Drew Lafond provides advice to businesses on corporate structure, finance, governance and cannabis, liquor and gaming licensing. He also has extensive experience advising Indigenous clients on governance and jurisdictional issues.
Drew advises clients on matters related to economic development, gaming, housing, commercial leasing, corporate governance, structure and finance.
Drew also assists Indigenous clients with asserting and exercising jurisdiction over core areas of governance, including land management, taxation, gaming and agriculture in Alberta, Saskatchewan, British Columbia and Yukon.
Drew was raised in Treaty 6 territory on the Muskeg Lake Cree Nation reserve and is also of Secwepemc descent from the Simpcw First Nation in British Columbia.
He has also served as President of the Indigenous Bar Association since 2019.
- Member, Law Society of Saskatchewan (present)
- President, Indigenous Bar Association (2019-present)
- Director, Indigenous Bar Association (2009-2019)
- President, University of Victoria Indigenous Law Students’ Association (2007-2008)
- Kawaskimhon National Aboriginal Moot (2008)
- UBC Indigenous Legal Clinic (2009)
- Recognized in Lexpert Special Edition on Agribusiness and Cannabis (2020)
- A leading practitioner, Indigenous, Canadian Legal Lexpert Directory (since 2019)
- Rising Star Award, Lexpert (2018)
- The Honourable Thomas A. Dohm Shield
- Keith B. Jobson Award
- Chief Michael A. Underwood Memorial Scholarship
- James Gosnell AFN Heroes of Our Time Award
- Canadian Millennium Bursary (2007-2009)
- Presenter “First Nations’ Jurisdiction over Cannabis,” Assembly of First Nations National First Nations (AFN) Cannabis Summit, Vancouver (September, 2019)
- Course Instructor, University of Calgary Faculty of Law, Indigenous Business Law (2019)
- Guest lecturer at the University of Alberta Faculty of Law (Indigenous Businesses and Economic Development) and the University of Calgary Faculty of Law (Indigenous Jurisdiction on Reserve)
- “UN Human Rights Committee Rules Indian Act is Discriminatory in McIvor Case,” ABlawg.ca, University of Calgary Faculty of Law (January 2019)
- “Barring Claims Against Discriminatory Legislation: Canada v Canada,” ABlawg.ca, University of Calgary Faculty of Law (June 2018)
- “The need for an Implementation Policy for the Numbered Treaties,” conference hosted by the University of Alberta, Augustana Campus, The Way Forward: Envisioning Treaty Rights in Modern Resource Management (February 2016)
- Presented on behalf of the Indigenous Bar Association to the Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples regarding Bill S-3, an act to eliminate sex-based inequities in the Indian Act (May 16, 2017)