Air Canada has been ordered to pay $1,000 per passenger as compensation for flight delays that landed a Kelowna, B.C. couple at their destination three days late. The onus is on airlines to justify extraordinary delays, said a British Columbia adjudicator: “Air Canada is in the best position to provide evidence explaining the delay of its own flights.”
More than a quarter of Chinese diplomats assigned to a Toronto Consulate have left the country since the last general election, data show. Figures on accredited staff were updated yesterday for the first time since the expulsion of a Chinese spy: “It does make me wonder.”
Federal agencies have awarded hundreds of thousands in subsidies to farm geese on Hudson Bay. One government memo called it a climate change initiative: ‘It is to promote consumption of light geese that can contribute to restoring Inuit food sovereignty.’
Commons Speaker Anthony Rota’s office yesterday justified a $150,496 junket to Australia as uncommon but necessary. Rota and seven guests including wives spent three days in Canberra: “It provides speakers with an opportunity to discuss procedural and administrative challenges.”
A Department of Fisheries report proposes First Nations join the Coast Guard in policing marine traffic in whale habitat including commercial shipping lanes. “Whale species are significant to Indigenous peoples’ cultures,” wrote the department: “There was a desire to have shared responsibility and authority.”
Fewer than half of Canadians surveyed consider the RCMP accountable, says in-house research. The findings follow the resignation of Commissioner Brenda Lucki: “They award lower marks when it comes to the calibre of its leadership.”
Canadians welcome immigrants but cannot see where they’re supposed to live, says in-house research by the Department of Immigration. Housing worries followed the highest immigration quotas in Canada’s history: “It is too much, too fast.”
A South Pacific junket led by Commons Speaker Anthony Rota cost taxpayers more than $150,000, records show. Guests invited to a three-day conference included a Liberal-appointed Commons clerk who resigned after he was accused of sleeping on the job: “Cooperation is a prerequisite for furthering people-to-people contact.”
Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault’s department closed Arctic weather stations even as it warned of catastrophic climate change, records show. Parliament had voted $384 million to modernize the Meteorological Service of Canada: “Climate change has already altered our reality.”
Federal inspectors have stepped up six-figure fines against employers accused of breaching migrant labour regulations, records show. The labour department as late as 2017 conducted no in-person spot inspections under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program: “They have had ample opportunity to act on this.”
A Nova Scotia judge has ordered students to pay for “shocking” damage to a rental property he called a real life Animal House. “The landlord took the position the house was virtually destroyed,” wrote the Court.
Blacklock’s pauses for the August bank holiday with warmest regards to subscribers. We wish you a safe, happy holiday. We’re back tomorrow — The Editor.
I couldn’t fix
the leaking faucet
so I took a hard look
at my toolbox,
switched the places of the hammer
and the pliers,
moved the screwdriver
from the top deck
to the bottom,
threw away the rusty nails
and brought in a few shiny ones,
and finally,
released from duty a number of old bolts
and replaced them
with good-looking nuts.
I am camera-ready.
By Shai Ben-Shalom
In 1915 the president of the Canadian Bar Association called lawyers “children of light.” In 2015 Justice Edward Belobaba of Ontario Superior Court called lawyering “a self-regulated profession that continues to enjoy the benefits of a monopoly, including monopoly pricing.” Belobaba was angered by cost claims in a National Bank class action lawsuit in which barristers chocked up $1,000 an hour. “Access to justice for most litigants remains illusory mainly because of the high hourly rates charged by lawyers,” he wrote.
Here lies the tension in a profession deemed essential and contemptible all at the same time. If clients rarely hug their lawyers on the courthouse steps, most would agree society would be worse without them. The profession itself is capable of searing self-criticism, which brings us to Lawyers’ Empire by Professor W. Wesley Pue of the University of British Columbia’s law faculty.
Dr. Pue chronicles Swinfen v. Lord Chelmsford, a malpractice scandal from 1859. “High drama,” he calls it. “Had tickets been sold it would have been a scalper’s dream.” Patricia Swinfen, an English widow, sued her own lawyers for quietly cutting a deal in an estate settlement in breach of explicit instructions, then billing her for the privilege.
“The establishment view was that barristers’ public duties required that they enjoy authority to act without being subject to their clients’ command,” writes Pue; “The ideology of adversarial justice also held, however, that barristers were to be their clients’ champions, fiercely and without compromise advancing her position.”
Swinfen lost. The topic remains timely. Lawyers’ Empire chronicles this conflict between the ideal and practice of law.
From the 1850s English barristers were forbidden from advertising. Well into the 20th century the Canadian Bar Association frowned on purely for-profit practice. Yet when the Calgary Bar Association was founded in 1899 local barristers were preoccupied with fixing fees, regulating office hours and hounding unlicensed practitioners.
“Whereas professional rhetoric makes much of public service – sometimes elevating professional self-governance to the status of an entrenched constitutional right – the nitty-gritty of professional organization seems to have been self-interest,” writes Pue. “Their specific objectives were classic trade union stuff: money, work week and monopoly.”
This tension dates from the profession’s Victorian roots. “However lucrative successful barristers’ practices might be, the ideology of the Bar was intensely anti-commercial,” notes Lawyers’ Empire. “Founded on the notion that the best men would always come out well, it was considered ‘ungentlemanly’ to actively seek out legal work.”
Yes, but –
In 2017, Small Claims Court in Halifax cited a local barrister for charging $350 an hour in a routine traffic case. “Vulnerable clients will often sign whatever is put before them because they feel they have no choice,” wrote the Court.
In 2016 the Prince Edward Island Court of Appeal criticized a local law firm for billing $95,528 in an uncomplicated workers’ compensation lawsuit. “When a client asks his lawyer the time of day he doesn’t need to be told how to build a watch,” said Justice John Mitchell.
Note both sharp criticisms were made by fellow lawyers. It is one of the profession’s best assets. So, too is Lawyers’ Empire. Carefully researched, it treats its subject in a plain-spoken manner any client would enjoy.
By Holly Doan
Lawyers’ Empire: Legal Professions and Cultural Authority, 1780-1950, by W. Wesley Pue; University of British Columbia Press; 516 pages; ISBN 9780-7748-33097; $75
Ratepayers will see higher costs for electricity, says a staff memo to Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault. The Department of Environment would not estimate how much more consumers and industry will pay for “green” electrification: “Expansion of clean electricity supply towards 2050 will increase costs.”
