Young will sit in Oshawa while Zaman has been assigned to London
The Ontario Court of Justice has appointed new judges Rachel Elizabeth Young and Ghazala Shaheen Zaman.
They will take up the posts on September 25. Young will step into a bilingual role in Oshawa, while Zaman was assigned to London by chief justice Sharon Nicklas.
Young was recently a Crown counsel in the Complex Prosecutions Bureau’s Serious Fraud Office under the Ministry of the Attorney General. She began her legal career by focusing on criminal defence.
She was previously an associate commission counsel to the Walkerton Inquiry and an administrative and civil litigator. She commenced with the Toronto Crown Attorney’s Office in 2004, where she was an assistant Crown attorney prosecuting criminal offences before the Superior Court of Justice and the Ontario Court of Justice. She has acted for the Crown before the Ontario Review Board.
In 2012, Young joined the Court of Appeal for Ontario as a judicial research lawyer. She completed a secondment at the Crown Law Office – Criminal between 2017 and 2018, arguing appeals before the Court of Appeal for Ontario and the Supreme Court of Canada.
She spent six years as a a senior litigation counsel on the Joint Serious Offences Team at the Ontario Securities Commission and was seconded to the Mass Casualty Commission in Nova Scotia, serving as a senior commission counsel.
Zaman has worked with the Public Prosecution Service of Canada as Crown counsel for almost 25 years. She prosecuted cases before the Superior Court of Justice and the Ontario Court of Justice in addition to arguing appeals before the Court of Appeal for Ontario.
She joined the PPSC’s Revenue Prosecutions Unit in 2005, leading complex, large-scale fraud and tax prosecutions. She was also on PPSC Appeals Committee for the Ontario Regional Office, where she evaluated Crown appeal recommendations and appeared before the Ontario appeals court.
The appointment announcement was made by Ontario attorney general Doug Downey.
