Elise Hamill is the 2023-24 recipient of the Pro Bono Students Canada (PBSC) Chief Justice Richard Wagner Award. Elise was recognized for her leadership and outstanding volunteer work with the Madhu Verma Migrant Justice Centre, a non-profit committed to the advancement of migrant justice and supporting migrants with precarious status in New Brunswick. Elise sat down with Nexus to discuss her passion for pro bono legal work and work with the Migrant Justice Centre.
I was born and raised in Paris, Ontario. I graduated from the University of Ottawa with my Hons. Bachelor of Political Science. I am now heading into my third and final year at UNB’s Faculty of Law. In my free time I love camping, hiking, and going for bike rides on the Fredericton trails!
I’ve also always wanted to explore Canada’s Atlantic provinces. I thought that law school would be a really great opportunity to move to a new province and explore all that the east coast has to offer! I was also drawn to the smaller class sizes and the opportunity to get to know my classmates and professors. I knew that this would be important to me because my favorite classes in university were not the 200-person lectures, but rather the 12-person seminars where you had the opportunity to collaborate with and learn from your peers. When I saw that UNB Law prided itself on having these small class sizes and an intimate learning environment, I knew that that UNB would be a great fit for me!
I thought that it would be a wonderful way to get involved in the fight for access to justice. Working with the Madhu Verma Centre was a very welcoming place, and I am so grateful for their flexibility and kindness after a chaotic first couple of weeks of the semester caused by an apartment fire. I knew after my first meeting with my supervisor, that working with the Madhu Centre would be a great learning experience and introduce me to a community of people who deeply care about issues related to migrant justice.
Honestly, with everything else going on around me, I enjoyed just diving into the PBSC assignments. Working on projects that really mattered was a welcome distraction amid all the chaos. The support that I received from those at the Madhu Centre was just phenomenal throughout my time volunteering for them; I'm eternally grateful for that.
The Madhu Verma Migrant Justice Centre was assigned to me by the PBSC Coordinator—and I feel so lucky to have been matched with such an interesting project! I had been doing some work with the Red Cross’ Immigration Detention Monitoring Program, I think that is part of why I was matched with the Madhu Verma Centre. My PBSC placement perfectly reflected my areas of interest—working with vulnerable people and advocating for better policies and systems that affect them.
Of course! Essentially, we perform wellness checks with detainees. We meet with them and ensure that they are being treated properly while being detained. We look at whether they have adequate food and clothing, and whether they are being treated fairly and humanely. Based on the outcome of the interview, we may write a report, do a follow-up interview, or contact the detention center directly if there are concerns.
It is difficult to hear the stories of people who have been detained and of their ill-treatment while at these facilities. Ultimately our goal is to protect them and be advocates for their wellbeing.
Sure. The Madhu Verma Migrant Justice Centre is primarily concerned with helping migrant workers, underserved migrants, refugee claimants, international students, and people without status. Much of the work done at the Migrant Justice Centre is at the intersection of immigration, international and human rights law.
I was involved in several projects throughout my placement.
One project I was involved in was research on Canada's legal obligations to gender-diverse youth. This research was collected to help the Justice Centre develop a case to become interveners on Policy 713 and to represent gender-diverse international students or refugee students who are attending school in Canada.
We also looked at the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration study that was examining the effects of closed work permits on migrant workers in Canada. The position of the Madhu Verma Migrant Justice Centre is that this type of work permit is particularly harmful to the worker because they are tied to a single employer in a defined employment sector. If the worker is being mistreated, they can easily be returned to their country of origin. The Migrant Justice Centre is advocating for open work permits for all migrant workers, which would allow workers to seek different employers and types of work in Canada. Researching the parliamentary committee's work on this issue was a great opportunity to learn more about the actions that the government is taking to address the issue of mistreated migrant workers in Canada, but also how industries that rely on migrant labour have a significant role in maintaining the status quo.
Another project that I took on involved reviewing cases that relied on humanitarian and compassionate grounds as an avenue to permanent residency after all other options had been exhausted. Doing this research gave me insight into the hurdles associated with meeting the demands for an exception based on humanitarian and compassionate grounds. It also deepened my appreciation for the challenges faced by individuals seeking protection in Canada.
These are just a few of the interesting projects that I was able to work on during my time with the Madhu Verma Migrant Justice Centre.
I think one of the major benefits of the PBSC program is exposing students to a diverse and challenging set of legal problems. In my experience, every week there was a new task and a new issue. As I mentioned earlier, this placement was very intersectional. We saw immigration law, refugee law, human rights law, and even a bit of employment and labour law.
On a practical level, the research and writing skills used to produce the memos, briefs, and reports are very useful skills that will continue to be incredibly beneficial going forward. In terms of my goals for the future, I am now considering a career in immigration and refugee law, as a direct result of my exposure to this area of law.
I will certainly be pursuing pro bono work for the rest of my career. It's so important to give back to your community and to make sure that you're using your law degree to increase access to justice, particularly for vulnerable people.
I was surprised and deeply humbled to be selected for this award. It means a lot to me to see my work with the Migrant Justice Centre acknowledged. I want to thank my placement supervisors, Aditya Rao and Avery Judson, for their guidance and support. This was not strictly a research project. Each week, I was given the opportunity to learn about this critical area of the law and make a small contribution that was meaningful to the work of the Migrant Justice Centre.
There's a lot of responsibilities that come with a law degree. It is our job as future lawyers to make sure that people have access to legal representation. The law can be inaccessible for so many people, especially newcomers who may not understand their rights, know the language, or fear repercussions for speaking up about mistreatment. We need to be there for them. Providing free legal services is just one of many things we can do to support temporary foreign workers, immigrants, and refugees to Canada.
To any law students who may be considering PBSC, I urge you to apply. You will explore interesting areas of the law that you may not have considered. It might just spark an interest that can totally change your career path. No matter what your placement, the skills you will learn will enhance your ability to succeed in class and will be invaluable to your future career.
