About

The legal department at YVR is organised to function like a mini law firm, with lawyers and support staff focusing on different practice areas and supporting the organisation across all of its departments. External counsel with particular areas of expertise are brought in to assist as required, and are supervised and instructed directly by YVR’s in-house counsel. The department is led by vice president legal and chief governance officer Argiro Kotsalis and director of the legal services department Dorothy Wong, and consists of nine lawyers, three contract clerks, one risk management and insurance administrator and two executive legal assistants. Vancouver Airport Authority is a community-based, not-for-profit organisation that manages Vancouver International Airport (YVR). Canada’s second busiest airport, YVR served just over 25 million passengers in 2018. 56 airlines serve YVR, connecting people and businesses to more than 128 non-stop destinations worldwide. YVR was also awarded “Best Airport in North America” from Skytrax in 2018, which
it has won for nine years in a row – no other North American airport has ever accomplished this feat. In
June 2017, after years of hard work led by the legal team, YVR entered into the Musqueam Agreement, a
30-year agreement with the Musqueam First Nation community, a ground breaking agreement involving profit sharing, job creation and sustainable development. Kotsalis highlights that, ‘great strides have been made over the first year of the Musqueam Agreement being in place: 86 general applications from the Musqueam Band were referred for positions at the airport; 25 Musqueam members are currently working at the airport and many more have interviews pending; eight Musqueam members received scholarships, each up to C$10,000; and the Musqueam Band received just over C$5.2m from YVR under the revenue sharing arrangement’.