Irwin Cotler
The Honorable Irwin Cotler is Canada's Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada. He was sworn into these positions on December 12, 2003.
He was born on May 8, 1940 in Montreal, Quebec. Son of a lawyer, he studied at McGill University and for a short period, he worked with federal Minister of Justice John Turner.
Before his election to Parliament, Dr. Cotler was a Professor of Law at McGill University in Montreal since 1973 and the Director of its Human Rights Program. He has been on a leave of absence since his election as a member of parliament in 1999. He has also been a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at Yale Law School and is the recipient of five honorary doctorates. He was appointed in 1992 as an Officer of the Order of Canada.
Human rights activity
Irwin Cotler has served on the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and its sub-Committee on Human Rights and International Development, as well as on the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. In 2000, Mr. Cotler was appointed Special Advisor to the Minister of Foreign Affairs on the International Criminal Court.
Irwin Cotler is considered an expert on international law and human rights law . As an international human rights lawyer, Cotler served as counsel to former prisoners of conscience Andrei Sakharov in the Soviet Union, Nelson Mandela in South Africa, Jacobo Timmerman in Latin America, Muchtar Pakpahan in Asia, as well as other well known political prisoners and dissidents. Cotler represented Natan Sharansky, who was imprisoned in the Soviet gulag for Jewish activism. After his release, Sharansky went on to become Israeli Deputy Prime Minister. Saad Ibrahim, an Egyptian democracy activist imprisoned by the Egyptian government, was represented by Cotler and acquitted in 2003. He has also defended both Palestinians and Israelis against their own governments, and he participated in a minor role in the Camp David peace agreement between Israel and Egypt.
Politics
Though he intended his foray into politics to be a brief departure from his academic career, this changed when Prime Minister Paul Martin called upon him to enter cabinet.
Cotler recalled the conversation during which he was informed of the appointment as follows:
Martin: What do I do with a man who is both an expert on justice and human rights?
Cotler: I always thought justice meant human rights.
Martin: Good answer, minister of justice.
Views on anti-Semitism
Cotler is popular within the Canadian Jewish community, given his attempts to bring Nazi war criminals to justice and his strong support of Israel. Irwin Cotler separated six categories of anti-Semitism and find thirteen indices of discrimination against Jews that characterizes the "List of Canadian Ministers of Justice
