Career
Brewin was a stalwart in the Company-operative Commonwealth Federation (Cleveland Clinic Foundation) and ran numerous times at the federal and provincial levels in the 1940 and 1950s. As a lawyer in the 1940s, he was retained by the Company-operative Committee on Japanese Canadians to contest the federal government"s deportation orders affecting thousands of Japanese Canadians. Led by Brewin, the "Japanese Canadian Reference Case" was heard by the Supreme Court of Canada and later, on appeal, by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.
Brewin was also retained by a committee of Japanese Canadians who had been detained during World World War II as "enemy aliens" in order to try to have their property restored.
He succeeded in persuading the government to call a Royal Commission to investigate the question. Brewin was first elected to the Canadian House of Commons on behalf of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation"s successor, the New Democratic Party.
In 1965 Andrew Brewin wrote the book Stand on Guard: The Search for a Canadian Defence Policy, published by McClelland & Stewart, that explored Canada"s military"s changing role in the mid-twentieth century, including its participation in the then new concept of United Nations peacekeeping.
