David P. Stevens

About David P. Stevens

David P. Stevens is a Toronto partner at Gowling WLG whose work brings together tax planning for companies and individuals, trusts and estates, and charity law. The client list runs from wealthy families and owner-managed businesses to trust companies, charities and not-for-profit groups. Whatever the file, the aim is the same: advice that's technically exact and still makes practical sense years down the road.

David's career has had a strong academic thread. Called to the Ontario bar in 1982, David went on to spend 15 years as a law professor at McGill University, and by 1999 was an associate professor in its Faculty of Law while also practising with Ogilvie Renault. In those academic years David ran the Ontario Law Reform Commission's charity law project and wrote its final report, published in 1996 in two volumes. That background still feeds into the practice today, especially on matters where tax questions overlap with governance and fiduciary duties.

In its 2026 High Net Worth guide, Chambers places David in Band 1 for Private Wealth Law in Canada, and its Canada guide ranks David nationally for charities and nonprofits. Best Lawyers in Canada has recognized David since 2006, and the areas it now lists are tax law, trusts and estates, and charities and non-profit law.

The writing didn't stop after McGill. David publishes and speaks often on how private companies and trusts are taxed and on tax-exempt entities, from Gowling WLG commentaries on recent federal budgets to a 2013 analysis in The Philanthropist of paragraph 149(1)(l) of the Income Tax Act. David also co-chaired the legal roundtable behind a Tides Canada Initiatives Society proposal for a new structure for registered charities, and co-authored the resulting paper, which The Philanthropist published in May 2010.