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Josh Dehaas: Leftist lawyers aim to permanently politicize Ontario law society

Governance reforms would limit opposition to mandatory Indigenous culture course, and fealty to DEI

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Ontarians don’t tend to pay much attention to the Law Society of Ontario (LSO), which governs more than 60,000 lawyers and paralegals. Their decision last month to make a six-hour Indigenous cultural course mandatory should be a wake-up call.

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I took a version of this course, called The Path. While much of the content was valuable and interesting, it is, at the end of the day, a political program that pushes left-wing understandings of issues like Aboriginal title, “land defenders,” land acknowledgements, and residential schools.

Josh Dehaas: Leftist lawyers aim to permanently politicize Ontario law society Back to video

Lawyers should educate themselves on Canada’s history, including its shameful chapters. But a profession dedicated to truth, integrity and impartiality should not be making political or ideological training a condition of practice.

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This decision is not even the worst thing happening at the LSO. Many of the same group who narrowly passed this policy in a vote of 26 to 23 (two abstained) appear to be trying to consolidate their power through proposed “governance reform.” Ontarians should call on the province to intervene if this proposal moves ahead.

Let me explain. The LSO is run by a board of directors called benchers. There are 53: 20 lawyers elected from inside of Toronto, 20 lawyers elected from outside of Toronto, five elected paralegals and eight laypeople appointed by Ontario. Lawyers and paralegals vote every four years. This is messy but democratic governance.

In 2015, a who’s-who of progressive lawyers took over the Law Society of Upper Canada, as it was then known board. Some arrived with an activist agenda. After changing the name to LSO, they voted to require that every lawyer write a “statement of principles” (SOP) “acknowledging their obligation to promote” diversity, equality and inclusion.

Many lawyers were disturbed by a mandatory requirement to express fealty to a left-wing political ideology, so a group of conservative- and libertarian-leaning lawyers calling themselves Stop SOP ran in the 2019 election on a promise to undo the SOP. Stop SOP secured 22 of the lawyer seats, enough to repeal the SOP and replace it with a requirement that all licensees acknowledge a “special responsibility … to respect the requirements of human rights laws in Ontario and to honour the obligation not to discriminate.”

In 2023, the progressive group got their revenge. They ran their own slate under the banner Good Governance Coalition (GGC) and swept all 45 elected seats. The Stop SOP group won zero. Soon, one of the GGC’s members, Jacqueline Horvat, was elected treasurer, meaning that the bencher who had the next highest number of votes took her place: Stop SOP’s Ryan Alford. Horvat was later appointed to the Superior Court, so Peter Wardle took her place as treasurer. Since then, four more GGC benchers have become judges, so there are now six Stop SOP members on the board.

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If the governance reform goes ahead, the left-leaning side’s power may become permanently entrenched. It’s easy to imagine a scenario where no conservative or libertarian could win again. This is because the governance reform task force (all GGC benchers) has proposed that the board be cut to only 30 members in 2027: 14 elected lawyer board members, two elected paralegals, four non-licensees appointed by the government and 10 appointed by the Law Society board. The task force argues that allowing the current board to appoint 10 benchers instead of letting people contest those seats is necessary to “enhance diversity.” If the last election is any indication, the GGG will have no trouble taking all 14 elected seats, and we can expect them to appoint another 10 fellow travellers.

The governance reform would also cut the bencher term limits from 12 to eight years, meaning that most if not all of the current Stop SOP benchers would not be allowed to run again, while most of the GGC candidates could sit for another term.

Finally, the board would no longer appoint whoever had the next highest number of votes in the general election when a seat is vacant. There would be a by-election. In principle, there’s nothing wrong with that, but this too benefits GGC more than Stop SOP or other groups that might want a say.

Lawyers who think that mandatory DEI statements and a mandatory Indigenous political training shouldn’t be a condition of practicing law may be frozen out entirely if the governance reforms go ahead. If Ontarians don’t support that, they should demand the province block this governance reform.

Josh Dehaas is a Toronto-based lawyer.

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