Prior to launching Catherine Peters Dispute Resolution, Catherine practiced Human Resources law for 30 years with a prominent boutique firm in Toronto. She retired from private practice at the end of 2022.
While she was in private practice, Catherine worked with a wide range of organizational clients in both the public and private sectors. From the outset, Catherine’s practice focused on human rights and equity issues. The scope of her practice in this area developed and expanded continuously over the years as organizations’ obligations with respect to human rights and equity issues evolved and became an increasingly critical priority in their relationships with their employees (whether unionized or non-unionized), customers, and members of the public. For several years prior to her retirement, human rights and equity issues were the main focus of Catherine’s practice.
In the course of her practice, Catherine developed extensive breadth and depth of expertise with respect to a wide range of human rights and equity issues arising with respect to employment and the provision of services. She regularly advised organizational clients on the development and review of anti-discrimination and harassment policies and complaint investigation procedures, proactive discrimination and harassment prevention strategies, incident response, and dispute resolution. She has been involved in numerous workplace investigations, working with investigators and advising clients on investigation process, strategy issues, and remedial responses to substantiated complaints. She has represented clients in numerous mediations with respect to human rights disputes, including complex multi-party negotiations involving potential exposure to significant legal, financial and reputational risk. She has also represented clients in many human rights-related proceedings before labour arbitrators, federal and provincial human rights tribunals, the courts and other administrative tribunals. As a result of this wealth of experience with human rights investigations, mediations and litigation, Catherine has gained critical insights into best practices for conducting investigations and preparing robust investigation reports, as well as successful strategies for resolving human rights and other workplace disputes. These insights enable Catherine to provide valuable and effective dispute resolution services to clients.
In addition to her legal practice in the human rights and equity field, Catherine was the founding Chair of her law firm’s diversity, equity and inclusion program. This experience assisted Catherine to expand her expertise in developing, implementing and supporting the success of diversity, equity and inclusion strategies and initiatives, which is a skill set which she also brings to her dispute resolution work. In 2016, Catherine was awarded a Lexpert Zenith Award for Celebrating Diversity and Inclusion for her work in advancing diversity, equity and inclusion in the legal profession.