The Battle for Ontario Law Society – UPDATE – Good Guys: 45 Stop SOP: 0
The anti-woke, anti-EDI Stop SOPs lost the election, but they're still up to their dickish ways.
A few weeks ago I wrote about the epic battle leading up to this year's quadrennial Law Society of Ontario bencher election. Every four years, all 57k lawyers and 10k paralegals in the province elect “benchers” to their governance board.
On one hand, you have the Bencher Good Governance Coalition which wants to do/keep doing “good” things like support and enforce a statement of principles, promote and support Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion initiatives and outreach programs to bring legal supports to marginalized communities. You know, to fight the legacy of the law profession is a bunch of straight old white dudes, where you can't be openly gay, trans, female, or not white.
On the other hand, you have the Stop SOP team. Anti-woke, anti-.. well.. everything. Who feels that EDI programs and adherence to a statement of principles (to not be racist, hateful, phobic dicks) is compelled speech... and it costs money they don't want to spend. And generally just like complaining about everything. If we were south of the border, they'd be Republicans. And their biggest supporter is Dickimus Prime himself, Jordan Peterson.
Well, I am pleased to say that the BGGC won. All 45 slots (20 from Toronto, 20 from outside, and five paralegals).
Like.. it wasn't even close. Here are the votes from the LSO's election results page, vs. the BGGC's slate of candidates (the Stop SOP slate has been removed from their dank website, almost as if they're embarrassed by their shellacking). The red lines are where the BGG slates end.
Now, since the election results, a few of the Stop SOPers have been promoted to fill vacancies in the benchers – one bencher became the new “Treasurer” (the LSO “president” if you will), and three were appointed to actual benches aka be judges.
One of the “promoted” Stop SOP dudes, Murray Klippenstein, is suing the LSO over that 2016 survey/report that was the genesis of the LSO's proposed Statement of Principles.. complaining amongst other things that:
- respondent rate was low, at 6%
- respondents were self-selected
- didn't differentiate between lawyers and paralegals
- the actual report was never released outside of the LSO committee on equality and diversity (who crafted the SOP)
Yeah – doesn't like the SOP, so let's attack the statistical validity of the report that suggested its necessity. But Murray needs to stay in his lane on this one.
any statistics wonk will tell you that 10% of your sampled population is the most practical up to a sample size of 1000; anything more than 1000 samples is overkill. 6% of 57,000 lawyers + 10,000 paralegals is – I know math for lawyers is hard, lemme see – 4,020. So way more than 1000 is required for statistical rigor.
So fucking what – if a subset of LSO members feel sexualized, racialized, discriminated, or marginalized, and a subset doesn't.... and if the former are the only ones who respond to a survey on EDI, does it matter if the latter does not? Of course not. The former is saying there's a problem; just because the latter isn't aware of a problem doesn't make the problem not exist. Ludicrous.
Again, so fucking what – does it matter if someone is a lawyer or a paralegal when they're being racialized, sexualized, discriminated against, or marginalized? Of course, it fucking doesn't.
This is the only one where Murray may have a point. But, usually when survey reports aren't openly distributed, there are good reasons. Personal testimonies or unique characterizations that might doxx individuals for one. Yeah, this can be sanitized, but that costs money, and Murray and the SSoP heads are already whining about how $wasteful$ the LSO is. Maybe he should join the EDI committee.
Oh no wait, he doesn't believe it's necessary to have an EDI committee.
Changelog
2023-07-03 – initial 2023-07-03 – bork link line 1
I was sitting with my parents a few years ago at breakfast and we were talking about the house and childhood homes. I knew that my dad (1949) grew up in the east end of Toronto and that his father was had been a butcher at Dominion. His mother and aunt had owned and run the flower shop they had inherited from their father. After high school (at Riverdale Collegiate) was over in the afteroons, dad would drive over to the flower shop and make deliveries.