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Page 6 November 27, 2017 • Law Times www.lawtimesnews.com COMMENT u EDITORIAL OBITER By Gabrielle Giroday Debate most useful A ny lawyer looking for debate is sure to find it with their peers. The amount of discussion set off over requiring law- yers to sign a statement of principles has been a heady sur- prise. But, sometimes, debate can be applied in important ways. Take some family lawyers' critiques of a proposed amendment by the Ontario government of the Family Law Act. The amendment is intended to provide parity between dependent adult children of unmarried and married parents who require on- going child support. The amendment is more restrictive than the federal Divorce Act, say lawyers, which they claim will lead to poor results. "The [provincial] government is perpetuating differential treat- ment between children of married versus unmarried parents," said Joanna Radbord, a lawyer who said the amendment is "bad for everyone." "I am stunned that the proposed amendment continues to dis- criminate," she added. This is advocacy at its best by lawyers familiar with the issues fac- ing their clients. So is the work of human rights lawyer Richard Warman, who has criticized the Law Society of Upper Canada for a lengthy investiga- tion related to another lawyer who advertised in a publication that has been decried as racist, misogynistic and homophobic. Warman says he complained 20 months ago, and he has now received word that the lawyer will face a regulatory meeting. "Personally, I'm at least as concerned that the law society permitted such a straightforward issue to drag on forever when discipline is supposed to help lawyers stay on track or get back on it as soon as possible before further harm is done to the pro- fession," Warman says. In this time, there is much that divides us. Sometimes, it's knowing on which front to fight the battle. LT ©2017 Thomson Reuters Canada Ltd. All rights reserved. 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Karen Lorimer Managing Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jennifer Brown Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gabrielle Giroday Staff Writer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Alex Robinson Copy Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Patricia Cancilla CaseLaw Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Leah Craven Art Director . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Phyllis Barone Production Co-ordinator . . . . . . . . .Catherine Giles Electronic Production Specialist . . . Derek Welford Electoral reform shifts to safeguarding BY SUSAN DELACOURT U .S. president Donald Trump's victory a year ago changed a lot of things in Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's gov- ernment. While all kinds of attention has been paid to trade and diplomacy mat- ters in Canada's post-Trump universe, less of a spotlight has been shone on elec- tions and democracy. However, Trump's victory entirely shifted the conversation around elec- toral reform in Canada. We've gone from talking about making the voting system fairer to making it safer. Thanks to Trump and the ongoing investigation into Russian meddling with the U.S. presidential election, cyber- threats have suddenly become the most pressing issue for Canada's democracy. Burlington MP Karina Gould was named as the new federal minister of Democratic Institutions in the big Janu- ary cabinet shuff le, replacing Maryam Monsef, who is now the Status of Women minister. Gould's arrival coincided with the Trudeau government's now-infamous reversal on its promise to deliver a new voting system for Canada before the 2019 election. Some joked when Gould was appointed that she was the ministerial equivalent of the Maytag repairman in cabinet. In other words, she had responsibility for issues that don't require repair. But Gould has definitely found new democratic problems that need solving, and they appear to revolve around the very integrity of our electoral system. "I take the cyber-threat very seriously. That's why I asked the Communications Security Establishment earlier this year to assess the vulnerability of our democ- racy to cyber-threats," Gould told a mu- nicipal affairs conference in Toronto this fall. "These threats emanate from a range of sources — from foreign governments intent on inf luencing our electoral pro- cesses to so-called hacktivists motivated by ideology," she said. "We also have to consider terrorists, profit-driven cyber- criminals and even thrill-seekers with a variety of nefarious motives." The CSE's assessment, released in June 2017, did indeed forecast a real possibility of cyber-threats during the federal election planned for 2019. However, the report also seemed to adopt a very deliberate, anti- alarmist tone. "We expect that multiple hacktivist groups will very likely deploy cyber capabili- ties in an attempt to inf lu- ence the democratic process during the 2019 federal elec- tion," the CSE report stated. "We anticipate that much of this activity will be low-sophistication, though we ex- pect that some inf luence activities will be well-planned and target more than one aspect of the democratic process." So, this is what Gould and other dem- ocratic-reform people are talking about in Canada now. Gone is the discussion over whether we should have a propor- tional voting system. Instead, it's been replaced with discussion of what Canada needs to do to safeguard the system. Canada is not going to adopt online voting, for instance, and the government has already set up a Canadian Cyber In- cident Response Centre. This centre, not just for elections, apparently will allow Canadians to report all kinds of cyber- mischief. Gould has also helped launch a national public awareness campaign on cybersecurity and a Facebook "Election Integrity Project." This latter initiative also involves some public awareness, as well as tougher scrutiny of ad usage and potential "fake news" moving across the social media platform. None of these were topics that con- cerned Trudeau and his Liberals when they were last campaigning for office in 2015. Back then, they were making more sweeping promises to fix democracy. So, in this one way, they may be grate- ful for this part of the post-Trump world — it's allowed the Trudeau government to change the subject on electoral reform away from a vow to change the system to a far more modest one of guarding the status quo. LT uSusan Delacourt is an Ottawa-based political author and columnist who has been working on Parliament Hill for nearly 30 years. She is a frequent politi- cal panellist on national television and author of four books. She can be reached at sdelacourt@bell.net. The Hill Susan Delacourt Susan Delacourt

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