Canarie - About Us

Mr. Brisson joined the CANARIE board in 2013.

Mr. Brisson joined Bell in 2012 as Vice-President, Sales, Québec for Bell’s Business Markets group. As a member of Bell’s senior leadership team based at Bell’s headquarters in Montréal, Alain leads the delivery of Bell’s leading business communications services to large corporate and public customers across Québec. Alain ensures the development and growth of this important market in the sales of integrated business solutions enabling clients to be more competitive and effective.

Mr. Brisson brings more than 15 years of sales and management experience in the information technology and communications sectors to Bell. Before joining Bell, Alain Brisson was Senior Vice President at CGI Group where he led major business units in both the corporate and public sectors. Alain has equally strong experience in delivering solutions for large, medium and small businesses.

Mr. Brisson holds an MBA from HEC Montréal and has followed Executive training in Business Strategy at Harvard Business School.

Throughout his career, he has actively and continuously supported multiple charities notably United Way and Muscular Dystrophy Canada.

Dr. Howard Brunt joined the CANARIE Board in June 2010, and was elected to the position of Board Chair in June 2011.

Dr. Brunt is the Vice-President, Research with the University of Victoria and Professor in the Faculty of Human and Social Development. From 2004 to 2007 he served as provost and vice-president academic at the University of Northern British Columbia, where he led an academic planning process to set strategic directions for the university. He returned to UVic to lead the university’s research enterprise for five years, effective September 1, 2007. Dr. Brunt recently completed a term as Chair of the Board of TRIUMF, Canada's national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics.

Dr. Rick Bunt joined the CANARIE Board in 2008.

Dr. Bunt is Chief Information Officer and Associate Vice President, Information and Communications Technology at the University of Saskatchewan. He has Ph.D. and M.Sc. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Toronto and a B.Sc. degree from Queen's University, and has been a Professor of Computer Science since joining the University of Saskatchewan in 1972.

Mr. Chapman joined the CANARIE Board in 2012.

Mr. Chapman is the Vice President, Public Sector for IBM Canada. In this capacity, Mr. Chapman is responsible for providing the full range of IBM products, services, solutions and consulting to Canadian governments, education and healthcare institutions and life sciences. Prior to his appointment in October 2010, Mr. Chapman was the Vice President, General Business, for IBM Canada, responsible for overseeing the revenue growth, profit, and client satisfaction across the full range of IBM products, solutions, and services in the General Business market segment.

Mr. Chapman joined IBM in 1989 as a Marketing Representative and has held leadership roles within IBM across Canada over the past 21 years.

Mr. Chapman was born and raised in St. John’s, Newfoundland. He has a Bachelor of Commerce Degree (Co-Op), from Memorial University of Newfoundland. He has also attended executive education programs at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and Harvard University in Cambridge Massachusetts.

Mr. Kim Devooght joined the CANARIE Board in 2008.

Mr. Devooght is the Vice President, Public Sector for Cisco Canada. In this capacity, Mr. Devooght is responsible for providing the full range of Cisco products, services, solutions and consulting to Canadian governments, educational and healthcare institutions and life sciences. Prior to November 2010, Mr. Devooght was Vice President, Public Sector for IBM Canada, and previously held various other senior positions with IBM responsible for the development and deployment of public access and electronic commerce solutions with governments around the world.

Mr. Grant Farmer joined the CANARIE Board in 2009, served 2 terms as Secretary-Treasurer, and was elected to the Board Vice-Chair position in June 2011.

Mr. Farmer is an accomplished business leader with over 25 years of diverse experience in the Information Communication Technology (ICT) Industry. Most recently, he was Bell Canada’s Vice President, West Region, and previously led the Solution Management Practice within Bell Enterprise, accountable for providing advanced business solutions to Canada's largest private and public sector organizations.

Dr. Michael Geist joined the CANARIE Board in June 2010.

Dr. Geist is a law professor at the University of Ottawa where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law. He has written numerous academic articles and government reports on the Internet and law, and was a member of Canada’s National Task Force on Spam. He is an internationally syndicated columnist on technology law issues. Dr. Geist serves on the Privacy Commissioner of Canada’s Expert Advisory Board, on the Canadian Digital Information Strategy’s Review Panel, the Electronic Frontier Foundation Advisory Board, and on the Information Program Sub-Board of the Open Society Institute.

Ms. LaPerriere joined the CANARIE Board in 2012.

Ms. LaPerriere is an active builder of the global Internet. An expert in negotiating peering and international network interconnections she is actively involved in extending the reach and use of the Internet. She is a strategic negotiator for Google’s global interconnection team managing the network edge and content delivery programs. Previously, she expanded Tata Communications’ Internet backbone in more than 25 markets, had it circle the globe and achieved settlement-free status. Operating in the international telecommunications arena for two decades, Sylvie has extensive experience in developing peering partnerships and negotiating commercial agreements with global, regional and national telecom and Internet operators.

An engaged member of the global Internet community of networkers, Sylvie chairs the Board of Directors of the North American Network Operator Group (NANOG), whose mission is to improve the Internet interoperability through the coordination and dissemination of technical information related to networking technologies and operational practices. She is also a member of the Board of the Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX) and of the Montreal Internet Exchange.

With a solid foundation in product development for Internet, data and mobile services, Sylvie is international leader on peering strategy and a frequent speaker at international panels. She received her Bachelor of Commerce in Marketing and Information Systems from École des Hautes Études Commerciales de Montréal.  

Ms. Laplante joined the CANARIE Board in 2012.

Ms. Laplante has been with Rogers Communications since 2005, where she is currently the Finance Vice President, Service and Operations. Ms. Laplante is an accomplished business leader with over 20 year of experience in the wireless and wireline Communications, Media, Online, and Publishing Industries. She is recognized for her broad spectrum of Finance and operational expertise. Ms. Laplante is a Certified General Accountant.  

Dr. Christopher Loomis joined the CANARIE Board in 2003, and served as Chair for the 2006-2007 year.

Dr. Loomis is Vice-President, Research, and Professor of Pharmacology at Memorial University of Newfoundland. He recently completed a one-year appointment as President and Vice-Chancellor, Pro Tempore at MUN, beginning in July 2009, and was appointed Vice-President (Academic), Pro Tempore in October 2008. In 2002, Dr. Loomis was appointed Vice-President (Research) and was renewed for a second term in December 2006. Among many other appointments, Dr. Loomis has served as a member and officer of a number of MRC/CIHR peer-review committees, and is a member of the College of Reviewers for the Canada Research Chairs Program and the Science Advisory Board of Health Canada.

Mr. Lumb joined the CANARIE Board in 2012.

Since December 2009, Mr. Lumb has been CEO of TEC Edmonton, a technology accelerator created by the University of Alberta and the Edmonton Economic Development Corporation. Through a variety of commercialization services, including intellectual property management, business planning and mentoring, market research, financing strategies and the TEC Centre incubation facility, TEC Edmonton’s programs contribute to Edmonton’s being one of North America’s leading regions for wealth creation through innovation. Working with researchers, entrepreneurs and investors, TEC Edmonton transforms technologies into viable companies.

From 1994 to 2009 Chris was the CEO of Micralyne Inc. He was involved in all aspects of Micralyne's development, including leading its transition from a university-owned not-for-profit to a privately held commercial company, growing annual revenues to more than $28 million, and delivering long-term profits and return on equity to its shareholders.

Chris is a Board Member and Former Chair of CMC Microsystems, Board Member for ACAMP, Radient Technologies, Cleankeys Inc, and Startup Edmonton. Overall, his career has been centered around building commercial success for advanced technologies, and management of technology organizations to ensure they are profitably focused on addressing market needs.

Dr. Kimberly Matheson joined the CANARIE Board in 2011.

Dr. Matheson was appointed Vice-President (Research and International) at Carleton University in November 2009. She is a highly accomplished researcher and graduate supervisor and is widely published in the areas of Social and Health Psychology. Together with her collaborators in neuroscience, her work aims to understand the psychosocial factors that promote resilience in the face of stressors that disproportionately affect particular social and cultural groups, with the aim of designing intervention programs and to inform public policy. She is one of the few researchers to have been funded by all three major funding agencies: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).

Dr. Catherine Middleton joined the CANARIE Board in 2011.

Dr. Middleton holds a Canada Research Chair in Communication Technologies in the Information Society. Her research focuses on the development and use of new communication technologies, and she is also interested in how Canadians use (or don't use) the internet in their daily lives. Current research projects investigate the use of ubiquitous communication technologies (like Blackberries) in organizations, the development of next generation broadband networks, competition in the Canadian broadband market, and Canadians' internet use.

Mr. Jim Roche joined the CANARIE Board in 2008 and was elected Chair for the 2009-2010 year. In February 2010, he took a leave of absence from the Board in order to serve first as Interim President and CEO of CANARIE and currently as the Chief Strategy Officer.

Mr. Roche is a successful entrepreneur with over 25 years of leadership experience, having been a founding member and General Manager at Newbridge Networks Corporation (now Alcatel-Lucent), a co-founder and CEO of Tundra Semiconductor (now IDT), the CEO of CMC Microsystems, and the founder and CEO of Stratford Managers. In addition to his corporate duties, he also serves on numerous boards and committees including the ICT Advisory Board for DFAIT, the Committee of Research Partnerships for NSERC, and the Expert Panel on Business Innovation for CCA. He is also an Executive-in-Residence at the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa.

Mr. Michel Vanier joined the CANARIE Board in 2007, and currently is Chair of the ORAN Advisory Committee.

Mr. Vanier has been chief executive officer of RISQ (Réseau d'informations scientifiques du Québec) since 2004. Before joining the organization he held a number of positions at Université de Montréal, including Associate General Manager, information and communication technology, and acted as the university's Y2K coordinator, being responsible for preparation and response.

Dr. Mark Whitmore joined the CANARIE Board in 2004, and served 30 months as Board Chair between June 2008 and June 2011.

Dr. Whitmore became Dean of Science at the University of Manitoba on July 1, 2004. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1978 from McMaster University, in an area that is now called computational condensed matter physics. Dr. Whitmore was a member of the faculty at Memorial University of Newfoundland from 1977 to 2004, serving as deputy department head, acting department head, and associate dean (research) for the Faculty of Science.

Dr. Whitmore has been deeply involved in the world of high performance computing (HPC), being one of the founders of the national organization C3.ca, and serving on its board of directors and committees for many years. He was also a founding member of Genome Atlantic, was principal investigator on an NSERC Major Facilities Access grant for HPC support across Canada and, in a later CFI competition, wrote much of Memorial's successful application for a campus network upgrade. In 2003 and 2004, he led the team that created the successful CFI application for a regional HPC consortium called ACEnet, or the Atlantic Computational Excellence Network.