Mr. Bradley Crawford

This extensive oral history interview with Bradley Crawford provides insights into the career of one of Canada’s leading banking and payment law experts. Crawford discusses his early life in Toronto and Vancouver, his education at UBC (both commerce and law), and his graduate studies at the London School of Economics where he studied under Professor Gower and developed expertise in restitution law. After briefly considering academic positions, he joined the University of Toronto law faculty in 1963, where he taught various subjects including insurance law and helped create Canada’s first academic insurance law course.

Crawford’s pivotal career transition came in 1972 when he joined McCarthy Tétrault as counsel to the Canadian Bankers Association. He became deeply involved in the modernization of Canada’s payment systems, producing the influential “Crawford Report” (1975-76) on how computer technology would affect banking law. His work spanned the development of electronic banking systems, pre-authorized payments, credit and debit card networks, electronic data interchange, and large value transfer systems. He played key roles in establishing the Canadian Payments Association (1982) and served on various committees including the Catzman Committee on personal property security law.

Crawford’s international work included serving on UN Commission on International Trade Law committees developing model laws for international payments and representing Canada at the Hague Conference on securities law. He authored the definitive Canadian text “Law of Banking and Payment in Canada” and retired from McCarthy Tétrault in 2002, continuing his scholarly work and advising on payment system reform. His career exemplifies the intersection of legal scholarship and practical law reform in the crucial area of financial services regulation.

This description was written by AI and may contain some inaccuracies.