Robert Décary was born in Montreal. He attended Jean-de-Brébeuf College, the Faculty of law of the University of Montreal and the University of London (UK), where he obtained a Master’s Degree in Law in 1968. He practiced in Montreal between 1969 and 1979, except for a two-years stay in Ottawa, in 1972-73, as Special Assistant to the Honorable Mitchell Sharp, then Secretary of State for External Affairs and a nine-months stay, also in Ottawa , in 1978-79, as co-director of research for the Task Force on Canadian Unity (the Pepin-Robarts Commission).

In the fall of 1979, he moved to Hull and founded the firm Noël, Décary with Simon Noël. During the ten following years, he specialized in representing numerous law firms and private clients, including the Attorney General for Quebec, before the Supreme Court of Canada. He also wrote hundreds of legal and political columns, notably in Le Devoir and La Presse and he was a regular guest on public affairs programs on CBC and TVA. In 1983, he published a collection of some of his columns under the title Chère Elize (Éditions Asticou). He was appointed Queen’s Counsel in 1986.

On March 14, 1990, he was appointed to the Federal Court of Appeal. He sat on the Court for close to twenty years and participated in more than two thousand decisions. He retired in July 2009. On October 1st, 2009, he was appointed an arbitrator of the Tribunal of Arbitration for Sport, which is located in Lausanne, Switzerland. On June 20, 2010, he was appointed Commissioner of the Communications Security Establishment, the Canadian institution in charge of international counter-espionnage. He resigned in October 2013. In the meantime, in January 2011, he had been appointed to the Sport Dispute Resolution Center of Canada.

As a volunteer during the Vancouver Winter Olympic Games in 2010, he assisted Canadian dignitaries, amongst whom the then Premier of Quebec, Mr. Jean Charest. At the Sochi Winter Olympic Games, in 2014, he was one of nine arbitrators appointed by the International Council of Arbitration for Sport to decide sporting disputes arising out of the Games.

On May 8 2014, he published a new book, entitled Confidences d’un conseiller de la Reine, in which he chronicles, amongst other subjects, the birth of Noël & Associates.

He is now coming back, as senior counsel, to the firm he co-founded thirty-five years ago…