Andrew Brewin

Who was Andrew Brewin?

Francis Andrew Brewin was a lawyer and Canadian politician.

Brewin was a stalwart in the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and ran numerous times at the federal and provincial levels in the 1940 and 1950s. As a lawyer in the 1940s, he was retained by the Co-operative Committee on Japanese Canadians to contest the federal government's deportation orders affecting thousands of Japanese Canadians. Led by Brewin, the 'Japanese Canadian Reference Case' was heard by the Supreme Court of Canada and later, on appeal, by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Brewin was also retained by a committee of Japanese Canadians who had been detained during World War II as "enemy aliens" in order to try to have their property restored. He succeeded in persuading the government to call a Royal Commission to investigate the question.

In 1945, he was asked by Ontario CCF leader Ted Jolliffe to be co-counsel during the infamous LeBel Royal Commission that was looking into whether or not Ontario's premier at the time was employing a secret political police force. He was a candidate for the leadership of the at the party's the 1953 leadership convention, but lost to Donald C. MacDonald.