Law and Mental Health in Canada: Cases and Materials

Anita Szigeti, LL.B., is the founding lawyer of Anita Szigeti Advocates, a Toronto firm focusing on mental health and the law. Ms. Szigeti graduated from the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law in 1990. She was called to the bar in Ontario in 1992 and in Nunavut in 2014. She is currently co-director (with Dr. Ruby Dhand) of the Mental Health Law course within the Health Law LLM at Osgoode Professional Development, where she obtained a Certificate in Tribunal Adjudication in 2018. Ms. Szigeti has published widely in this area, including as co-author of five textbooks on mental health law across Canada. These include the LexisNexis publications: Canadian Anthology on Mental Health and the Law (2024), Law and Mental Health in Canada: Cases and Materials (2023), Halsbury’s on Mental Health Law (2023), A Guide to Consent and Capacity Law in Ontario (2024), and A Guide to Mental Disorder Law in Canadian Criminal Justice (2020). She is a recognized expert in the area of mental disorder in both civil and criminal law contexts. She has been retained as an expert witness in mental health justice matters.

Ms. Szigeti has been a leader in the field for 30 years at the Ontario bar. She has been representing clients in Nunavut since 2014 as a member of the Nunavut Law Society. Ms. Szigeti was the Chair of the Mental Health Legal Committee (MHLC) for a decade and the founding first Chair of Legal Aid Ontario's Mental Health Law & Policy Advisory Group. For six years, she served as an elected Toronto Director of the Criminal Lawyers' Association (CLA) and the Association's Chair of its Mental Disorder Portfolio. She also served as the CLA’s Women’s Director through COVID in 2020-2021. Ms. Szigeti is the founder and President of the Law And Mental Disorder Association (LAMDA), a national umbrella advocacy organization of 200 lawyers practising mental health law. She is the founder and Secretary of Women in Canadian Criminal Defence (WiCCD), a national advocacy organization for women and gender non-conforming criminal defence lawyers in Canada. Ms. Szigeti’s community involvement extends to membership on the governing body of several other organizations, including as the sole Canadian (now Emeritus) representative on the Board of Directors of the National Association of Rights Protection and Advocacy (NARPA), an American advocacy organization based in Colorado, and Pilot Place Society, a not for profit 24/7 supervised housing service provider in Toronto.

Ms. Szigeti’s litigation career spans thousands of tribunal level cases, hundreds of cases argued in appellate Courts including fifteen in the Supreme Court of Canada. Ms. Szigeti has also been involved in more than a dozen death inquiries focusing on police use of force in interactions with persons in crisis and just as many high profile Inquests concerning other mental health related and institutional deaths. In 2016, she joined the prestigious Trial Advocacy faculty at the University of Toronto law school. She is a frequent guest lecturer in many mental health law courses at law schools across the country, including at the University of Toronto, Lincoln Alexander School of Law, Western Faculty of Law and Osgoode Hall Law School. Ms. Szigeti is passionate about teaching advocacy as well as the substantive law of mental disorder. She has provided education and training throughout her career to Crowns, Coroners, adjudicators, psychiatrists, defence lawyers, clients, their families and anyone else who asked. She has particular expertise in training tribunal, board and agency adjudicators on how to address mental health matters culturally competently. Ms. Szigeti has mentored hundreds of new lawyers and law students and loves coaching advocacy at trial and appellate levels, including coaching mooting teams at law schools. When she's not mentoring new generations of lawyers and law students, she is in a courtroom litigating, nearly every day. She is grateful for three decades of opportunities to advocate on behalf of vulnerable people, giving a voice to those who otherwise may not be heard at all.

Ruby Dhand, B.A. (Western Ontario), M.A. (Carleton), LL.B. (Ottawa), LL.M. (Toronto), Ph.D. (Osgoode), is a Full Professor in the Faculty of Law at Thompson Rivers University (TRU). She was called to the Bar in Ontario in 2008. Dr. Dhand joined the TRU Faculty of Law in 2012. She was awarded the TRU Law Teaching Excellence Prize by the Student Law Society in 2019, 2021 and 2022 and the Recognition of Excellence Award by the TRU Board of Governors in 2021. Dr. Dhand has been awarded a number of Tri-Agency research grants including the SSHRC Insight Development Grant, the SSHRC Partnership Development Grant, the CIHR Fellowship in Health Law and Policy, the SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, and multiple Law Foundation of BC Grants. Her major areas of research are mental health law, human rights law, health law and policy, disability law, access to justice, the impact of race, culture, ethnicity and other intersectional factors upon the law, clinical legal education and science and law. Dr. Dhand has published extensively in refereed journals including the International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, the Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice, the Canadian Journal of Comparative and Contemporary Law, the Manitoba Law Journal (Criminal Law Edition) and the Canadian Journal of Disability Studies. She is a co-author of the Canadian Anthology on Mental Health and the Law (2024) and Law and Mental Health in Canada: Cases and Materials (2023). She has also co-authored multiple editions of the Halsbury’s Laws of Canada: Mental Health, and a co-author of the books Law and Mental Health in Canada Cases and Materials (LexisNexis Canada, 2023) and the book Law and Disability in Canada: Cases and Materials (LexisNexis Canada, 2021). Dr. Dhand is currently the Principal Investigator for a number of SSHRC-funded qualitative legal research projects. Her research has been used for law reform initiatives to increase access to justice across Canada.

Dr. Dhand has appeared in the Supreme Court of Canada as part of legal teams led by Anita Szigeti on behalf of the Empowerment Council in British Columbia (AG) v. CCD and Ontario (AG) v. G. Prior to joining the TRU Faculty of Law, Dr. Dhand worked as Anita Szigeti’s first legal intern and at ARCH Disability Law Centre in disability rights law. At TRU, Dr. Dhand led the development and establishment of the TRU Community Legal Clinic, the faculty’s first clinical law program. At TRU Law, Dr. Dhand teaches in the areas of Mental Health Law and Policy in Canada, Human Rights Law, Health Law, Community Lawyering and Clinical Legal Education. She is also currently co-director (with Anita Szigeti) of the Mental Health Law course within the Health Law LLM at Osgoode Professional Development.

Jennifer Chambers is a founder and Executive Director of the Empowerment Council — Systemic Advocates in Addictions and Mental Health. She was also founder and Advocacy Coordinator of the Queen Street Patients Council and a founder and Chair of the Mental Health Legal Advocacy Coalition. Each organization conducted systemic advocacy by and for people with a history of mental health and/or addiction issues. The organizations she founded and worked with have been the only peer advocacy organizations in Canada to regularly intervene in Supreme Court of Canada cases and have standing at inquests in Ontario. She is currently Co-Chair of the Mental Health and Addiction Advisory Panel to the Toronto Police Services Board (“TPSB”), a member of the Anti Racism Advisory Council to the TPSB, and a member of the Police and Community Engagement Review advisory to the Toronto Police Chief. She was on an advisory committee to the Ontario Consent and Capacity Board and to Legal Aid Ontario. She has been an expert witness in numerous forums on the intersection of policing, people in crisis and race. She has taught college classes and guest-lectured classes in law, nursing, social work and policing, both locally and internationally. She has authored and co-authored articles, chapters and numerous deputations. She has often spoken at conferences, Webinars and to media. She spoke at the Ontario Conference of Judges. She has received awards from the City of Toronto, the Ontario Association of Patient Councils, the Canadian Mental Health Association Toronto, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (“CAMH”) Education Department, as well from CAMH Social Workers, the Mental Health Legal Committee and the Law and Mental Disorder Association.

Cassandra DeMelo is the founder of DeMelo Law, a criminal defence practice in London, Ontario, serving all of southwest Ontario. She is near completion of her Ph.D. at Western Law, with a focus on drug addiction, drug reform and mental health. She completed her Masters in Law at Western Law as well, focusing on the intersection of mental health and the bail system, and the shortcomings of the latter in addressing the former — the inspiration for her chapter in this collection. Cassandra has taught at Western Law’s Legal Aid clinic, Community Legal Services, where she served as Review Counsel on criminal law files. She thoroughly enjoys teaching and mentoring, and continues this work as both a formal and informal mentor to several law students and young lawyers in the southwest Ontario area, including to her Associates at DeMelo Law. Cassandra is the Vice-President of the Criminal Lawyers’ Association for Ontario, where she has co-chaired the Mental Health Committee for the past three years. She is also the President of the Criminal Lawyers’ Association for London, the Treasurer for Women in Canadian Criminal Defence, and a member of the Law and Mental Disorder Association. She can be found regularly representing clients with mental health challenges, including on fitness assessments, NCRMD issues, in the therapeutic/mental health courts, at the Ontario Review Board, and at the Court of Appeal for Ontario. She loves her work, and is honoured to serve her community, especially those who too often otherwise would “fall through the cracks”.

Carter Martell is a criminal defence lawyer practising at Martell Defence in Toronto. His practice focuses on criminal and constitutional law with a particular focus on complex litigation and appeals, including appeals against verdicts of Not Criminally Responsible and appeals against dispositions of the Ontario Review Board. Mr. Martell regularly appears at all levels of court in Ontario, and has been counsel for intervener organizations on several appeals to the Supreme Court of Canada, including most recently for the Empowerment Council in R. v. Sullivan and Chan ([2022] S.C.J. No. 19, 2022 SCC 19) and R. v. Brown ([2022] S.C.J. No. 18, 2022 SCC 18). He regularly speaks on various topics in criminal law.

Jacqueline Petrie graduated with distinction from the University of Victoria with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1987 and then attended law school at the University of British Columbia. She subsequently articled at and was a litigation associate with the Vancouver law firm Alexander, Holburn, Beaudin & Lang, where she practised insurance defence before returning to her home province of Alberta in 1993. After admission to the Alberta Bar, Ms. Petrie worked as a commercial litigation associate with the firm Ogilvie and Company in Edmonton. In 1996, while raising a young family, Ms. Petrie started a legal research and opinion consultancy service, which she operated for the next 20 years, working with both civil and criminal lawyers on various contracted legal projects. Over the years, Ms. Petrie was retained to work on large corporate commercial disputes, personal injury settlement negotiations, and numerous criminal cases at the trial and appellate level, including appeals to the Supreme Court of Canada. For the last several years, Ms. Petrie has worked exclusively in the area of criminal law and is currently Associate Counsel with Bottos Law Group, a leading criminal defence firm in Edmonton. Her work at Bottos Law Group encompasses all areas of criminal law, particularly mental health law where she represents the firm’s more vulnerable clients before the Alberta Mental Health Review Panel, the Alberta Review Board, and the Alberta Court of Appeal.

Sarah Rankin is a criminal defence lawyer practising at McKay Ferg LLP, a Calgary firm specializing in complex criminal litigation. She is currently the Education Director of the Calgary Criminal Defence Lawyers’ Association. She was also a founding member of the Prison Justice Society of Alberta, and has been a member of the Law And Mental Disorder Association and Women in Canadian Criminal Defence since their inception. She has been asked to guest lecture in law school and criminology courses, and has appeared on numerous panels at continuing educational events for lawyers and other professionals whose scope of work includes criminal or mental health law. She is on the National Advisory Council of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, and has appeared at all levels of court in Canada. She holds a JD (Hons.) and an MA in Criminology and Sociolegal Studies from the University of Toronto, Faculty of Law.

Naomi Sayers is a lawyer and Indigenous feminist, called to the Ontario (2018) and Alberta (2020) Bars with nearly a decade of consulting experience. She worked in-house at one of Canada’s largest electricity providers. She has appeared at all levels of court in Ontario; Federal Court — trial and appeals; Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench; and various tribunals throughout Ontario. Ms. Sayers represented Work Safe Twerk Safe, the first and only federally incorporated non-profit advocacy group dedicated to strippers’ rights to work safely in Canada. Her advocacy on their behalf resulted in a precedent setting decision resulting in the court recognizing the harms that sex workers experience in trying to access justice. That decision was also cited by the Supreme Court of Canada, affirming stigmatized groups’ right to privacy in litigation processes. Ms. Sayers is a member of Women in Canadian Criminal Defence; the Criminal Lawyers’ Association and its Indigenous Committee; the Canadian Bar Association and its Aboriginal Law section executive; the Law and Mental Disorder Association; the Ontario Bar Association’s Constitutional and Human Rights section executive, the Aboriginal Law section executive and the Women’s Lawyer Forum section executive.

Amy Shoemaker is a criminal lawyer in Toronto. Following graduation from Queen’s University with a Bachelor of Law, Ms. Shoemaker articled at the law firm of Greenspan, Rosenberg and Buhr and worked in private practice in Toronto. After completing a Masters of Law in criminal law at Osgoode Hall Law School, she worked as an Institutional Advocate at the Advocacy Centre for the Elderly. She then joined Legal Aid Ontario as a staff lawyer at LAO LAW, the research department. For the last 10 years, Ms. Shoemaker has been the director of LAO LAW, providing research services to legal aid lawyers across the province of Ontario in the areas of criminal, family and immigration law.