The socialist attack on the legal profession I have witnessed over many years has been deliberate, incremental, persistent and sneaky — and it’s extremely dangerous for the health of our just society.
A commentary by a Victoria lawyer.
I have practised law in Victoria coming on to 37 years. Over my long and wonderfully rewarding legal career, I have observed the propensity of socialist governments, invariably for their own mischievous purposes, try to paint lawyers as greedy villains.
When the provincial sales tax was brought in on legal fees back in 1992, the NDP government of the day ran with the sales pitch that lawyers should pay their share of the tax.
I still recall chuckling to myself at the idea that anyone could be so naive to possibly fall for that.
For many years I have dutifully collected PST on all the legal fees I charged. My clients paid every cent of that tax. It became just another line on their legal bill.
In 2020, and after promising the electorate they would not do it, our current NDP government brought in no-fault motor vehicle insurance and put an effective end to compensation for personal injuries suffered in car accidents in B.C.
The sales pitch for that move involved telling the public that the lawyers just caused delay and unnecessarily increased costs. Fast forward, the “dumpster fire” at ICBC is now a “raging brush fire” notwithstanding that persons who are injured in car accidents in B.C. get nothing remotely approaching fair compensation for their suffering.
True, the personal injury lawyers were put out of business, but that was on the backs of citizens who now just pay a tax to drive. One most certainly does not require the services of a lawyer when there is no claim to pursue.
And
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