Lawrence Greenspon is an Ottawa based lawyer. [1] [2]
Greenspon was born and raised in Montreal and moved to Ottawa in 1974; he became a civil libertarian before commencing his legal work. [3]
Greenspon is a partner in the Ottawa firm Greenspon Granger Hill and is a certified specialist in both criminal defence, civil litigation. [4] He has been involved in the defence of a number of high-profile cases. [5] [6] [7] [8] In August 2017, Senator Mike Duffy announced that he would sue the Senate of Canada and the RCMP for $8 million in lost income and general damages because of his suspension and hired Greenspon to represent him. [9]
He is a past chair of the Ottawa Jewish Community Centre and the United Way Community Services Cabinet and has received several honours, including a Lifetime Achievement from Volunteer Ottawa and the Community Builder of the Year Award by the United Way. [10]
He married Angela Lariviere in July 2015. [11]
On January 3, 2018, the lawyer representing Joshua Boyle said that the defendant planned to have Greenspon and partner Eric Granger take over the defence against 15 criminal charges. [12] Boyle is a high-profile defendant because he and his family had been released after five years of captivity in Afghanistan only months before his arrest for offences alleged to have been committed in Ottawa. [13] [14]
In 2022, Greenspon represented the family of a 14-year old boy who climbed through City of Ottawa-erected fencing at the disused Prince of Wales Bridge and drowned after jumping into the Ottawa River. The family filed a $1.5 million lawsuit against the City alleging that it was negligent for not taking effective steps to stop such incidents at the bridge. [15]
Louise Arbour, is a Canadian lawyer, prosecutor and jurist.
Maher Arar is a telecommunications engineer with dual Syrian and Canadian citizenship who has resided in Canada since 1987.
Events from the year 2004 in Canada.
The Khadr family is an Egyptian-Canadian family noted for their ties to Osama bin Laden and connections to al-Qaeda.
Michael Dennis Duffy is a former Canadian senator and former Canadian television journalist. Prior to his appointment to the upper house in 2008, he was the Ottawa editor for CTV News Channel. In turning 75 on May 27, 2021, Duffy retired from the senate due to mandatory retirement rules.
Operation Crevice was a raid launched by Metropolitan and local police in England on the morning of 30 March 2004. It was in response to a report indicating cells of terrorists of Pakistani origin operating in the Thames Valley, Sussex, Surrey and Bedfordshire areas, the source of which was said to be an interception of an instruction sent from Al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan to militants in Britain. In March 2020 Jonathan Evans, Former Director General, MI5 gave an interview and citing one passage: 'The plot itself, however, appeared to be encouraged and fomented by al-Qa`ida in the tribal areas. It was one of the early ones we saw. It involved predominantly British citizens or British residents of Pakistani heritage, something which became something of a theme for this period'. The operation resulted in five men being found guilty in April 2007 of conspiring to cause explosions likely to endanger life.
The Chief William Commanda Bridge, formerly the Prince of Wales Bridge, is a pedestrian/cycling bridge and former rail bridge that spans the Ottawa River between Ottawa, Ontario and Gatineau, Quebec, Canada. It connects the Trillium Pathway in Ottawa to the Voyageurs Pathway in Gatineau. The bridge crosses the south channel of the river to Lemieux Island at the edge of Nepean Bay and continues across the northern channel into the Province of Quebec.
Mohammed Junaid Babar is a Pakistani American who, after pleading guilty to terrorist related offences in New York, testified in March 2006 against a group of men accused of plotting 21 July 2005 London bombings. In return for being a government supergrass, his sentence was drastically reduced to time served and he was released leading to widespread criticism in Britain.
Lawrence Cannon, is a Canadian politician from Quebec and Prime Minister Stephen Harper's former Quebec lieutenant. In early 2006, he was made the Minister of Transport. On October 30, 2008, he relinquished oversight of Transport and was sworn in as Minister of Foreign Affairs. He was defeated in the 2011 federal election by the NDP's Mathieu Ravignat. He was appointed as Canadian Ambassador to France in May 2012, and he served in that position until September 2017.
The Public Prosecution Service of Canada was established on December 12, 2006, by the Director of Public Prosecutions Act. A federal agency, the PPSC prosecutes offences on behalf of the Government of Canada. It is responsible to Parliament through the attorney general of Canada, who litigates on behalf of the Crown and has delegated most prosecution functions to the PPSC.
Mohammad Momin Khawaja is a Canadian found guilty of involvement in a plot to plant fertilizer bombs in the United Kingdom; while working as a software engineer under contract to the Foreign Affairs department in 2004 became the first person charged and found guilty under the Canadian Anti-Terrorism Act following the proof that he communicated with British Islamists plotting a bomb attack. On March 12, 2009, Khawaja was sentenced to 10.5 years in prison and was eligible for parole five years into the prison term. On December 17, 2010, Khawaja's sentence was increased to life imprisonment by the Ontario Court of Appeals.
On October 14, 2007, Robert Dziekański, a 40-year old Polish immigrant to Canada, was killed during an arrest at the Vancouver International Airport in Richmond, British Columbia (BC).
Hassan N. Diab is a Lebanese-Canadian citizen and sociologist who has been convicted in absentia of having planted the explosive that caused the 1980 Paris synagogue bombing. He has always countered the accusation by insisting he was in Lebanon, and has witnesses and evidence to prove it, at the time of the event.
The 2013 Via Rail Canada terrorism plot was a conspiracy to commit terrorist acts in and against Canada in the form of disruption, destruction or derailment of trains operated by Canada's national passenger railway service, Via Rail Canada. The alleged targeted train route was the Maple Leaf, the daily train service between Toronto and New York City operated jointly by Via Rail and Amtrak. A railway bridge over the Twenty Mile Creek in Jordan, Ontario, was later identified as the target, according to unsealed court documents.
The Canadian Senate expenses scandal, also known as Duffygate, was a political scandal concerning the expense claims of certain Canadian senators which began in late 2012. Senators Patrick Brazeau, Mike Duffy, Mac Harb, and Pamela Wallin claimed travel and living allowance expenses from the Senate for which they were not eligible. Deloitte LLP was retained to provide the Senate with an independent examination of the expense claims. Duffy, Harb, and Wallin repaid ineligible amounts. Harb retired a few months into the scandal, and in November 2013, Brazeau, Duffy, and Wallin were suspended from the Senate without pay. Brazeau, Duffy, and Harb were criminally charged. On April 21, 2016, Duffy was acquitted on all charges. Charges against Harb were withdrawn and no charges were to be laid against Wallin. The scandal attracted much public attention, with as many as 73% of Canadians following it closely. Many said that the scandal impacted the 2015 Canadian general election.
Colten Boushie was a 22-year-old Indigenous man of the Cree Red Pheasant First Nation who was fatally shot on a rural Saskatchewan farm by its owner, Gerald Stanley. Stanley stood trial for second-degree murder and for a lesser charge of manslaughter, but was ultimately acquitted in February 2018.
Deborah Sinclair is a Canadian social worker who has specialized in working with women who are victims of intimate partner violence. She served as an expert witness in court cases where intimate partner violence has played a role. She has been working with victims of violence for over thirty years.
On December 1, 2018, Huawei's board deputy chair Meng Wanzhou was detained upon arrival at Vancouver International Airport by Canada Border Services Agency officers for questioning, which lasted three hours. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police subsequently arrested her on a provisional U.S. extradition request for fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud in order to circumvent U.S. sanctions against Iran. On January 28, 2019, the U.S. Department of Justice formally announced financial fraud charges against Meng. The first stage of the extradition hearing for Meng began Monday, January 20, 2020, and concluded on May 27, 2020, when the Supreme Court of British Columbia ordered the extradition to proceed.
In February 2022, four Canadian men were arrested on allegations that they conspired to kill Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officers. The arrests occurred during the Canada convoy protest on the Coutts, Alberta, side of the Sweetgrass–Coutts Border Crossing. According to police, the plot was part of a wider plan to alter "Canada's political, justice and medical systems."