Crusading lawyer named rights head
Tamara Thermitus was involved with Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Haitian-born anti-discrimination lawyer Tamara Thermitus has been named head of the Quebec Human Rights Commission. She received the unanimous support of members of the National Assembly.
Her appointment comes more than a year after Jacques Frémont left to become rector at the University of Ottawa.
Thermitus’s name had been circulating at the National Assembly, but opposition parties suggested last fall they could block her nomination because she was too “multiculturalist” and too close to Liberal Economy, Science and Innovation Minister Dominique Anglade, also of Haitian origin.
Reached by the Montreal Gazette on Tuesday, Thermitus said with a hearty laugh that she is “obviously very happy” with her new title, but declined to comment any further since the news was still “too fresh.”
“Right now, I have someone I need to thank who supported me, and that trumps everything else,” she said.
Thermitus is an award-winning lawyer who worked for Justice Canada, and who was involved in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
From 2004 to 2010, she was president of the Quebec Bar’s committee on cultural communities. She was among the first to raise issues of racial discrimination within the profession, and played a key role in the development of a course on the social context of law, which is now part of the compulsory curriculum for professional training at the Bar.
“(The appointment) sends a very strong signal about the place that people coming from diversity must occupy in our society,” Premier Philippe Couillard said.
“Our Quebec house is large enough for everyone.”
Five positions still need to be filled on the Human Rights and Youth Rights Commission; the HRC is currently missing a vicepresident in charge of human rights and four out of five human rights commissioners.
But on Tuesday, the Quebec Community Groups Network applauded Thermitus’s nomination as “encouraging.”
“We’re going to have a human rights commission that cares about human rights,” said QCGN vicepresident Geoffrey Chambers.
“She (Thermitus) has a strong reputation as a human rights lawyer,” he said, adding he thinks Thermitus will “protect the little guy.”
The QCGN, Chambers said, is also “very pleased” with the nomination Tuesday of Gregory Kelley, son of Aboriginal Affairs Minister Geoffrey Kelley, as liaison between the premier’s office and the English-speaking community.
Couillard rejected in December the idea of a special office for anglophone affairs, promising instead to have a member of his staff act as liaison officer in the future.
On Tuesday he named Kelley, 31, who up until recently was working in Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Jean-Marc Fournier’s office as a policy adviser.
Kelley studied history and political science at McGill University, and obtained a master’s degree in public administration from Queen’s University.
In 2010-11, he worked for former Native Affairs, Agriculture and Fisheries Minister Pierre Corbeil, and then for Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Yvon Vallières the following year.