She was “shocked” when she received a terse one-page letter
on Jan. 17 from CBA President Rod Snow informing her that
she and her board colleagues had been “relieved of their duties,” and are no longer “authorized to act or speak on behalf of
CCCA.” The letter arrived a day after an intense weekend-long
mediation session led by Toronto litigator Martin Teplitsky and
involving negotiating teams from the CBA and the CCCA that
followed a long drawn-out 26-month battle between both sides
over the CCCA’s request for more resources and greater autonomy in its programming.
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“There was a professional, respectful tone. But I didn’t see
the dissolution of the board coming,” recalls Leanne Andree,
assistant vice-president and senior counsel at Sun Life Financial Inc. in Waterloo, Ont., who was one of the CCCA board
representatives on the mediation committee.
“It wasn’t like things had blown up and everybody stormed
out. When we didn’t resolve the issues mid-afternoon on Sun-
day, at least two members of the CBA negotiating committee
came over and hugged me, and said, ‘We’ll continue. Have a
nice weekend.’ ”
Snow’s email “completely blindsided” Foy and Andree who,
just hours earlier, had reached out to former CBA President
and Lead CBA Negotiator Guy Joubert to keep the dialogue
going between both sides. Foy read the letter on her BlackBerry
in an elevator en route to a lunch with Randy Marusyk, a part-
ner with the Ottawa firm, MBM Intellectual Property Law LLP,
about becoming a sponsor for the CCCA’s next world summit.
Sylvie Kuppek, who served as the Toronto-based executive
director of the CCCA until the CBA also dismissed her, came
up with the idea for the biennial international event first held
in Vancouver in 2008 and in Toronto, last September.
Although Foy put on her bravest face and went ahead with
her mid-day appointment with Marusyk (although not officially on behalf of the CCCA), Snow’s missive left her devastated.
“I was shocked and deeply hurt,” Foy recalls. “It was a matter of if they don’t like your argument and you’re too much of
a pain, they get rid of you. It’s not the way lawyers should deal
with each other and does not set a great example of civility
within the profession.
“It showed a complete lack of collegiality.”
Andree believes that last November, the CBA board of di-
rectors “gave their negotiating committee the authority to dis-
solve our board if we didn’t reach a deal.”
“I do not think there was an intention to reach a resolu-
tion,” says Foy, noting that she spent many hours during the
Christmas break — “in vain,” as it turned out, working on the
CCCA’s mediation brief. “And I was a volunteer.”
The amount of time Foy, a single mother of a now five-year-
old daughter, devoted to the negotiation and mediation process
was “phenomenal,” says Andree, who also logged many hours
and weekends attending board meetings away from her husband
(Chris Andree, a partner at Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP in
Waterloo, Ont.) and three children (now aged 8, 10 and 13) as a
volunteer with the CCCA, including a term as its president.
Foy now feels “personally offended” for having “essentially
been fired for being dedicated, committed, principled, constructive and acting in what I thought were the best interests
of corporate counsel. Yet clearly there was no space for me.”
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Leanne Andree
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LET TERS
foy’s hurt feelIngs are evident in raw remarks she
wrote in a Jan. 23 four-page letter to Snow, in which she de-
scribed the CBA’s treatment of her and her board as “high-
handed and shoddy,” and “punitive.”
“This is a sad day for the CBA and a sad day for you as presi-
dent. Ask yourself what this action tells the world about the
CBA’s (and your) values, the place of corporate counsel within
the CBA, and the treatment dedicated volunteers can expect
at the hands of the CBA.”
Snow says he will not reply to the letter, since it struck him as
“an invitation to rehash” more than two years’ worth of discus-
sions, meetings and correspondence exchanged between both
sides that concluded with 11th-hour mediation requested by
the CCCA.
