Non-Profit Board Members

Position: Board Member
Type: non-profit board of directors / unpaid
Organization: Canadian Environmental Law Association
Location: Toronto ON / Hybrid
Date posted: January 2025

The Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA) invites interested applications or nominations for qualified individuals to express interest in joining our Board of Directors.

CELA works toward protecting public health and the environment by seeking justice for those harmed by pollution or poor decision-making, and by changing policies to prevent pollution-related problems in the first place. Since 1970, CELA has used legal tools, conducted public legal education, undertaken ground-breaking research, and advocated for increased environmental protection, and to safeguard communities against environmental injustices. As a specialty clinic funded by Legal Aid Ontario, our primary focus is on assisting and empowering low-income people and disadvantaged communities.

CELA is a specialty legal aid clinic, funded by Legal Aid Ontario, with a service mandate to provide legal representation across the province of Ontario to individuals and groups who qualify for our services in the area of environmental law. In particular CELA provides services to those who would not be able to afford a lawyer, on important matters such as the protection of drinking water, prevention of pollution that impacts their health, and providing input to decision makers on significant environmental safety issues.

The members of CELA’s Board of Directors provide governance and oversight of CELA’s strategic priorities, wise use of its resources, and connection to client communities and the agencies that serve them. We look for members who bring professional skills as well as members who represent the communities we serve.

All Board Members must commit to honour the mission and values of the organization which can be seen at https://cela.ca/cela-values-statement/ and https://cela.ca/our-mandate/

CELA strives to ensure that the Board is comprised of members of the communities to be served by the clinic. Reasonable efforts are made to include persons representative of the low-income community, persons reflecting the diversity of the community, persons with experience working with community agencies, persons with financial, management, and legal skills, and persons from the environmental non-governmental and environmental professional sectors.

CELA encourages applicants for its Board of Directors from equity‐seeking groups, including but not limited to individuals who are Indigenous, Black, racialized, LGBTQI2S, persons with disabilities, and women.

Please provide your expression of interest to CELA’s Board Secretary and Office Manager/Executive Administrator at tracy @ cela.ca . 

Please mention you saw this at GoodWork.ca.

An application package will be provided to you upon receipt of your expression of interest, which will include an explanation of our Board member application process. We are currently recruiting for June 2025.