Douglas Harrison is an independent commercial arbitrator. He also acts as a mediator and as legal counsel in select matters, including designing arbitral procedures and enforcing arbitral awards, as well as doing opinion work.

He has been a presiding arbitrator, co-arbitrator and sole arbitrator in ad hoc arbitrations and in arbitrations under the rules of the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce, ICC, ICDR, ICDR Canada, and the National Automobile Dealership Arbitration Program. His recent arbitration appointments have involved both Canadian and international disputes arising from a variety of commercial agreements, including supply agreements, license agreements, distributorships, franchises, shareholder agreements, consulting agreements, Insurance agreements, construction contracts and commercial tenancies. They have covered a range of sectors, including automotive, consumer products, energy, financial services, heavy manufacturing, pharmaceuticals and sports. In additional to contractual disputes, his recent mediation mandates have also included environmental issues, law firm partnerships, co-operatives, defamation, insurance coverage and cryptocurrency mining.

Mr. Harrison is a Member Arbitrator and Mediator at Arbitration Place in Toronto. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, a member of the CPR Panels of Distinguished Neutrals as both an arbitrator and mediator (Global Panel, Product Liability Panel and Pro Bono Panel) and is on the arbitration rosters of ICDR Canada, ICC Canada, the ADR Institute of Canada, the Canadian Transportation Agency and the Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission.

Mr. Harrison is the chair of the Toronto Commercial Arbitration Society, a member of the executive of the ICC Canada Arbitration Committee and a Co-Chair of the University Tribunal of the University of Toronto. He is the Director and a faculty member of the TCAS Gold Standard Course on Commercial Arbitration, a 40-hour course that permits students who successfully complete it to apply for a Q.Arb. designation from the ADR Institute of Canada. He is on the organizing committee of CanArbWeek and is a member of the Arbitration Committee of the ADR Institute of Canada. He is a member of the London Court of International Arbitration, the Institute for Transnational Arbitration, the International Council for Commercial Arbitration and the International Arbitration Institute.

For over 30 years, Mr. Harrison was with Stikeman Elliott LLP in Toronto conducting a broad corporate-commercial litigation and arbitration practice that included complex, high-value matters involving, among other things, breach of contract, competition law, insolvency and restructuring, supplier-procurement disputes and class actions, in a variety of sectors including aerospace, chemicals, food processing, logistics, media, mining and pharmaceuticals. His practice also included environmental law, product liability, defamation, professional liability, and directors and officers insurance.

He is listed in the Canadian Legal Lexpert Directory for commercial arbitration (Repeatedly Recommended), Who’s Who Legal (Canada) for commercial arbitration (Recommended), Best Lawyers in Canada for international arbitration, alternative dispute resolution, corporate and commercial litigation, class action litigation and product liability law, and has also been recognized as an expert in global product liability law by Legal Media Group’s Expert Guides

Mr. Harrison has written and spoken widely about arbitration, including recent papers on the enforcement of awards in Canada against states and state-owned enterprises, and on removing arbitrators for incapacity or delay. He is a regular contributor to Law360 Canada on arbitration and international law topics. He is a co-author of The Law of Product Warnings and Recalls in Canada, 2nd ed. (LexisNexis Canada, 2019) and has served as a Sessional Instructor on advocacy at the Queen’s University Faculty of Law in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.