Jamie Baxter, Schulich School of Law

Jamie is interested in food systems, agriculture, land, rural-urban connections, and local governance. Most of his work looks at what are sometimes called the "working rules" that shape human interaction and cooperation--those rules and norms that operate where formal laws and actual practices meet.

Before studying law, Jamie completed his graduate studies in economics, focusing on rural and community development, and was a visiting Fulbright Scholar at the Appalachian Center, University of Kentucky. After law school, he articled with a solo practice in Toronto specializing in cases of state and institutional misconduct, civil rights and Indigenous rights, and taught part-time in the Department of Food, Agriculture and Resource Economics at the University of Guelph. Jamie then clerked at the Federal Court of Canada before returning to graduate studies in law.

Cheryl Simon, Schulich School of Law

Cheryl Simon is an Assistant Professor who will teach Property and Special Issues in Aboriginal Law and Indigenous Governance at the law school. She is a proud Mi'kmaq woman from Epekwitk (PEI) with extensive experience in community-based policy development. She completed her BA in Native Studies from the University of Lethbridge and a law degree from the University of Victoria. She also studied Maori law and comparative Indigenous studies in New Zealand. She completed an LLM with a constitutional specialty at Osgoode law school in 2020. After briefly practicing law, Simon worked as manager of Governance Advisory Services with a national organization. She worked with First Nations communities across the country, assisting in developing governance models based on traditional systems before opening her own consulting business. Simon moved on to work for Mi'gmawe ’l Tplu'taqnn, a Treaty rights implementation organization, while teaching courses on identity law with Cape Breton University.

Catherine Mah, School of Health Administration, Dalhousie

Dr. Catherine L. Mah MD FRCPC PhD is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Promoting Healthy Populations in the School of Health Administration at Dalhousie University. She is an internationally recognized scholar in nutrition and food policy. Dr. Mah publishes widely in health and social science, with a particular focus on the consumer food environment and its role in social equity, population diet, food access, and food affordability. She was an appointee to Health Canada’s Nutrition Science Advisory Committee (2020-2023) and the inaugural Canadian Food Policy Advisory Council (2020-2022). In 2022, Dr. Mah was the recipient of a Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal from Nova Scotia for exemplary public service.

Glenford Jameson, GS Jameson & Company

Glenford Jameson is the principal of GSJ&Co., a Canadian law firm dedicated to food law and regulatory affairs. Since 2013, he has advised food companies across the value chain on regulatory compliance, CFIA enforcement, labelling, product classification, and the commercial agreements that hold the food supply chain together. He has taught food law at the university level, spoken at conferences across North America and internationally, and been quoted as an expert source by CBC, CTV, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, and other national media.

He acts for manufacturers, importers, distributors, exporters, and industry associations, including companies in the pet food, plastics and packaging, and consumer packaged goods sectors. He also regularly serves as Canadian regulatory counsel for law firms in the United States, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, Latin America, and Asia whose clients need to access the Canadian market.

Jessie McInnis, Springtide Farms, the National Farmers Union and La Via Campesina

Jessie MacInnis is a small-scale farmer from Canada. She farms in Nova Scotia (also known as Mi’kma’ki, the unceded land of the Mi’kmaq) with her sister where they grow vegetables and flowers. She is the former Youth President of the National Farmers Union, which is a member organisation of La Via Campesina. Jessie is a member of the Peasants Rights Collective of La Via Campesina and the did her Master’s research on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP), which culminated in the paper The Potential of UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas: Moving towards rights-based agriculture policy in Canada (2021). She is currently doing a PhD in Geography on Food Sovereignty and Youth.

Sunday Miller, Akoma Family Centre