“There has to be a way that we can level the playing field.”

On April 16, 1992, David Milgaard was released from Manitoba’s Stony Mountain Institution after serving 23 years for a murder he didn’t commit. The team that had worked for years to overturn his wrongful conviction – now seen as a landmark decision in Canadian legal history – included David Asper, a young Winnipeg defence lawyer taking on his first case. It was an auspicious beginning to a career that soon broadened to include legal education, business, philanthropy and, in 2007, the founding of the David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights at the University of Toronto.

Housed within U of T’s Faculty of Law, the David Asper Centre is devoted to advancing advocacy, education and research on all aspects of constitutional rights in Canada. Its cornerstone is a unique legal clinic where students, faculty and members of the bar intervene on significant constitutional cases. The only institution in Canada that brings together constitutional scholarship, teaching, policy development and advocacy under one roof, the Asper Centre joins with other law schools around the world engaged in constitutional inquiry, while sharing Canadian perspectives and experiences.

Protecting fundamental rights

Practising law since he was called to the Manitoba bar in 1986, David Asper has also held several executive positions at CanWest Global Communications Corporation, the media conglomerate founded by his late father, Izzy Asper. David’s wide-ranging philanthropic efforts include support for many community initiatives and charities in his home province, as well as his family’s donation, in 2018, of $2.5 million to the Canadian Olympic Foundation – the largest-ever single donation to Olympic sport in Canada.

In 2006, David decided to further his legal education, enrolling in the master’s program at U of T’s Faculty of Law. His academic pursuits were driven by a keen interest in the constitutional protection of Canadians’ rights and freedoms. As he remarked in a speech that year: “There has to be a way that we can level the playing field with respect to fighting for our Charter rights [other] than the present system, where no one individual, except the most wealthy and foolhardy, could stand up and defend themselves.”

Graduating with an LLM degree the following year, and deeply concerned by cuts to federal government funding for constitutional court challenges, David generously donated $7.5 million to the Faculty of Law to fund the centre that now bears his name. Half of the gift is an endowment that supports a variety of innovative programs, including workshops, fellowships, student internships and the litigation clinic, along with the Asper Centre’s day-to-day operations. The balance went toward the construction of dedicated teaching spaces, meeting rooms and offices. To complement this initial investment – at that point the largestever donation by an individual to a Canadian law school – in 2018 David provided the Centre with an additional $2.5 million in funding.

“I will continue in that advocacy.”

In addition to chairing the non-profit Asper Family Foundation and pursuing various business interests, David continues to seek out opportunities to champion human rights, justice and the rule of law, notably serving as chair of the Manitoba Police Commission. When David Milgaard died in May 2022, his former lawyer and long-time friend paid tribute, in a CBC interview, to their shared passion for ensuring all Canadians receive equal treatment under the law: “He was resolute in his advocacy. And to honour him, I will continue in that advocacy.”

The investment fund that generates ongoing financial support for the David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights is among more than 6,900 individual funds within the Endowment portfolio managed by UTAM.

A total of $550 million was allocated to academic programs in the year ending April 30, 2022 – about 17% of the total $3.2 billion in endowment funds held by the University during that period.*