Canadian Lawyer InHouse

37 canadianlaWyermag.com/inhouse june 2014 SECOND SNAPSHOT '' P ro f e s s i o n a l P ro f i l e Fitzgerald, an amateur musician who is learning to play classical guitar, says the op- portunities presented by the program were too good to pass up, even though it will — initially at least — mean a long weekly commute to Waterloo from Ottawa, where one of her two sons is fi nishing high school. "I see it as a really exciting challenge, because it's brand new," she says. "I've been looking at the work of CIGI over the last decade or so and always wondering will they ever have the opportunity to connect it with the legal dimension. And so when I saw that they had announced the program of inter- national law and research it seemed too at- tractive to ignore." Fitzgerald, who grew up in Stratford, Ont., not far from her new Waterloo base, is somewhat more reticent about her many years in government, where she held jobs in departments as diverse as Justice, National Defence, Human Resources Canada, and the Privy Council. She was legal adviser to the Department of National Defence and the Canadian armed forces in the period after the deadly 2001 suicide attacks on the U.S. Pentagon and the World Trade Center, at a time when the government was rethinking secu- rity issues and rewriting its contracts for military hardware to strengthen military equipment against the improvised explosive devices that were killing Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan. Her last government job, starting in Oc- tober 2011, was as national security coor- dinator and senior general counsel for the Department of Justice. "I worked a lot on the government re- sponse to 9/11, so that was an interesting pe- riod to be working on legislative changes in the fi eld of national security," she says. "It's been interesting working in that area and seeing how things have evolved over time, and it's an area that will continue to evolve. It's an ongoing, very challenging area." She adds: "Security is very important, it's a primary responsibility of state. But there is always that question of how do you protect peoples' human rights and privacy and those interests at the same time as guaranteeing se- curity, so it's always a delicate balance. And as the threat changes over time, one has to adjust to that. It's always a question of fi nding the balance, and certainly issues of national security have changed a lot over time." Fitzgerald strongly recommends the fed- eral government as a destination for ambi- tious young lawyers. "I've had a wonderful career in the pub- lic service, and most of it connected with the Department of Justice," she says. "I think one of the really exciting things that happens when you work in government is that you are involved in the big issues of the day. So there have been many times where a paper lands on the front doorstep and you go 'Oh boy, there's my fi le,'" she says. During her time in Ottawa, Fitzgerald balanced a day job with the government with a part-time professorship at the Uni- versity of Ottawa, where she taught interna- tional law and governance. She also spent about a year working on an anti-corruption initia- tive in Malawi as part of a United Nations project and travelled to Ghana to present the paper that came out of that research. "I've always done both jobs," she says of the com- bination of working for the federal government and in the academic world. "So I would teach at night, and I would practice law in the public sector during the day. . . . I think both worlds are really great, really interesting places to work. I know that some people would say that in an academic environment you don't have that feel- ing that everything you do is relevant, which you do when you work in govern- ment. It was a nice combi- nation to do both." It's a combination of practical and theoretical that will also work for CIGI. "The way I want to work is I want to con- sult with the private sector, with govern- ment and with the academic community to see what are the issues that they feel are the ones that need to be pursued right now as a priority, and I don't want to create an agen- da that is not grounded in real-life concerns of Canadians," she says. "What I learned from my public service career is how to work well with people and how to fi nd super-bright people who will add to a common cause and I'm good at inspiring people to work to that common cause. So I have a lot of positive hope for this position that I will be able to draw people from the different legal communities and even cross-discipline communities to work on these projects and I think we can achieve some wonderful things together." IH T h e l aW y e r : Oonagh Fitzgerald T h e c o m Pa n y: Centre for international Governance innovation • First director of new international law research Program at the Centre for international Governance innovation in Waterloo, Ont. • long career in public service, most recently as national Security Coordinator and Senior General Counsel at Canada's Department of justice in Ottawa • Part-time professor at the university of Ottawa, focus- ing on international law and business and on models of public, private, and civic governance • law degrees from Osgoode Hall and the universities of Ottawa and Toronto; Master of Business Administration from Queen's university • long career in public service, most recently as national Security Coordinator and Senior General Counsel at Canada's Department of justice in Ottawa • Part-time professor at the university of Ottawa, focus- ing on international law and business and on models of public, private, and civic governance • law degrees from Osgoode Hall and the universities of Ottawa and Toronto; Master of Business Administration from Queen's university i've had a wonderful career in the public service, and most of it connected with the Department of justice. 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