascal Rochefort, Brian Howard, Christian Paré, Nina V. Fernandez, Mathieu Renaud and Marc-Alexandre Girard. QUEBEC LEGAL PARTNER Untitled-6 1 14-02-06 1:51 PM

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