The Ontario Review Board - What and Why?

The Ontario Review Board- What and Why?

This webinar will consist of an outline of the Criminal Code framework that creates the Board, and others like it across Canada. Jean will give some historical and legal context for the concept of "not criminally responsible" (NCR), explain the consequences of being found NCR or unfit, and drill down to how hearings work and the evidence usually tendered to them. 

Jean Polak is a member and alternate chair of the Ontario Review Board but speaks today on her own behalf and not as a spokesman for the Board. 

She is also an experienced litigator whose practice as a barrister includes municipal prosecutions, estate litigation and commercial litigation (such as construction liens, employment law and property disputes).  Earlier in her career she also did criminal defense work.  Jean practices as a solicitor in the area of wills and estates. 

Jean was called to the bar in 1989, and began her legal career as a civil litigator in Toronto at what was then Tory Tory DesLauriers & Binnington.  In 1993, Jean chose to relocate to Muskoka, where she initially worked for a small firm, then opened her own practice in 2000.  She successfully ran that sole practice for over twenty years before joining Barriston LLP as Counsel in 2021.

Jean has always been active in her community.  Since moving to Muskoka, Jean has volunteered as a member and past president of the Rotary Club of Bracebridge, an assistant governor with Rotary International District 7010, as a committee chair with Community Living South Muskoka and as a board member of the local hospital, the Muskoka Heritage Foundation, and its successor the Muskoka Conservancy.  At a provincial level she has also served as a member of the Chief Justice of Ontario's Advisory Committee on Professionalism and as a director of The Advocates' Society.  She is currently a provincially-appointed grant review team volunteer for the Trillium Foundation.  She is a Rotary Citizen of the Year, recipient of the Town of Bracebridge Good Citizenship Award, and in 2019 she was awarded the Ontario Medal for Good Citizenship by the Province of Ontario.