Law Times

Law Times • June 10, 2013 A Page 7 COMMENT Breaking the cycle of codependence s a parent, would you keep bailing your 21-year-old son out of bad situations due to his addiction to alcohol to protect him from having a criminal record or worse? If you're an assistant for a lawyer, do you cover up for her when she continually misses filing deadlines and client meetings due to an obvious but unspoken addiction to a prescription painkiller? If, as a lawyer, you witness negligent behaviour by a colleague you suspect drank too much at lunch, would you be willing to simply forget what you saw and refrain from reporting the behaviour? The people in these hypothetical situations are caring and compassionate people who are acting out of a sense of loyalty and empathy. No lawyer wants a complaint to the Law Society of Upper Canada, so why do it to someone else? No parent wants to watch as a child spirals into a perilous abyss with potentially permanent damage. How can that be wrong? In fact, most often it is. Addiction is perplexing and pervasive. One of the hallmarks of addiction is the continued use of a substance or process despite adverse consequences. In other words, someone's life may be disintegrating rapidly with risks to family, career, and health, but the person nonetheless persists with the self-destructive behaviour. How can individuals as logical and solutionoriented as lawyers become susceptible to such a condition? In fact, reports indicate lawyers are as much as four times as likely to struggle with an addiction as those in the general population. For family members, friends or colleagues, the challenges are often equally daunting. People often describe addiction as a family disease because those closest to the person are so tightly and intricately woven into the experience of it that they, too, suffer desperately and behave in profoundly to recover. She was smoothing Ultimately, the focus needs to shift from the counterproductive ways. This exedges of his perience is what people often refer and towards caring for yourself. The Lawyer out all of the rough with an ad- addict Beattie puts it, the heart of recovery addiction. If those to as codependence. As Melody Beattie, in her book Therapist diction only begin to consider "lies not in the other person — no matter effecting a real change once the how much we believe it does. It lies in ourCodependent No More, defines adverse consequences of their selves, in the ways we have let other people's the codependent person as "one behaviour become too much behaviour affect us and in the ways we try who has let another person's beeven for them — what some call to affect them: the obsessing, the controlhaviour affect him or her, and hitting bottom — her cushioning ling, the obsessive 'helping,' caretaking, low who is obsessed with controlling of the consequences was merely self-worth bordering on self-hatred, selfthat person's behaviour." I would forestalling her husband's arrival repression, abundance of anger and guilt, describe codependence as the at that point. In other words, she peculiar dependency on peculiar people, addiction's unwitting coconDoron Gold was enabling him. spirator except that conspiracy attraction to and tolerance for the bizarre, So what should we do in the other-centeredness that results in abanrequires volition and intentionality. Most often, codependent people are face of this conundrum? Most importantly, donment of self, communication proboblivious to their active participation in we can reach out for help. It's not an accident lems, intimacy problems, and an ongoing and perpetuation of the infrastructure of that most addiction treatment centres offer whirlwind trip through the five-stage grief addiction. One way to describe it is that the family programs. Family and friends need process." It's imperative, then, for both the addict has an addiction to the substance or to recover as well. Another way to reach out addicts and those who care about them, to process while the codependent person may is to attend groups like Alcoholics Anony- replace codependence with self-care. LT mous that include family and friends of have an addiction to the addict. At the heart of codependence is the sense people suffering with addiction. The people uDoron Gold is a registered social worker that the addicts are in trouble and need help there understand because they've been there. who's also a former practising lawyer. He works but they can't help themselves so we must They also help break the isolation that can with lawyers and students in his private psystep in and save them. One of my former cli- come from life with an addict. Therapists chotherapy practice and is also a staff clinician ents, who's married to a lawyer but isn't one and addictions counsellors are also invalu- and educator at Homewood Human Soluherself, used to go into her spouse's office able in breaking the grip of codependence. tions. He's available at thelawyertherapist.ca. to do his legal aid billings while he slept off a night of drinking. She would ensure payINDIVIDUALS JAILED IN ment of his law society and LawPRO fees u Letter to the PREVIOUS BIG-RIGGING CASE and would call some of her husband's clients In regards to your story, "Landscape altered whose matters he had seriously neglected as for price-fixing, bid-rigging cases" on May she made up innocuous stories about why 27, Eric Lefebvre is quoted as saying, "I don't he wasn't on top of things and how they need recall anyone ever having served time in a jail cell for price fixing or bid rigging." Lefebnot worry. She was codependent. vre may be too young to recall the infamous dredging case, R. v. McNamara, launched It was his practice, but she behaved as in 1975. After a nine-month preliminary hearing, a 14-month trial, and a two-month though she was as responsible for his cliappeal, two individuals were to serve two-year sentences for their role in corporate bid ents as he was. His law society status was rigging. Others were awarded jail terms that were set aside on appeal but that resulted in hers as well. In her mind, she was procell time prior to bail arrangements being completed. The corporations involved got off tecting him from professional sanction much more lightly. Although substantial fines were imposed, none was ever collected. or worse. She was holding down the fort John Nelligan, while he figured out how to get better. Nelligan O'Brien Payne LLP, However, as long as she kept doing what Ottawa she was doing, he was much less likely editor Bird ruling gives environmental law a lift BY CHARLES HATT For Law Times S tory offence, under the Criminal Code. This power is particularly important in environmental law where government prosecutors ignore many problems because of their novelty or complexity or simply a lack of resources. In this way, private prosecutions provide concerned citizens with a vital tool for achieving justice. The biggest deterrent to private prosecutions is their cost. Cases can go on for years with no guarantee of a positive result, and the burdens of evidentiary and disclosure requirements are significant. The greatest fear for the private prosecutor is that the attorney general will intervene and stay a charge even where the case has significant merit. Alberta, for instance, used to have a blanket policy of staying all privately laid charges, although the Syncrude case shows, happily, that it has relaxed this policy. Ecojustice's experience shows the situation isn't as good in other provinces, although Ontario has a fairly positive record when it comes to allowing strong private prosecutions to proceed. The federal prosecution service's policy provides a useful model. It rightly recognizes the value of private prosecutions and lays out criteria for interventions. An ideal policy would have clearer and more detailed criteria, and such a policy will hopefully emerge in time at both levels of government. The precedent the Cadillac Fairview case provides couldn't be timelier. Migratory bird numbers are in decline across North America while glass buildings, including ones with mirror-type windows, remain a favourite design for developers. Time will tell exactly how provincial and federal regulators will react to this precedent, but for the first time in a long time, there's reason to hope for change for the better. Things are looking up. LT u SPEAKER'S CORNER pring is in the air and millions of birds are now soaring across Canada's skies after returning from their winter getaway in warmer southern climes. Sadly, many of these birds will meet untimely deaths as they go about their travels. Birds encounter many dangers on their journeys, but one such threat has become more and more common in modern cities: highly reflective glass buildings. These buildings present a mirror image of sky and trees to migratory birds, causing thousands of fatal collisions, or bird strikes, each year. These violent deaths are preventable, but few building owners have taken the reasonable steps necessary to prevent the carnage. If migratory birds could read the news, however, they would no doubt be happy to learn that things have become a little safer for them. In his landmark ruling in Podolsky v. Cadillac Fairview Corp., Justice Melvyn Green of the Ontario Court of Justice ruled that buildings that cause bird strikes violate both provincial and federal law. The judgment held that sunlight reflected from building windows is a "contaminant" under s. 14(1) of the Ontario Environmental Protection Act when it causes an "adverse effect" such as, in this case, a non-trivial number of bird strikes. The court also found that buildings that kill threatened or endangered birds via reflected sunlight violate the federal Species at Risk Act's prohibition against killing listed species irrespective of the numbers at issue. This is the first reported interpretation of this key section of the act. Although the court ultimately acquitted the corporate defendant on the basis of a successful due-diligence defence, this doesn't diminish the precedential value of the court's interpretations of the Environmental Protection Act and the Species at Risk Act. Rather, the decision makes clear the liability of building owners and managers who fail to take reasonable steps to prevent bird strikes. It also opens the door to regulation of such buildings by the Ministry of the Environment under its powers to require environmental compliance approvals for the emission of a contaminant or the Canadian Wildlife Service under its mandate to protect migratory birds. The case was a private prosecution carried out by Ecojustice based on evidence logged by the volunteers of the Fatal Light Awareness Program, a bird conservation group whose members work tirelessly to count dead birds and rehabilitate injured ones at the worst buildings for strikes in the Toronto area. The case also demonstrates the power of rarely used private prosecutions to accomplish important public-welfare objectives. Private prosecutions have deep roots in the common law and the infrequency of their use belies their significant impact on Canadian environmental law. The case leading to the Supreme Court of Canada's foundational decision on regulatory offences in R. v. Sault Ste. Marie began as a private prosecution, as did the headline-grabbing $3-million dollar conviction in R. v. Syncrude Canada Ltd. for the death of 1,600 ducks that landed on the company's toxic tailings pond. Few lawyers, let alone lay people, seem to understand that any person has the power to lay an information for a suspected regulatory offence under the Ontario Provincial Offences Act or, for a federal regula- www.lawtimesnews.com uCharles Hatt is an articling student at Ecojustice.

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