Contact the CPA Accreditation Panel and Office

Deborah Dobson received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Western University in London, Ontario.  She is the current Chair of the Accreditation Panel. She is an Adjunct Professor in the Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry, University of Calgary and has a private practice providing psychotherapy to adults with mental health problems.  She was the Director of Clinical Training for the Calgary Clinical Psychology Residency Program and has provided supervision and training both within Canada and internationally.  She is a founding member and served on the board of the Canadian Association of Cognitive Behavioural Therapies from 2010 until 2016.   In addition to her work in psychology, she has advocated for mental health community programs and was the President of the Canadian Mental Health Association—Calgary Region.  In addition to being a Fellow of the Canadian Psychological Association, the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies and the Canadian Association of Cognitive and Behavioural Therapies, she was awarded the Governor General’s Caring Canadian Award in 2015 for her volunteer work.

Douglas Cane received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Western University in London, Ontario. He has been a member of the Accreditation Panel since 2015. He has been active in clinical training for the past 32 years and previously was the Director of Clinical Training for the Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre Psychology Residency Program for 10 years. He has also served as a member at large and as Secretary-Treasurer for CCPPP. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Department of Anesthesia, Pain Management and Perioperative Medicine, Dalhousie University and is a Fellow of the Association of Psychologists of Nova Scotia. His clinical work involves providing psychological services to individuals with ongoing pain.

Dr. Niki Fitzgerald completed her PhD in clinical psychology at the University of Windsor. She joined the Accreditation Panel in 2019 after serving as a site visitor.  She is a clinical psychologist in the Work, Stress, and Health Program at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) where she treats and assesses individuals injured at the workplace and assists clients reintegrate into the workforce. She supervises all levels of psychology trainees as well as psychiatry residents.  She is the Director of Training for the CAMH residency program.  She is a Lecturer in the Psychiatry Department at the University of Toronto, as well as Clinical Lecturer, in the Graduate Department of Psychological Clinical Science, University of Toronto, Scarborough.  Since 2010 she has held Diplomat Status with the Academy of Cognitive Therapy.  In 2016, Dr. Fitzgerald became a certified Road to Mental Readiness (R2MR) facilitator and was a clinician facilitator of this program for two local paramedic services. Outside of psychology, Dr. Fitzgerald is an avid runner and aspiring endurance triathlete.

I am an Associate Professor with a high impact position in child and youth mental health in the CPA-accredited programme in School and Applied Child Psychology at the University of British Columbia.

Previously, I held a position as an Associate Professor and I was the Director of Clinical Training in the  Counselling Psychology programme at the University of Calgary. In my five years in Calgary, I led the programme through a series of changes to implement social justice at the core of its training philosophy. I am the past-Chair of the Section on Counselling Psychology of the CPA, and an editor for Canadian Psychology. I completed my graduate studies at McGill University, which included a pre-doctoral internship in professional psychology at the University of California, Irvine Counselling Centre.

My program of study is influenced by my own bicultural identity and as such is informed by an overarching social justice lens. I am the director of the Vividhatà Research Lab – A space where my graduate students and I collaborate on culturally responsive and socially just research. My own research presently includes two major foci. First, I am studying the impact of immigration experiences on different communities. Second, I am conducting teaching and learning research, investigating multicultural and social justice competencies in professional psychology.

Elaine De Guise joined the CPA Accreditation Panel in July 2019. She obtained a psychology degree from Laval University, Quebec City, QC, Canada and a Ph.D. degree in clinical neuropsychology from the University of Montreal, Montreal, QC, Canada in 1994 and 1999, respectively. Between 1998 and 2013, she was occupying a position as a Clinical Neuropsychologist for the traumatic brain injury program at the McGill University Health Center, Montreal, QC, Canada. Since 2009, she has been an Assistant Professor for the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery at McGill University and since 2013, she has been occupying a position as an Assistant-Professor for the Department of Psychology at Université de Montréal, Québec, Canada. In 2013, she established a Psy.D. program in clinical neuropsychology at the University of Montreal as well as a University Neuropsychology Clinic.

She is a regular researcher in the Brain Repair and Integrative Neuroscience (BRaIN) Brain Repair and Integrative Neuroscience (BRaIN) Brain Repair and Integration Neuroscience (BRaIN) programBrain Repair and Integrative Neuroscience (BRaIN) Brain Repair and Integrative Neuroscience (BRaIN) Brain Repair and Integrative Neuroscience (BRaIN) at the Research-Institute of the MUHC and at the Centre de recherche interdisciplinaire en réadaptation du Montréal métropolitain (CRIR) and she is funded by the CIHR, FRQS, REPAR and CRIR. She is mainly interested in traumatic brain injury research. More specifically, her main domain of interest is to develop predictive models of outcome in a traumatic brain injured population. She is specialized in neuropsychological assessment of mild, moderate, and severe traumatic brain injured patients in an acute care setting. She works with an interdisciplinary team who has developed specialized interventions to increase the level of alertness, cognition and level of functioning after a traumatic brain injury.

Regarding clinical practice, she supervises the clinical practice of doctoral students in her Psy. D. program in neuropsychology and works in clinical practice where she conducts expert neuropsychological evaluations.

Dr. Williams is the Canada Research Chair for Mental Health Disparities at the University of Ottawa in the School of Psychology. Her work focuses on ethnic minority mental health and psychopathology research. She completed her undergraduate studies at MIT and UCLA and received her doctoral degree from the University of Virginia. She completed her psychological internship at Montreal General Hospital. She was an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania for four years, followed by five years at the University of Louisville, where she served as Director of the Center for Mental Health Disparities. She also was at the University of Connecticut for three years, where she held joint appointments in Psychological Sciences and Psychiatry

Dr. Virginia Tze received her Ph.D. in School and Clinical Child Psychology from the University of Alberta. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Administration, Foundations and Psychology at the University of Manitoba. Prior to joining the professoriate position, Dr. Tze had practiced as a school psychologist in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her research focuses on social-emotional learning, including emotional management, attribution theory, self-regulation, and cultural diversity.

José F Domene is a Professor in the counselling psychology specialization area within the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary. His teaching includes career development, professional ethics, and research methods. His scholarly work focuses on the relational contexts of career development and professional issues in counselling and counselling psychology in Canada. Dr. Domene is a Fellow of the Canadian Psychological Association and has previously served in various leadership roles within the Counselling Psychology Section of the CPA. He is currently serving as the Editor in Chief of the Canadian Journal of Counselling and Psychotherapy. He is also a registered psychologist in the province of Alberta, whose practice focuses on the intersection of career-life and mental health concerns. Dr. Domene has a Mexican and Chinese cultural heritage and, in 1990, immigrated to Canada as a teenager with his family. Prior to joining the University of Calgary in 2018, he taught at the University of New Brunswick, and at Trinity Western University in British Columbia.

Lauren Matheson is a doctoral student in Clinical Psychology at the University of Victoria. She is currently the student member of the CPA Accreditation Panel. Her research focuses on romantic relationships and LGBTQ+ identity. Specifically, she explores gender expression and sexual orientation in the context of queer relationships. Lauren is active in social justice initiatives within the Department of Psychology at the University of Victoria and has sat on the Psychology Graduate Student Council and the Social Justice and Human Rights Committee in that department.