Biography of the Honourable Robert Décary, Q.C.

The Honourable Robert Décary, Q.C., was appointed Commissioner of the Communications Security Establishment on June 18, 2010, for a three-year term.

Commissioner Décary was born in Montréal in 1944. He received his education at Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf (BA), at Université de Montréal (LL.L.) and the University of London (LL.M.). He was called to the Barreau du Québec in 1967 and named Queen's Counsel in 1986.

In the course of a career dedicated to public office, the law and journalism, he was Special Assistant to the Honourable Mitchell Sharp (then Canada's Secretary of State for External Affairs) (1970–1973), Co-Director for Research on the Task Force on Canadian Unity, the Pepin-Robarts Commission (1978–1979) and member of the French Constitutional Drafting Committee of the federal Department of Justice (1985–1990).

He practised law in Montréal, then in Gatineau, where, in the firm Noël, Décary, he specialized in representing many law offices and the Attorney General of Québec before the Supreme Court of Canada.

He has written a number of feature articles for Le Devoir and La Presse, and has contributed to many legal journals and textbooks. He is the author of Aide-mémoire sur la Cour suprême du Canada (1988) and of Chère Élize (or The Long and the Short History of the Repatriation) (1983).

He was a member of the Federal Court of Appeal from 1990 to 2009. In 2009, he was appointed arbitrator of the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland and in 2010 he became a member of the Sport Dispute Resolution Centre of Canada.