| Michelle O'Bonsawin | |
| Office: | Puisne Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada |
| Termstart: | September 1, 2022 |
| Nominator: | Justin Trudeau |
| Appointer: | Mary Simon |
| Predecessor: | Michael Moldaver |
| Office1: | Justice of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice |
| Term Start1: | May 18, 2017 |
| Term End1: | September 1, 2022 |
| Nominator1: | Justin Trudeau |
| Appointer1: | Julie Payette |
| Birth Place: | Hanmer, Ontario |
| Alma Mater: | Laurentian University (BA) University of Ottawa (LLB, PhD) Osgoode Hall (LLM) |
| Occupation: | Lawyer |
| Children: | 2 |
| Honorific Prefix: | The Honourable |
Michelle O'Bonsawin (born 1973 or 1974) is a Canadian jurist serving as a puisne justice on the Supreme Court of Canada since September 1, 2022. Before her appointment to the Supreme Court, she served as a judge on the Ontario Superior Court of Justice from 2017 to 2022. O'Bonsawin is the first Indigenous Canadian to serve as a Supreme Court justice.
O'Bonsawin was born in Hanmer, Ontario, a Franco-Ontarian community near Sudbury in 1974.[1] Her father was a machinist and her mother worked as a teacher. She is a Franco-Ontarian and an Abenaki member of the Odanak First Nation.
O'Bonsawin began her legal career working for Royal Canadian Mounted Police legal services.[2] O'Bonsawin worked as in-house counsel for Canada Post for nine years before she joined the Royal Ottawa Health Care Group in 2009. There she worked as general counsel and established its legal services department. She also appeared as counsel for the organization on mental-health cases before the Ontario Superior Court and Ontario Court of Appeal as well as tribunals such as Ontario's Consent and Capacity Board and the Ontario Review Board.[3]
While working, she also studied to earn a master's degree in law from Osgoode Hall Law School.[4] Her practice focused on mental health, labour and employment, human rights, and privacy. She also taught a course on Indigenous peoples and the law at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law.
In 2017, O'Bonsawin was the first indigenous Canadian to be appointed to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in Ottawa.[5] She assumed office on May 18, 2017.[6] In her application for the position, she described her legal philosophy as "progressive". Concurrently while working as a judge, O'Bonsawin worked on earning a doctorate in law from the University of Ottawa, and successfully defended her thesis on Gladue principles in February 2022.[7] Her PhD thesis has been embargoed and is not available for public consultation, which has raised concerns and attracted criticism.[8] [9]
In 2017, O'Bonsawin was the trial judge for the case CM Callow Inc v Zollinger, which applied the general organizing principle of good faith contractual performance from the 2014 Supreme Court of Canada case Bhasin v Hrynew.[10] [11] In 2018, the Court of Appeal for Ontario overturned her decision, ruling that she had improperly expanded the duty in a manner not directly linked to the performance of the contract and limited an expressly bargained-for right. In 2020, a majority of the Supreme Court of Canada overruled the Ontario Court of Appeal, reinstated O'Bonsawin's trial award, and provided clarity on the application of Bhasin.[12]
In 2024, it was reported that at least two of O'Bonsawin's decisions on the Superior Court of Justice have been reversed by the Ontario Court of Appeal. In one of the cases, the Court of Appeal suggested O'Bonsawin did not understand the law of evidence: "Although trial judges are presumed to know the law, this presumption does not entitle appellate courts to ignore what trial judges actually say in their reasons".[13] A prominent criminal lawyer accused her of making "sloppy errors" and of "misapplications of a bread and butter rule of criminal evidence".
In summer 2021, she co-chaired a conference organized by an association for French-speaking judges in Ontario.
In 2021, she was considered a possible candidate to succeed the retiring Rosalie Abella as a Supreme Court justice from Ontario.[14]
On August 19, 2022, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau nominated O'Bonsawin to the Supreme Court of Canada to replace retiring Justice Michael Moldaver.[15] On August 24, O'Bonsawin appeared for a special meeting with the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights to answer questions from parliamentarians from both the House of Commons and Senate. On August 26, 2022, the Office of the Prime Minister announced that her appointment was formally confirmed and she would join the Supreme Court on September 1, 2022, the same day that Moldaver was retiring.[16] O'Bonsawin is the first Indigenous person to sit on Canada's highest court.
O'Bonsawin is Franco-Ontarian and fluently bilingual, and as of May 2022, was taking lessons in the Abenaki language. She is married with two sons.