UNB Appoints Ian Peach Dean of Law
The University of New Brunswick is pleased to announce that Ian Peach has been appointed the Dean of the Faculty of Law. Dean Peach's terms will commence officially on August 1st, 2010. Please join us in welcoming Mr. Peach and his family to the UNB Law and Fredericton communities.
A Maritimer by birth, Ian Peach received his B.A. from Dalhousie University before going to Queen's University for his LL.B. Since graduating in the 1980's, he has held a number of senior positions with federal, provincial, and territorial governments in Canada and at the University of Regina. His specialties are constitutional law, Aboriginal law, federalism and intergovernmental relations, and Aboriginal policy and self-government negotiations.
Mr. Peach articled with the Constitutional Law Branch of the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General and, immediately upon completion of his Bar Admission tests, began work with the House of Commons on the first of two Parliamentary committees on constitutional reform established in the wake of the defeat of the Meech Lake Accord. He was then hired as a negotiator for the Government of the Yukon in the Charlottetown Accord negotiations and was involved in the negotiation of both the First Ministers' Agreement and the accompanying legal text.
His experience in the Charlottetown Accord negotiations led him to a position in the Department of Intergovernmental Relations in Saskatchewan, where he quickly rose to be Director of the Constitutional Relations Branch. There, his work focused primarily on national unity issues, at the time of the 1995 Quebec referendum on independence and its aftermath, and Aboriginal self-government. He transferred to Saskatchewan Executive Council to become a Senior Policy Advisor to the Premier and the Cabinet Committee on Planning and Priorities in 1997, where he worked on a wide variety of legal and policy issues across government, including Aboriginal self-government negotiations, a number of federal-provincial and First Nations-provincial negotiations, and strategic planning and performance management processes for government. During this period, Mr. Peach was also part of the team that drafted the Saskatchewan Government's factum in the Quebec Secession Reference before the Supreme Court of Canada.
After several years in Executive Council, Mr. Peach was appointed the 2003-04 Government of Saskatchewan Senior Policy Fellow at the Saskatchewan Institute of Public Policy, a policy research institute based at the University of Regina. He remained at the Institute for four years, becoming Research Director and, on January 1, 2005, Director of the Institute. In his time as Director, he significantly expanded the size, level of activity, and impact of the Institute, connecting the Institute to scholarly networks across Canada and around the world. He also published extensively during this period and taught several courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels while Director of the Institute.
His reputation as Director led to his being invited in 2007 to create an Aboriginal Policy Research Network at the Office of the Federal Interlocutor for Métis and Non-Status Indians, to increase the level of policy-relevant scholarship on issues of concern to Métis, non-status Indians and urban Aboriginal people. While working at the Office of the Federal Interlocutor, Mr. Peach also returned to Queen's University to undertake the LL.M. program, receiving his LL.M. in the autumn of 2009. Having successfully launched that Research Network and managed it through its first two years of growth, Mr. Peach left the Office of the Federal Interlocutor to become an Associate at KTA Consulting and the KTA Centre for Collaborative Government, where he remained until taking up his current appointment as Dean of Law at the University of New Brunswick.
