BIOGRAPHY
David Masse is a lawyer living in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, admitted to the Quebec Bar and to the Law Society of Ontario, and practising in association with Caravel Law. He also provides business law and governance consulting services via Governance View Consulting, and is a senior officer of Towerhouse Data Corporation.
Education: Concordia University, Montreal (B.A.); McGill University, Faculty of Law (BCL., LLB).
Secondment: to the Ontario Securities Commission as Legal Counsel - Enforcement and as Legal Counsel - Corporate Finance, 1985-1986.
Previous positions: Senior Legal Counsel and Deputy Corporate Secretary, CGI Group Inc. (2003 - 2015); Assistant Corporate Secretary (1997-2003) of Bell Canada and BCE Inc. Associate (1980-1985; 1987-1989), Partner (1989-1997) and special counsel (1997 - 2004) De Grandpré Chait (prior to May 1999, Chait Amyot) where he practiced exclusively in the area of commercial law. He was the firm partner responsible for the corporate department and the partner who chaired the committee on the law of technology. Legal counsel, BCE Inc. (1985-1987).
Published works: Contributor and author, Foreign investment vehicles and other legal considerations under Quebec and Canadian Law, 1994 conference on Legal and Financial Aspects of Foreign Investment in China, sponsored by The Federation of Chinese Canadian Professionals; contributor and author, The Computerized Practice of Commercial Law, 1994 symposium on Productivity by Integration - Computers and Software for Lawyers; contributor and author, Les accords de partenariat avec des entreprises chinoises 1995 seminar on construction in China on behalf of the Quebec Ministry of International Affairs, Immigration and Cultural Communities; contributor and author, The Legal Framework in Quebec Civil Law of Commercial Transactions on the Information Superhighway, in the context of a 1995 symposium entitled Information Highway: Convergence of Law and Technology and published in the McGill Law Journal at (1997) 42 McGill L. J. 403; author: L'État a-t-il un rôle à jouer dans le développement de l'inforoute in Policy Options, October, 1996 published by the Institute for Research on Public Policy; contributor and author, L'information juridique à l'âge de l'informatique, a speech given to the annual convention of provincially appointed judges in Quebec City, on October 6, 1996; author of the AQDIJ brief presented to the Quebec Parliamentary Commission on Culture in the context of the hearings on the information highway, October 30th, 1996; co-contributor and co-author: Economic Modelling and Risk Management in Public Key Infrastructures, an article accompanying a speech given at the RSA Data Security Inc. Annual Symposium on January 31st, 1997 in San Francisco, California; author La preuve des inscriptions informatisées, presented to the continuing legal education session of the Quebec Bar Association at the annual convention of May 30th, 1997 and published in Congrès Annuel du Barreau du Québec (1997) at page 429, forming part of the Dévelopements récents collection; author, The ABC's of Authentication: A is for Atom, B is for Bit and C is for Care and Chair of the panel on authentication for a national summit conference to solve the problems of authenticating, preserving and citing electronic legal information entitled The Official Version, Toronto, November 20-22 1997 organized by the Canadian Association of Law Libraries ("CALL"); contributor and author Managing Information and Emerging Technologies, a presentation made to the Annual Conference of the Canadian Corporate Counsel Association, April 23-24, 1998; contributor and author, Digital Signatures - The Law and High Fidelity IP Pipes, an article accompanying a presentation made to an international e-commerce symposium held in Montreal on September 29, 1998; author, The Role of Information in Corporate Governance, a paper presented in Montreal, Quebec on September 29, 1999 at the Second Quebec Summit on Corporate Governance organized under the auspices of the Institute for International Research and in Toronto at the Annual Conference of the Canadian Society of Corporate Secretaries on October 21, 1999; contributor and author, La preuve et l'utilisation du courriel à l'insu de l'auteur, a lecture given on November 10, 2000 in the context of the Quebec Bar Association's continuing legal education program and published in Développements récents en droit civil, Vol 143, Les éditions Yvon Blais, Montreal, 2000, at page 145; author and contributor, Comment créer une transaction sécuritaire et légale - La signature électronique et les contrats réalisés sur Internet, a presentation made to a conference on e-commerce organized by the Institute for International Research and held in Montreal on December 11 and 12, 2000; guest lecturer and author, La mission du Secrétariat de l'entreprise - La circulation de l'information et la gestion des archives, given in the context of the course entitled Institutions et documents officiels (ARV-3030), Département de Bibliothéconomie et des sciences de l'information, Université de Montréal; contributor and author, Directors' liability and the 2001 reform of the Canada Business Corporations Act: A uniquely Canadian journey, a paper provided for the information of the delegates at the Annual Conference of the Canadian Society of Corporate Secretaries on September 20, 2001 and presented in Toronto on December 6, 2001; Presentation entitled Reflecting on electronic Commerce given on March 19, 2004 to the students in the masters' program in electronic commerce offered jointly at the University of Montreal by the École des hautes études commerciales and the faculty of law; Presentation entitled Changing role, challenges and priorities of Corporate Secretaries given at the 2005 Symposium on Corporate Effectiveness sponsored by the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators in collaboration with the Canadian Coalition for Good Governance, the Institute of Corporate Directors and the Canadian Society of Corporate Secretaries in Toronto, on December 8, 2005; panel moderator and presenter, Corporate Ethics, a Global Perspective, given at the 2006 Annual Conference on Corporate Governance of the Canadian Society of Corporate Secretaries in Kelowna, British Columbia on September 9, 2006; Panelist, Executive Insight: To disclose or not to Disclose, a conference organized by the Canadian Investor Relations Institute and sponsored by the Toronto Stock Exchange, held in Montreal, Quebec on November 16, 2006; panelist, NI 54-101 Communication with Beneficial Shareholders, a break-out session at the annual conference of the Canadian Investor Relations Institute, in Whistler, British Columbia on June 18, 2007; Co-Chair and panelist, Expert panel: National Instrument 54-101 – A discussion on the proxy voting system in Canada, and More than codes - Management structures and systems for developing a culture of ethics and compliance, respectively, a panel discussion and a presentation offered to attendees at the 9th Annual Corporate Governance Conference of the Canadian Society of Corporate Secretaries held at La Malbaie, Québec, from September 9 to September 12, 2007; Co-panelist with Messrs. Norm Steinberg, Ogilvy Renault and John Siemann, Laurel Hill LLC, at a panel discussion on shareholder activism organized by the Canadian Investor Relations Institute held in Montreal, Quebec on January 17, 2008; Guest lecturer, A Field Guide to the Modern Corporation and its Board of Directors, McGill University, Centre for Continuing Education, Internal Stakeholder Communications CPRL 530 – 761, Instructor: Cindy Lipomanis; author of the White Paper on Shareholder Communication proposing a series of amendments to Canadian corporation statutes and Canadian securities regulation on behalf of the Canadian Society of Corporate Secretaries; Co-panelist with Messrs. John Campion and John Keefe at the Federated Press 12th Best Practices for Audit Committee Effectiveness held in Toronto, Ontario on April 18 and 19, 2011, for the panel on Crisis Management and Internal Investigations, and author of the paper entitled Who Does What When Crisis Strikes? Corporate Counsel’s Point of View.
Memberships: Montreal Bar Association, Quebec Bar Association, Law Society of Ontario, and Canadian Bar Association, and member of the organizing committee for the 1997 Quebec Bar Association convention; Associate member: American Bar Association and member of the Science and Technology Section; Member, (1995 - ), Director, (1995 - 1997), past Executive Vice-president (1995 -1996) and past President (1996 -1997), Quebec Association for the Advancement of Law and Technology ("AQDIJ") and Chair of the AQDIJ Organizing Committee (1995 -1996); Member (1997 - 2004), Society of Corporate Secretaries and Governance Professionals; Member (1997 - ), member of the Board of Directors (2005 - 2018), Secretary (2005 - 2006), Vice-President (2006 - 2008), Vice-Chairman (2008 - 2010), and Chairman of the Board (2010 - 2017) of Governance Professionals of Canada (formerly the Canadian Society of Corporate Secretaries); Member of the Board of Directors, and Secretary: The Wilson Foundation (2000 - ); Member: Organizing committee (2001-2003) and Management Committee (2003 - ) of the L.R. Wilson Chair in Information Technology and E-commerce Law, Public Law Research Centre, Faculty of Law, Université de Montréal (2001 - ); Chair of the Organizing Committee of the CSCS Shareholder Democracy Summit (2011).
October 2018
David@Masse.org