Bio
Bernard Colas is a CIGI senior fellow and a partner at CMKZ — Colas Moreira Kazandjian Zikovsky, an international trade and business law firm based in Montreal. He has more than 30 years of experience in international trade law and intellectual property law.
Bernard is an expert on law and governance innovations for simplifying the transfer of environmentally sustainable technologies from North to South. Specifically, Bernard explores how businesses, governments and lawyers can anticipate and mitigate legal and institutional barriers to the transfer of clean technologies from North to South.
As a partner at CMKZ, Bernard provides advice pertaining to the development and enforcement of international trade agreements and helps his clients develop commercial and industrial strategies while taking advantage of international trade laws.
Prior to co-founding CMKZ, Bernard worked at a law firm now called Dentons, at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris and at the International Federation of Producers of Phonograms and Videograms in London. Bernard has also advised foreign governments, and notably acted as trade law specialist for a Canadian International Development Agency project by assisting Lithuania and Algeria to join the World Trade Organization, and for World Bank projects concerned with liberalizing and privatizing telecommunications and postal services in Togo, Comoros and Mauritania.
Bernard has a doctorate of law (with honours) and a D.E.A. (law of international economic relations and organizations) from the University of Paris 1 (Panthéon Sorbonne), a licence in law from the University of Sherbrooke and an auditor certificate from The Hague Academy of International Law.