In the short term, the most urgent issue facing the legal profession in Ontario today is the need to get The Law Society’s well-intended but misguided “Statement of Principles” requirement repealed as soon as possible. If we don’t get the requirement repealed quickly by democratic means, and we have to leave it to the courts to extinguish the requirement for us, the general public will have the right to wonder whether we know what we’re doing at all, in running our own profession. Then, too, as long as the “Statement of Principles” requirement remains on the books, the resentment and uproar over it will be roadblocking actual improvements, not only on the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion front, but also on other fronts, on all of which our co-operative collective action is needed. Once the urgent matter of repealing the “Statement of Principles” requirement has been attended to, we can and should turn our attention to the huge and long-festering (and much tougher to solve) issue of the unacceptably high financial costs involved at all stages in producing lawyers, and in their thereafter being able to provide legal services. Lawyers’ educational and operating costs have grown so high that their consequently necessarily high fee levels are beyond the capacity of most potential clients to pay. This is an access to justice issue of the highest order. Please see my comments on these topics elsewhere among my responses on this site.

I was in small-firm general legal practice, mostly in the former City of North York, for 16+ years after my 1975 Call to the Bar. I then spent 19+ years, until my 2011 retirement, based in Oshawa as a roving Tax Prosecutor for the Attorney General of Ontario. I’m U of T Law ’73. I belong to the Canadian Bar Association, to the Toronto and Durham law associations, and to the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. I’ve run for office several times for the NDP, including provincially in 2011 and 2014; young people are now taking charge on that front. In law and in riding politics, I’ve always enjoyed mentoring the new recruits. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, I migrated to Canada in 1969, during the Vietnam War.

I support all the bencher candidates pledged to vote for the repeal of The Law Society’s “Statement of Principles” requirement. Please see the website, stopsop.ca .

The Law Society should stop spending time and money on attempted “rebranding.” Whose idea was it that the general public would be impressed by our having changed the Society’s name? For that matter, how did the benchers who approved the name change, fail to anticipate the anger that the change would engender among the Society’s members?

The infusion of more provincial and federal taxpayers’ money will regrettably be required, if there are to be realistic attempts at solving today’s problems facing Ontario’s justice system and impeding the ability of the province’s legal profession to deliver services to people who need them. Unfortunately, I believe that The Law Society will have to become involved in more effective lobbying of government for money. It hasn’t helped the justice system, or the ability of lawyers to do their work, that relatively fewer lawyers are running for public office these days. We have to make up for our loss of influence in the halls of government these days.

stopsop.ca

johnffagan@gmail.com