Future Series: Managing Environmental Risks Across the Value Chain

Brad Gilmour is head of the firm's regulatory department and co-head of the environmental department. His practice focuses primarily on environmental, energy, regulatory and aboriginal law. He has significant experience in facility approval applications associated with a broad range of energy, natural resource, chemical, petrochemical, hydro, oil sands, carbon capture and storage, bio-fuel, renewable power and other industry types. Brad appears before the Alberta Environmental Appeals Board, the Alberta Energy Regulator (formerly, the Energy Resources Conservation Board), the Alberta Utilities Commission, the Natural Resources Conservation Board and the Canada Energy Regulator (formerly, the National Energy Board). Brad also regularly advises clients concerning regulatory compliance issues, spills, contaminated sites and environmental prosecutions. Brad has also appeared before various courts including the Provincial Court of British Columbia, the Provincial Court of Alberta, the Court of Appeal of Alberta, the Provincial Court of Saskatchewan and the Supreme Court of Canada.

Susannah has held senior positions in the energy and technology sectors in Canada, the United States and Europe, most recently as Director of Corporate Affairs for LNG Canada.

She joined LNG Canada in 2013 as a Shell secondee and has been responsible for the project’s federal and provincial regulatory approvals, Indigenous relations, government relations, media relations and community communications. Under her leadership, the project achieved federal and provincial environmental approvals on schedule and received unprecedented support from First Nations, communities and governments. 

Prior to joining LNG Canada, Susannah served as Vice President, Value Chain Integration, Shell Canada. In this capacity, she was responsible for identifying new business opportunities across Shell’s multiple businesses in Canada. Prior to this position, Susannah was Vice President, Communications, Upstream International based in The Hague.

Susannah was previously Head, Government Relations for Shell Canada, where she established the government relations practice to support Shell Canada’s Upstream, Downstream, and manufacturing businesses. 

Prior to joining Shell in 2009, Susannah was Director, Government Affairs for TransCanada Pipelines based in the United States, where she was responsible for driving government policy at federal and state levels in support of TransCanada’s existing power and pipeline interests, as well as new business development activities.

Susannah was named one of Vancouver magazine’s Power 50 in 2019 and on B.C. Business’s 2015 Most Influential Women in Business list. She was also recognized as a 2019 Most Influential Woman in Business by Business in Vancouver magazine.  

Nicole Flanagan is a Senior Climate Change & ESG Advisor and a registered professional engineer in Ontario and British Columbia. She has more than 20 years of experience consulting in environmental and sustainability planning and policy, ESG, climate risk assessments, strategic carbon consulting, and greenhouse gas emission quantification. She has assisted companies in the development of ESG programs, net zero planning, roadmap development and both physical and transition climate risk assessments supporting Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures. In addition, Nicole has a background in program development, carbon offset planning as well as climate action planning across a variety of sectors. Her clients have included various levels of governments, power, utilities, manufacturers, mining, and oil & gas companies. Nicole was previously responsible for Stantec’s accredited GHG verification services under ISO 14065 and has provided training on the ISO 14064 suite of greenhouse gas standards on behalf of the Canadian Standards Association.

Jessica advises Canadian and international clients on a broad range of trade and investment matters, including import and export compliance, customs audits, trade remedy inquiries, WTO law, bilateral and regional free trade agreements, anti-corruption compliance, export controlled goods and technology and the Controlled Goods Program, economic sanctions, third party due diligence in international commercial transactions, product regulation and labelling, supply chain integrity and other cross-border issues.

Jessica represents clients in customs appeals and trade remedy proceedings before the Canadian International Trade Tribunal (CITT) and the Canadian Federal Courts, verifications and enforcement actions by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and other Canadian government departments that regulate imports and
exports, and investigations by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the CBSA, Global Affairs Canada and other domestic and foreign law enforcement agencies. She also advises businesses in designing and implementing effective trade compliance programs and business ethics internal controls, assessing risk exposure, and conducting internal reviews and investigations of potential compliance violations.