Case Studies

CANADIAN BAR ASSOCIATIONA sculpture of a blindfolded lady justice with a sword and scales. Behind it are books and a globe.

Equity Advisor
The CBA acts as the voice for the legal profession on numerous legislative, policy and regulatory issues. As its Equity Advisor, Charles provided strategic advice to the leadership, led consultations with a national scope, and published several papers for the CBA, including Ten Years Into the Future: Where are we now After ‘Touchstones for Equality’? and Comments on Methodologies to Study Accessibility to Law Schools.

Charles also guided the development of the CBA’s Take Action on Equity and Diversity, a resource guide and toolkit for law firms.

Notably, Charles was the Equity Advisor to the CBA as well as the Law Society of Upper Canada when each were finalists in the Canadian Race Relations Foundation’s Award of Excellence for anti-racism, equity and diversity programs.

GEORGE BROWN COLLEGE 

Four students sitting at a table with a laptop and a notebook

Equity and Anti-racism Consultant 
In 2019, this leader in post-secondary education engaged Charles C. Smith Consulting to help them address urgent issues around anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism. Today, the College has hired for a new position of Director of Indigenous Initiatives, created a new Indigenous Student Centre on its Casa Loma Campus, signed the Black North Pledge, published a comprehensive anti-racism strategy and has begun to roll out the corresponding anti-Racism campaign; informed by the recommendations and report by Charles C. Smith Consulting, which was credited and made publicly available on the College’s website.

THE WRITERS UNION OF CANADAClose up of a typewriter with the words "stories matter" typed on the paper

Equity and Organizational Change Consultant
The TWUC engaged Charles after the organization adopted institutionalized commitments to equity, but lacked a plan to execute. The matter was urgent, with the TWUC being thrust abruptly into the international spotlight when its magazine’s editor prefaced an issue on Indigenous works by declaring that he defended and promoted cultural appropriation as any author’s right.

Charles provided the TWUC with a detailed situational analysis and implementation plan - as the TWUC’s Executive Director put it, Charles was “taking all the discussion and policy work that we’ve done over the last three to four years on the issue, and figuring out how to make it real within our programs, within our leadership, how we make decisions.”