THE LEGAL EYE Oct Vol. 9 No. 2

In this issue:

Allard on Ethics by Eric Gauf... pages 1, 4, 8Post-Riot Recommendations by Alex Blondin... pages 1, 2Dennis Edney Lecture by Fathima Cader.. pages 3, 7Dates to Remember... page 6Typical Law Class by Alex Hudson... page 6Goodbye Curtis Library by Christina Gray... page 5Public Interest Opportunities by Tracy Wachmann... page 7

Allard on EthicsBY ERIC GAUF, LAW III

At the opening of Allard Hall, Peter Allard was somewhat reluctant to step into the spotlight, but once there, he had very important things to say. His speech is available at http://bit.ly/qaUZb2 and is excerpt-ed it below. He spoke particularly forcefully on the topic of ethics, and he was gracious enough to grant an interview to the Legal Eye.

From the speech delivered at the opening Allard remarked: “It was during my time at UBC that I grew to appreciate how

the law affected every aspect of our lives. On looking back over my many years in law, there was no more important class in my mind, than the first year course in ethics. “Honesty”, “in-tegrity” and the unofficial “smell test” are the hallmarks of the Rule of Law, and with the Rule of Law comes justice. It fos-ters to this day a sense that the Rule of Law is, and should be, accessible to, and respectful of, every single human being.

Many of you know or can expect that the practice of law can be a grind. I have deep respect for those who “do the grind” year in and year out in their ethical service to society. But I have an even greater respect for those who believe that buried deep within each legal strategy or decision must be a social contract and eq-

Post-Riot Recommendations BY ALEX BLONDIN, LAW III

In early September a third-party, investigative report com-missioned to establish the reasons behind the downtown Vancouver riots following the Canucks’ Game 7 defeat dur-ing the Stanley Cup playoffs was released. This report pro-posed recommendations to avoid a repeat of these events – particularly because Vancouver prides itself on hosting sev-eral large public events for its residents throughout the year.

One proposal, encouraged by Police Chief Jim Chu, is to es-tablish “airport-style” screening at downtown-bound Skytrain stations on nights where such events would take place in the downtown core. This proposed screening would presumably take the form of bag and surface body-searches (pat-downs) and sobriety examinations to catch illicit alcohol and weap-ons. This proposed screening would be intended to deter in-toxicated and/or armed persons from joining the festivities.

The police chief explained that every Skytrain passen-ger would be subjected to these searches before boarding at downtown-bound skytrain stations, including those stops as far along the line as Scott Road in Surrey. Refusal to sub-mit to the searches would bar an individual from boarding.

Those with a basic understanding of Charter rights should have their red flags handy and raise them now.

The fundamental rules regulating searches and seizures, as derived from section 8 of the Charter, state that police may only perform a search upon a person where they have a reasonable suspicion to believe that that person has committed a crime. At this prelimi-nary stage, only a pat-down search is allowed, and only insofar as to ensure officer safety (mainly, its purpose is to search for weap-ons). In order to search bags or inside otherwise inconspicuous pockets, police must make a formal arrest – which requires reason-able and probable grounds to believe that a crime was committed.

In regards to the police chief ’s proposal, it must either be assume dthat (a) the police have a reasonable suspicion to believe that every

continued on page 2

uity that provides for the long term greater good in society, no matter how trivial the task, no matter how small the retainer.

Our profession has more impact on our society than any other. When we do our job well, we see that the Rule of Law is upheld and we protect our clients, our neighbors and fellow citizens against the vagaries of unchecked abuses of power and corruption. If we didn’t do this, day in and day out, we would lose our freedom. It

Photo taken at the Official Opening of Allard Hall by Zoe Si

NEWS2

single passenger boarding a downtown-bound train from every station as far back as those in Surrey has or is committing a crime, or (b) the police are given extraor-dinary powers in these specific circum-stances that elevate their ability to conduct searches and seizures. It can’t reasonably be believed that the first option is in any way realistic, so the justification must be within the framework of the second option – particularly as we can see similar situa-tions where this is already taking place.

The Canada Border Services Agency, for example, has much broader powers of search and seizure than ordinary police. Consequently citizens crossing the border have less stringent Charter protection than in other places other than the border – an acceptable concession allowed under the Customs Act. Only reasonable grounds of suspicion are needed to perform searches and seizures, with more onerous searches requiring proportionally more suspicion.

Closer to home, at events in Vancouver like the Davie Street Party during Pride week, police cordon off a section of the city at all but a few checkpoints, thereby controlling entry to this event. At these checkpoints, the police search bags before allowing entry.

The Canadian Border Services Agency is empowered by strict national security laws and the Customs Act, and the Davie Street Party – while public – is fenced off and inaccessible but for the checkpoints. Only those people seeking to enter the

latter by the checkpoints are searched – while not every single person getting off at Yaletown, Granville, Burrard, or Wa-terfront Skytrain stations is searched.

What justification exists to legiti-mize such an immensely broad in-crease of search and seizure powers?

The riot report cites a need to control the number of people who attend open public events, and the impossibility of controlling the type of people who attend these events (those who are drunk, those who seek to distribute alcohol, those who aim to insti-gate riots, or those who pose a risk to public safety). While other alternatives were pro-posed, such as not holding any further ma-jor downtown public events which was an idea of the police chief, these were prompt-ly turned down by Mayor Robertson.

Also proposed was closing off large ar-eas and using ticketed entry at check-points like the Davie Street Party. This proposal was written off as being un-realistic when handling Game 7-sized crowds of more than 150 000 people.

Implementing and enforcing stricter pub-lic intoxication laws was also proposed, but again the problems raised were those of feasibility of enforcement for larger crowds.

The sheer size of the crowds represents the main obstacle to any sort of arrangement to assure public order. With smaller crowds, an “unrealistic” option like checkpoints could be valid, rather than the proposed skytrain searches which not only violate Char-ter rights, but seem unnecessarily costly.

continued from page 1 The riot report found that Vancouver hosts an average of 13 annual events that draws crowds of more than 100,000 people. It also concluded that the damages caused by the riots were an estimated 2 million dollars. It is safe to assume, however, that very few of these events would result in Game 7-style riots. However, for the pur-pose of some dirty calculations, let’s assume that one out of thirteen events results in such damages. I wonder how the $2 million per year damage claim fares in comparison to the cost of hiring police officers to man the city’s 47 Skytrain stations on those 13 nights, paying them to conduct at least 1.3 million illegal searches, and the legal costs from defending any subsequent lawsuits al-leging Section 8 violations of the Charter.

A quick Charter review for students: the second stage of the Oakes test requires that the Charter-breaching means chosen to achieve an important societal objec-tive (in this case, illegal searches to assure public safety during large events) must be reasonable and demonstrably justi-fied. There must be a rational connection to the objective, the means should impair a person’s rights as little as possible, and it must be proportional to the degree of intru-sion of the Charter right. Broad spectrum bag-searches and pat-downs to every per-son boarding a train heading in the gen-eral direction of an event that said person may not even be going to, costing the city more money than the damage it prevents, can hardly be justified in this manner.

Photo by Christina Gray

NEWS 3Dennis Edney Lecture Review

(Continued on page 5)

BY FATHIMA CADER, LAW 3 “Human rights have a dysfunctional re-

lationship with justice. The language is certainly beautiful, but it’s all dressed up with nowhere to go,” contended Den-nis Edney at UBC Law on September 15.

Edney worked from 2004 to 2011 on Omar Khadr’s defence against charges stemming from the 2002 death of a US soldier. Khadr is Canadian. He was 15 at the time. American forces interrogated him for three months in the US-operated Bagram Theatre Detention Facility in Afghanistan, before transferring him to Guantanamo Bay. He remains there. In 2005, Khadr’s chief Bagram interroga-tor, Sergeant Joshua Claus, was found guilty of offences relating to the routine torture and homicide of Bagram prisoners. Claus received a five-month prison sentence. In 2010, he testified at Khadr’s military trial.

In April 2009, the Federal Court ruled Canada was complicit in the US’s torture of Khadr. It ordered Ottawa to seek his repatri-ation. The Federal Court of Appeal agreed. In 2010, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled Canada was violating Khadr’s human rights, but was not obliged to seek his repatriation.

In October 2010, Khadr pled guilty in a military trial to terrorism-related of-fences, in exchange for Canada’s promise to repatriate him by October 2011 to serve the rest of his prison sentence in Canada.

On September 20, the Conservatives ta-bled their controversial omnibus Bill C-10. It adds “additional criteria” to decisions about whether or not to transfer Canadian offenders to Canada to serve sentences.

After the trial, Edney declared Khadr “would have confessed to anything, includ-ing the killing of John F. Kennedy, just to get out of this hellhole.” There are nearly 800 prisoners in Guantanamo. Only four have been charged and given a trial. De-tainees cannot see evidence against them.

“I went into Guantanamo Bay as a law-yer and I came out as a broken father,” said Edney at UBC. “I never thought that in my lifetime I would go to such an evil place and see such evil being done.” He drew special attention to three camps: Camps 5 and 6 are “designed for enhanced interrogation tac-

tics: torture” and said “We are not allowed to talk about [Camp 7]. We have prisoners in there who came from Europe, about a year and a half ago, and they’re going to be there forever, because there’s no one there to help.”

Edney denounced Canada’s government for perpetuating a culture of fear in the camp’s defence. Edney stated that “there has always historically been terrorism,” which means “this war on terror – if allowed to be one – is unlike any other, because it is nev-er-ending.” Accordingly, the last decade has been marred by “habeas corpus being aban-doned, secret courts being created to hear se-cret evidence, guilt inferred by association, torture and rendition nakedly justified.”

Edney noted that after 9-11 “the US gov-ernment detained hundreds, if not thou-sands, of people of colour on the suspi-cion of terrorist activity, some of them up to a year, all without charges.” He pointed out that few were found to be connected with terrorism, but many are still being held without formal charges. Thus, Guan-tanamo “provides powerful evidence of how America and the West are making war on terror synonymous with the war on Islam. No white Anglo-Saxon goes to Guantanamo Bay. Any American picked up for terrorism offences gets due process in a federal court system in New York.”

“I went into Guantanamo Bay as a lawyer and I came out as a broken father”

One audience member suggested Presi-dent Barrack Obama’s failure to realise his election promise to shut the camp down indicates it has a purpose. Edney responded that the camp primarily func-tions as “an important propaganda tool.” He said the Obama administration has in fact “systematised” the culture of torture normalised under George W. Bush’s ad-ministration by disallowing victims of ex-traordinary rendition from suing the US.

Edney censured “lazy” media and academ-ics for “slotting events into a sort of juicy clash of civilisations story,” as exemplified by coverage of Anders Behring Breivik’s

terrorist attack in Oslo, where he killed 69 people, avowedly to protect Europe from Muslims. Edney said that immediately “media organisations began reporting on jihadist organisations,” which “fit perfectly the story we have all been telling each other since 9/11 that who else, who else could be so hateful, so crazy, so disrespectful of life but Muslims.” He noted Breivik is a white Norwegian Christian, but “we don’t hold Christians or conservatives or liberals re-sponsible for Brievek’s despicable acts.”

Edney said that since 9/11, “race, eth-nicity, and religion have become proxies for suspected terrorist activity, which in turn has become a pretext for the appli-cation of Canadian immigration laws in an unequal manner towards Arabs, South Asians, Muslims and so on.” In an appar-ent nod to Bill C-4, the anti-refugee bill that the Conservatives tabled in Septem-ber despite widespread condemnation, he observed, “We just have to listen to media descriptions coming out of Ottawa when we talk about refugees today. We call them queue jumpers and potential terrorists.”

Edney also criticised the public’s will-ingness to be lulled into complicity. He described the transfer of the prisoners to Guantanamo “hooded and shackled for transportation across the Atlantic” as remi-niscent of eighteenth century slave ships. He insisted that “no knowledge of internation-al humanitarian conventions is needed to understand that what was being witnessed was simply unlawful.” He also blamed pub-lic apathy for “allowing anti-Muslim senti-ment to become part of our mainstream conversations.” He said, “I say to you we cannot tackle manifestations of intoler-ance, unless we learn and understand how

4Vol. 9, No. 2October 2011

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Contributors

(Continued from page 1)

is more than eternal vigilance that is the price of freedom but a strong and moral judicial activism to enforce these concepts.”

ERIC: Your speech raised the topic of ethics, and on that topic, is there a particular moment or instant that you are willing to speak about, that crystallized your thoughts?

PETER: Every day, in dealing with clients, one is dealing with ethics. One early memory of an example relates to a lawyer at one

of the firms I was practicing with, who was preparing mort-gages and assignments for people who really didn’t need to go through a broker. I remember a retired teacher from Pentic-ton who should have been paying a maximum of 8% per annum for a house with no debt who was being charged 16% and then our client would assign that mortgage and take their substan-tial fees or “lift” and not have to deal with the borrower again.

After a short time, I advised the senior real estate lawyer in-volved that I refused to participate in processing these uncon-scionable loans and suffered his wrath and possible dismissal.

I had one real estate client who came in with his son to pre-pare a will. The real estate client had given some property to his son and wanted the will prepared so that the property would revert back to him in the event of his son’s death. I told him at my office door, “I’m sorry, you can’t come in, it’s a rule of the Law Society that I have to take instruction from your son and him alone.” Oh, he was mad at me. You deal with these ethi-cal issues every day. I might have paid for that, and lost some business, but I didn’t care, those were my ethical obligations.

ERIC: Your twin brother poked his head in the door mid-anecdote, and there was a distinct note of amusement in your voice when you waved him off, saying, “I’m being interviewed.”

PETER: That wasn’t so much amusement as it was a gri-mace as Chuck has been dealing with his own very real Cana-dian deregulation story and the misery that has gone with it.

After a lengthy process at the CRTC in Ottawa, the Commis-sion, under the late Charles Dalfen, in 2006 granted my broth-er’s company an English Pay Television License across Canada. Most of the major Broadcasting Distribution Undertakings ( BDU’s) either intervened or made their own license applications.

The CRTC decided that the existing regional Pay Television licens-ees had had no competition for 30 odd years, and had become very profitable, and that Canadians needed more consumer choice and competition, required the usual promises to invest a percentage of revenues into Canadian programming with input from all provinces.

The Commission did not grant a right to buy all pro-gramming but did order a “must carry” requirement to the BDU’s of 6 channels, including two HDTV channels.

Rather than support the Commission’s desire to establish more consumer choice and work with the new licensee to provide that choice, the two existing regional licensees of pay television im-mediately set out to circumvent that decision by trying to tie up as much studio and programming exclusives as possible.

Several BDU’s set out to frustrate and strangle the new licensee by delaying implementation of the “must carry” rules while try-ing to bleed a new licensee to death, contrary to their own regis-tered (NYSE) Business Standards of Ethics and with their strong

cash flows earned under their 30 plus years of quasi-monopolies.Several years later, Quebecor, which has a potential 750,000

English subscribers and made an application for the same Eng-lish Pay Television license, has not had to carry this service due to a special Quebec French language provision. If Quebecor had received the license, no one has any doubt that the English speak-ing Montreal consumers would not only have had this service from day one but would have had it aggressively sold to them.

The late Ted Rogers’ broadcasting legacy has to a great de-gree been dismantled to the benefit of other more profit-able technological developments such as cellular and inter-net developments at the expense of the Broadcasting Act that allowed them over the years to flourish and lead technologically.

Ted Rogers would be outraged if he saw that Bell and some of the telcos are outselling Rogers in the sale of broadcasting services as much as eight to one.

continued on page 8

5

BY CHRISTINA GRAY, LAW II

As school began in early September a cloud of dust began to settle around Allard Hall from the demolition of the old Curtis library. The demolishment of the old library marked the official “end of an era,” as class of 1999 alumni, Kyle Hyndman remarked.

The George F. Curtis building opened its doors on Sep-tember 17, 1976, after significant expansion and renova-tion of the original 1951 structure.. It’s rumored from for-mer professor Ermeritus Donald MacDougall, that when the new law building opened students showed-up in prison uni-forms to show their dismay for the Brutalist style building – a style that is more known for its architectural style at prisons.

Le Corbusier coined the term Brutalism from the pour-ing of “raw concrete” to erect the foundation of post-war buildings. This type of building structure can be seen all over the UBC Campus, most notably Arthur Erickson’s Museum of Anthropology, which also opened in 1976.

This style of architecture is known for having roots in social-ist utopia philosophy. In the 1970s, the socialist discourse ran strong within Canada. The Federal Liberal government had a near-coalition with the NDP and pushed-through many socially progressive initiatives. This period also marked the opening of more buildings within already established universities as well as

many universities across Canada. It could be inferred that there was more public funding for education during this time period.

In the 1970s, there were also higher enrollment to fund ex-pansion of universities, as baby-boomers began their university education. The Curtis building reflected the need for the student body to expand within a new and more permanent structure.

The Curtis building was also made to withstand the test of time. Second year law student, Andrew Guaglio, joked that “it’s not the cold war anymore, they don’t need to make build-ings like that anymore”. The building resembled a large bomb

shelter, and as demonstrated from the amount of time it has taken to dismantle the building, it certainly could have withstood an attack.

Students, faculty, and staff could hear and see the thunder-ous drills from the high-reach excavators used to demolish the Curtis building. Over the course of the first few weeks of school, students from the UBC Law Review office on the fourth floor watched whole floors crumble. After a few week the con-struction team had taken down most of the structure, leav-ing rebar and the cement foundation left to be broken down.

Students will no longer have to endure the coldest library on-campus, which made coffee tepid within a matter of minutes. The new UBC law library is a place where students can study their ratio ratio decidendi with coffee that will actually stay warm.

Photo by Christina Gray

the constant use of fear pervades our everyday life, and how that fear is being used to influence how you and I think and how you and I act. It’s that same manipulation of fear that has allowed mili-tary escapades into countries beyond those who bombed the Twin Towers. It is that same message that has been exploited by par-ticipating countries to reduce civil liberties and infringe upon hu-man rights by allowing such places as Guantanamo Bay to exist.”

Edney ended his lecture by reiterating the need for ur-gent action: “Not only does it [Guantanamo] continue to ex-ist, they continue building it. Guantanamo is going to be there for a long, long time, unless you do something.” And that “the only crime equal to wilful inhumanity is the crime of indifference, the crime of silence, the crime of forgetting.”

Continued from page 3

Goodbye Curtis Library

6TYPICAL LAW LECTURES

student’s offensive comment.

9:47: General shock and dismay.

9:48: Professor cools tempers with amus-ing anecdote about clerking for a famous judge.

10:02: Professor discusses ratio of case; sound of typing reaches a deafening roar.

10:10: Professor discusses dissenting judgment; Mark Zuckerberg watches in impotent horror as overwhelmed Face-book servers collapse.

10: 16: Professor makes a mildly sugges-tive joke; class erupts in hysterical laughter.

10:17: Professor hopes this will finally earn him a chilli pepper on ratemyprofes-sors.com.

10:20: Class ends; students stampede towards doughnuts for fear there will only be gross maple ones left.

10:21: Professor frantically checks rate-myprofessors.com for chilli pepper.

10:22: General shock and dismay.

BY ALEX HUDSON, LAW II 9:00: Class begins.

9:03: Most students arrive.

9:04: Professor begins with historical background of case; Facebook experiences an unusual amount of traffic.

9:13: Latecomer makes himself extremely conspicuous in attempt to enter class inconspicuously.

9:24: News spreads that coffee and doughnuts will be distributed after class; impoverished student curses her Tim Hor-tons breakfast.

9:31: Professor casually slips in reference to clerking for a famous judge.

9:42: Student makes offensive comment.

9:43: General shock and dismay.

9:44: Other student responds with righ-teous indignation.

9:45: General shock and dismay.

9:46: Professor attempts valiantly to extract kernel of intelligent thought out of

Dates to Remember

“Choosing the Right to Choose: Roe v. Wade and the Legalization of Abortion

in Taiwan” - Chao-Ju Chen Room 123 October 18

12:30 - 1:30

Exemplary Leadership: How Dispute Resolution Professionals Can Change Cultures - Professor Michelle LeBaronKPMG 9th floor, 777 Dunsmuir Street

October 25 - 4:30 - 6:00

Update on McIvor v Canada Sharon McIvor

Room 123 November 1 - 12:30 - 1:30

Public Interest Law Panel Discussion Room 121 November 1 - 12:30 - 1:30

No One Is Illegal - Harsha Walia, Room 123 November 8 - 12:30 - 1:30

“Law, Feminism and the Pursuit of Happiness” - Shirley Nakata

Room 123 November 15 - 12:30 -1:30

How to be an Effective Hard Bargainer - 10 Lessons

KPMG 9th floor, 777 Dunsmuir Street November 15 - 4:30 - 6:00

International Internships Seminar Room 121 November 24 - 12:30-1:30

Ethics Workshop with Lee TurnbullMoskowitz & Meredith LLP

777 Dunsmuir StreetNovember 30 - 4:30 - 6:30

Incorporating Public Interest Into Private Practice Panel Discussion Room 104 January 19 - 12:30-1:30

Public Interest Summer Info Seminar Room 121 February 2 - 12:30-1:30

Social Justice Forum Law Courts Inn February 2 - 5:30-7:30

Career Connection 7Public Interest Opportunities

there are opportunities for lawyers to be part of at a multitude of boards, agencies, com-missions or international organizations.

Opportunities to Gain Experience You can gain advocacy, research and

drafting skills through participation in moots, many of which involve public in-terest issues. Working on one of the law journals at UBC will help you hone your research, legal analysis and writing skills. The following programs and courses of-fer opportunities for you to gain practi-cal experience in a public interest setting.

Public Interest Work Placement Program: Each year under this program, 6 paid

summer positions are offered exclusively to UBC Law students with 6 different lo-cal and regional public interest organi-zations. The positions will be posted in February 2012 with hiring by the or-ganizations completed by late March.

Campus Community Service Programs:Pro Bono Students Canada-UBC: PBCS-

UBC offers placements with not-for-profit community organizations, public interest groups, lawyers and tribunals working in pursuit of the “common or public good.” The placements can involve direct work with clients, policy review and develop-ment, law reform research, drafting of sub-missions or public legal education literature, as well as developing and delivering public legal education seminars and much more.

Placements are usually posted in Sep-tember, but may arise throughout the academic year. For more informa-tion visit www.ubcpbsc.com or con-tact the Student Coordinators at pbsc.ubc@gmail.com or 604.822.8009.

Law Students Legal Advice Program: LSLAP can give you practical exposure to real clients with real legal issues. You will learn how to interview clients, research the law, give advice, draft documents, negoti-ate with Crown Counsel and other law-yers, prepare for court or tribunal appear-ances and conduct trials and hearings. You will also have the satisfaction of knowing that most LSLAP clients would not have received help without your efforts. For more information see the LSLAP website.

Clinics and Externships: UBC Law’s

clinics offer the opportunity for you to gain credit for your public interest work while developing practice skills.

First Nations Legal Clinic: This full-time clinic is located in Gastown and operates like a law firm, exclu-sively serving First Nations clients.

Innocence Project: Through work on wrongful conviction files with des-ignated supervising lawyers, you can develop valuable research, legal analy-sis, evidentiary and drafting skills.

Criminal Clinic: This program pro-vides students with an understanding of the procedures and skills required to practice criminal law through di-rect representation of clients under the supervision of a designated lawyer.

Judicial Externship Program: Students serve as interns to judges of the BC Provin-cial Court, working on research, memoran-da preparation, attendance at trial and other judicial processes, editing and other law-related tasks of assistance to the judiciary.

LSLAP Credit Program: is available for students who have participated in a mini-mum number of LSLAP clinics per term as a volunteer clinician. Participants re-ceive conduct of several major files over the academic year involving a trial, hear-ing or major submission under the su-pervision of LSLAP’s Supervising Lawyer.

Assistance in Creating Your Own Op-portunities: The CSO Public Interest Co-ordinator, Tracy Wachmann, is available to help you identify a public interest organiza-tion you would like to work for and assist you in creating a volunteer or paid posi-tion that will help you gain practical skills.

Career Services Office Resources Also, look for UBC’s first Public Inter-

est Legal Careers Guide; a comprehen-sive resource handbook which is full of practical suggestions, contact informa-tion and sample communications to as-sist you in building a public interest ca-reer, which will be released in October.

Lastly, keep your eye on the Weekly Bulle-tin for more information on paid and volun-teer public interest opportunities as well as upcoming CSO events and programming.

BY TRACY WACHMANN, CSO

There are many opportunities at UBC Law for you to develop practice skills through volunteer and paid positions in public in-terest law. They are available whether you have come to law school with the desire to use your law degree to further social or en-vironmental justice or if you plan to pursue a more traditional career path. Along the way you will be able to explore what type of work and practice settings you prefer and gain the satisfaction of providing help to clients and organizations who may not oth-erwise have the benefit of legal assistance.

What is Public Interest Law?Public interest law can generally be de-

scribed as legal work on behalf of indi-viduals, groups and causes that are under-served. More specifically, it is work using legal skills that is intended to: secure justice for disadvantaged people and underserved communities; assert, protect and defend human rights, civil rights and civil liber-ties; preserve and protect and defend the world’s health and resources for the pub-lic good; or, promote the public’s interests protected by agencies or governments.

Where is it Practised?There are many settings in which pub-

lic interest law is practised that provide opportunities for you to gain experi-ence. You may find yourself helping pro-vide legal services to clients who can-not afford a lawyer in a legal aid clinic or direct service office such as the B.C. Centre for Elder Advocacy and Support.

You may choose to work with an or-ganization like West Coast Environ-mental Law or Atira Women’s Resource Society focusing on law reform efforts or advocating on behalf of a particular interest or disadvantaged community.

There are also private practice law firms where the lawyers define a major portion of their work as serving the public interest. This includes lawyers practicing in areas such as union-side labour law, refugee and immigration law, Aboriginal rights, human rights and criminal defence. In addition,

8The Conservative appointed Chairman

of the CRTC (Konrad W. von Fincken-stein) has appeared numerous times in the

past few years before the Heritage Committee asking for much need

ed powers to balance the needs of the consumer and protect the balance re-quired in a competitive system. Is the strangling of a new licensee commit-ted to Canadian programming and the consolidation of influence into fewer and fewer hands a positive thing for Canadians? Americans did not think so when they brought in anti-trust legisla-tion and forced the divestiture of AT&T.

On the one hand, you have the li-censee being required by the CRTC to “must carry”, with all that implies and requires for balance and fairness, and on the other hand a BDU which insists that anyone doing business with them must sign a draconian affiliate agree-ment with them that legally forbids one to sue them no matter how offensive and anti-competitive the behaviour.

The irony of this whole situation is that if Canada opened its borders to true broadcasting, cellular and inter-net competition, these BDU’s would be the first to send their lobbyists to Ottawa to prevent such a move.

Many large corporations today with large cash flows will have several large law firms look at a matter for them simply to prevent the firms’ litigation teams from being retained to act against the corpo-rations due to conflict of interest rules, thus reducing the number of compe-tent litigators available to launch a fight.

ERIC: You mentioned that when you were at law school there was a first year ethics class. One of the discus-sions the faculty is having is how to teach ethics, with the two opposing poles being a standalone ethics class, or attempting to fit ethics into most, if not all courses. Between the two, do you think there is a better path?

PETER: After the opening ceremo-ny an hour ago, I was speaking with a UBC professor on the issue of ethics, and Keith Mitchell of Farris, Vaughan, Wills & Murphy, who graduated with me, came up and listened to that same question being posed to me. Keith was

adamant that “If you don’t have good sound judgment, it doesn’t matter if you practice law, or do anything else, you’ll never make money.” And judgment in-volves ethics and common sense. If you really want to be a good lawyer, you have to have a strong ethical background, be-cause it’s involved in judgment. If you want to practice law, and be successful at it, people rely on your good moral judgment and good ethics-based deci-sions. This really means that ethics is at the heart of all courses that lawyers take and while there may be a stand alone course, ethics is an intrinsic part of every course taught in a law school.

ethics is at the heart of all courses that lawyers take

ERIC: When you’re speaking of eth-ics and morals, do you have a short-cut answer as to what that would mean to you? Do you draw from a religious background for morals and ethics?

PETER: Fifty to 100 years ago, church-es were our community centres for spiritual, social and physical issues. In-stitutions such as the YMCA still carry on these traditions and values but with less of the formality of institutionalized religious organizations. My mother reg-istered my twin and I for Boy Scouts so I still have that sort of ethical feel for the principles embodied by the Boy Scouts, and by my parents, such as diligence, education, hard work, com-munity involvement, respect for the elderly, etc. Anything that involves im-proving people’s lives over the long term is something that I think is worthy.

Competition is critical for choices and so, I think, for me, the question that Ca-nadians, Americans, and even Europe-ans have to ask is, are we here for the long term? Are we going to ensure and en-force checks and balances, to have choic-es and to have diversity in them, or are we going to sell everything we’ve got and leave the debt with the next generation?

I am personally outraged when I see what we have allowed to be done to the next generation in terms of gov-ernment debt, lack of choices, concen-tration of corporate power and lob-byists, and the resulting effect on our

daily lives, so much so that our elected of-ficials have become completely neutralized.

ERIC: That kind of shifts to the next two questions. One of the questions was about family which is, visibly, quite important to you. You have this and other philan-thropic projects. What motivates you?

PETER: Anything that sustains long term growth and stability and which re-spects human dignity and rights. The best projects seem to be those where the recipients respect their gifts by carrying out and exceeding their aims and goals to help others whether it is through edu-cation, health, community service etc.

ERIC: Shifting topics, there is the statue (“Legends Begin” by Allan Houser) that you donated, and that Kari Streelasky (the Assis-tant Dean, External Relations) has said is a piece of work that you were quite attached to.

PETER: Well, my attachment is to the story of the artist who created it and the exceptional quality of his work, not just “Legends Begin”, www.allanhouser.com. The native artist underscores how an in-dividual can overcome adversity, nur-ture his passion and talents and spread his knowledge by teaching others. It is about doing the right thing for the long term good and following your passions and teaching those that come after you.

Allan Houser’s works in general are classical/abstract with all the passion, spirit and endurance shown in the faces.

ERIC: I think that’s probably it for ques-tions, is there anything you’d like to add?

PETER: My twin brother and I came from a background where if you knew something wasn’t right and stunk, you said something and tried to change it.

I think like my father and my mother in a lot of respects. I have taken what I can from their strengths. They were, collectively, an inspiration to us. Some of the things that go on today, in busi-ness, our father would never do, and would never have allowed to be done.

So, for me, it’s important that people under-stand that people rely on lawyers to have good judgment and a solid ethical background.

I’d say, in BC, most of the lawyers I know are essentially ethical and respectful, but I’ve been places in the world where it isn’t like that at all, where it’s not about what’s right, it’s about making money.

ERIC: Thank you.

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