Douglas Harrison

Practice Areas

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 numerous ad hoc arbitrations as well as in arbitrations under the rules of the AAA, ADR Institute of Canada, Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce, ICC, ICDR, ICDR Canada, and the National Automobile Dealership Arbitration Program.

His recent international arbitration appointments have involved disputes arising under license agreements, share purchase agreements, shareholder agreements, and supply agreements, in the agribusiness, automotive, cannabis, consumer products, financial services, heavy manufacturing, and pharmaceuticals sectors, involving parties from Belgium, Canada, China, Denmark, Italy, Sweden, and the United States.

His recent Canadian appointments have included similar contractual disputes but also ones involving commercial tenancies, construction contracts, consulting agreements, distributorships, insurance coverage, and land development, in a range of sectors, including automotive, consumer products, energy, financial services, food, heavy manufacturing, insurance, public infrastructure, and tourism.

In additional to contractual disputes, his recent mediation mandates have also included co-operatives, cryptocurrency mining, defamation, environmental issues, insurance coverage, and law firm partnerships.

He has also acted as an expert witness on Ontario law in litigation in New York, the District of Columbia and The Netherlands.

Career

Prior to establishing his arbitration practice in 2018, Mr. Harrison was with Stikeman Elliott LLP in Toronto for more than 30 years, 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. He acted for clients from across Canada and around the world in a variety of sectors including aerospace, chemicals, financial services, food processing, logistics, manufacturing, media, natural resources, and pharmaceuticals. His practice also included defamation, directors and officers insurance, environmental law, product liability, and professional liability.

Professional Memberships

Campaign for Greener Arbitrations, North America subcommittee

ICC Canada Arbitration Committee

Institute for Transnational Arbitration

International Arbitration Institute

International Bar Association

International Council for Commercial Arbitration

International Institute for Conflict Prevention & Resolution

London Court of International Arbitration

The Advocates’ Society

Toronto Commercial Arbitration Society

Toronto Lawyers Association

Publications

"State Instrumentalities - Piercing the Corporate Veil - Canada", Enforcing Arbitral Awards Against States, IAI Series on International Arbitration No. 12, 2024 (forthcoming).

“Multi-Tiered Dispute Resolution Clauses: Jurisdictional Issue? C v. D, [2021] HKCFI 1474 – A Case Comment”, ADR Perspectives (ADR Institute of Canada) Vol. 8, No. 4, December 2021.

Book review of UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts: An Article-by-Article Commentary by Eckart Brödermann (Kluwer, 2018), Canadian Business Law Journal, Vol. 63, 2020.

“Removing an arbitrator for incapacity or undue delay”, Canadian Journal of Commercial Arbitration, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2019 (also abridged in the Fall 2019 and Spring 2020 editions of New York Dispute Resolution Lawyer).

The Law of Product Warnings and Recalls in Canada, 2nd ed., LexisNexis Canada, 2019 (with Alex Colangelo).

"An arbitrator's duty of disclosure under the Model Law", Arbitration News, International Bar Association's Legal Practice Division (Arbitration Committee), August 2016 (with Vanessa Voakes).

"Kanada" chapter, Handbuch internationale Produkthaftung: Produktsicherheit in den wichtigsten Markten weltweit, Koln: Bundesanzeiger Verlag GmbH, 2014 (with Eric Bremermann).

“Canada Ratifies Convention on Settlement of Investment Disputes between States and Other States’ Nationals”, International Law News, American Bar Association, Summer 2014 (with Susan Hutton).

“Arbitration” chapter, Ultimate Corporate Counsel Guide (Litigation and ADR section), CCH Canada, 2014.

Advocacy in Arbitration", paper presented at Successfully Navigating An International Commercial Arbitration, Ontario Bar Association, Toronto, October 2013 (with Janet Mills).

“Canada” chapter, Getting the Deal Through – Arbitration, Law Business Research, 2010-2013 (with John Judge, Peter Cullen and Lev Alexeev).

Personal

Mr. Harrison is identified as Most Frequently Recommended in Commercial Arbitration in the Canadian Legal Lexpert Directory (2021-25), as well as being among the three leading Commercial Arbitration lawyers in Toronto in Lexpert's 2025 directory of the Leading 500 Cross-Border Lawyers.

Mr. Harrison has for a number of years acted as a volunteer arbitrator at the Vis Moot in Vienna, as well as at many Vis Pre-Moots including those held in Toronto, Miami and Vienna.

Mr. Harrison taught Trial Advocacy at the Queen's University Faculty of Law, 1993-1997.

Prior to being called to the Ontario Bar, Mr. Harrison was a reporter and copyeditor with The Globe and Mail, Canada's National Newspaper, in Toronto. He was also a freelance sportswriter and broadcaster based in Toronto and Paris, covering F1 auto racing, World Cup alpine and nordic skiing, rowing, and other Olympic sports, for several media outlets including UPI, Canadian Press, The Globe and Mail and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Industry Sector Expertise

Mr. Harrison has acted as an arbitrator in disputes arising in a variety of sectors, including:

Agribusiness

Automotive

Biomedical

Cannabis

Commercial Real Estate

Construction

Consumer Products

Energy (Electricity, Natural Gas, Renewables)

Financial Services

Food Distribution

Heavy Manufacturing

Insurance

IT

Land Development

Non-profit (Amateur sports)

Pharmaceutical

Public Infrastructure

Public Procurement

As arbitration and litigation counsel, Mr. Harrison represented clients in various sectors, including:

Aerospace

Agribusiness

Automotive

Chemicals

Consumer Products

Consumer Services

Energy (Oil & Gas, Renewables)

Financial Services

Forestry

Food Processing

Heavy Manufacturing

Insurance

IT

Land Development

Logistics

Media

Mining

Music

Non-profit (Amateur sports)

Pharmaceutical

Professional Services

Shipping

Transportation

Expert in these Jurisdictions

Mr. Harrison is a member of the bar of the province of Ontario, Canada. As arbitrator, he has presided over disputes in which the governing law was has been not only Ontario but also British Columbia, Missouri, New Brunswick, Pennsylvania, and Sweden. These arbitrations have been seated principally in Toronto, but also in New York, Ottawa, Stockholm, and Vancouver.

Experience

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 AAA-ICDR, the ADR Institute of Canada, the Canadian Transportation Agency, ICC Canada, ICDR Canada, the Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission, and the Scottish Arbitration Centre.

Mr. Harrison is the chair of the Toronto Commercial Arbitration Society, a member of the executive of the ICC Canada Arbitration Committee, and is 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.

Education

Awards