The Law Society of Alberta (LSA) took another major step towards the woke transformation of the Canadian legal system..The LSA, which is the professional regulator of lawyers in Alberta, “expanded” the concept professional “competence” as described in its new “professional development profile.”.By its new definition, it seems, a lawyer who isn’t woke isn’t fully “competent.”.In May it notified 10,000 Alberta lawyers they are required to submit educational plans to the LSA using a new online “continuing professional development” tool. The mandatory tool, which is not yet available for use, will apparently have lawyers self-reporting their ideological (and other) “competence” (or lack thereof) to the LSA, along with plans to resolve select areas of incompetence. It will conduct “random reviews” to check whether lawyers are “on track … and to offer coaching to assist with implementation.”.While the LSA assures lawyers it won’t discipline (or, we might say “cancel”) them for being incompetent according to this new framework (which would include being insufficiently woke) that’s hardly reassuring..The LSA’s objectives say:."The purpose of disciplining lawyers is to protect the public, the legal profession, and legal institutions against lawyers who have demonstrated an unwillingness or an inability to comply with professional standards.".Those same objectives say a “core purpose” of the LSA is to promote “equity, diversity and inclusion in the legal profession in the delivery of legal services,” including “cultural competence.” It elsewhere entertains discipline for such “incompetence” including under the umbrella of “discrimination and harassment.”.Regardless, we’re told the new profile is a “living” document which is “expected to evolve and change.” Bearing in mind that, according to the LSA, diversity, inclusion and equity (DIE) ranks equal to and may even outrank other core purposes, including promoting the rule of law, the question becomes: how long will the regulator really tolerate incompetence?.While at this point one can’t be certain how the information gathered by the tool will be used, it seems an excellent opportunity to preemptively identify and blacklist ideological malcontents..The new competency profile includes nine “domains,” two of which are overtly woke (DIE and “Truth and Reconciliation”) with wokeness subtly peppered throughout the remaining seven. Oddly, the profile “… does not include substantive areas of law …” but lawyers are still “… encouraged to pursue CPD specific to their practice areas.”.The profile explains a competent lawyer is woke in thought and conduct. Correct thought includes many standard neo-Marxist (i.e. woke) dogmas including confessions of unconscious bias and belief in intersectional oppression and “systemic discrimination” as a cause or (more properly) the only cause of all socioeconomic disparities between races..Of course, passive belief in woke ideology does not suffice; a competent lawyer must “take action,” “advance,” “advocate” and “promote” it. A competent lawyer “practices anti-discrimination and anti-racism.”.To the average Canadian a term like “anti-racism” probably sounds quite reasonable and benevolent. Good people oppose racism. But, as with all wokeness, words often don’t mean what they seem..To understand the term “anti-racist” you might refer, as the LSA does, to “Calgary Anti-Racism Education.” There we learn “anti-racism” means suspicion, if not outright rejection, of things like liberalism (which, it says, is “full of paradoxes and contradictions”), equality before the law (which is “used to perpetuate discriminatory practices”) and multi-culturalism. We are even informed Martin Luther King was a closet racist. His “dream,” a colour blind society, is maligned as “colour evasion” which:.… fosters the systematic denial of racial subordination and the psychological repression of an individual’s recognition of that subordination, thereby allowing such subordination to continue..The LSA’s resource references the likes of Robin DiAngelo (responsible for the poisonous line, “a positive white identity is an impossible goal”) and Ibram X Kendi (“The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination”). Consistent with this theme, the LSA’s resource further informs us that “whiteness” is: a social construction that's created a racial hierarchy that's shaped all the social, cultural, educational, political, and economic institutions of society. Whiteness is linked to domination and is a form of race privilege invisible to white people who are not conscious of its power..It’s not entirely clear what’s “anti” about all this racism until you consider that wokeness is neo-Marxist. Marxist ideology explains virtually everything is the result of oppressive power hierarchies which are, all too conveniently, invisible to the “oppressor.”.Therefore, there’s no such thing as racism against whites: Racism cannot be experienced by white individuals because of the power factor..Under the LSA’s competency domain of “Truth and Reconciliation” things are no less extreme. For example, lawyers should, “acknowledge and respect the traditional Indigenous territory in which the lawyer practises or lives.” Elsewhere the LSA explains:.Land acknowledgements are traditional protocol used to give thanks and to pay respect to the peoples and the land for which you are a visitor upon. "The LSA, linking land and race, believes that you — or, at least, readers of most skin colors — are just visitors in your “home and native land.” This, now, is legal “competence.”.“Competence” also means a lawyer “acknowledge[s] the impacts of colonization and systemic discrimination,” and even, “appl[ies] Calls for Action and Calls for Justice applicable to Indigenous Peoples.” That’s a big ask. There are 94 “Calls to Action.” Just a part of a single one (number 27) was responsible for the LSA recently forcing 10,000 lawyers to undergo a highly politicized and factually distorted re-education in indigenous “cultural competency.”.To the reader tempted to think of an institution “going woke” as harmless virtue signaling... When it comes to our legal system, that's a dangerous mistake. As the LSA says, “lawyers are integral to the development, interpretation and application of laws.” In other words, laws can effectively be changed by changing the thoughts of lawyers themselves. You cannot exercise a right your lawyer doesn’t think to tell you about, or which your lawyer doesn’t pursue, or which a court doesn’t value and enforce..Take, for example, the bedrock rule “innocent until proven guilty.” A law society should cherish and protect that rule. What happens if it doesn’t? In the LSA’s Articling Placement Program, if an articling student reports “discrimination or harassment” (which may lead to “education, training or the conduct process” for the target lawyer) the LSA says its “default position … is that articling students are believed” — the target lawyer is “guilty until proven innocent.” Where lawyers do not “cherish and protect” the innocence rule, it is effectively cancelled..The deterioration of the innocence rule is, however, peanuts compared to the LSA’s broader focus. In its mandatory indigenous “cultural competency” training, for example, lawyers were taught that: … racism … discrimination … unfair treatment and … inequality [are] built into Canadian law, policies, and structures..Similarly, see the definition of “whiteness” above, and the LSA’s “anti-racism” resource which tells us: "Anti-black racism is deeply entrenched in Canadian institutions, policies and practices, to the extent that anti-Black racism is either functionally normalized or rendered invisible to the larger White society.".The LSA’s own “Acknowledgment of Systemic Discrimination” echoes these sentiments..If Canadian law, policies, structures, and practices are truly corrupted with racism (i.e. whiteness), the only logical and compassionate response is to cancel them too. For lawyers, the LSA’s new approach to “competence” should be deeply troubling. It is an attack on the legitimacy of the legal order lawyers are supposed to protect. It is also a profound violation of personal freedoms including those guaranteed under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. To continue in their chosen profession, it seems, lawyers must eliminate wrongthink, believe and espouse woke ideology, and become woke activists..For Canadians who value things like the rule of law, equality before the law, innocence until proven guilt, property rights and a free and open multicultural society of shared humanity, the LSA’s new approach towards “competence” should be alarming. It should be doubly-alarming this is being pushed on lawyers by a regulator which prides itself on “independence” — that is, independence from democratic oversight and control..Calgary-based lawyer Glenn Blackett with the Charter Advocates Canada network of lawyers (funded by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms). Glenn’s other work can be found on Substack here.
