‘Culture Wars’ come to Ontario Law Society election
By Tara MacIsaac for The Epoch Times
With bencher elections taking place every four years, the next is due this April, and for the first time ever it now has two opposing groups.
Benchers are elected LSO members who serve on the Ontario Law Society’s decision-making body, known as Convocation.
Before the last LSO bencher election, in 2019, these contests were fairly ho-hum.
But the regulator passed a motion in 2016 to require all lawyers—as a condition of being allowed to practice—to sign a diversity and equity statement of principles (SOP). For the first time in bencher election history, a large slate of lawyers ran together in 2019 on a contentious political issue.
They called themselves StopSOP. And they won, taking 22 of the 40 seats.
The “other” side was fragmented in 2019 but has since formed into a unified Good Governance Coalition.
This year’s election not only has the SOP issue at its centre, but seemingly a whole parcel of issues connected to the “culture wars” of today.
Bruce Pardy, a law professor at Queen’s University, LSO member, and part of the FullStop team, wrote that the regulator “is set on establishing ideological requirements to maintain our licences and livelihoods.”
“Incorporating the substance of the SOP into the rules of professional conduct, tracking and publishing the racial makeup of each firm over 25 lawyers, and requiring licensees to take compulsory re-education programs in EDI [equity, diversity, inclusiveness] are among the many items waiting to be reactivated by a big-governance coalition of establishment benchers who hope to retake the law society in this spring’s election,” Pardy wrote.
