Norm is a Professional Engineer and a practicing environmental consultant. He is a member of the Manitoba Clean Environment Commission and sits on the Board of Trustees for the Fort Whyte Environmental Education Centre in Winnipeg. During his 32-year career in the Manitoba public service, the last 15 of which he served as Deputy Minister of the departments of Environment, Conservation and Water Stewardship, he has been involved in water issues from a number of different perspectives. He has represented Manitoba in inter-provincial and international water negotiations; been intimately involved in the development and administration of Provincial water legislation; and was the founding Deputy Minister for the first all-water department of government in Canada.
Oliver serves as Co-Director of the University of Victoria’s POLIS Project on Ecological Governance and leads the Water Sustainability Project. With a background in law, economics and ecological restoration, he focuses on the institutional and legal reform aspects of sustainable water management and provides advice to all levels of government and various nongovernment organizations. Oliver is an adjunct at the University of Waterloo's Department of Environment & Resource Studies and provides strategic water policy advice to all levels of government, as well as numerous national and local non-government and funding organizations. Oliver has authored or co-authored numerous chapters, articles, books and reports on water sustainability, governance and the Soft Path including a recent edited volume: Making the Most of the Water We Have: the soft path approach to water management.
Jim is a consultant on climate change adaptation, water management, and natural disaster mitigation. He currently serves as an advisor to the International Joint Commission concerning the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. Jim was the first Director of the Canada Centre for Inland Waters, Burlington and worked for 8 years as an Assistant Deputy Minister for Environmental Management and Atmospheric Environment, Environment Canada. From 1986 to 1989, he was Director of Technical Cooperation and Acting Deputy Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He has been awarded Honorary Doctorates from the University of Waterloo and McMaster University and the Massey Medal of the Canadian Geographical Society.
Marc is senior advisor to the St. Lawrence River-Great Lakes program at Nature Québec. He is President of the Priority Intervention Zone Committee (Comité ZIP Saguenay) on the Saguenay River and President of the Quebec Regional Advisory Council on Marine Oil Spills. Marc retired from the Canadian Armed Forces in 1994, where he was active in the environmental sector for 21 years, working on, among other things, hazardous material safety, contaminated soils, and water and wastewater treatment plants. He was awarded the Commemorative Medal for the 125th Anniversary of Confederation in recognition of the significant contribution he has made to his fellow citizens, and to Canada.
Tony is Freshwater Director with WWF-Canada. He has been involved in water management issues for over a decade, with experiences ranging from technology development to public policy. His work has taken him across Canada and around the planet to engage business leaders, policy makers, politicians and citizens in freshwater stewardship and conservation. He has studied Environmental Technology at Fanshawe College in London, Ontario, Environmental Science at Royal Roads University in Victoria, BC, and water governance at the School of Planning, University of Waterloo.
Ralph is Acting Chair of the Canadian Water Issues Council, and President of Ralbet Enterprises Inc., where he has been active in consulting on a variety of water and environmental policy issues. From 1978 to 1991, he was Director of Water Planning and Management in the Canadian Department of the Environment. In that capacity, he was responsible for overseeing numerous Canada-U.S. and Federal-Provincial agreements and arrangements, and was the prime author of the Federal Water Policy that was tabled in Parliament in 1987. He has co-chaired five International Joint Commission Boards, and has served as an environmental consultant in numerous countries.
Merrell-Ann Phare is a lawyer and the founding Executive Director of the Centre for Indigenous Environmental Resources, a national First nation environmental organisation. She is the author of the book ‘Denying the Source: the Crisis of First Nations Water Rights’ and co-author, with Robert Sandford, of Ethical Water. Merrell-Ann Phare is a lawyer and the founding Executive Director of the Centre for Indigenous Environmental Resources, a national First Nation charitable environmental organisation. She is a member of the Water Partners Advisory Committee for the Council of the Federation, the Living Lakes Canada Partners Advisory Committee, and the RBC’s Blue Water Advisory Panel, which advises the Royal Bank on water matters and, in particular, distribution of its $50-million Blue Water Fund. Merrell-Ann is also legal counsel and advisor to a number of First Nation and other governments regarding water matters and regularly speaks on water issues and First Nations.
Bob Sandford is the Canadian Chair of the United Nations International “Water for Life” Decade, a national partnership initiative that aims to advance long-term water quality and availability issues in response to climate change in this country and abroad. In this capacity, Bob is the only Canadian to sit on the Advisory Committee for the prestigious Rosenberg International Forum on Water Policy. Bob was invited to be an advisor on water issues by the InterAction Council, a global public policy think-tank composed of more than twenty former Heads of State including, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, U.S. President Bill Clinton and the former President of Mexico, Vincente Fox. Bob’s latest book on water issues, Ethical Water, co-authored with Merrell-Ann S.Phare, was released October 2011.
For thirty years, Dr. Clamen has been at the forefront of transboundary water resources management working in a multidisciplinary environment with engineers, scientists, lawyers, academics, administrators and environmentalists at the Canada – United States International Joint Commission (IJC). He has lead and participated in numerous Canada – U.S. water resource studies and assessments, and for twelve years was the Secretary of the Canadian Section of the IJC responsible for the administration of the Canadian Secretariat and providing policy advice to the Presidential and Prime Ministerial-appointed Commissioners. Dr. Clamen has participated in numerous national and international water conferences as an invited speaker, panelist, facilitator and session chair. He maintains routine working relationships with many of the senior water experts in Canada and abroad. He currently holds an Adjunct Professorship at McGill University where he assists with the Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) Masters Program and teaches a graduate level course on Water Law and Policy.
Brenda leads the Southern Ontario Water Consortium (SOWC) as its Operations Manager. The SOWC will create a platform for research, testing and demonstration of water and wastewater services and technologies at a watershed level.
Brenda recently served as Senior Policy Advisor to two Ontario Ministers of Environment with responsibility for water and renewable energy. In that capacity, she played a key role in the introduction and passage of the Water Opportunities and Water Conservation Act. Before that she spent 8 years with the Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation, creating and managing its Freshwater Program.
Brenda received her M.Sc. in Biology from Queen’s University and B.Sc. from University of Guelph.
Linda just started as Director of Pacific Conservation with WWF-Canada in February 2011. She has with over twenty years experience in the private, government, intergovernmental, nongovernmental and philanthropic sectors. She was previously at the Program on Water Governance at the University of British Columbia, and before that was the Executive Director of West Coast Environmental Law. She was a member of the Canadian Council of Academies' Expert Panel on Groundwater and has also served on the BC Independent Drinking Water Review Panel, the Vancouver Foundation's Environment Committee and the Board of Directors of Smart Growth BC. She is the author of numerous reports, including Practising Shared Water Governance in Canada: A Primer, and The Legal Regime for Arctic Environmental Protection.
