Brent Olthuis

Brent Olthuis is an experienced litigator with a broad practice. He represents individual and corporate clients in civil and commercial matters and also regularly acts for regulated professions and their member professionals, as well as for other public bodies. He has acted as external counsel to the Auditor General of Canada in respect of the 2015 audit of the Senate and for the Attorney General of British Columbia in constitutional proceedings. He presently acts for the City of Richmond in the trial of an Aboriginal title claim.

Brent has appeared before all levels of court in British Columbia and Ontario, including in 10 appeals before the Supreme Court of Canada and over 35 before the Court of Appeal for British Columbia. He has also conducted hearings before the trial courts in Alberta and Yukon Territory, the Tax Court of Canada, the Federal Court and Federal Court of Appeal, various administrative tribunals including the BC Financial Services Tribunal, the BC Human Rights Tribunal and the Sport Dispute Resolution Centre of Canada, as well as commercial arbitration panels.

Brent is recognized in numerous third-party publications, including Chambers, Best Lawyers, Who’s Who Legal, Benchmark Litigation, and The Legal 500 Canada. He has also received Martindale-Hubbell’s “AV/Preeminent” rating. Brent has published peer-reviewed articles in the fields of Aboriginal law, criminal practice and gaming law, and is author of the professional conduct chapter in a leading text on the practice of law in Canada. He has also authored and presented a number of papers at continuing legal education conferences, on diverse topics including administrative, criminal and constitutional law. Brent is also a regular faculty member for professional development offerings of The Advocates’ Society.

Brent served as a Director of the BC Law Institute for three years until September 2019. Before that (from 2015 to 2018), he served as an elected Provincial Council representative for the Canadian Bar Association BC Branch. He is a member of that organization as well as the Vancouver Bar Association, The Advocates’ Society, l’Association des juristes d’expression française de la Colombie-Britannique and the International Commission of Jurists Canada. Prior to entering practice, Brent served as law clerk to Chief Justice McMurtry and Justices Doherty and Sharpe of the Court of Appeal for Ontario and to Justice Frank Iacobucci of the Supreme Court of Canada.