page_title: Morris C. Shumiatcher
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Morris C. Shumiatcher / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: Dr. Morris Shumiatcher
context_page_description: Morris Cyril "Shumi" Shumiatcher, OC SOM QC was a Canadian lawyer, human rights activist, philanthropist, arts patron, art collector, author, and lecturer. As senior legal counsel in the provincial government of Tommy Douglas, he drafted the 1947 Saskatchewan Bill of Rights, the first such bill in the British Commonwealth. He established a successful private law practice in Regina in 1949 and argued numerous cases of constitutional law before the Supreme Court of Canada. He and his wife Jacqui distributed millions of dollars to support the arts, universities, and other charities in Regina, and also amassed "one of the most significant private collections of Inuit art in Canada". He was the recipient of many awards and honours, including the Order of Canada in 1981 and the Saskatchewan Order of Merit in 1997.
context_section_description: In 1946, he moved to Regina, Saskatchewan, at the invitation of Tommy Douglas to become Law Officer of the Attorney General. Afterwards he became the personal assistant to Douglas. He drafted several statutes, including the Farm Security Act and the Trade Union Act. He was the legal advisor for the Union of Saskatchewan Indians and chaired a July 1946 meeting  between Treaty Indians and the provincial government. He continued to advocate for Indians with a 1967 article in Saturday Night magazine that criticized the government for restricting tribes to reservations rather than allowing them to own private property, and with the 1971 publication of his book Welfare: Hidden Backlash: A hard look at the welfare issue in Canada; what it has done to the Indian, what it could do to the rest of Canada.
  Shumiatcher authored the 1947 Saskatchewan Bill of Rights, which was the model for the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the Canadian Bill of Rights (1960). The bill – the first of its kind in the British Commonwealth – codified the rights of due process, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association, and freedom of the press, and included protections against discrimination. Shumiatcher included a protection against gender discrimination, but it did not appear in the final draft. In preparation for writing the bill, Shumiatcher referred to "social science and legal research by Canadian and American Jews of various ideological leanings". However, the bill lacked an enforcement mechanism, making it "more a symbol than an instrument for defending human rights".
  In 1948 he was appointed as King's Counsel in the Commonwealth of Nations, becoming the youngest person to hold that position. 
  Shumiatcher left government employ in 1949 to start his own legal practice in Regina. Regarded as a "brilliant" lawyer, he specialized in labour, tax, and corporate law and argued numerous cases in constitutional law before the Supreme Court of Canada. His appeal on behalf of Eleanor Ellen Farr in Farr v. Farr (1984) led to changes in Canada's matrimonial property law. He represented Joe Borowski before the Supreme Court of Canada in the latter's 1980s challenge to the constitutionality of abortion law; the court declared the case moot in 1989.
caption: Shumiatcher portrait
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