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(March 11, 2023) Howard Levitt, Financial Post: "Workplace wokeness will be put to the test if economy sours"

The Law Society of Ontario...attempted to institute a Statement of Principles (SOP) four years ago...The move was an obvious prelude to taking the same actions against lawyers as the College of Psychologists has against Peterson, if lawyers expressed political opinions it found out of line. Ontario lawyers revolted by voting in a group of Benchers...in opposition and the SOP was repealed. But now a number of candidates calling themselves the Good Governance Coalition (more aptly, the Bigger or More Governance coalition), made up of many groups and law firms that had supported the SOP, are running in the Bencher elections. This development is particularly concerning as lawyers were the historic defenders of those requiring protection from big government and compelled thought and speech.

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(January 4, 2023) Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal: "The Campaign to Re-Educate Jordan Peterson: For speaking his mind, the psychologist could lose his license" 

Professional bodies are supposed to ensure that practitioners are competent, not enforce political orthodoxies or act as language police outside the office. But that’s the trend in Western medical associations and beyond. The Law Society of Ontario had pushed a mandatory diversity pledge for all lawyers until a members’ revolt took over the board and nixed the pledge in 2019. At the time, an Ontario lawyer objected to the “ever-expanding mission to socially engineer the profession.”

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(January 24, 2019) Bruce Pardy, National Post: "In the name of social justice, they are showing reformers their place: A civil war is unfolding inside the Law Society of Ontario and at stake is the liberty to think and speak for yourself"

Inside Convocation, the 22 reformers have been portrayed as divisive malcontents without a mandate for reform, since only roughly 30 per cent of Ontario lawyers voted in the election. Yet the SOP is based upon a study and survey to which less than seven per cent of lawyers and paralegals responded. In another Globe piece published last week, Atrisha Lewis, a newly elected bencher, called the reformers unprincipled and implied that repealing the SOP is something that only racists would do.

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(June11, 2020 reprint of speech delivered to Civitas, January 2020) Lisa Bildy, New Discourses: "They can't cancel all of us: How we fought the 'woke' thought police and won" 

This is the story of how Social Justice Activists turned the Law Society into the thought police. It’s a polarizing story, as all stories are these day, about a skirmish between warring factions of lawyers and paralegals that convulsed through our profession over the last couple of years. It’s a story about a handful of ordinary lawyers and paralegals, mostly sole or small firm practitioners, who risked careers, reputations, friendships and more to stand up against the progressive juggernaut, because they believed that their professional regulator had no right to tell its members what they are required to think and believe in order to practice law.

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