The Woke Law Society of Ontario
Every Canadian institution must have their virtue to signal
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By James Pew
I thought it might be a good idea to begin a new series of essays exploring the reasons Canada is an unserious country. It would chronicle, among other things, Canada’s ongoing decline from a wealthy first world nation to a soon-to-be pitiable second world one drunk on faux virtue. There will of course be reams of pages with gallons of ink spilled over Canada’s silly and devastating embrace of woke identity politics. The usual suspects, the aboriginals, with their impractical Calls to Action from their misguided Truth and Reconciliation program, will be a prominent feature.
I thought it might be a good idea to announce this to readers today, but then on second thought, I realized that I am already writing and publishing these essays. I have been writing a book called What Happened To Canada? which does indeed examine the reasons why Canada is devolving into something so at odds with what it has been historically, with what our ancestors dreamed it would be one day. It asks, how did such an enlightened group of nation-builders turn so rapidly into shallow and emotionally unhinged nation-mopers?
The word “woke” as defined by Canadian political scientist Eric Kaufmann is the making sacred of those deemed equity deserving — everyone but white men. Visible minorities, women, and members of the LGBTQ are to be rallied around so that cultural support and protection can be slathered all over them. The aboriginals are undeservedly exalted. This means their claims cannot be challenged, but must be believed, affirmed, and through calls-to-action, implemented in the real world.
The chapter I contributed to the 2025 book Dead Wrong: How Canada Got The Residential School Story So Wrong (a sequel to the best-seller Grave Error) dealt with the British Columbia Law Society who had imposed a mandatory aboriginal cultural sensitivity training module onto its lawyer and paralegal members. The problem is that all such courses are full of ahistoricism, as all present day problems faced by aboriginals are rationalized as a consequence of colonialism. This fact alone renders these modules as little more than infantilized pandering to the sensitivities of Canada’s “sacred” aboriginals. However, in the case of the BC Law Society, their training materials made the blatantly false claim, embraced by so many low-resolution Canadians, that 215 bodies of aboriginal children were discovered on the grounds of a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C.
And now, it is Ontario’s turn.
The Ontario Law Society has voted in favour of adopting one of these historical abominations. Lawyer and paralegal licensees have two years to undergo the anti-Canadian propaganda that is always the featured element whenever “cultural sensitivity” is mouthed through the empty virtue of a Canadian do-gooder. If not completed in the allotted time, OLS members will face suspensions of their legal licenses.
This move to further woke-ify an already insufferably woke institution is part of the broader trend where practically all Canadian institutions come under the totalitarian grip of social justice forces. Individuals can still challenge and critique the embrace of illiberal dogma — I am one such individual. However, if I were a lawyer and member of the Ontario Law Society, I would not only be forced to comply with an ahistorical training module full of anti-white rhetoric, but I would be expected to mouth the accepted party line. When B.C. lawyer Jim Heller challenged his law society over factual errors in their aboriginal cultural sensitivity module, he was publicly called a racist by both leading First Nations associations and by the B.C. Law Society themselves. There is nothing to indicate that such belligerent enforcement and protection of the merits of these courses would not also be the case in Ontario. Canada is the wokest country in the world, and every provincial and federal institution has been captured. In this regard, neither the B.C. nor the Ontario law societies are exceptional.
The Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms has created a pre-written letter that Canadians can send to the Attorney General of Ontario and the Premier “urging them to amend provincial legislation governing regulatory bodies to prohibit any form of compelled speech or ideological enforcement.”
From the letter:
“Lawyers across Ontario are being subjected to compulsory ideological training imposed by the Law Society. This affects the independence of the legal profession and raises serious concerns about freedom of conscience.
If you are a lawyer, or know someone who is, take action today by completing and sharing our pre-written campaign letter. It only takes a minute, and it sends a clear message that compulsory ideology has no place in the legal profession.”
The following are quotes from Ontario lawyers captured from X:
“Under penalty of suspension, the Law Society of Ontario just imposed on 61,000+ lawyers an obligation to take a 6 hour Indigenous course (based on the Seven Grandfather Teachings) which will teach us about land acknowledgments and colonisation while attacking federal legislation.” – Ryan O’Connor
O’Connor included a screenshot of the courses table of contents:
“The Law Society of Ontario voted 26 to 23 today (2 abstained) to require all lawyers to take six hours of Indigenous cultural training or lose our licenses. I’m opposed. This training is ideologically-motivated, and I’ve already taken similar training.” – Josh Dehaas
An X user named Kralik responded to Dehass with the following:
“My wife had Indigenous cultural training forced on her by The Law Society of BC. She said the training made the indigenous people seem like The Smurfs - little naïfs frolicking in peaceful nature until big bad Gargamel (Europeans) came along. I had a good laugh about that.”
And another X user, Your Fringe Superfriend, responded to Kralik with:
“When my wife worked with the Government of the NWT, the course consisted of several modules, each one beginning with how you, as a ‘settler’, are a shitbag of a human.”
Clayton Demain from Juno News made the following observation:
“The training will count toward the ethics training they are already required to take, meaning the Indigenous ideology seminars will replace other potentially relevant ethics education for lawyers seeking to receive or maintain their licence.”
As the great Thomas Sowell taught us, everything in life is a trade-off. Imposing 6-hours of cultural sensitivity propaganda means eliminating 6-hours of something potentially more useful to lawyers. But in Canada we don’t seem to care about things like efficiency, success, the truth, or not wasting time. In Canada, the elites who sit atop our captured institutions deal almost exclusively in the currency of virtue. They are not actually virtuous; not by a long shot. No, the Canadian way is simply to be seen as virtuous. It is all on the surface, making us perhaps the shallowest nation on earth.
Thanks for reading. For more from this author, read Vernacular of the Forecastle
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The whole thing is nauseating and insideous. The whole system is captured and fake with people going along with things they don't believe as well as indoctrinated true believers.
When the whole system is captured, and it's literally the whole system, anyone trying to have a reasonable, rational, factual conversation is labeled a racist or hateful bigot and hung out to dry. With credit scores and digital ID and currency, you can see how far it could go. (Frozen bank accounts?)
What is happening to Canada and the west is exactly what one would expect under these ideologies. It's a phony, performative, self righteous society that pats it's back on the road to ruin. It's literally elevating mental illness to the top levels while suppressing the people that make society function properly.
James, I supervised a catering event last year for the Law Society of Ontario. The whole damn office came down for lunch, hundreds of people, and it was 90% women, and 10% beta males. This here is not surprising.