“I have always been driven to effect change for Indigenous Nations, communities and peoples,” says Jaimie Lickers, Law’07. In a career that already includes successfully representing Indigenous people in Canada in a host of landmark decisions, she has excelled as a changemaker. For her work, Lexpert magazine has named her one of its 2020 “Rising Stars: Leading Lawyers Under 40.”
“For over a decade, I was able to advance Indigenous rights in Canada through the legal system; by negotiating change in that system and by litigating rights issues in the Courts,” she says.
Lickers became Gowling WLG’s first-ever Aboriginal woman partner and led the firm’s national Indigenous Law Group. As a litigator with the firm, she took on, and won, important cases affecting the legal status and lives of Indigenous people. Two of them saw her appear before the Supreme Court of Canada: Daniels v. Canada, representing the Assembly of First Nations on whether Métis and non-status Indians are “Indians” under the Constitution; and Chippewas of the Thames First Nation v. Enbridge Pipelines, representing the Chiefs of Ontario on the adequacy of consultation relating to a pipeline development. Three other cases, Foster and Howse, Wells, and Abbott took her to the Federal Court, where she fought for the rights of non-status Indians who applied for membership in the new Qalipu Mi’kmaq Band. At Gowling WLG, she also structured and drafted trusts for over 25 First Nations with assets totalling $1 billion, expanding their wealth, economic development, and autonomy.
Building on that work, in October she joined CIBC as VP of Indigenous Markets. “Now I can advance Indigenous economic interests by leading a team of Indigenous trust and lending experts at the Bank,” she says. “Together, we are working to advance economic reconciliation in Canada.”
Guiding her throughout all that work are introductory remarks presented to her class when they arrived at Queen’s Law in September 2004. “I will never forget sitting in the auditorium in the Law Building on my first day of law school,” Lickers recalls. “During our welcoming address, Dean Alison Harvison Young delivered an important message: the legal community is small and our reputations in that community just started. Of course, it goes without saying that I received a world class education at Queen’s, but that message from the Dean has guided my career.”
It’s also advice Lickers, who became a member of the Dean’s Council earlier this year, now passes on to law students and new lawyers. “The most important asset you will hold throughout your career is your reputation; and your reputation among your colleagues is as important as the reputation you cultivate with your clients,” she says. “The level of integrity with which you act will define you and your career.”
Read the alumni profile on Jaimie Lickers in Queen's Law Reports 2018!
By Lisa Graham