“I was delighted to accept this role,” says Professor Kevin Banks of his appointment to the International Labour Organization’s Committee of Experts, which examines how global standards related to work are applied.

As a member of the Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations (CEACR), Banks joins legal professionals of high international standing who provide impartial, technical assessments of how ILO member states are meeting their labour‑standards obligations.

“The Committee is composed of about 30 eminent jurists from different geographical regions, legal systems and cultures,” says Banks, who joined Queen’s Law in 2010 as the founding director of the Centre for Law in the Contemporary Workplace, a role he held until December 2025. Sitting alongside retired judges, former Ministers of Labour, and other senior legal figures, he will help shape labour rights, workplace protections, and social justice worldwide.

“Our main role is to examine the reports countries submit on how they are meeting the obligations of the conventions they’ve ratified,” he explains. “We then issue a report that identifies areas of compliance and non‑compliance and makes suggestions for improvement.”

The Committee’s impact is significant because its work enters many channels of influence and advances better working conditions around the world. “Our reports benefit the ILO, which needs to engage with its members when they’re not in compliance with the conventions,” he says. “But because the reports are published for the broad international community, they also widely influence thinking and action in both the public and private spheres.”

His career — as a practitioner, scholar, and teacher — has long centred on international labour law. As a result, he’s well-acquainted with the ILO’s conventions, and has often drawn upon them. Before joining Queen’s Law, Banks worked at the Labour Secretariat created under the North American Free Trade Agreement as an analyst. He then joined the federal public service, directing the office responsible for negotiating trade‑related labour agreements and overseeing their implementation.

At Queen’s, Banks, who also serves as Editor‑in‑Chief of the Canadian Labour and Employment Law Journal, has authored numerous influential research papers. “One substantial article was on making international trade‑related labour standards effective,” he says. “Another [examined] the competitive pressures on labour law created by international economic integration.”

Other professional roles have helped prepare him for his new role on the Committee of Experts. He chaired the first international arbitration panel to hear a dispute dealing with labour standards under a free trade agreement and played a major role in writing the panel’s report. He later published an article reflecting on that experience and questioning, as he put it, “the purposes we pursue when linking labour standards to trade, and how those purposes should be reflected in trade‑agreement language.”

Although Banks’ research focuses on freedom of association, anti‑discrimination law and employment‑standards enforcement, the Committee has tasked him with examining the Occupational Safety and Health conventions and the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples conventions. “This isn’t directly aligned with my previous expertise, but I have enough background to learn quickly and make a contribution in those areas,” he says.

The Committee’s reports, he notes, are among the most authoritative and persuasive documents interpreting international labour law. “I’m joining a body that does vital work. I’m putting my shoulder to the wheel, and my goal is to help keep that good work moving forward,” he says. “And I’ll bring a distinctly Canadian perspective to their deliberations — for the first time in at least 60 years, I’m told.”

By Kirsteen MacLeod