Chantal Tie

Chantal Tie is a litigator and educator, dedicated to social justice and the defence of human rights. She wrote her LLM thesis on discrimination in Canadian immigration, and the same interest in the rights of immigrants, women and marginalized groups drives her advocacy and litigation work. She has represented individuals and organizations in rights based litigation at all court levels, including seven appearances in the Supreme Court of Canada representing among others; Amnesty International, the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF), The Elizabeth Frye Society, The Canadian Council for Refugees (CCR) and individual litigants.

She was the founding Executive Director of South Ottawa Community Legal Services, an Ontario legal aid funded clinic where she practiced immigration and refugee law for twenty two years. She then worked as counsel for eastern Ontario for the Human Rights Legal Support Centre, prior to her retirement in 2019.

She has worked on community based, cross-cultural justice projects for the Canadian Bar Association in Bangladesh and China, and currently volunteers with The Equality Effect, where she was part of the litigation team which won a landmark constitutional challenge in Kenya, on behalf of 160 girl victims of rape.

She chaired the Court Challenges Program of Canada, was Co-chair of LEAF’s national litigation committee and CCR’s Inland Protection Working Group and Co-Chair of the national litigation committee for the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers (CARL). She was a long-standing member of Legal Aid Ontario’s test case committee, an expert panel which recommended funding for all test cases, inquiries and inquests in Ontario.

In the past, she has provided training to Canadian lawyers; Canadian judges through the National Judicial Institute; adjudicators with the Immigration and Refugee Board, both the Refugee Protection Division and the Refugee Appeal Division, and internationally to refugee and migration judges through the International Association of Refugee and Migration Judges.

She has taught Immigration and Refugee Law and Access to Justice at uOttawa, part-time, since 1995.