She/Her
Sharan K. Basran is the Chief Legal Officer and Counsel for the Ontario Nurses’ Association (ONA), where she provides legal and strategic advice to ONA and its members. She oversees and directs the delivery of legal services and litigation in diverse areas including the courts, labour arbitration, human rights, labour board matters, and regulatory bodies for health care professionals. She also acts as ONA’s Privacy Officer and regular provides advice and guidance about the privacy rights of union members.
Sharan also provides general advice and has litigated cases on important labour issues involving human rights and privacy. She has appeared in various judicial reviews to successfully argue that an arbitrator erred in applying the test for discrimination for a grievor with a substance dependency and acted as co-counsel in a case involving creed-based discrimination.
Sharan previously worked at a union-side law firm for several years. She also practised at the Human Rights Legal Support Centre, where she held the position of Senior Legal Counsel and Acting Manager, regularly appearing before the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario in employment-related cases and racial profiling cases involving the police. Sharan has taught many courses and is a regular speaker at conferences and workshops directed at lawyers, human resources professionals, and union representatives. She was also a featured speaker at the Law Society of Ontario for the 2018 International Women’s Day Conference on contextualizing the #MeToo movement in our legal workplaces.
Sharan holds a B.A. from the University of Saskatchewan and an LL.B. from the University of Ottawa.
