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| Great White North |
| Canadian Law Society prescribing, effectively with the force of law, what to say and what to think. SJW attorney shocked at what he helped create. |
| 2019-02-13 |
| I have been a Toronto-based litigation lawyer for 30 years. My politics are progressive and strongly egalitarian. About two decades ago, I started my own law firm, specifically so that I could serve disadvantaged individuals and communities. I have sued governments and large corporations, often on a pro bono basis. I have acted for Indigenous clients‐including the family of Dudley George, an Ojibway man who was shot and killed by police in 1995 at Ipperwash Provincial Park in Ontario. I have represented a regional Cree First Nations tribal council on the James Bay coast for more than 25 years, and for eight years a group of indigenous Mayan women in an ongoing claim against a Canadian international mining company for alleged rape and murder at its facility in Guatemala. I act in a class-action for almost a thousand people who claim to have been wrongfully mass-arrested by Toronto Police at the 2010 G20 Summit. I am a recipient of the Diane Martin Medal For Social Justice Through Law, the Human Rights Award from the Ontario Federation of Labour, and the Champion of Justice Award from Aboriginal Legal Services of Toronto. In 2014, and again in 2015, Canadian Lawyer Magazine put me on its national Top-25-Most-Influential list because of my advocacy on behalf of those seeking access to justice. I recite all this not to blow my own horn, but rather in the hope that my progressive credentials may convince otherwise skeptical readers to take seriously the arguments that follow. For all of my adult life, I have worked to advance social justice. Now I am horrified by what my own professional regulator is doing in the name of that same cause. In Canada, the legal profession is regulated provincially. Seven years ago, the Law Society of Ontario (which then was still called the Law Society of Upper Canada) created a working group to address "challenges faced by racialized licensees" in Ontario’s legal profession. The working group reported in 2016 that it had discovered "systemic racism" in the profession. While no one will dispute that elements of racism can be found in parts of Canadian society, the collected survey data did not support the conclusion that racism in my profession is widespread and serious. Nevertheless, in December, 2016, Convocation (the legislative body that governs the Law Society) adopted a set of 13 recommendations on the topic. Times being what they are, no one felt comfortable putting the brakes on this process, despite misgivings. The idea that racism was rampant, and that heavy-handed measures were required to address it, took on a life of its own. One of the listed recommendations was that the Law Society should "require every licensee to adopt and to abide by a statement of principles acknowledging their obligation to promote equality, diversity and inclusion generally, and in their behaviour towards colleagues, employees, clients and the public." When the Law Society announced this new requirement the following September, its advisory also stated that we Ontario lawyers should "demonstrate a personal valuing" of these principles. Despite the fact that I always have been a strong advocate for "equality," this development left me flabbergasted: Our regulator was demanding that lawyers and paralegals draft and then obey a set of specific political ideas‐both in their personal and professional lives‐as a condition of their license. Failure to prepare a personal statement of principles in keeping with the Law Society’s directive would likely result (after a short reprieve for re-education) in sanctions, such as an administrative suspension. (The Law Society has not formally announced what the penalty will be, except to say that "progressive measures" would be applied.) Lawyers who are suspended are not permitted to practice law. Their refusal to embrace these values would put their livelihood in peril. The Law Society was prescribing, effectively with the force of law, what to say and what to think. I never imagined that I would ever see such a thing in Canada. It goes on. He is shocked, shocked to see that his ideology that is known for thought control, is creating thought control. |
| Posted by: Herb McCoy |
| #10 1984 minus the cigs and victory gin. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2019-02-13 15:30 |
| #9 Gracias |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2019-02-13 13:21 |
| #8 Revolutionary intellectuals are always surprised to find themselves up against the wall along with all the deplorables. Mind you, even Stalin didn't try abolish meat or traditional gender roles. I'd take that as Snark of the Day! |
| Posted by: SteveS 2019-02-13 13:17 |
| #7 Useful idiot is the term for this vaginal turd. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2019-02-13 10:51 |
| #6 Social justice is just another social disease. It infects the highly educated but chronically un-informed. Symptoms include: fever dreams, constant anger, loss of rational thought, paranoia and racial animus particularity against older white males. Once contracted is is usually a life-long sickness poisoning all that surrounds it. Similar to rabies and light, SJ individuals shun the truth. Not surprisingly, acceptance of truth is the only known cure. |
| Posted by: Warthog 2019-02-13 09:45 |
| #5 "My politics are ... strongly egalitarian." "I have worked to advance social justice." Sorry these are mutually exclusive. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2019-02-13 08:37 |
| #4 It's all about power. All that stuff about equality, fairness, justice is just rationalization in attaining power. Unfetted power ultimately destroys all of that. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2019-02-13 06:19 |
| #3 Leftists are genetically incapable of digesting what the word free means. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2019-02-13 01:30 |
| #2 Mind you, even Stalin didn't try abolish meat or traditional gender roles. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2019-02-13 01:17 |
| #1 Russians fought a 5 year, extremely bloody, civil war before communists gained power and started coommunisting. Europeans and Canadians rolled over without a shot fired. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2019-02-13 01:16 |