Tom Christensen

Background

About Tom Christensen

Tom is a Solicitor. He brings a pragmatic, service oriented approach to meeting each client's objectives. Tom's legal practice includes estate and incapacity planning, estate administration, estate disputes, real estate conveyancing and financing, business structuring, the purchase and sale of businesses, and generally advising businesses with respect to their legal matters. Tom has a particular interest in both family business succession and alternative dispute resolution. From 2001 to 2009 Tom was the elected Member of the Legislative Assembly for Okanagan-Vernon. In that time, he served as British Columbia’s Minister of Education, Minister of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation, and Minister of Children and Family Development. As the province’s first Minister of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation, Tom had responsibility for implementing a more collaborative and less adversarial new relationship with First Nations and Aboriginal peoples in British Columbia. He has been a member of Treasury Board and was Chair of the Legislative Review Committee from 2005 to 2009. Tom chose to leave politics in 2009 and return to private practice. He remains committed to public service, having served as a Director of the Southern Interior Development Trust, and currently serving as a Director and Chair of the Legal Services Society of British Columbia. In Vernon, he is Past President of the Literacy and Youth Initiatives Society of the North Okanagan, and a member of the Kalamalka Rotary Club.