Line Beauchesne is a Full Professor in the Department of Criminology at the University of Ottawa and an Associate Professor in the Department of Community Health in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Sherbrooke. She is the author of numerous papers, articles and books on the issue of drug policy, including Les drogues : enjeux actuels et réflexions nouvelles sur leur régulation (2018) and La légalisation du cannabis au Canada : Entre commercialisation et prohibition 2.0 (2020). She was a founding member of the Canadian Foundation for Drug Policy, a member of the Board of Directors of CACTUS in Montreal and l'Association des intervenants en toxicomanies du Québec, and works on drug policy with the International Society for the Study of Drug Policy (ISSDP). Within the Harm Reduction Network she channels her research more specifically on cannabis issues by examining the impact of laws, government policies to regulate the cannabis market, and the impact of the market on public health policies as well as on consumption profiles in the field. She aims to show the deficiencies in the policies that are being put in place and their consequences, especially on the most vulnerable.

Colleen M. Flood FRSC, FCAHS is University of Ottawa Research Chair in Health Law and Policy and inaugural Director of the University of Ottawa Centre for Health Law, Policy and Ethics. From 2017-2018 she served as Associate VP Research at the University of Ottawa. From 2000-2015 she was a Professor and Canada Research Chair at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto with cross-appointments to the School of Public Policy and the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation. From 2006-2011 she served as a Scientific Director of the Institute for Health Services and Policy Research, one of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Her four most recent books are The Right to Health at the Public/Private Divide (2014) (co-edited with Aeyal Gross and published by Cambridge University Press), Law and Mind: Mental Health Law and Policy in Canada (2016) (co-edited with Jennifer Chandler and published by LexisNexis, Canada), Administrative Law in Context (3rd. ed.) (2018) (co-edited with Lorne Sossin and published by Emond Montgomery) and Is Two-Two Health Care the Future? (Forthcoming, 2019) (co-edited with Bryan Thomas and published by the University of Ottawa Press).

Dr. Harris’s research combines laboratory, field and community-based approaches to study the roles of plants in human and ecological health. His research explores the ethnobotany, chemistry and bioactivity of plants with a current emphasis on native Canadian species used for food and medicine. Together with Inuit and First Nations communities as well as the private and public sectors, some of the ongoing projects include: health benefits (and risks) of wild plant foods, the antidiabetic and neuroprotective potential of berries, the chemical ecology of coneflower alkylamides, and the ethical and evidence-based use of alternative medicines by mainstream healthcare providers.

Dr. Jason Nickerson is a Clinical Scientist at the Bruyère Research Institute and an Adjunct Professor of Common Law at the University of Ottawa in the Centre for Health Law, Policy and Ethics. Jason has worked extensively on drug policy research, analysis, and advocacy with a specific focus on improving access to controlled medicines for pain relief and anesthesia in low- and middle-income countries, and on the use of cannabis by older adults in Canada. He is a graduate of Dalhousie University’s respiratory therapy program specializing in anesthesia, and completed a master’s degree at the University of British Columbia studying the education of health professionals who provide community-based HIV care, and a PhD in population health at the University of Ottawa where he focused on the methodologies for conducting assessments of health facilities in severely disrupted health systems during acute and protracted emergencies. He has worked and published on a broad array of global public health, health systems, access to medicines, and drug policy issues in Canada and internationally.

Dr. Anindya Sen is a Professor of Economics at the University of Waterloo.  His research interests are in the economics of public policy, with an emphasis on estimating the statistical effects of government intervention on health outcomes. He has published research on the impacts of increases of alcohol prices on the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases, the impacts of higher cigarette taxes on smoking, the effects of higher minimum wages on employment and poverty, and the relationship between stricter penalties and impaired driving/traffic accidents. These papers have been published in peer reviewed journals such as the Canadian Journal of Economics, Journal of Law and Economics, Journal of Health Economics, Journal of Regulatory Economics, International Review of Law and Economics, Labour Economics, and Canadian Public Policy. His recent work has focused on assessing the effects of deregulation in retail alcohol distribution in Ontario and the legalization of marijuana in Canada. His work has extensively covered by The Globe and Mail, The Financial Post, CBC, and The Toronto Star.

Joao Velloso is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Law (Common Law) at the University of Ottawa. He has a multidisciplinary background in law, criminology, sociology and anthropology. His empirical research focuses on the governance of security from different legal regimes, specifically the use of administrative regimes overlaid on criminal justice. His previous research focuses on immigration control in Canada and the penalization of protesters during the G20 Summit in Toronto (2010) and during the Quebec student strike of 2012. He is currently participating as a co-investigator in a partnership project (SSHRC) Access to Justice in Custody and Social Expectations and Awareness of Law, and in the Brazilian project Institute of Comparative Studies in Institutional Conflict Administration (INCT-InEAC), one of the few National Institutes of Science and Technology (INCT) in the Humanities and Social Sciences in Brazil and the headquarters of a strong multidisciplinary research network of leading researchers in Brazil and Argentina in the fields of police, criminal justice and conflict studies. He is also involved in two laboratories at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Ottawa: the Research Collective on Prison Studies and the Interdisciplinary Research Laboratory on Contemporary Cities and Urban Processes.

Patrick Fafard’s lengthy career spans both government and academe. He has served in senior management positions with the Governments of Canada and Saskatchewan. Patrick has published extensively in a number of policy fields including health, trade and the environment, intergovernmental relations, and Canadian federalism. His current research focuses on knowledge translation for public health policy, the global governance of antimicrobial resistance, and public health as a political project. Patrick serves as Associate Director of the Global Strategy Lab (York University and University of Ottawa). For the University of Ottawa Harm Reduction Network Patrick serves as co-lead of the tobacco cluster.

Sam Halabi is a Scholar at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University and an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Missouri. He has written on harm reduction in the tobacco context, especially on federalism aspects of the 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act in the U.S. and the legal effect of guidelines issues under the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which dealt peripherally with harm reduction as an evidence-based issue properly subject of the treaty. His work is published in JAMA, the Lancet, and the Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics, among others. He holds a JD from Harvard Law School, an MPhil from the University of Oxford (St. Antony’s College) and a B.S., summa cum laude, from Kansas State University.

Adam R Houston is a PhD Candidate (Law) at the University of Ottawa. He is interested in legal interventions for the prevention and treatment of communicable and noncommunicable disease at the intersection of health, human rights and international development.  He holds a JD from the University of Victoria, an MA in Global Development Studies from Queen’s University, and won the Outstanding Student Award in his LL.M (Health Law) from the University of Washington. He has worked in multiple countries for NGOs like Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), the Pacific Islands AIDS Foundation (PIAF), Avocats sans frontières Canada (ASFC), and the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti (IJDH). His work has appeared in a publications ranging from Health & Human Rights Journal to PLoS Medicine to Foreign Affairs.

David is an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Ottawa and Chair of the Advisory Committee of the University of Ottawa Centre for Health Law, Policy and Ethics. He has worked on tobacco and health issues since the early 1980s and played a key role in a wide range of Canadian and global tobacco control precedents. His primary area of work has been the interaction of law and economics as a determinant of public health, and recently much of his time has been focused on appropriate policies for reduced risk products. His interests extend to a wide range of issues, and in addition to his personal work he funds numerous initiatives in a sometimes-Quixotic effort to create a better world. He was the recipient of Ottawa’s Outstanding Individual Philanthropist award in 2016.