Jacques J.M. Shore, C.M.

About Jacques J.M. Shore, C.M.

Jacques Shore is an Ottawa partner at Gowling WLG who helps Canadian and international businesses, governments and non-profits work through federal regulation, public law and their dealings with officials. The core of the practice is regulatory and negotiation work on trade and procurement, with Canada-US relations, nuclear energy, environmental questions, national security and cultural policy all part of the mix. Amazon, Simon & Schuster and Ferrero are among the clients, and the work for them has covered foreign investment review and appearances before federal and provincial officials. Within the firm, Jacques is a senior member of the Advocacy Group, once led the National Government Affairs Group and has sat on the national external management committee.

Jacques's career began in Ottawa in 1980 with two years on criminal justice policy at the Secretariat of the Ministry of the Solicitor General. Before coming to Gowling WLG, Jacques also served as the Security Intelligence Review Committee's first director of research, at the body that reviews CSIS for Parliament, and held a senior staff post with the Macdonald Royal Commission, handling constitutional work and the research on the Northern Territories. Trained in both of Canada's legal traditions, with a civil law degree from the Université de Montréal and common law from McGill, Jacques is called to the bar in Ontario, Quebec, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. Jacques spent five years as Canada's chief negotiator on a land claim and was co-lead counsel for Air India victims' families at the federal inquiry.

Clients can work with Jacques in English or French, and Jacques also speaks Polish and has a working knowledge of German. Viewers may know the name from CBC, CTV and BNN, where Jacques comments regularly on law and public policy. Jacques writes, too: journal articles on national security and cyber security, op-eds, and children's books that encourage understanding between faiths, along with illustrations for a published collection of short stories. In 2022 Jacques was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada, recognized for professional and volunteer contributions as a lawyer and negotiator.

Jacques was born and raised in Westmount. After first joining the Ottawa Titans as a legal adviser, Jacques became one of the baseball club's owners and now serves as president of its Field of Dreams Foundation. As the child of Holocaust survivors, Jacques felt a pull to help Afghans fleeing the Taliban and co-founded Operation Abraham, an interfaith volunteer group that helped bring roughly 150 people at risk to Canada, work honoured with a 2024 Welcoming Ottawa Ambassador Award.