David Butt

Barrister, Toronto, Ontario

David Butt is a trial and appellate lawyer with a wide ranging practice. He graduated from Queen’s Law School at the top of his class and earned his LL.M. at Harvard Law School, which he attended as Canada’s 1988 Viscount Bennett Scholar. He has clerked for both the Court of Appeal for Ontario and the Supreme Court of Canada, the first Canadian to have completed such a double clerkship. He was called to the Bar of Ontario in 1989. He has been lead counsel more than two dozen times in the Supreme Court of Canada, and hundreds of times in the Court of Appeal for Ontario, dealing with a broad range of issues involving criminal law and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. He has both prosecuted and defended many lengthy and complex trials. He has served as counsel to three independent judicial inquiries or reviews. He has extensive experience representing police officers in a wide variety of criminal and disciplinary investigations and hearings. He also acts regularly for victims of crime or misconduct, and through this work engages deeply in privacy law.

A former Harvard teaching fellow, Mr Butt has designed and delivered many different professional education programs for lawyers and other professionals from Vancouver to St John’s. He is a frequent speaker on a variety of legal topics and a regular commentator on national and local media. He has consulted world-wide on internet child exploitation. He is a past Board member of ECPAT, the world’s largest NGO devoted exclusively to fighting the commercial exploitation of children.

David joined the Board of the Victim Justice Network in 2019.