Canada's incoming GG Louise Arbour brings rich palette of experience to Rideau Hall

Former sublime margaret court justness Louise Arbour is perhaps Canada's to the highest degree complete jurist, having served in a number of highly influential roles both at home and abroad that sometimes earned her criticism for the principled positions she took. 

Born to a low-income, single-parent family in Montreal in 1947, Arbour earned a law degree with distinction from l'Université de Montréal in 1970, and was admitted to the Ontario bar in 1977.

Since then, the 79-year-old has gone on to serve as chief prosecutor for the international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and CEO of the International Crisis Group.

That long career began when she took a job clerking for former supreme court justice Louis-Philippe Pigeon, shortly after graduating.

From there she worked as a research officer at the Law Reform Commission, then as a professor at Osgoode Hall, York University's law school. By 1987 she had worked her way up to the position of associate dean.

That same year Arbour was appointed to the bench of what was then the Supreme Court of Ontario, now the Ontario Court of Justice. Three years later she was elevated to Ontario's Court of Appeal. 

Arbour's reputation as a fearless advocate for the truth found its early roots in her scathing final report on conditions at the prison for women in Kingston, Ont., in 1996. In it, she called for limiting the use of segregation, arguing that isolating inmates negatively impacts their mental health. 

In her conclusion to that report, Arbour said the federal correctional system is supposed to contribute to the "maintenance of a just, peaceful and safe society." 

"The society in which many women offenders live is neither peaceful nor safe," she said. "By the time they go to prison, they should be entitled to expect that it will be just."

The same year she delivered her report, Arbour was appointed chief prosecutor for the international criminal tribunals in The Hague for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda, a position she held for three years. 

While at The Hague, Arbour tried to turn the tribunals into what she then described as a "law enforcement agency" for human rights. 

In her three years, Arbour made a name for herself by securing the first genocide conviction by an international tribunal since the 1948 Geneva Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, when former Rawandan mayor Jean-Paul Akayesu was found guilty of genocide on Sept. 3, 1998. 

She marked another milestone in international law in 1999 by overseeing the first indictment on war crimes by a sitting head of state when Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević was charged alongside other Serbian officials with crimes against humanity, murder, deportation and violations of the laws and customs of war. 

Arbour left her UN post when former prime minister Jean Chrétien appointed her to the Supreme Court of Canada in 1999.

Upon her departure from The Hague, tribunal president Gabrielle Kirk McDonald said Arbour used the "full force of her considerable legal skills to bear on the unique challenges faced by the Tribunal." McDonald said the number of indictees in custody had tripled during Arbour's tenure, noting her work on the tribunal ensured "that impunity will no longer be the norm."

While at Canada's top court, Arbour sometimes found her attempts to liberalize the law left her in the minority on the bench when it came to considering issues such as the decriminalizing of marijuana. 

In a ruling issued Dec. 23, 2003, that dealt with the constitutionality of convicting a person for possession of the drug, Arbour argued in a dissenting opinion that it was an affront to their liberty.

"A law that has the potential to imprison a person whose conduct causes little or no reasoned risk of harm to others, offends the principles of fundamental justice," she wrote. "Such a law violates a person’s right to liberty under Section 7 of the Charter."

Arbour left the Supreme Court in 2004 after five years on the bench to become the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

In that role she courted controversy on a number of occasions, including a December 2005 statement in which she said the U.S.-led war on terror was trampling the ban on torture. 

"Pursuing security objectives at all costs may create a world in which we are neither safe nor free," she said. "This will certainly be the case if the only choice is between the terrorists and the torturers."

John Bolton, the U.S. Ambassador to the UN at the time, said it was "inappropriate and illegitimate for an international civil servant to second-guess the conduct that we're engaged in the war on terror, with nothing more as evidence than what she reads in the newspapers."

The controversy did not stop there. In 2006, Arbour's call to protect civilians during an outbreak of violence in Lebanon, Israel and Palestinian territories drew accusations of antisemitism. 

"International humanitarian law is clear on the supreme obligation to protect civilians during hostilities.... International law demands accountability," she said in a statement in July 2006.  

"The scale of the killings in the region, and their predictability, could engage the personal criminal responsibility of those involved, particularly those in a position of command and control.”

After four years in the post, Arbour announced she would leave the UN in June 2008, because of the relentless schedule — not the aggressive criticism she had faced. 

"I am not quitting because of this pressure. On the contrary, I have to resist the temptation to stay to confront it," she said at the time. 

After leaving the UN, Arbour took a job as president and CEO of the International Crisis Group, a non-profit that works internationally to prevent and resolve conflicts.  

Shortly before her departure five years later, former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan said Arbour's "energy, dedication and intellectual and moral integrity are inspiring for all of us."

In 2017, UN Secretary-General António Guterres appointed Arbour to be his special representative for international migration. 

While holding that post, she oversaw the creation of the Global Compact for Migration and its adoption by governments around the world, including Canada, at an international conference in Marrakesh, Morocco. 

The compact was not a treaty but a non-binding agreement charting how countries around the world could work together to mitigate the impact and stresses of increased global migration.

Upon its adoption, Arbour said the compact "will make an enormous positive impact in the lives of millions of people — migrants themselves, the people they leave behind and the communities that will then host them."

That view wasn't shared by then Conservative leader Andrew Scheer, who said the compact "gives influence over Canada's immigration system to foreign entities" and "could open the door to foreign bureaucrats telling Canada how to manage our borders."

That view was dismissed by former prime minister Stephen Harper's immigration minister Chris Alexander, who said the compact was "not legally binding" and "has no impact on our sovereignty."

More recently, Arbour led the 2022 probe into sexual harassment in the military in which she condemned what she described as a "toxic" culture of misogyny and the "glorification of masculinity." 

Her work prompted a change in how the military she will now command prosecutes misconduct.

She has also advocated for 2SLGBTQ+ rights and was part of a past top court decision that blocked a B.C. School board from banning books that feature same-sex parented families on religious grounds.

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