During Transparency International Canada’s 26th Annual General Meeting on June 22nd, 2023, three new members were voted onto TI Canada’s volunteer Board of Directors by the TI Canada membership. These members bring with them a deep understanding of TI Canada’s mission and a dedication to strengthening transparency across Canada. TI Canada is very pleased to welcome these new Board Members, a new Chair and President, and a renewal.
Toby Mendel
new chair and president
Toby Mendel is the founder and Executive Director of the Centre for Law and Democracy, a Canadian based international human rights NGO that provides legal and capacity building expertise regarding foundational rights for democracy, including the right to information, freedom of expression, the right to participate and the rights to assembly and association. Toby has been a member of the Transparency International Canada Board of Director since 2020 and has held the position of Vice President since 2022.
Prior to that, he was for over 12 years Senior Director for Law at ARTICLE 19, an international human rights NGO focusing on freedom of expression and the right to information. He has collaborated extensively with intergovernmental actors working in these areas – including the World Bank, UNESCO, the UN and other international rapporteurs on freedom of expression, the OSCE and the Council of Europe – as well as numerous governments and NGOs in countries all over the world.
His work spans a range of areas of legal work. This includes having drafted or participated in drafting numerous laws in countries all over the world, engaging in strategic litigation before senior national and international courts, providing training and other forms of capacity building, including to judges and legal professionals, and preparing in-depth analyses of laws and proposed legislation. He is also the author of a large number of articles, monographs and books on a range of freedom of expression, right to information, communication rights and refugee issues, including several books published by UNESCO. Before joining ARTICLE 19, he worked as a senior human rights consultant with Oxfam Canada and as a human rights policy analyst at the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).
New board members
Adam ross
Adam is a founding partner of Templeton Research, a research firm that focuses on integrity due diligence, investigations and strategic advisory engagements. He has over a decade of experience in business intelligence and investigations, and has worked extensively with government and private sector clients to tackle issues related to money laundering and corruption. Adam began his career as an investigative researcher for leading anti- corruption and human rights organizations in the UK and Asia. He is the author of several ground-breaking reports for Transparency International Canada on issues related to opaque ownership and money laundering risk, and has been an active member of TI Canada’s Beneficial Ownership Working Group.
Mark garcia
Mark Garcia is the Government Relations and Advocacy Coordinator for the Canadian Teachers’ Federation. Professionally, Mark has held an array of roles including having worked in the offices of elected officials in Ontario and Alberta, at the United Steelworkers’ Canadian National Office, at the Japanese Consulate in Calgary, and at the Assembly of First Nations. Mark has a Bachelor of Social Sciences from the University of Ottawa and a Masters of Arts in Political Studies from Queen’s University. He’s a proud Hamiltonian and a proud advocate for public ownership and strong public services.
Peter donolo
Peter Donolo has served as a senior advisor to leaders in all three orders of government, including as the longest serving Director of Communications for a Canadian Prime Minister (The Rt Hon Jean Chretien). He is the former Vice Chair of Hill+ Knowlton Strategies Canada and was a partner at the Strategic Counsel. In both those positions, he provided strategic communications advice to CEOs and senior executives of some of Canada's largest companies as well as to public agencies and government departments and ministries. He has also served as Senior Vice President of Air Canada, and as SVP of the 2015 Pan Am Games, Chief of Staff for the Leader of the Official Opposition (Michael Ignatieff) and Canadian Consul General in Milan, Italy.
Peter is currently vice chair of the boards of directors of three separate not-for-profits: Journalists for Human Rights; CIVIX, Canada's premier school-based civic engagement program for youth; and the Canadian International Council. He is a former director of the Toronto Board of Trade and Pathways to Education Canada. He lives in Toronto, with his wife Mary Cruden. They have three children.
Board Term Renewal
Amee Sandhu
Amee Sandhu is Senior Legal Counsel at Alstom Canada, where she is the dedicated project lawyer for the Alstom scope of work on the multi-year and multi-billion dollar Go Expansion project – a project which will expand and electrify the Greater Toronto and Hamilton public regional transit system, Go Transit.
Prior to joining Alstom, Amee was founder and principal lawyer at Lex Integra PC, a firm that exclusively focused on business law and corporate ethics. Before founding Lex Integra, Amee spent several years at major engineering and construction companies with roles in legal, commercial, and integrity departments, including global head of compliance operations. She started her career on Toronto’s Bay Street.
Amee is a board member of Transparency International – Canada, and a long- standing member of their Legal Committee. Amee, along with two esteemed colleagues from TI-Canada, has been a Canadian expert for the global Transparency International Secretariat’s “Exporting Corruption” report. She frequently speaks on corporate ethics, anti-corruption law, compliance programs, as well as diversity. In 2022, she taught an anti-corruption short course at McGill University’s Faculty of Law. In 2023, she will teach a short course on ESG law. She has guest lectured at several Canadian law schools and business schools on anti-corruption and business ethics.
Amee is a mentor to law students at the TMU’s Lincoln Alexander School of Law, as well as an instructor of business law to undergraduates. She has been an assessor or mentor to lawyer-candidates at TMU’s Law Practice Program since 2019. She is on the roster of Climate Governance Experts at the Canada Climate Law Initiative, a joint project of the University of British Columbia and York University. She is also on the Law and Business Advisory Council at the Ted Rogers School of Management at Toronto Metropolitan University. Amee has three ethics and compliance and anti-corruption certificates, as well as the ESG Competent Boards certificate. She was a contributor to the 2020 multi award- winning book, Great Women in Compliance.