Joanna Nefs has been appointed for a six-month term as acting chair of the Mental Health Review Board, starting Tuesday, April 1, 2025.

The review board is an independent tribunal established under the Mental Health Act. The board conducts panel hearings for patients admitted by physicians and detained involuntarily in provincial mental-health facilities in a manner consistent with the principles of fundamental justice and Section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Nefs holds a master in public policy degree, 2017-18; a juris doctor, 2008-11; and a bachelor’s degree in political science, 2006-08, all from York University.

From 2020 until 2024, Nefs was the CEO of AIDE Canada, a national initiative funded by the Public Health Agency of Canada. It focused on delivering information and resources to people with developmental disabilities and diagnosed with autism and their families.

From 2018 until 2020, Nefs was executive director of the International Centre for Criminal Law Reform and at the United Nations, working on projects with the UN Office on Drugs and Crime and at the UN Secretariat for the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. From 2012 until 2018, Nefs was the assistant Crown attorney at the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General.  

From January until May 2018, Nefs taught a course at Osgoode Hall law school about representing clients with mental illnesses and addictions.

Since 2020, Nefs has been a member and alternate chair of B.C.’s Mental Health Review Board.

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For more information about the Mental Health Review Board, visit: https://www.bcmhrb.ca/