Juno News - April 15, 2023


Lawyers push back against woke ideology and politicization of law


Episode Stats

Length

13 minutes

Words per Minute

197.06027

Word Count

2,659

Sentence Count

19

Hate Speech Sentences

2


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 I want to move to a political battle that is taking place in Ontario right now and before
00:00:13.240 all the Westerners tune out I assure you this is something that has much broader implications
00:00:18.000 than just for Ontario. The Law Society of Ontario has its venture elections which are basically the
00:00:25.040 elections for its board of governors coming up and there is one group of I don't know if I'll call
00:00:30.920 them disgruntled lawyers but I'll say very impassioned lawyers that are speaking up and
00:00:36.760 saying that they want change. They think there's been bureaucratic and political overreach by the
00:00:42.340 Law Society. They did this with some success in the last round of elections with the efforts to stop
00:00:48.980 this statement of principles that the Law Society was forcing on lawyers. Lisa Bildy is as always
00:00:54.820 the mastermind behind all the good things happening in law in Canada and she joins me now. Lisa good to
00:01:01.260 talk to you thanks for coming on today. Thanks Andrew for having me. I don't know about mastermind but I
00:01:07.420 seem to get messed up and everything anyway. Well because you're not satisfied sitting on the
00:01:11.900 sidelines which is good because I think most people are ready to throw in the towel on a lot of these
00:01:16.120 things. So this is the the campaign is called fullstoplso.ca and people can check it out for
00:01:23.100 themselves but explain to me first off what the issue is here because I know there was a fair bit
00:01:28.480 of momentum around the stop SOP slate that you had a few years back and I think a lot of your
00:01:34.340 candidates were successful and I think a lot of people on the outsides probably thought okay great
00:01:38.700 the battle's won. Right well that was only just a small taste of the battle because if you you may
00:01:46.040 recall the statement of principles was one of 13 recommendations that were brought in in 2016
00:01:53.040 under the previous convocation which is the name for the the board of governors. So these were based
00:02:01.260 on something called the stratcom report which was basically it concluded that there was systemic racism
00:02:07.960 in the profession. It was questionable in terms of their methodology and the statistical validity of
00:02:13.060 all of this and then they of course they extrapolated to say that all equity seeking groups should be
00:02:21.320 entitled to to the benefits of what they were pushing forward which without defining which equity
00:02:27.280 groups and you know so it wasn't really just about racism but in any event there were 13 recommendations
00:02:32.800 that were brought in by the convocation one of which was the statement of principles actually there
00:02:39.140 were uh and that was only one of like a sub section so so there's like 12.75 more percent more or 12 12 12
00:02:48.400 and three quarter more uh suggestions that need to be implemented they're just basically waiting in the
00:02:52.300 wings to to bring these back in. Some of them include things like an inclusion index where law firms are
00:02:58.840 ranked based on their um you know on all the boxes that are checked and the satisfaction of of staff and
00:03:06.720 and lawyers who um who who happen to be coming from these equity seeking groups whichever they are
00:03:13.920 so basically it's a naming and shaming kind of exercise for for large law firms and of course
00:03:19.440 for a lot of large law firms this is part of what they do anyway uh they have you know edi departments
00:03:24.960 and this is this is the kind of thing that their clients expect and so on uh and so basically it's free
00:03:30.000 marketing then for those law firms to be given this stamp of approval by the law society uh at the expense of
00:03:36.240 of of the smaller firms and sole practitioners i mean that's just one more and then the statement
00:03:41.600 of principles is supposed to be incorporated into the rules of professional conduct and there's other
00:03:46.720 other measures that i could go on um but there's an awful lot of data collection and um processes
00:03:54.320 involved that that all emanate from the same source and so we did get rid of that statement of principles
00:03:58.880 and the opponents that we have this time who have um formed a slate of their own say that the stop the
00:04:06.400 the sop is dead we will not be bringing that back but uh they haven't said anything about these other
00:04:11.120 measures one of the big things that i i brought up earlier on in the show that i i think is important
00:04:16.880 to note here is that regulatory colleges have oftentimes operated in the shadows because if you're not a lawyer
00:04:23.280 you think okay well what does the law society of ontario matter to me and i i realize there's a bit
00:04:27.760 of a difference there if you're someone who has to make a complaint about a lawyer and and all that
00:04:31.920 but but we saw with jordan peterson recently when the college of psychologists decided to go after him
00:04:37.040 that these groups are very much politicized and and i think when the trinity western case came up a few
00:04:42.400 years ago and the law societies were effectively blocking trinity western from setting up a law school
00:04:48.400 uh you have people starting to see okay these groups are entering the culture wars these aren't
00:04:53.680 just focused on you know do you have the right insurance and are you qualified to practice
00:05:00.480 right and that is obviously a big concern we are seeing it in a lot of other institutions
00:05:04.880 i having sort of uh taken the position i did on the statement of principles ended up attracting a lot
00:05:10.640 of clients who were also being essentially punished for their views in in other regulatory bodies across
00:05:16.640 the country and so i'm seeing this in a lot of places it isn't just this institution and what
00:05:21.920 what's happening is um you know they're being weaponized in effect by activists who don't like
00:05:28.320 the views of members and they've now discovered there's this disciplinary process they can tap into
00:05:33.440 and so we saw this with covid we're seeing with gender issues uh if somebody expresses a view that
00:05:38.240 doesn't fit with the orthodoxy of the day on on any of those topics uh well then a group of
00:05:44.560 activists or even a single activist can send a letter of complaint and then suddenly if if it
00:05:49.920 falls to you know on a receptive audience which it increasingly does as more of these same thinking
00:05:55.440 people move into the bureaucracy um then you know suddenly this this licensee has has a whole
00:06:02.800 disciplinary process to deal with as a result of their views in the public square you have nothing to
00:06:07.920 do with with patients or or what have you so uh so it is dangerous and in fact the law society is
00:06:13.360 proposing to bring in similar sort of powers to what we were seeing with the jordan peterson case
00:06:17.280 which uh um would would essentially force a lawyer when there's no reasonable and probable grounds for
00:06:24.320 discipline to still come before a committee of their peers to be re-educated chastised whatever
00:06:31.440 and that this will also be made public on their record without any input from them so it's you know you
00:06:37.680 like to think that it would be used for things like competence uh making sure people are doing their
00:06:42.720 you know they they aren't um you know handling mortgages badly for real estate clients or or
00:06:48.640 missing limitation periods or or that kind of thing but the temptation will always be there to use it for
00:06:54.320 other purposes and that's really what our group is trying to do is we're trying to say look this has to
00:06:59.760 be a neutral body if it wants if we want to self-regulate it needs to be neutral and so we
00:07:06.000 cannot be going down this path of regulating people's political opinions or you know amassing
00:07:12.400 power in the bureaucracy to to um to go off on all these other tangents i i remember i would have been
00:07:19.120 however many years ago now i can't recall i was covering the ontario carbon tax challenge before the
00:07:24.720 court of appeal and it was at osgood hall which is this beautiful building that everyone only knows about
00:07:29.120 now because of this fight over trees or something but uh you osgood hall is home to the court of
00:07:33.600 appeal for ontario and also to the law society of ontario and there's like this i recall this
00:07:38.080 hallway that you go down and once you go down that hallway you're on the part that the law society
00:07:42.400 governs and i remember knowing that instantly because you pass this corner and it's the uh transgender
00:07:49.440 washroom on one side and the muslim prayer room on the other side and you sort of realize okay we're now in
00:07:54.320 in wokistan here so i i look at the three pillars that you have for this full stop platform stop
00:08:00.240 bloat stop creep and stop woke are there people that you're finding that that aren't as happy with
00:08:06.000 that third category they're saying yeah i'm on side with stopping the bloat but i'm okay with the
00:08:11.040 woke or are you finding that the legal community is pretty much in these two camps of yes this is all
00:08:16.480 good and no we need to put an end to it well i think there are some who feel a little uncomfortable with
00:08:21.840 it um you know again it's it's a it's a colloquial term that has taken on a whole lot of meaning and
00:08:28.560 not perhaps the original meaning that it had back in the 20s and 30s when it was more of a um you know
00:08:34.560 a a racial awareness campaign which you know had some importance and value but it's become what i like
00:08:40.560 to call social justice fundamentalism now and so a lot a lot is being ushered in under that and
00:08:46.800 you know there's always there are always going to be people who still want to believe that the words
00:08:52.320 that are being advanced in this orthodoxy mean what we think that they mean rather than what they
00:08:58.080 actually mean so for example equality diversity and inclusion all sound like great words i don't
00:09:03.920 think there's a single person uh that i've met or and certainly not on our slate who don't think that
00:09:09.120 those words by their normal meanings that we all kind of assume we're talking about would have any
00:09:14.720 problem with those things but those aren't the things that they actually mean and so when they
00:09:18.640 say equality they really mean equity they mean equality of outcome they mean everybody needs to
00:09:24.400 end up in the same place regardless of you know merit circumstances uh personal decisions whatever i
00:09:31.120 mean you just need to have we just need to have a head count basically we need to have everybody at
00:09:36.160 the end of the the finish line looking the way that they're supposed to look uh and so that's what
00:09:40.960 equity is and then inclusion again we only include people who think like us okay so it's not really
00:09:46.000 inclusive and diversity well you know we can have an entirely female panel uh all females of the same
00:09:54.160 you know racial background and that's considered diverse uh but that's not what most people think
00:09:59.760 when they hear those words but the the activist meaning is really quite different and so to some degree
00:10:05.280 it's a failure of education i suppose to to help people understand what we're really talking about
00:10:09.680 and i suppose we need to work on that yeah i know and i i think that's fair and i'm curious if you
00:10:14.880 could shine some light on what voter turnout on on these venture elections is do you find that
00:10:19.600 historically lawyers just pay their ridiculous licensing fees and carry on and don't really care
00:10:24.800 who they are or do you find that they do take a really active role in in picking these ventures as
00:10:29.840 they're called well you would think there'd be more and the the numbers have never been great
00:10:35.280 um i think last election they were just under 30 percent which was a was particularly low and
00:10:41.600 which was shocking to me when i heard that because yeah because that was the one that the non-lawyers
00:10:45.440 had heard about right i mean it was it was a galvanizing issue normally there's nothing to
00:10:51.040 even you know you just kind of vote for the names that you've heard of okay that lawyer sounds like
00:10:54.480 somebody i've i've come across you seem all right um you know the but but people actively came out last
00:11:00.400 time i thought um but the numbers didn't demonstrate that so i i don't know what that says
00:11:05.600 a certain amount of complacency in the profession i guess or maybe people are just tired of of the
00:11:10.320 conflicts but uh you know if you're tired of the conflicts then i think you want a neutral regulator
00:11:14.480 so you know vote for us and we'll get things back on track is basically the position that we're taking
00:11:19.760 just to look at the bigger picture here how is this battle playing out in other provinces to the
00:11:24.320 extent that you're aware is is ontario pushing further or is this just kind of already accepted
00:11:30.800 elsewhere it depends some i think there's a variety of experiences i would say most institutions tend to
00:11:38.720 attract the kind of people who who have an activist agenda and so they're in various stages of that
00:11:44.000 unfolding uh in terms of the legal profession i i believe that you know ontario was was a leader
00:11:49.840 in bringing a lot of this stuff in and and uh to the chagrin of some who who wanted that move
00:11:55.440 forward um it's been basically on hold while our stop stop ventures have been around um you know
00:12:00.960 this inclusion index for example was basically iced uh last year because by now the data is kind of
00:12:07.840 out of out of um you know it's it's it's not current uh and so they they say well you know we're
00:12:13.760 not going to do the inclusion index or they imply that they aren't but they will be back they
00:12:17.760 they basically just put it on hold tour out of the way um so i don't i don't know where the others are
00:12:23.120 starting to catch up a bit more but i haven't done an exhaustive analysis i heard that um new brunswick
00:12:28.880 is bringing in a climate change uh committee uh in their law society so i i it continues i i don't even
00:12:36.640 know how that applies to the law society like i'm not even sure what they'd be governing in that case
00:12:42.480 i don't know carbon offsets if you want to go and visit your clients or something who knows
00:12:47.360 all right well i i wish you the the best of luck with this lisa i know we'll we'll certainly have
00:12:51.040 your voice on about cases uh in the future as you always have ones that are incredibly important but
00:12:56.160 it's good to see you taking up this fight people can learn more about it at fullstop lso.ca and
00:13:02.160 you've got uh by the way it's great when i look through the candidate list i see like
00:13:05.920 a third of them i think i've had on the show in the last year so it's good that you have the right
00:13:09.520 people running or i have the right people uh coming on the show or a bit of both good stuff all
00:13:13.920 right thanks for having me andrew thanks very much lisa always a pleasure thanks for listening
00:13:17.760 to the andrew lawton show support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news