Blair Cowper-Smith

Mr. Cowper- Smith is a lawyer and Principal of Erin Park Business Solutions. He provides advice and counselling to businesses, not-for-profit organizations, regulators and other bodies on organizational effectiveness, governance, board responsibilities, corporate culture and  business partnering arrangements.

His background includes serving as an Executive Vice-President at OMERS Administration Corporation one of Canada’s large public pension plans where his responsibilities included participation in approving all large scale investments for recommendation to the OMERS Administration  board of directors, oversight of governance of the plan and chairing the oversight board of an international group of investors including OMERS as manager investing in large scale international infrastructure projects as co-owners.

He served as a partner one of the leading Canadian large law firms McCarthy Tetrault where he led the business development committee for a number of years and served on the Board of Directors. His activities included advising boards of directors of public and private corporations on mergers and acquisitions, governance and reorganizations and pension plans on organizational governance and regulatory matters.

He is or has served on many boards of directors of leading organizations such as Hydro One, Golf Town, Porter Airlines, the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ontario, Hammerson Canada, the 407 ETR toll-road, the Heart & Stroke Foundation of Ontario, and the Canadian Council for Public and Private Partnerships of which he was a co-founder. With an interest in sports and franchises he served as an alternative governor of the Toronto Maple Leafs Hockey Club. He chairs the Advisory Committee of Timbercreek Capital.

Mr. Cowper-Smith has spoken widely on governance and organizational optimization in many markets over the years and has maintained an active involvement as a lecturer in Canadian Directors College which his law firm helped found.