Advancing Justice through Education and Training
When the Ministry created the Public Safety Training Division in 2013, Denise was asked to lead its transformative agenda as Assistant Deputy Minister. Her background was ideal for the role --it was the perfect marriage of her criminal law experience and knowledge of adult learning gained from her Masters degree in adult education. She led an initiative to integrate and consolidate public safety training across the three colleges, Ontario Police College, Ontario Fire College and Ontario Correctional Services College within MCSCS as well as having oversight of the operations of the Ontario Police College. Denise and her team developed a blueprint for the Public Safety Learning System, an initiative designed to achieve enhanced, evidenced–based police training requirements as part of this significant modernization project.
Currently, Denise is an Assistant Deputy Minister in the Ministry of Education promoting equity of opportunity, safe and healthy schools and enhancing the wellbeing for Ontario students. She sees these critical initiatives as the true antidote to the youth justice issues she encountered as a prosecutor.
Mentor and Coach: Advocating to Make Law an Inclusive Profession
“Ability is nothing without opportunity”. This quote from Napoleon Bonapart is a battle cry for Denise. She saw that justice, equality and race were not always concept that were well aligned, especially when it came to ability of lawyers-of-colour lawyers to enter the profession. She has dedicated her volunteer time to activities focused on making law an inclusive profession. She has been a member of the Equity Advisory Group at the Law Society of Upper Canada, and a passionate supporter of the Internationally Trained Lawyer Program, providing mentorship, learning and development to foreign-trained students enrolled in the program.
Denise was a board member of the Canadian Association of Black lawyers in its more nascent days and played a pivotal fundraising role in the organization achieving its commitment to fully
endow the scholarship established by CABL and the University of Windsor which is named in honour of Canada’s first black chief justice, the late Honourable Justice Julius Isaac.
12 BLawyerisH/March, 2017
Contributed by Patricia DeGuire: a founder of CABL.