Our Team

A former Premier of Québec, Pierre Marc Johnson, lawyer and physician, is recognized for his expertise in international trade negotiations and international partnerships as well as environmental and health law. He is chief negotiator for the Government of Québec in the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between Canada and the European Union (AECG-CETA) as well as in the softwood lumber dispute between Canada and the United States.

Mr. Johnson has been lead counsel and strategic adviser to international partnerships and foreign investments with respect to new information technologies, entertainment, real estate and financial products. He has extensive experience in international negotiations with the United Nations on environmental and development issues. He has advised the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC), an international organization created by Canada, Mexico and the United States under the North-American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC) and has chaired in 2004 the Ten-year Review and Assessment Committee overseeing the application of the Agreement for its Ministerial Council. In 2003, he chaired a similar effort for the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

Co-author of The Environment and NAFTA — Understanding and Implementing the New Continental Law, published by Island Press, and of Beyond Trade: The Case for a Broadened International Governance Agenda, he has also penned numerous essays and articles on international trade, globalization and the environment. Renowned for his expertise, he is regularly invited, here and overseas, to counsel governments and institutions, and to speak on the workings and effects of globalization.

He has served as a director of several major corporations and currently sits on the Air Canada, Holcim (Canada) and Médicago Inc. boards; he chairs the foresight committee and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Veolia Environment Institute (Paris). In 2006, he was appointed chair of the board of directors of the Quartier de la Santé (Health district corporation), a Montreal-based organization that aims to develop the community adjacent to the new Centre hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal (CHUM).

Mr. Johnson holds an honorary doctorate from Université Claude Bernard Lyon I, France. He is Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Grand Croix of the Ordre de la Pléiade and grand officer of the Ordre national du Québec.

He has also been recognized as one of Canada’s leading lawyers in the area of International Arbitration in the 2012 and 2013 editions of The Best Lawyers in Canada (Woodward/White).

Mr. Johnson has been of counsel to Heenan Blaikie since 1996.