Biography

Patrick Westaway is a corporate lawyer of more than twenty-five years’ experience, combining expertise both as a corporate and a tax lawyer to start up, grow and, ultimately, to sell businesses. From the enterprise structuring at the beginning to the sale at the end, with all of the reorganisations, acquisitions and commercial contract negotiations in between, Patrick has the formal in-depth training and experience at Canadian blue-chip firms on both sides of the corporate and tax divide for coherent and cohesive service with a particular emphasis on cross-border scenarios.

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Patrick has represented clients in a wide range of industries such as SaaS providers who themselves operate in various fields, bio-tech development and distribution, medical services, telecommunications, renewable technologies, animated feature film financing, production and distribution and more besides. What many of these clients have in common is international financing. ownership or operations, to which Patrick’s cross-border tax expertise is integral.

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Patrick began his career at the Toronto office of Deloitte & Touche in 1998 where he practised cross-border enterprise and investment tax structuring for multinationals before moving into the practice of law, ultimately joining one of Canada’s leading law firms, Lang Michener LLP (now McMillan LLP). While continuing to develop expertise in complex tax structuring, Patrick concurrently developed as a corporate lawyer in such areas as mergers and acquisitions, private equity and commercial contracts.

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While maintaining his law practice, Patrick co-founded a company which provided all pre-production services for an IMAX feature film commissioned by NASA (featuring a voice cast drawn from the world’s two most renowned sci-fi franchises) as well as pre-production and business services for a wide-release feature film. In 2009, Patrick was seconded to serve as in-house counsel to Wind Mobile (now Freedom Mobile) during its start-up phase, in which role Patrick negotiated all manner of agreements involved in the start-up of a national telecom company. In 2014, Patrick relocated to Waterloo, Ontario, the hub of Canada’s innovation and technology community.

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Representative Transactions

• Provided all corporate and tax services for the structuring, financing and establishment of a Canadian investment fund with a mandate to acquire and manage technology companies in various foreign jurisdictions;

• Provided all corporate, tax, entertainment and contractual services for the structuring, financing and operation of virtual reality content production and distribution operations in Canada, the United States and Australia as well as for an associated Hong Kong-based investment fund;

• Co-founded and managed all legal and business affairs for a feature animation pre-production studio operating in Canada and Taiwan;

• Advised a U.S. VFX studio based in China in connection with its due diligence to establish a Canadian operation to work on a well known blockbuster feature film franchise;

• Advised on all Canadian tax issues arising in respect of the sale of a group of private Canadian corporations to a public non-resident multi-national; including, structuring and implementing the tax-effective exchange and cancellation of employee stock options;

• Structured the purchase, development and sale of numerous German-owned wind and solar projects in Canada; and

• Provided all corporate and tax services in connection with the sale to a UK public company of Canadian private company shares held by both Canadian residents and a foreign trust.​

 

Education

• B.A. (Honours) University of Western Ontario

• J.D., Osgoode Hall Law School

• Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants’ In-Depth Tax Course, Parts I and II​

• Certificate in Entertainment Law, Osgoode Hall

 

Teaching Engagements

• The Osgoode Certificate in Intellectual Property Licensing (2017-2019, 2025 to the present)

• The Bar Admission Course of Ontario, Business Taxation Section (2000 to the programme’s conclusion in 2005)​

 

Speaking Engagements

• "Tax & Trade: Cross-Border Business 101", delivered to the International Law Practitioners of Waterloo Region, November 2016

• "Avoiding U.S. Tax—What Too Few People Know", delivered to the Rotary Club of Forest Hill, Toronto, July 2013

• "Taxation Issues in Acquisition Transactions –A Practical Review", delivered to the Ontario Bar Association, March 2008

• "The Short Course on Partnerships", delivered to Osgoode Hall Professional Development, February 2008

• "Partnerships, Limited Partnerships and Unlimited Liability Companies", delivered to Osgoode Hall Professional Development, April 2007

• "Income Tax Issues Affecting Foreign Corporations Entering the Canadian Market", delivered to the annual EU-Lex conference, October 2005

• "Professional Corporations", delivered to the Annual Conference of the Society of Urological Surgeons of Ontario (SUSO), September 2005​

 

Past Directorships

• Festivals & Events Ontario

• Lens Entertainment Pty. Ltd.

• Nimble Film Inc.