Law Times

PAGE 8 COMMENT February 22, 2010 • Law Times ("LSUC on women and legal aid," Law Times, Jan. 11, 2010) about women in the legal pro- fession and legal aid leaves an impression with which I simply cannot agree. It is true that Convocation T spent three years studying the is- sues confronted by women in the profession. And indeed, we stud- ied it over a decade before that. Sadly, what came out of the most recent intolerably lengthy study period was an agreement to bring 55 large- and medium- sized fi rms together to discuss — still further — how to retain women in the profession and to prepare written material to assist fi rms in making women's lives he letter from Law So- ciety of Upper Canada Treasurer Derry Millar LSUC all talk on women and legal aid Letters better. Talk, talk, talk. Giving those discus- sions a fancy name, Justicia, doesn't make them any more eff ec- tive. Nor does it fully meet our obligations as a law society. Even today, women working as in-house counsel earn 19-per- cent less on average than their male counterparts. As recently as 2002-08, with pretty good consistency, about 40-per-cent more women than men left the profession in their fi rst fi ve years of practice and are not practis- ing law today. Women are far less likely than men to be partners in fi rms. Th e law society has simply never responded to the urgency of the situation. You would think that the law to the Editor society might publicly evalu- ate the openness of large- and medium-sized fi rms towards women and publicize the results so that the good fi rms have an impetus to keep on with use- ful programs, and the bad ones have some incentive, if only out of embarrassment, to change. Or, if the law society and LawPRO refused to hire fi rms with bad records, we would see some dramatic changes. Without either commitment, short-term economic interests dominate de- cisions respecting the retention of women. Everyone has fi gured out the law society is not really going to do anything, so why change? Sure, we initiated a Parental Leave Assis- tance Program to pro- vide fi nancial benefi ts for young mothers and fathers who have no other source of benefi ts and cannot access employment insur- ance. Th ere are 30,000 members of the legal profession in Ontario. Th irty-nine men and women were approved for this program in its fi rst year. Now that's a huge impact on the profession. During the legal aid boycott, the law society was responsible mostly for one platitude after another, and those platitudes were overwhelmingly modest Subscribe to Law Times Why pay extra for your legal news? Cutting-edge legal affairs, news and commentary for just 37¢ a day! Make the time for Law Times and keep up with all the developments in Ontario's legal scene. Subscribe today and receive: • Unlimited access to the Law Times digital editions and to our digital edition archives...FREE • Canadian Legal Newswire, a weekly e-newsletter from the editors of Law Times and Canadian Lawyer...FREE expressions of confi dence in the attorney general. Th e law society did not support the one action that was in fact eff ective: the boycott that was brought and carried out by the Criminal Lawyers' Association. Most signifi cantly, over the years, the law society has stood by and watched silently as the provision of criminal legal aid to poor people turned from a decent public service into the provision of third-class legal ser- vices for the poor. It has taken no eff ective action to prevent this, then or now. Clayton Ruby, bencher, Law Society of Upper Canada, Toronto CARTOON STRUCK SENSITIVE NERVE In the aftermath of the Danish cartoon controversy, it may be tempting to conclude that as a group, we Muslims can't enjoy a good joke, particularly when it comes at our own expense. However, in an era of racial profi ling, no-fl y lists, and security certifi cates, it should come as no surprise that jokes confl ating Is- lam with terrorism tend to strike a sensitive nerve. Caricatures linking Muslims and terrorists, such as the cartoon published in the Feb. 1 edition of the Law Times, serve to cement negative stereotypes that far too often result in harmful conse- quences. While we appreciate that the cartoon was meant to be satirical, we would be remiss if we failed to point out that for too many, such jokes are just not funny. Nafi sah Chowdhury, Canadian Muslim Lawyers Association, Toronto q Send me 1 year of Law Times for only $135.00 (Total with GST: $141.75) Name: __________________________________________________________________________ Company: _______________________________________________________________________ Address: ________________________________________________________________________ City: ____________________________ Prov: _______________ Postal Code: __________________ Tel: ( ) _______________________ Fax: ( ) ______________________ Email: ____________________________________________________________________________ q Payment enclosed q Charge my: q Visa q Mastercard q American Express Card #: __________________________________ Expiry Date: ___ / ___ (mm/yy) Signature (required): ________________________________________________ Date: ________________ 240 Edward St. Aurora, ON. L4G 3S9 Tel: (905) 727-0077 Fax: (905) 841-4357 Mail or fax this form to Law Times www.lawtimesnews.com LT Sub ad - 1/3-3X.indd 1 12/16/09 2:02:15 PM A LITTLE HELP HERE — WHAT'S THE PUNCHLINE? While no longer solely relegated to sidebars or as the villain in many pop-culture representa- tions, Islam and Muslims are still, for the most part, alien to a large part of the population whose only contact with them comes in their weekly instalment of Little Mosque on the Prairie. What this show and others demonstrate is that, far from not having a sense of humour, many Muslims can and do get jokes that are made about them. However, in the cartoon pub- lished in the Feb. 1 edition of the Law Times, it's not clear what the intended joke is. Read one way, it can be a fair, if unclear, com- mentary comparing some aspects of the current terrorism trials to clown trials. Read another way, it could be construed as confl ating Muslims and Islam with terror- ism and even women wearing the niqab (face veils) with clowns. Both assertions are highly inaccurate as well as off ensive. If the purpose of satirical cartoons is to poke fun and make a point about the subject, then please let us in on the punchline. Ihsaan Gardee, executive director, Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations, Ottawa www .lawtimesnews.com Includes a FREE digital edition!

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