36 BCBusiness June 2015 adam blasberg
Monique
Mercier
executive vice-president,
corporate affairs,
chief legal officer and
corporate secretary, Telus
A
lawyer educated at the Univer-
sité de Montréal faculty of law
and Oxford University, where she
received an MA in politics and a
Commonwealth scholarship, Monique
Mercier was the †rst woman at Montreal
law †rm Stikeman Elliott to take mater-
nity leave. That was in 1987, and the Telus
EVP— the only woman on the telco's nine-
member executive team—is still setting
precedents.
Mercier joined Telus in 2008 when
the company she was then working
for as executive VP of law and human
resources, Emergis, was acquired. Telus
quickly added business development
to her responsibilities and, in late 2011,
moved her to Vancouver as its chief legal
o£cer. In that capacity, Mercier won a
yearlong court battle with Mason Capital,
a New York hedge fund that was attempt-
ing to block Telus's consolidation of two
classes of shares; Harvard Business
School now teaches it as a case study.
"That was for me a very important
achievement," she says. "It brought so
much to Telus in terms of marketability
and liquidity of its shares. We had a major
expansion of our market capitalization,
and also it improved our track record
for excellence in corporate governance.
Since then we have been trying to in€u-
ence the evolution of corporate and
securities laws to prevent similar things
happening to other issuers."
In March 2013, Mercier led the Telus
legal team in another landmark case—
this one establishing that wireless provid-
ers are not required to give customers'
private text messages to police without
wiretap authorization. "We fought that
battle up to the Supreme Court of Can-
ada," says Mercier. "That was applauded
everywhere by privacy commissioners
and advocates, and I think that really
made jurisprudence."
In addition to her role as chief legal
of©icer, Mercier's growing portfolio at
Telus (she now manages more than 300
people across the country) also includes
regulatory a"airs; government, social
and media relations; sustainability; disas-
ter recovery; privacy compliance; real
estate (†nishing Telus Garden is a current
priority); strategic initiatives like events;
and Telus Studios, which produces vid-
HealtH
+
tecHnology
MOST
INFLUENTIAL
WOMEN IN
B.C.
Mercier won a yearlong court battle
with Mason Capital, a New York hedge
fund that was attempting to block
Telus's consolidation of two classes of
shares; Harvard Business School
now teaches it as a case study
