IAPP Canada Privacy Symposium 2025

Dr. Carys Craig joined the faculty at Osgoode Hall Law School in 2002. She is the academic director of the Osgoode professional development LLM Program in Intellectual Property Law, a founding member of IP Osgoode (Osgoode’s intellectual property law and technology program), and recently served as Osgoode’s associate dean (research and institutional relations). In 2018, she held a MacCormick research fellowship at the University of Edinburgh.

A recipient of multiple teaching awards, including the 2015 president’s university-wide teaching award, Dr. Craig teaches JD, graduate and professional courses in the areas of intellectual property, copyright and trademark law, and legal theory. She researches and publishes widely on intellectual property law and policy, with an emphasis on authorship (drawing on critical and feminist theory), users’ rights and the public domain. She is the author of “Copyright, Communication & Culture: Towards a Relational Theory of Copyright Law” (2011), and the co-editor of “Trade-marks and Unfair Competition Law: Cases and Commentary,” 2nd ed. (Toronto: Carswell, 2014) and “Copyright: Cases and Commentary on the Canadian and International Law,” 2nd ed. (Toronto: Carswell, 2013). Her award-winning work has been cited with approval by the Supreme Court of Canada.

Dr. Craig holds a First Class Honors Bachelor of Laws (LLB Hons) from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, a Master of Laws (LLM) from Queen’s University in Kingston, and a Doctorate in Law (SJD) from the University of Toronto, where she was a graduate fellow of Ontario’s Centre for Innovation Law and Policy.

Graduate Research Supervision (LLM, PhD): Professor Craig is interested in supervising graduate research in the area of intellectual property law (domestic, comparative and/or international), with a focus primarily on copyright and/or trademark law and related fields. Her own scholarship in this area covers a wide variety of topics including concepts of authorship and ownership, fair dealing and user rights, freedom of expression, digital locks, technological neutrality, open access and open licensing models, trademark registration requirements, etc. While tackling particular doctrinal and policy issues at the forefront of IP law, Professor Craig's scholarship employs a critical theoretical approach (drawing on, e.g. feminist legal theory, critical race theory, cultural and literary theory). Current projects include work on critical theories of IP; racially disparaging trademarks; authorship and artificial intelligence; choreographic copyright; copyright's substantial similarity doctrine; moral rights, parody and satire.

Philippe Dufresne was appointed privacy commissioner of Canada on 27 June 2022. A leading legal expert on human rights, administrative and constitutional law, he previously served as the law clerk and parliamentary counsel of the House of Commons. In this capacity, he was the chief legal officer of the House of Commons and led the office responsible for the provision of legal and legislative drafting services to the House of Commons, its speaker, members and committees, the Board of Internal Economy and the House Administration.

Prior to his appointment as law clerk of the House of Commons in 2015, he was the Canadian Human Rights Commission’s senior general counsel, responsible for legal services, litigation, investigations, mediations, employment equity and access to information and privacy. During that time, he successfully represented the commission before all levels of Canadian courts, including the Supreme Court of Canada, in a number of key human rights and constitutional cases over the last two decades. He has appeared before the Supreme Court on 15 occasions, on issues ranging from accessibility and equal pay for work of equal value, to the balancing of human rights and national security. As lead counsel for the commission in the landmark parliamentary privilege case of House of Commons v. Vaid, he helped reinforce and clarify some of the country’s fundamental constitutional principles as they apply to the House of Commons and Parliament.

A member of the bars of Québec, Ontario and Massachusetts, he has served his profession and community in several different capacities, including as president of the constitutional and human rights law section of the Canadian Bar Association (Québec Branch) and as a member of the editorial board for the Canadian Corporate Counsel Association’s CCCA Magazine. In 2014, he served as president of the International Commission of Jurists, an institution devoted to the protection of the rule of law and judicial independence in Canada and internationally.

Commissioner Dufresne holds degrees in common and civil law from McGill University’s Faculty of Law and has been a part-time professor with the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Common Law and Queen’s University’s Faculty of Law where he taught international criminal law, human rights and appellate advocacy. He regularly speaks on issues of human rights, administrative, constitutional and parliamentary law in Canada.

Patricia Kosseim began her five-year term as commissioner on 1 July 2020. She has a wealth of experience and in-depth knowledge in access, privacy and health law, having worked in public, private, and health sectors, and across various jurisdictions. Prior to her role as Ontario’s commissioner, Kosseim was counsel in Osler’s Privacy and Data Management Group where she provided strategic advice to clients on matters of privacy, data governance and access law. For more than a decade, Kosseim served as senior general counsel and director general with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. Kosseim has also served in executive positions with Genome Canada and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research where she developed and implemented national strategies to address legal, ethical and social issues related to health research and genomics technologies. She has published and spoken extensively on matters of privacy law, health law and ethics.

Rick Mercer celebrates, chronicles and gives his satirical take on all that is great and irreverent about Canada. A national No. 1 bestselling author and the governor general’s award winner for Lifetime Artistic Achievement, Mercer is our most popular comic: a political satirist who knows exactly what matters to regular Canadians and what makes them laugh. He won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour for his memoir “Talking to Canadians,” in which he charts his meteoric rise to TV fame in a series of riveting, hilarious, and unforgettable anecdotes and behind-the-scenes revelations from his decades-long career. In his new memoir, “The Road Years,” he continues the story and reminds us, with trademark humor and charisma, how much there is to love about Canada.