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David Onley salutes push for diversity in legal hiring

David Onley, the lieutenant governor of Ontario, commended the launch of a new program that promotes diversity within the legal departments of some of Canada's biggest companies.

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David Onley, the lieutenant governor of Ontario, has commended the launch of a new program that promotes diversity within the legal departments of some of Canada’s biggest companies.

The in-house legal counsel met in Toronto on Thursday afternoon to sign a pledge committing their organizations to diversity. The pledge launches Legal Leaders for Diversity and Inclusiveness. This program not only commits companies to diversity plans, it also encourages them to hiring law firms and suppliers that are either minority-owned or reflect a commitment to diversity.Lt. Gov. Onley, who contracted polio as a child and who gets around on an electric scooter, was a television broadcaster on Citytv for 22 years before he was sworn in as Ontario’s 28th lieutenant governor in September 2007. Upon taking the job, he declared that he would make advocating for accessibility the “over-arching” theme of his mandate.

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That advocacy includes encouraging employers to hire persons with disabilities. Even though they account for 15% of the population, he said the unemployment rate for those with a disability exceeds 25%.

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Lt. Gov. Onley said this high unemployment rate stems from myths about hiring persons with disabilities. It’s not true that the disabled have higher rates of absenteeism, and it’s not true that they tend to quit after only short stints on the job. On the contrary, Lt. Gov. Onley said persons with disabilities are highly reliable employees; there’s a strong economic case to be made for hiring them.

So he said it’s time for employers to end the discrimination against hiring those with disabilities, just as over the years employers have stopped discriminating on the basis of ethnicity, skin colour, sex or sexual orientation.

“Throughout our history, such barriers have been broken down, one by one. Such barriers were broken down, ultimately, by the legal community, case by base, example by example,” the lieutenant governor said. “I would like to thank you, sincerely, for being part of that process, for once again, leading by example.”

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At Thursday’s event, about 40 General Counsel gathered to add their signatures to a placard as a public declaration that they will reach out to their peers and urge them to follow their example.

Among the many in-house lawyers present were Av Maharaj, chief counsel, international, for Kellogg Co.; Dorothy Quann, general counsel of Xerox Canada Ltd; Simon Fish, general counsel for BMO Financial Group; David Allgood; general counsel for Royal Bank of Canada; Kevin Derbyshire, general counsel for DuPont Canada; Melissa Kennedy, general counsel with Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, and Kenneth Fredeen, general counsel, Deloitte & Touche LLP.

The event was hosted at Deloitte’s Toronto office.

Drew Hasselback

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