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The Office of the Commissioner for Federal Judicial Affairs (FJA) in Ottawa was facing a crisis in April 2011.

The director of its international programs division, which coordinates the involvement of the Canadian judiciary in international exchanges and judicial reform projects, had unexpectedly quit. The whole program was in jeopardy of collapse and the FJA urgently needed a new director who could hit the ground running.

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Marc Giroux, then the FJA’s acting director, approached Oleg Shakov, an Ottawa consultant who had done a similar job for the FJA from 2005 to 2009 and had the necessary skills and experience.

Shakov initially declined the job, but was persuaded to accept a one-year appointment. A new position was created with an “English essential” language requirement. Shakov’s appointment became permanent in December 2012.

In 2014, the Public Service Commission concluded that Giroux and another FJA official, Nikki Clemenhagen, had acted improperly by tailoring the position’s language requirement to the unilingual Shakov and choosing a non-advertised process without proper justification.