Alan Eagleson

Alan Eagleson was appointed to the rank of Officer of the Order of Canada April 20, 1989, for his work to promote ice hockey. While serving as the head of the National Hockey League Players Association, he was accused of defrauding players out of money. Other charges included racketeering, embezzlement, and obstruction of justice with 34 total charges in the United States and 8 in Canada.^[10]

In January 1998, Eagleson pleaded guilty to three counts of mail fraud in the US.^[11] In that same month, Eagleson was disbarred in Canada.^[12] In February, the Governor General at the time, Roméo LeBlanc, signed an ordinance that removed Eagleson from the order. Eagleson became the first person to be removed from the order.^[13]

The decision to terminate Eagleson's membership in the order was gazetted on March 14, 1998.^[14]

During his sentencing in July 1998, Eagleson wore his Order of Canada lapel pin, despite the fact it was already stripped from him by that time.^[15] However, when asked to return the order, Eagleson did so within a week of the demand being made.^[16]

David Ahenakew

David Ahenakew was appointed to the grade of Member in December 1978 for his longtime "service to Indians and Métis in Saskatchewan culminated in his election as Chief of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indians, which has revolutionized Indian education in his province."^[17]

Ahenakew first came under fire in 2002 after giving a profanity-laden speech. In this speech, Ahenakew called Jewish people "a disease". Ahenakew made taped comments to the Saskatoon StarPhoenix a few days after the speech that included "That's how Hitler came in. That he was going to make damn sure that Jews weren't going to take over", and "That's why he fried six million of those guys."^[2]

In June 2003, Ahenakew was formally charged by the Saskatchewan justice department with willingly promoting hatred,^[18] but his removal from the order was put on hold until the legal dispute was finished.^[19]

On June 29, 2005, the order's Advisory Council began its formal revocation process, during a regularly scheduled semi-annual meeting.^[20] Ahenakew was informed, in writing, that he can either voluntarily resign, respond, or contest the possibility of revocation.^[20]

Ultimately, the council found that irrespective of the outcome of Ahenakew's legal proceedings, it brought disrepute to the order,^[20] and Governor General Adrienne Clarkson to issue an ordinance on July 11 to officially remove Ahenakew from the Order of Canada.^[16][20]

The decision to terminate Ahenakew's membership in the order was gazetted on July 30, 2005.^[21]

T. Sher Singh

T. Sher Singh received his Member of the Order of Canada in 2002, due to a record in public service.^[22] His appointment was terminated on December 10, 2008, after the Law Society of Upper Canada found him guilty of professional misconduct and revoked his licence to practise law. Among the allegations against Singh were that he failed to serve clients, mishandled trust funds, misappropriated $2,000 from a client, and continued to practise after being suspended in November 2005. His membership in the order was revoked on December 10, 2008.^[3]

Steve Fonyo

Steve Fonyo was the youngest person ever appointed as an Officer of the Order in 1985.^[23] Following his appointment, however, Fonyo developed an addiction to cocaine.^[23] The advisory council considered removing him in 1995, following a criminal conviction related to his cocaine use, but did not move to strip him from the order.^[23]

By 1996, Fonyo had a number of run-ins with the law.^[24] He was accused of a number of offences, including assault with a weapon, aggravated assault, fraud for writing bad cheques to supermarkets, and domestic violence.^[24]

Fonyo was terminated from the order on December 10, 2009.^[4] The decision to terminate Fonyo's membership in the Order was gazetted on January 23, 2010,^[25] and announced by the Governor General's office two days later.^[4]

Garth Drabinsky

Garth Drabinsky was a theatrical production mogul in Canada, responsible for numerous successful productions, most notably the long-running Toronto production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera. He was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1995. In 2009, he was found guilty of fraud and forgery in Ontario and has been a fugitive from American law for related crimes.^[26] With the Supreme Court of Canada's ruling on March 29, 2012, not to hear his appeal or grant a new trial, Drabinsky has apparently exhausted his opportunities to have his convictions overturned and is serving the balance of his reduced sentence. On November 29, 2012, the Governor General signed an ordinance removing Drabinsky from the order.^[27] Drabinsky subsequently filed an application in the Federal Court of Canada to block his removal.^[28]

Conrad Black

Media baron Conrad Black was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1990.^[29] In 2001, following a conflict where then Prime Minister Jean Chrétien invoked the Nickle Resolution to prevent Black from being appointed a life peer, Black surrendered his Canadian citizenship,^[30] though he remained in the Order of Canada.

In 2005, Black was arrested in the United States on multiple charges of mail and wire fraud.^[31] However, due to lengthy appeals, even as Black was serving a prison sentence, he still remained a member of the Order of Canada. In September 2011, after Black returned to prison due to the failure of his appeal, Rideau Hall confirmed that Black's appointment was under review by the Advisory Council of the Order of Canada, which has the power to recommend "the termination of a person's appointment to the Order of Canada if the person has been convicted of a criminal offence."^[32] Black's requests for an oral hearing were denied by the advisory council and his application to federal court for an oral hearing to be required was dismissed.^[33] Black appealed the decision.^[34]

In an interview, Black intimated that he would rather resign from the order than be removed. "I would not wait for giving these junior officials the evidently almost aphrodisiacal pleasure of throwing me out. I would withdraw," he told CBC's Susan Ormiston. "In fact, I wouldn't be interested in serving."^[35]

On January 31, 2014, the Governor General at the time, David Johnston, announced that he had accepted a recommendation from an advisory council to remove Black from the Order of Canada.^[36] On the same day, the Governor General, acting on the recommendation of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, also expelled Black from the Queen's Privy Council for Canada, to which he had been appointed in 1992.^[37] Black, however, maintained he resigned from the order the year prior.^[38]

The decision to terminate Black's membership from the order was gazetted on February 22, 2014.^[39]

In 2019, Conrad Black's American criminal record was pardoned by President Donald Trump.^[40]

Ranjit Chandra

Ranjit Chandra was a research scientist and professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland, and was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1989.^[41]

In 2006, CBC aired The Secret Life of Dr. Chandra, which alleged that research published by Chandra was fraudulent.^[42]

In 2015, a jury trial in which Chandra sued the CBC for libel found the contents of the documentary to be truthful.^[42] In that same year, the British Medical Journal retracted one of his papers, "Influence of maternal diet during lactation and use of formula feeds on development of atopic eczema in high risk infants", which was published in 1989, due to what was described as "scientific misconduct".^[43]

Rideau Hall revoked Chandra's appointment to the order on December 3, 2015, but the decision was only gazetted on January 9, 2016.^[44]

Johnny Issaluk

Johnny Issaluk is a well known Canadian Indigenous actor from Nunavut. He is known for acting in films such as Indian Horse (2017) and The Terror (2018). For these and other achievements Issaluk was elevated to the Order in 2019. He was accused by Canadian Indigenous filmmaker Alethea Arnaquq-Baril of fondling her without permission at a party. While Arnaquq-Baril accepted his apology at first, over time several other women, ranging in age from 21 to 78, came forward with similar allegations. This caused the accusations to be viewed more seriously, and after allegations that Issaluk acted inappropriately during a Sedna Epic Expedition conference in Norway, there were calls for Issaluk to resign from Sedna.

Issaluk resigned from Sedna on December 9, 2019, amid questions of whether his membership in the Order would also be reconsidered. Rideau Hall at first declined to comment on Issaluk's status. By October 2022, however, Issaluk had been stripped of his membership in the Order. The reasons were said to be well founded, but Rideau Hall still declined to comment on whether it was related to the earlier allegations of Arnaquq-Baril and other women.^[45][8]

Notable cases