Osuji & Smith Lawyers Receives the 2026 IECC National Inclusion in Action Employer Award
Presented by the Immigrant Employment Council of British Columbia
OSUJI & SMITH PLACE · CALGARY
We are grateful for this recognition. Through FIDI and every other door we could open, this firm has backed people whose talent arrived long before their opportunity did. We do not ask where someone started — we ask what they can do. That standard has given newcomers of every race, culture and background a fair shot, and it has made us better.
“This belongs to the people who lived it — and to the team who quietly made room for them.”
DR. CHARLES OSUJI · CEO & MANAGING PARTNER
140+
AWARDS & RECOGNITION
32+
LANGUAGES SPOKEN
4
OFFICES WORLDWIDE
46+
YEARS OF SERVICE
The distance between a credential and a chance
Somewhere in this city this morning, someone is working a job that has nothing to do with what they trained for. There is a law degree in a drawer. A bar admission from another country. Ten years of practice behind them.
Their application will not be read today. Not because someone read it and said no, but because it did not clear a single line near the top of the form: Canadian experience required.
That gap — between what a person has earned and what they are allowed to do — is the reason this award exists.
A country does not lose talent at the border. It loses it in the inbox.
What this recognition means
The Immigrant Employment Council of British Columbia is a Vancouver non-profit funded by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada and the Province of British Columbia. Its purpose is straightforward: help employers find, hire and keep skilled immigrant talent.
It does this through programmes such as FAST, which assesses what newcomers can actually do, and MentorConnect, which introduces them to people already working in their field. IEC-BC is part of the national IECC Network, alongside CRIEC in Calgary, TRIEC in Toronto and ERIEC in Edmonton.
Its Employer Leadership Recognition Awards honour employers who have shown real commitment to inclusive and diverse workplaces. The people judging are employment specialists, and they look at what an organisation does rather than what it says.
That is what makes this award worth having.
Why it matters to us
We will not pretend this one did not move us.
We are grateful for every recognition this firm has received, and we do not rank them. This one simply sits close to home.
Behind it are a great many small decisions, made quietly and never for an audience. Someone took a call they could have let ring. Someone read a résumé from a country they had never heard of. Someone sat through a practice interview at the end of a long day.
None of it felt like building an award-winning workplace at the time. It felt like being decent to a person who deserved a hearing. It turns out those are the same thing.
This is an employment award, so it is really a statement about people — who was given a chance, who stayed, and who is doing the work today. Those are names we know. That is why it means what it does.
Where it began
The Foot in the Door Initiative exists because our CEO and Managing Partner lived the problem it solves. Dr. Charles Osuji arrived in Canada with strong credentials, no professional network, and a long run of unanswered applications behind him.
Hundreds of internationally trained lawyers have since come through FIDI. They arrived with full careers behind them and began again — sitting the exams, waiting for the call, starting at the bottom of a profession they had already mastered elsewhere. Many are our colleagues now. Several are our senior associates. Every one of them was once an application somebody else set aside.
What changed here
We are not holding ourselves up as a model, and we still get things wrong. But people ask what was different here, and the answer is four changes — none of them expensive.
We stopped using Canadian experience as a shortcut for judging competence and started testing competence directly. We created a way for internationally trained lawyers to do real file work — drafting pleadings, attending client meetings, sitting in on pre-trials and trials — rather than watching from the side. We paired new arrivals with mentors who had made the same move themselves, because their advice is far more useful than anything general. And we worked alongside organisations already doing this well, including the Calgary Region Immigrant Employment Council.
None of it was charity. It is how we found some of the finest lawyers in this firm.
If you are an internationally trained professional
The Foot in the Door Initiative supports internationally trained lawyers building careers in Canadian practice — real experience, real mentorship, real introductions. There is a path, and you do not have to find it alone. FIDIOSUJISMITH.CA
If you are an employer
Our employment and labour team advises employers across Canada on hiring practices, job postings, workplace policy and human rights obligations — including where “Canadian experience” requirements create exposure. OSUJISMITHLAWYERS.COM/EMPLOYERS
Thank you
Our thanks to the Immigrant Employment Council of British Columbia and the IECC Network — for the recognition, and for holding employers to a standard that asks for evidence rather than good intentions.
And to our team: close to fifty people, more than thirty languages, one shared belief — that talent deserves a hearing, wherever it comes from. You are the reason this exists.
There is still work to do. There are applications going unread across this city today, and people spending their best years proving what they have already proven somewhere else. An award does not change that. Employers do.
Osuji & Smith Lawyers is an award-winning full-service law firm serving clients across Alberta, Ontario, British Columbia and Dubai, with practices spanning employment and labour law, business and corporate advisory, civil litigation, immigration and more.