Wilson Competitive Moot

During my first law degree, the Bachelor of Laws (LLB) at Windsor Law, I was part of a competitive mooting team, the Wilson Competitive Moot coached by Professor Eansor. This was by far my favourite memory from that degree. The human rights competition is named after the Supreme Court of Canada judge, Bertha Wilson, who was the first female judge appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada and also the first female judge appointed to the Ontario Court of Appeal before that. She was known for her decisions promoting human rights throughout Canada. It was challenging as the team spent an entire term conducting intense research in order to prepare the factum and oral arguments for the competition.

Our hard work, collaboration, and team spirit paid off because the team (myself, Rebecca Bush, Marten Dykstra, and Steven Flaherty) won the Best Factum award and Rebecca Bush won an additional award for her persuasive arguments.

The team dealt with a challenging fact scenario that was loosely based on the Casino Rama situation and a fictitious organization that represented status, non-status aboriginal, and Metis women. I represented the appellants and was first appellant at the fictitious appeals court (it took place at the Federal Court of Canada in Toronto). The appellants argued that: there was discrimination under section 15(1) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Charter); the government program was not protected under section 15(2) of the Charter; there were policy reasons supporting a finding of discrimination (i-fiduciary duty, ii-section 35(1) of the Constitution Act, and iii-section 25 of the Charter); the breach could not be justified under section 1 of the Charter; there were policy reasons supporting that the breach could not be justified (principles of international law); and there should be a remedy under section 24(1) of the Charter (i-include the group of women in the program and negotiations, ii-give a fair share of the proceeds of the program, and iii-give them the same amount of power as a band).

This work provided me with several skills including research and writing, public speaking, teamwork and collaboration, asking professors to be guest judges for our practices, as well as argumentation and advocacy. It also inspired me to take part in future work involving Indigenous pedagogy and Truth and Reconciliation during my PhD at Western Law (see FIMULAW in this portfolio). Finally, the mooting work inspired me to be guest judge at Western Law for various mooting teams (especially for the 2016 Phillip C Jessup International Law Moot team who went on to win awards) during my PhD.