The Backroom Caste of the NDP is Trying to do Something Incredibly Stupid

 

The backroom caste of Canada’s New Democratic Party (NDP), by which I mean not the party as conceived of as its members across the country, but rather as an army of permanent staff, consultants, lawyers, who serially invent titles, and indeed institutions, for themselves, and rotate around within these titled sinecures, are thick in the effort of doing something extremely, offensively, profoundly procedurally anti-democratic, something which betrays the spirit of the NDP as a social democratic party. These largely anonymous backroom personalities must be stymied and corrected in this malign effort, because the fate of the party, and indeed left politics in Canada for many years, depends upon this. All working class people, indigenous peoples, LGBTQ2S+ people, ecologically and democratically minded people across the country ought, by all rights, to take an interest in and opposition to this malign effort.

Do you want a social democratic party in Canada which genuinely captures, encourages, platforms, amplifies the most literate, eloquent, incisive social democratic analyses and political organization to problems and issues in society, which marshals these forces in a manner by which their aggregate becomes a powerful political force capable of assuming responsibility for the state and for making its function range to the benefit of working people in Canada, indigenous peoples in Canada, LGBTQ2S+ people in Canada, the vulnerable, the marginalized, the put upon, the underhoused, the overexploited, etc, or, by contrast, do you want a hollow, desiccated husk, made grotesque marionette by a tiny clique of effete basically-liberals, monologically foisting half-measures and half-solutions at you for the next, say, five years? That is the real question.

For those who haven’t been following the exigencies of Canada’s Third Party, the NDP, we are right in the midst of a directional leadership campaign, where different branches and elements of the party propose different routes and avenues forward for the party, and for left more broadly in the Twenty-First Century. It is my favorite kind of conundrum: simultaneously all important and totally meaningless. All important because this is literally the moment where a vision of Social Democracy which is historically, morally, ecologically and sociologically informed can win out, capturing and channeling virtually limitless social energies towards saving our country, and by extension the world. Totally meaningless insofar as the truth is they would inherit a profoundly discredited and ostensibly bankrupt vehicle, and indeed bankrupt in more ways than one. It would be like becoming captain of a great and honourable wreck, with the glimmer of a chance to resuscitate it to, and maybe even exceed, its former glory.

This campaign has been occasioned by the complete collapse of the NDP in the recent 2025 election under the then leadership of Ontario-come-South-Burnaby MP Jagmeet Singh. Singh had clung on to a governing accord with the former Justin Trudeau Liberals, and upon the Trudeau brand becoming critically saturated with hypocrisy, corruption, and cultish irrationality, some of that leaked over and coated Mr Singh, hobbling his credibility against an ‘outsider/insider’ like Carney. More overarchingly, as NDP strategist Karl Belanger astutely put it, Mr Singh had already signaled to the NDP membership, and indeed the broader public, that it was more vital to keep Pierre Poillievre, the neo-Trumpist (but nonetheless lifelong political insider snake) Conservative candidate, out of office, by just remaining in that supply and confidence agreement. He gave, in effect, a permission structure to abandon the NDP for the familiarity of the Liberal brand, apart from the cult of personality of Trudeau.

The declared and approved candidates thus far have been Heather McPherson MP, ostensibly the insider’s pick, part and personage of an effort to grow the party into Alberta; Avi Lewis, a filmmaker and social activist whose most notable political activity was promotion within the NDP of the ‘LEAP Manifesto,’ a forward-thinking and still extremely relevant plan and expression of intent for ecologically informed social democracy; Rob T E Ashton, a union activist who has distinguished himself with substantive and ambitious economic policy positions, and a willingness to onboard social justice themes and concerns, though not a proven track record of extemporaneously debating or arguing these positions; Tony McQuaill, a farmer and Vienam War resister, and proponent of deep democratic party reform; and Tanille Johnston, a social worker and Campbell River City Councilor, a working class indigenous candidate.

But there is the rub, these are the so far 'approved' candidates. And the entire fight for the future of social democracy in Canada actually hinges upon what ‘approved’ means, who ‘approves,’ for what reasons, with what degree of transparency are those reasons made public? Do they have to be good reasons? If they are not good reasons is there a mechanism of redress? These are the actual questions which anyone who cares about the fate of the NDP should actually be asking themselves right now. Because, as I say, the backroom caste of the NDP, the lawyers, the consultants, the permanent sinecures, are currently on course to commit a grave, completely illegitimate, and catastrophic injury to social democracy in Canada by excluding Yves Engler, an otherwise qualified candidate who has indeed followed the rules set by the Federal Council, from participation in the first televised debate on November 27, 2025, and indeed potentially from the leadership campaign itself.

There is an important point to be made here: nobody would benefit from the exclusion of Yves Engler from the NDP leadership race. Nobody. Not even the permanent sinecures, because, as noted above, the NDP is a ship with water in it. And maybe some particularly scummy and entitled permanent sinecure just does not care about the ultimate fate of the party, and is just in it for themselves, for as many days as possible. I don’t actually imagine this is the majority. Most are well meaning, with a horizon and frame of reference which is merely stunted, kept at an infantile liberal level well into professional maturity.

For that majority, the various reserve armies of staff and lawyers who trade off into this position, then that one, obscuring their failures and inadequacies by the rearrangement of titles, they too would not benefit, ultimately, from the exclusion of Yves Engler. Why? Because it would mark a signal crisis in the basis processes of the NDP: it would say, no matter even if you do follow the rules, if ideas or personages are deemed inconvenient to NDP central in Ottawa, they may not participate. This is particularly galling and acute in this instance because it is really the NDP socialist caucus which these bad faith boffins are attempting to abject and occlude, to shove into the basement. It would make the point that actual socialism simply cannot be a public part of the NDP. To me that is a death knell, that is an insistence that the party wither and die from ineptitude, incapacity, and unworkable complicity with reaction and censorship of completely valid left wing ideas and people.

Who is Yves Engler? I mean, you could say a lot of things. His detractors would call him an agitator, he regularly stages political agitation events, and indeed crashes high society events where there are weapons deals for despicable conflicts in which Canada is implicated, and interrogates those who profit from these kind of arrangements. This is a basic journalistic function. If there is one actual journalist in Canada, it might be Yves, because nobody, not even the crack team at the CBC, actually and actively interrogates power like Yves does. At the same time, one could say of him that he is a historian, that he has written eloquently, and persuasively, at length and meticulously academic in methodology, about Canada’s complicity in Imperialism, and our nation’s harmful activities abroad. It is this aspect of Yves which has perhaps drawn even more ire than the situationist tactics in interrogating the powerful, because what Yves actually says contradicts actually quite a lot of both Canadian societal orthodoxy, but the orthodoxy which has governed both Canada’s Liberal Party, and unfortunately, Canada’s NDP. On Foreign Policy, he is both exactly right, and voluminous in his explication of that correctitude.

But the point, the real point, is that one ought not have to need to say anything at all about his bona-fides in this respect if he has followed the rules set out by the NDP Federal Council. So it is therefore incumbent upon the NDP to clarify whether Yves has or has not done so, and if not, upon what basis. Because what we are talking about is not negotiations to necessarily become NDP leader, but only for that possibility to exist under a fair, transparent, and democratic leadership competition. Or, in other words, we are talking about just being allowed to run, to be part of the fray, contend in ideas, share wisdom, be impacted by and impact upon others through the democratic process, and indeed more particularly the social democratic process! Too many of Yves detractors, in contradistinction to his supporters, make so much of Yves’ alleged personal failings that they feel entitled to dismiss him and his candidacy, and simply rely upon an apriori administrative dismissal, by a completely unaccountable, backroom vetting committee, without protest. They avert their eyes, I guess.

That is why this ultimately discretionary decision, to slow-walk the vetting of Yves until at least after the first televised debate, by which time they hope to have cast the race in a certain manner, is so galling, and why if left unchallenged it will poison social democracy in Canada for many years: because the left being allowed to run, for the NDP socialist caucus to field (1) socialist and (1) French language candidate, for their ideas to be part of an earnest and real social democratic leadership contest, that is the bare minimum. To arbitrarily and procedurally stymie this would be to drive an enormous rift within social democracy between those who capitulate to cynical, curated spectacle, and those who don’t, almost exactly as we have had for almost a decade under Jagmeet Singh! It is this rift between the inside and the outside of the actual party organ which actually needs bridging and fixing! Be social democrats! If Yves should not be leader of the NDP, great, then make that argument in the context of the extant leadership competition. By all means, set out to convince the membership of the demerits of such a course of action. But do not fall back on this pseudo-lawfare weasel talk to exclude even his otherwise qualified and broadly supported candidacy from even participating in a supposedly ‘social democratic’ leadership competition.

This was, after all, almost word for word what launched Avi Lewis’s candidacy for leader, that the inside caste felt the party was their little thing, and they were at risk of driving it further and further into the ground. Well, illegitimately procedurally excluding Yves from the November 27, 2025 debate, if they try to do it, is going to be driving the party further and further into the ground. It does not matter, at all, what sparkly powerpoint presentations Lewis or Ashton have at the permanent sinecure approved, backroom authorized, scripted PSA they will film together if they try to exclude Yves. And if Yves is out there yelling on the street, he will be right, and they will be wrong. It is a deep and growing embarrassment for each of the candidates that they have not publicly called for the inclusion of Yves, even with whatever caveat about it being provided he is otherwise qualified. Nope, not even that, radio silence, ie participation in the spectacle. Is that what you want to be, Avi, is that your pitch for leadership? Participation in the spectacle? Careful, the spectacle might just go with McPherson!

The NDP is both ridiculous and venerable, antiquarian and futuristic, ruined and hobbled, but vital and necessary. It must necessarily step up to the plate to save Canada, but its capacity to evolve and adapt to do so, and its historical track record, are at best mixed. I believe it can be a vehicle for profound change and progress in Canadian society, but only contingent upon it developing and adapting to the modern age in pretty particular ways. One of those ways is to recognize spectacular falsity, and to reject and combat that. We are living in a disimformation age, the news media lies to us with a laurentian owning class bias, American tech conglomerates lie to us with Trumpian chauvinism splashed across our screens, you know where working people, indigenous people, LGBTQ2S+ people don’t actually need another spectacle, in the body of their social democratic party. It is important that the NDP be serious, and be real, and that means not only a recitation of this or that policy platform or plank, but the capacity to extemporize and expound upon those beliefs and positions, to be intellectually, morally, politically legitimate, such that one has credibility to intervene in the political sphere.

If the NDP’s backroom boffins persist in this putting their thumbs on the scales against the (1) socialist caucus, and (1) French Canadian candidate, they may feel, in the extremely short term, as though their petty spectacle has won the day; except that falsity not only would haunt the party going forward, but is in fact reflective of the falsity which has been undermining the NDP all along. Any ‘leader’ who emerges from a rigged, gatekept, curated spectacle, as opposed to from a fair, earnest, real social democratic contest will be hobbled and weakened by the experience – emboldened in precisely the wrong kind of echo-chamber. A real leader would welcome the opportunity to contend ideas for the left in Canada, and would be confident in the rightness of their own ideas, and not need to rely on capricious procedural exclusion of one’s friends and colleagues in progressive struggle. That is the kind of leadership competition which the NDP, and Canada, for that matter, needs.

The backroom boffins should relent. And I say this again, genuinely, even they would benefit, ultimately, from Yves’ inclusion and participation, because the leader who resulted from that earnest social democratic leadership contest would be stronger, rather than weaker, for the experience, that they would accrue legitimacy through it, and that therefore the party would be healthier, and ultimately more opportunities for the permanent sinecures. They themselves cannot be content with 7%, and indeed 7 to 18% is the perpetual fate of the NDP, if it persists in just doing falsity, instead of social democracy, until it withers and dies. That is not a fate that any of us want. They should relent from their discretionary slow-walk and offer up a podium, and some minutes, to, again, the one socialist and one French Canadian candidate in the race. The other candidates ought to call for his inclusion, and welcome his contribution, and the debate ought to be elevated and enriched by his participation. It is not too late for the backroom caste of the NDP to just not do something incredibly stupid, and do social democracy instead.

An Open Call to the NDP and Potential Leadership Candidates: Support a Transparent, Fair, and Democratic leadership contest.

Good morning this crisp, autumn October 20, 2025, friends and fellow comrades across Canada, and particularly those who have publicly leapt into the NDP leadership race, and the NDP HQ. I am writing to ask for your support in what I consider to be an incredibly simple call:

        Support a Transparent, Fair, and Democratic leadership contest.

Sounds simple, right? Easy? It should be, ought to be. Before the leadership race, Avi Lewis astutely observed that, over the course of the contest, 'party insiders' would be prominent. He noted, correctly, that “it was these insiders - and their expertise - that engineered the NDP’s decades of incremental, Liberal-lite politics” and that “their kind of politics brought us to the low point where we now must begin again." Lewis charged that these insiders “are going to fight like hell for what they insist belongs to them” because “they think of the NDP as *their* party. Their (broken) toy. Their club, to run by their rules.” Lewis demanded that "our process - our decision - is made in the sunlight of collective action, not the back rooms where insiders ply their trade.” He concluded “let the members decide.” Hear, hear!

All I am asking and calling for is public support, from Rob Ashton, Tanile Johnston, Avi Lewis, Heather McPherson, and Yves Engler, and whoever else wants to, for this principle. It ought to be easy for Avi, they’re his words! Similarly it ought to be easy for Rob Ashton. If Ashton is as hard as nails, born in the labour union as he says, then he’ll be more than familiar with weasel words and procedural ratfuckery, and would want to publicly oppose this kind of conduct in the strongest terms possible. Even McPherson, if she really stands against ‘purity tests’ and wants to welcome a broad tent in the party, then there could be no finer demonstration of that than by publicly affirming support for an open, transparent, fair, and democratic leadership contest. I don’t know Ms Johnston well but I think she’d likely support it, too. And I know that my friend and comrade Yves Engler would support such an initiative.

This is important. It is actually incredibly important. I owe Avi Lewis $100, but I have a stop payment on this debt until such time as I am assured that my hard earned dollars are actually permitting of the democratic process – which now I am not so sure of. Can we have a democratic leadership contest? Is HQ going to procedurally disqualify the most vibrant and necessary voices a-priori? I’m not going to argue the details of the manufacturing of consent for this, because I think they’re silly. I’ll just note that if consent *is* manufactured for this kind of undemocratic conduct, it would be a wound from which Social Democracy in Canada may not actually ever recover.

I do not care if my preferred candidate wins. I genuinely don’t. If there is a transparent, fair, and democratic leadership contest, I’ll fight for the gills for the party of the person who wins. But if that doesn’t occur, if there is first principles rat-fuckery, I will not only not donate to or support that party – buddy, I will devote my waking hours to heaving it into the dustbin of history. I don’t want that, and for those blithe to the ramifications of the ‘New Democratic Party’ starting out its fledgling new life upon an act of supreme anti-democracy, I assure you, you don’t want that. That, feeling like the NDP isn’t actually the party of Democratic Socialism in Canada at all, that HQ is just pulling the strings to sell us another stupid spectacle, is exactly what got us here in the first place. We should not be fighting one another, we should be uniting to oppose Carney and his devastating cuts, and Poillievre and his idiocy. Beginning this leadership contest by being lax as it pertains to procedural exclusion by the NDP insider caste would, perhaps irrevocably, poison this.

So, again, I am publicly asking for each of the NDP leadership Candidates, and preferably NDP central itself, to on record affirm their support for a transparent, fair, and democratic leadership contest.

Thank you,

- dc

I Hope the Rump LSBC and TLABC Lose – October 14 2025

 

Today is the first day of the BCSC Law Society of British Columbia (LSBC) trial, and I hope, for both my sake, and the sake of British Columbia, that the rump remnants of the LSBC and Trial Lawyers Association of British Columbia (TLABC) lose. Moreover, I do not care if the rump remnants of the LSBC, or TLABC, or any hectoring or censorious professional quarter, do not like hearing it, and am prepared to wear for all eternity having said so. First, though, an important preface: British Columbia, Canada, is actually the greatest polity in the world. Skookum, better, more enlightened, our Constitution is good, our Courts (especially our Supreme Court) are honourable and intelligent, we are generally, though not exclusively, good neighbours and gracious guests of the First Nations here, and we generally enjoy a stable existence which we should seek to cherish and preserve. That cannot be said of everywhere, and I am glad to be scrabbling on the bottom of the heap fighting with the Crown and legal regulator here, than to be on the top of the heap elsewhere. With that said, I am for the legislative transcendence of this institution, the LSBC. It is a bad institution, perhaps the worst institution I have ever encountered: cold, stupid, dysfunctional, unfeeling, unintelligent, tasked with enormous power and responsibility and yet woefully unfit and incapable for purpose, and all the worse because it conducts itself entirely at a remove from the overwhelming majority of communities in British Columbia, sequestered as it is to one high-rise office in Vancouver with a hostile phone-tree, like a bank.

Its proponents point to its longevity as proof of its worth. ‘Look at the mighty oak tree, the LSBC,’ they say, when in point of fact this institution actively practised completely arbitrary and capricious racial and ideological exclusion for well over 100 years. Its membership today are demographically, and sociologically, descended from the beneficiaries of that exclusion, their being kept in absolute fiat power over the provision of legal services as a gated-community unto themselves. When the body of 14,000 licensees makes a decision on who ought or ought not be included, a membership which has at least in part been selected for on that basis, that is intrinsically suspect. Claims that it has since been reformed and rationalized are greatly exaggerated. In truth it does not even represent the greater mass of actually practising British Columbia legal practitioners today. Rather, what actually occurs is that everybody knows this hulking wreck functions poorly - and only in the interests of a tiny, extremely affluent minority - is malformed, does not fulfill its public duty in a rational way, and yet one is obliged, blackmailed, into silence and obeisance, allegedly because the alternative might be worse. The present litigation over the new Legal Professions Act in British Columbia has thwarted and thawed that conspiracy of silence somewhat. In a piece this past week for the Vancouver Sun, King's Counsel Peter Gall conceded that "the Law Society has had decades to meet the access challenge, but has failed to do so," that the Law Society's own processes take "too long, [are] too expensive and [are] unnecessarily adversarial," and that, ultimately, "the status quo isn't defensible." Peter A Gall "BC's Legal System is Failing to Serve the Public Interest" Vancouver Sun, October 9, 2025. I disagree with some of Mr Gall’s other views and conclusions, but it is nonetheless astounding all on its own that Counsel of such standing would openly pronounce the way legal regulation occurs in British Columbia as effectively moribund. It is not little old’ me, I can say, it is King’s Counsel Peter Gall. If the LSBC restorationist thugs torture me and shove bamboo up my nails, I’ll shout, ‘it wasn’t me, sire, it was Peter Gall KC!’

The rejoinder that the LSBC as it presently exists is ‘democratic,’ and that no reform ought to take place because it might upset the precious ‘democracy’ of the LSBC, is risible. The LSBC is at times led by its membership in the most general and diffuse sense, but in point of fact it gets led alternately by an extremely bureaucratic, terse and alegal staff, and a few Olympian Bencher Gods who descend to attend to the affairs of mere mortals, including law, basically never. When the membership passes a motion which the Benchers or staff don’t feel or imagine to be feasible or worth pursuing, they just don’t, as they haven’t with the member resolutions on Articling Student protections passed at the last Law Society AGM. In this respect, some in the profession speak about shepherding the LSBC as though it were an incredibly unwieldy tanker, being pulled gradually and precariously by tiny ropes towards purpose. And, if that is the case, that is not a good institution. Really, consider, an institution which constantly has to be apologized for in its incoherence, inability, delay, and irrational social hierarchy, as in, ‘oh, it doesn’t mean it, it’s just an impossibly incoherent 155 year old institution, it just needs to be coaxed,’ is not a good institution. It is insane that this institution, of this importance, has been trivialized to the point where complete incapacity is habitually normalized and hand-waved away.

The legal community ought to be democratic, absolutely. Indeed, it ought indeed to have a greater and more expansive democratic mandate than it presently does, to both inform, educate, and empower the public to engage with legal life and what the legal system can do. To debate important legal and societal issues, but to do so from within the public sphere itself, and not as an in-camera thought-correction session. Legal professionals, as leaders of the community, ought to animate and suffuse the most important issues of the day, as they oftentimes labour at the most trivial. I am not convinced this is accomplished by the present yearly system of furious closed-doors debate, leading to ambiguous quasi-referendums on literally the most important and salient issues of the day, and the legal community’s orientation towards these questions. This system in fact mystifies and stupefies, both the profession itself, and certainly the public, rather than explicates and educates. On the one hand, who elected this tiny body of 14,000 licensees, alone and apparently apart from society, to arbitrate and determine questions of such significance? Is the public comfortable with this purported determination, this self-assertion (basically ex-nihilo, because the LSBC is so old) of jurisdiction to adjudicate such questions – to effectively exclude those who do not pledge fealty to the LSBC and its ideological horizons from participation in legal life? And, on the other hand, only a handful of those licensees actually participate in any given AGM. The question has become too much trying to convince these 14,000 licensees, and even among them a particular caste of networked cliques, rather than what ought to be the object and aim, convincing the public, and, more importantly, the Court. I know what the Court would have said to a number of ill-advised member resolutions over the past number of years, none of it favourable. And that is precisely the problem, that Law Society politics has taken on this para-legal existence, such that one can succeed at law, but not at LSBC.

Its detractors wail and cry for the “independence of the bar,” and the “rule of law.” A few things on this:

(1) The new Legal Professions Act is not the Draconian cartoon its detractors make of it. It is actually a legislative document, a piece of statutory engineering, which succeeds precisely because it pre-anticipates the values which would be marshalled against it otherwise, and weaves these into its basic substrate. I’ll give you an example: in the Trial Lawyers Association of BC suit they have specifically named Mr Kevin Westell as ‘thee’ Counsel supposedly and allegedly under threat. In these submissions he is billed as the everyman journeyman lawyer, and it is menaced that he might be put in the box, subjected to star chamber procedures, just for zealous advocacy! Can you imagine? Except Mr Westell isn’t just Joe-Q-Public everyman lawyer, he also happens to sit on the LSBC’s disciplinary committee, and has a direct interest in the legitimacy of a system in which there is no public law obligation to serve the interests of access to justice, no public law obligation to encourage and facilitate reconciliation, no particular need to remove barriers to practice, and not with any particularity for any disadvantaged groups, and no public law obligation to do so in a timely, transparent, proportionate way. In other words, Mr Westell has an interest in precisely the kind of unaccountable star chamber which the TLABC submissions project onto and decries about the new Legislation. What the new Legislation actually provides is something like a disinfectant for unaccountable, star-chamber processes on the part of the legal regulator, which would mark an unwanted change for the insiders of the LSBC. I think it is hypocritical to posture as this impartial practitioner whose Charter rights are menaced, when you are an active-duty Charter menacer, and I think the submissions of the Trial Lawyers Association of British Columbia suffer from this defect. As for the LSBC’s submissions, they too misrepresent and mischaracterize the new legislation with shallow, falsely heroic mystifications, little more intellectually grounded than nursery rhymes. If this were Doug Ford or Danielle Smith going after the Law Society, I would almost certainly oppose it. But that’s not the case here, and what the BCNDP Government passed was a piece of legislation which is strong and defensible because it already knows and includes and statutorily enshrines all the important values which legal practitioners care about, and avails them of these provisions as a shield for them to wield actually against that legal regulator – to say, ‘here, you must allow me to challenge these authorities unmolested,’ as though it were an ancient writ. The new Legal Professions Act actually strengthens, enriches, and codifies all the liberties which legal practitioners could want to ward off against unacceptable state intrusion.

(2) The LSBC is not the knight in shining armour for the principles of the independence of the bar and the rule of law that it purports to be when under threat of legislative reform, it just isn’t. And it is dishonest and malign to pretend, for ulterior purposes, that it is that kind of institution. The LSBC protects its monopoly over the provision of legal services, that’s it. Everything it does, from onboarding legal developments in the Court, to directing and governing practice, is not structured and geared towards the promotion and preservation of zealous advocacy, but towards the promotion of the direct personal interests of licensees, and in particular its most affluent, well-established licensees. On the one hand it is easy to say, ‘oh, well it’s vital for the Law Society to keep the head-choppers and maniacs out of the legal profession,’ or the massive fraud embezzlers, the dupes of foreign money launderers, and the like, that’s fine, there is obviously a role for that. But the LSBC goes much farther than that. They are actual brain-washers, as ludicrous as 60s batman villains henchmen, like, ‘get in the brain-wash box.’ It is not enough for them to be qualified, it is necessary to swear fealty. It exists on the moral spectrum well above cult, and a few notches above mafia, but nonetheless well short of what one would expect when one hears the phrase ‘legal regulator.’ It is country-club, basically. A dressed up country-club, certainly, a nice country club, but nonetheless a country-club, and one which functions with as few preservative safeties, guardrails, processes as one would find in a gate-kept country-club. If the Law Society were the institution it pretends and purports to be under threat of its monopoly over the provision of legal services being taken away, this noble, shield on heart defender of zealous advocacy, then it would be worth preserving, obviously; except it isn’t, so it is not. And, this is the flip side of the coin of the new Legislation actually providing the kinds of protections its detractors complain of it lacking, because what the LSBC is trying to protect isn’t the independence of the bar, but rather its own private, institutional independence. That kind of ‘independence,’ is not good, actually.

(3) The legal profession, and society, would be immensely and enormously edified and bettered by a legal profession not afraid of and cowed by its legal regulator. Yes, legal professionals should have to uphold the highest standards of conduct, in keeping with their position in society. At the same time, the regulator ought not hold a monopoly over what constitutes the highest standards of conduct, because allowing them to do so results, invariably, in an unrealistic, unobtainable, patrician sophist ideal, against which those who are committed to actual causes in society are judged unfavourably. Those who actually contend, and attempt to intervene on behalf of the least well off in society, are the most heavily thought-policed by this Keystone-Cops squad of ‘professional’ brain-cleaners. As a sub-point, please do not misconstrue this as endorsement of vestigial and unenlightened anti-indigenous sentiment, to the extent that it is present within the BC legal community. Such opposition to the regulator is actually wrong and embarrassing, not because one ought not challenge the legal regulator, but because they are challenges to and contempt for the rulings of the Court on the subject. The LSBC is pretty barely and superficially a promoter and defender of Reconciliation and our Constitution, anyway. If it were such a thing it would have been issuing daily condemnations of opposition leader John Rustad calling BC Provincial Court Judges ‘Pedophile Lover.’ It didn’t.

Many access to justice problems are actually a matter of it being a risky and dangerous to attempt to help those in distress. The LSBC, by design, makes this actually as difficult, treacherous, and unpalatable for legal practitioners, and aspirant legal practitioners, as possible, precisely to drive up and inflate the cost of legal services, because this is what the tiny clique which directs the LSBC want. This has a direct and overwhelming negative effect on society. Society is paying for the LSBC’s self-defeating self-dealing, and the absence of a reliable supply of assistance with basic and oftentimes seemingly trivial legal services. The LSBC excludes those who don’t pledge fealty to this insular, sort of vaguely mason-like agreement, the greasy handshake. That is bad for the British Columbia Public, that is not the LSBC fulfilling its mandate to protect the Public, that is the LSBC harming the BC Public by knowingly depriving it of legal services by being an impossibly obtuse, self-dealing aristocratic garden-party. The rule of law would actually be strengthened by legal practitioners unafraid to say the wrong thing, or stand up for the wrong cause, lest they be subject to endless procedural persecution by their regulator, an otherwise completely unaccountable, quasi-public, quasi-private institution.

You can feel free to disagree, I know many do. I have found the opposition of the Canadian Bar Association to the new Legal Professions Act in particular disappointing and superficial. Law Societies have worked, and continue to work today, enormous injustice through procedural persecution and exclusion, historically on racial and ideological grounds – and I would contend continuing on class grounds. Many of the filtration mechanisms of the LSBC seem explicitly like class-based weeding out systems, rather than serving any rational form of preparation for legal practice. It is actually an incredibly progressive development for the independence of the bar, the rule of law, and the protection of rights in British Columbia and Canadian society, that a cold, bureaucratic, and risk-averse regulator be constrained by at least some basic guardrails in how it can treat legal practitioners, and aspirant legal practitioners, as are provided by the new Legal Professions Act.

For my part I will never be ashamed or sorry for endorsing and promoting the utility of this legislation, whether it becomes implemented or not, because my values aren’t determined by a greasy handshake, and I’d rather throw in with Immanuel Kant than the petty, aggrieved little surveillance, intimidation and retribution state they’ve got going on at LSBC HQ. I hope the Honourable Justice Skolrood sees right through the false heroism and chestbeating hysterics of this gaggle of affluent, insider persecutors. I sincerely hope he sees this entire exercise, where the most affluent, insider connected lawyers in British Columbia collude to inhibit and impede rational, reasonable, even enlightened, regulation of the legal profession, by an independent body conceived of for precisely this purpose, as ridiculous and grating to any of the British Columbian Public savvy enough to know it is going on.

We won’t know for months, maybe many months. Oh man, too many months. But until we do, and while arguments commence, just remember, the people who are ready to stride on into Court portraying themselves as the white hats, and the Government Man as the tyrannical bad guy black hats, it might just be that the biggest tyrants of all are LSBC insiders finally and justly being deprived of their arbitrary, irrational, archaic and fiat privilege. The access to justice crisis exists because these people, who subject legal aspirants and newly called lawyers to the same kind of Draconian unfairness which they menace and project onto the new legislation, consciously, knowingly, concertedly restrict the supply of possible provision of legal services, in order to inflate its pecuniary value. In doing so they derange both the BC legal profession, and BC public. I don’t think that’s consistent with the white hat cliche.