BLACKETT: The Law Society of Alberta stayed woke — UCP’s new law is helping them hide it

Glenn Blackett is a civil rights lawyer based in Alberta (@glennblackett on X).Premier Smith’s Regulated Professions Neutrality Act (RPNA) (dubbed the “Peterson Law”) was supposed to get wokeness out of professional regulation. The importance of that goal can hardly be overstated. If the legal profession “goes woke,” the laws will follow. Property rights and constitutional freedoms might still exist on paper — but not in practice. If the medical profession goes woke, the first patients to die will be evidence-based medicine and informed consent. Given that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions,” Albertans should, therefore, very carefully scrutinize whether the RPNA actually does what is claimed. In previous columns I have argued the RPNA actually authorizes wokeness, grants regulators new powers to mandate ideological education and that the Law Society of Alberta (LSA) seems intent on staying woke, a fact which its early “compliance” serves to conceal.The legislation came into full force for lawyers on September 1. The LSA’s final act of compliance — and what should be the most important — was amendments to the “Code of Conduct,” a set of ethical rules with which lawyers must comply or face sanctions including disbarment.So, do the LSA’s amendments delete woke? Not that I can tell. As with the LSA’s other compliance, it seems more likely that wokeness has just been submerged under some murky verbal waters.For starters, the LSA made no changes at all to Code’s “rules.” Breaching the rules is what gets lawyers in trouble. Lawyers are still expressly and unconditionally prohibited from “discrimination” and “harassment.”.The LSA has, however, lightly amended the “commentaries” associated with the rules. These are guidance as to what the rules mean. So, where the rules say “thou shalt not discriminate,” a lawyer might not know that includes failing to “recognize their own internal biases” without reading the commentary, which says so.In fact, one of the LSA’s amendments was to remove references to “unconscious” and “internal” bias from the commentaries (but not the reference to “implicit assumptions”). The only problem is that, while the LSA has deleted guidance as to what the rule means, that does not, in fact, change what the rule means. All these deletions seem to achieve is to cast our lawyer, again, into confusion. It may still be discrimination to be unconscious of your unconscious biases. The lawyers’ guide is now, simply, silent.Lest there be any doubt: first, when the LSA previously amended the Code (to add all these commentaries), it confirmed: “… the commentary provides guidance on these obligations but is not intended to be an exhaustive list.” The Code makes this point also.Second, when the woke content of the Code was challenged in Alberta’s Court of King’s Bench, the Court determined that the harassment and discrimination provisions “embod[y] values and principles of human rights law.” The commentaries continue to confirm that “A lawyer has a special responsibility to respect and uphold the principles and requirements of human rights … laws.” .Third, the Court also confirmed, without any reference to the commentaries, that “the words ‘discriminate’ [and] ‘harass’ … are well understood and are sufficiently precise to put members on notice as to the type of conduct in which they are not to engage.”Amending the commentaries seems, therefore, to do nothing but “bury the bodies.”But, for a moment, let us assume that changing the commentary does change the rule. Have the commentaries materially changed? Not that I can tell.Take, for example, the commentary’s previous warning against “being willfully blind” in relation to “the history of the colonization of Indigenous peoples in Canada, ongoing repercussions of the colonial legacy, systemic factors, and implicit biases.” That was all deleted. In its place, the LSA now warns of willful blindness in relation to “Canada’s history, as reflected in the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Report.” Is that not the same thing? As for “harassment,” the LSA has changed nothing. Harassment continues to include any “incident … that might reasonably be expected to [be unwelcome or] cause … offence … [including] assigning work inequitably.” “Equity” is a woke concept, as is the idea that we should censor expression because it prompts reports of subjective discomfort. A “safe space” is where your freedoms go to die.While the RPNA seems to have achieved some good, if mixed, results, it does not seem to be working as advertised where it matters most: the LSA seems to remain woke. This is not a minor deficiency. As far as the Constitution is concerned, this is an existential problem. The Smith government has not fixed the problem and may, in fact, have made matters worse.Albertans should write to the Premier and to the Minister of Justice to demand amendments to the RPNA. Smith should ban all politics, including wokeness, by name: critical legal theory, critical race theory, postcolonialism, etc. Rather than grant the LSA mandatory education powers and grant the LSA vast and vague new powers to do what’s in the “public interest,” the RPNA should expressly negate those powers. Finally, given the RPNA’s potential to conceal rather than ban wokeness, the RPNA should be equipped with some giant spotlights. The Minister should publicly investigate to confirm and compel substantive compliance. Citizens should be empowered to independently investigate and confirm compliance by adding the LSA to freedom of information legislation.Glenn Blackett is a civil rights lawyer based in Alberta (@glennblackett on X).

BLACKETT: The Law Society of Alberta stayed woke — UCP’s new law is helping them hide it

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