Ritu Khullar

The Honourable Ritu Khullar KC
Ritu Khullar in 2018
Chief Justice of Alberta
Incumbent
Assumed office November 28, 2022
Nominated by	Justin Trudeau
Preceded by	Catherine Fraser
Chief Justice of the Court of Appeal for the Northwest Territories
Incumbent
Assumed office November 28, 2022
Preceded by	Catherine Fraser
Chief Justice of the Nunavut Court of Appeal
Incumbent
Assumed office November 28, 2022
Preceded by	Catherine Fraser
Personal details
Born	(1964-01-01) January 1, 1964 Fort Vermilion, Alberta, Canada
Residence(s)	Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Alma mater	University of Alberta(BA) University of Toronto (LLB)
Occupation	lawyer, judge

Ritu Khullar, KC is a Canadian jurist who currently serves as the Chief Justice of Alberta and Chief Justice of the Court of Appeal for the Northwest Territories and the Nunavut Court of Appeal. She was appointed on November 28, 2022 and sworn in on February 23, 2023.

Prior to the Court of Appeal, Justice Khullar was appointed to the Court of King's Bench of Alberta in 2017. She is the first woman of South Asian descent to be appointed as a provincial chief justice in Canada.

Early life and education

Khullar was born in 1964 in Fort Vermilion, Alberta to Punjabi teacher parents who emigrated from India, and was raised in the rural communities of La Crete and Morinville. She also briefly lived in Jamaica from 1969 to 1972. Her mother’s family was Sikh and her father’s Hindu. She attended Old Scona Academic High School in Edmonton, graduating in 1981.

She received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, graduating magna cum laude from the University of Alberta in 1985, and a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Toronto Faculty of Law in 1991, and was admitted to the Bar of Alberta in 1992.

Career

Legal career

After law school, Khullar served as law clerk to the Alberta Court of Appeal and Queen's Bench from 1991 to 1992, after which she worked as an associate at Fraser Milner Casgrain and another Edmonton based firm.

Justice Khullar was an associate and then a partner with Chivers Carpenter Lawyers from 2002 to 2009 and then managing partner from 2009 to 2017. According to the firm, “her practice was focused on litigation relating to public law issues including labour and employment, privacy, administrative, human rights, and constitutional law.” She also represented public and private sector unions.

She has also appeared in front of numerous administrative trials and every level of court in Canada, including the Supreme Court of Canada where she acted as counsel for the intervener for United Nurses of Alberta and Alberta Federation of Labour in Saskatchewan Federation of Labour v. Saskatchewan, and the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund in Vriend v Alberta and R v Ewanchuk. She was appointed Queen's Counsel in 2014.

Khullar was appointed to the Court of Queen's Bench of Alberta in 2017, and in March 2018, Jody Wilson-Raybould, then Attorney General of Canada announced Khullar's elevation to the Court of Appeal.

On November 28, 2022, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Khullar's appointment as Chief Justice of the Court of Appeal, replacing then Chief Justice Catherine Fraser. Regarding her elevation to the role, she commented, “the opportunity to serve the people of Alberta, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut in this way is an enormous privilege and responsibility to which I am wholly committed.”

On her appointment, Trudeau said, “I wish the Honourable Ritu Khullar every success as she takes on her new role. She is a respected member of the legal community and brings a wealth of experience in multiple areas of law to the bench. I am confident Chief Justice Khullar will be a great asset to the people of Alberta, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut.”

Teaching career

Khullar has taught labour, constitutional, and administrative law at the University of Alberta, Faculty of Law alongside various seminars on privacy and labour arbitration.

Awards

• 2020 Lifetime Achievement Award. (Women In Law Leadership Awards)
• 2023 Canadian Inspiration Awards. (South Asian Awards)

Jurisprudence

Khullar has stated that she believes Canada’s judicial system should reflect the diversity of the country, both in demographics and in lived experiences. A proponent of the living tree doctrine and judicial activism, Khullar has advocated for the rights of various protected groups, ranging from those with a disability to those under the LGBT spectrum. She described the role of judge in a constitutional democracy as having "to be alive to the interpretive principle that the constitution is a ‘living tree’ that is adaptable as society evolves, but is not a document that should be changed easily – the tree should not be uprooted."

Describing the Constitution of Canada as an aspirational document and "not a neutral legal instrument," Khullar has used three notable 2015 Supreme Court cases known as the Labor Trilogy (Mounted Police Association of Ontario v Canada, Meredith v. Canada (Attorney General), and Saskatchewan Federation of Labour v Saskatchewan) to assert that their implications contributed to a significant evolution in the interpretation of part (d) of Section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Regarding R v Oakes, Khullar has discussed the development of privacy law in the context of employment and emphasized how the principles of balance and probability in the Oakes test has given labor arbitrators the ability to scrutinize the decisions of employers that have an impact on the privacy of their employers, both by shifting the power imbalance and protecting human dignity.

Further, remarking on R v Duarte and R v Wong, she concurred with the judgment on how unregulated technology has the potential to threaten our fundamental right to privacy based on Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and spoke on how private sector privacy legislation should be interpreted regardless of whether the threat to a protected right is threatened by a public or private actor. As such, she remarks that legislation of that nature should be given a "broad, liberal, and purposive” interpretation to comply with both national and international standards of constitutional law.

Personal life

Khullar is married to constitutional lawyer and public servant Rob Reynolds with whom she has two sons.