Speaking & Publications

A career-long thread runs through Ella's public work: the law meeting human vulnerability.

From federal research on sentencing and fetal alcohol syndrome, to workplace accommodation for cancer survivors, to what happens inside organizations after a harassment complaint. She has written and spoken, nationally and internationally, about the places where legal process and human experience collide. That same thread now runs through her investigation, mediation, and restoration practices.

Selected work and impact

The Sentencing of Offenders with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (with Larry N. Chartrand)

Research report prepared for the Department of Justice Canada and Solicitor General Canada, archived by Public Safety Canada, and published in the Health Law Journal. Quoted in the National Judicial Institute's Problem-solving in Canada's Courtrooms: A Guide to Therapeutic Justice, the judicial education handbook distributed to Canada's judiciary.

“Have You Heard the One About the Farmer's Daughter? Gender-bias in the Intergenerational Transfer of Farm Land on the Canadian Prairies”

Published in Canadian Woman Studies and cited in the Canadian Bar Review in scholarship analyzing the Supreme Court of Canada's decision in Schreyer v Schreyer.

Publications

  • “Insurance and Cancer: Navigating Your LTD Claim,” Canadian Cancer Survivor Network

  • Guest author, Cancer and Work, the national resource on cancer survivorship and employment

  • "Sexual Harassment: An Employer Guide"

  • Regular contributor, College Administrator (the OCASA professional journal) and HR Professional magazine (HRPA)

  • Earlier writing includes "Managing a Meeting with Human Resources," "Are Facebook and Twitter Really Your Friends?," "Enabling Individuals with Disabilities," and "Family Day" (written while at Nelligan O'Brien Payne LLP), and "Demonstrably Unreasonable Segmentation or Just Routine?" in the Ontario Bar Association's Administrative Law Bulletin

Speaking

Recurring platforms

  • Coach, National Introductory Mediation Course, ADR Institute of Canada (2026)

  • Regular presenter over many years at OCASA's Leaders & Innovators Conference, including the keynote address "Ch-ch-ch-changes: What David Bowie Never Told You About How Much Change You Could or Should Embrace" and "When Sex & Drugs Rock Your Role"

  • Presenter, OCASA member webinar series: six webinars a year on current workplace law topics

  • A decade of annual sessions for the Human Resources Professionals Association (HRPA), Ottawa Chapter. Recipient of the Co-Operators Vision Award for Outstanding Human Resources Volunteer, for founding and leading the chapter's Mentoring Committee: an uncommon honour for employee-side counsel from the HR profession's own association

  • Legal session presenter, "Rebalancing Life and Work After Cancer," several sessions a year for well over a decade, first with the Ottawa Regional Cancer Foundation and more recently through Coming Home Therapy. Recipient of the Foundation's Volunteer Champion Award

  • More than a decade lecturing in Alternative Dispute Resolution Processes at the University of Ottawa's Faculty of Law

I came to be involved with Maplesoft because of Annie, who cancer took from us many years ago.

Her enthusiasm, her positivity, and her sheer joy helped me to learn the real gift of giving what is yours to give without conditions or expectations. Anything I have given to this program has been returned to me tenfold.

- Ella Forbes-Chilibeck, Ottawa Regional Cancer Foundation's Fall 2021 donor newsletter

Selected engagements

  • Panelist, "Transitioning into a Practice," Federation of Law Societies of Canada Annual Conference, Ottawa, November 2025

  • Faculty, The Six-Minute Labour Lawyer, Law Society of Ontario (2021): paper and presentation, "What Happens with the Results of Harassment Investigations"

  • "Accommodation in the Workplace: Thriving as a Cancer Survivor," World Cancer Congress, Paris

  • Panelist, The Six-Minute Employment Lawyer, County of Carleton Law Association, Ottawa

  • Panelist, Lancaster House labour law and human rights conferences: sessions on the duty to accommodate and invisible disabilities in the workplace

  • "When Twits Tweet: Managing Social Media in the Workplace"

For speaking inquiries, contact ella@employmentlawottawa.ca.