Slate with Transphobic and Far-Right Candidates Running to “Stop Woke” in Law Society of Ontario Election
An open letter from former Treasurers of the Law Society of Ontario (LSO) has asked LSO members to vote against a slate of candidates that promise to “stop woke” in Ontario’s legal system.
First formed in 2019, StopSOP — since-rebranded as FullStop — has caused controversy in Ontario’s legal community for the group’s especially pointed messaging in LSO elections. As the group’s slogan, “Stop BLOAT, Stop CREEP, Stop WOKE”, makes evident, the organization has branded themselves well as the anti-“woke” option for 36 of 40 open seats for lawyer benchers in the upcoming Law Society of Ontario Bencher Election, where they hope to win even more seats than StopSOP did in the 2019 election.
In an email blast, the group stated their mission as the following:
“REDUCE the Law Society budget, annual fees, and bureaucratic interference in the business of members and firms (“Stop Bloat”); RESTORE the Law Society to its core mandate of regulating competence and integrity in the public interest, and curtail mission creep (“Stop Creep”); REMOVE social engineering, group identity politics, and “woke” or other ideological agendas from the Law Society (“Stop Woke”)”
Though I could not find a clear definition of “woke” readily available on FullStop’s website, many blog articles and candidate profiles lament “woke” and “wokeism”. In a series of articles defending psychologist Jordan Peterson from possible discipline for his allegedly unprofessional social media use (Peterson would later tweet out a pornographic video under the false pretense that it was a video showing a unique practice of Chinese government-enforced population control), FullStop’s blog claims that society is facing a “pandemic of self-destructive woke absurdity” and that “regulatory bodies are increasingly run by the woke”.
The former Treasurers’ open letter alleges that “they (FullStop) dismiss as “wokeism” measures to favour inclusion, end discrimination and oppose harassment”. The letter also claims that “Many aspects of their (FullStop) policies and their behavior are deeply troubling.”
What Stopping “Woke” Looks Like
Despite the complexity of following an election process that involves voting for forty-five positions (20 lawyers inside Toronto, 20 lawyers outside of Toronto, and five paralegals), FullStop has managed to receive friendly media treatment from far-right media for their “push against woke ideology” and have even written op-eds for major news outlets.
Though FullStop’s slate isn’t necessarily a who’s-who of recognized names in Canada’s far-right, their most vocal member, Lisa Bildy, has been a prominent spokesperson against vaccine mandates, making her popular among Canada’s anti-lockdown movement. A former staff lawyer and eventual acting president for the right-wing group Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF), Bildy was celebrated by some in Canada’s far-right for representing well-known COVID conspiracists such as Henry Hildebrandt and anti-trans activists such as Amy Eileen Hamm of Canadian Women’s Sex-based Rights. Bildy has said of the JCCF that it is not “anti-vaccine in any way, but pro-freedom”.
However, JCCF’s advocacy has gone beyond the interests of their clients, and this is where Bildy’s anti-“woke” messaging may be especially troubling. Bildy testified to parliament opposing Bill C-6, an act to amend the criminal code to ban conversion therapy. Bildy, on behalf of the JCCF, criticized the bill for “prohibiting services to assist an individual to regain comfort with natal gender identity while expressly allowing ‘gender transition’ away from one’s natal gender”. This is a gross misrepresentation of conversion therapy that Bill C-6 would prohibit.
Bildy also serves as an advisor for Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR), a U.S.-based organization known for its advocacy against Critical Race Theory. Though FAIR’s front-facing content regarding “Gender Issues in Schools” offers few specific details, the organization does affirm that they believe that “the idea of a (gender) ‘spectrum’ sounds flexible, but the way it is being taught in some schools requires children to reject biology and to accept and reinforce gender norms and stereotypes.” In May of 2022, the organization solicited donations and campaigned against a school board amending their harassment policy to include “outing related to gender identification”.
FAIR advisors alongside Bildy include Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters author Abigail Shrier and Jonathan Kay, a vocally transphobic Canadian columnist.
Bildy is not the only FullStop candidate with links to far-right politics. In the 2019 Federal Election, FullStop candidate Jean-Jacques Desgranges ran as a Member of Parliament candidate for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell on a xenophobic platform that specifically targeted migration and diversity initiatives. In his campaign, Desranges lamented “diversity-based policies” which he claimed “do not show enough respect for Canadian identity and the rule of law”.
Considering that Jean-Jacque Desgranges’ comments as a PPC candidate were considerably clearer about diversity-promoting initiatives than they were about “stopping woke”, it may be of little surprise that Desgranges’ biography on FullStop’s website does not mention his association with the PPC.
In addition to attacks on these issues, Desgranges has also promoted wildly inaccurate conspiracy theories about trans people. Desgranges has said that transgender identity in youth was “in line with the de polpulation [sic] agenda pushed by the Club of Rome, WEF (World Economic Forum) and Bill Gates”. The WEF and Bill Gates are common targets of far-right conspiracy theories about secretive control of world governments.
As language targeting “woke” is commonly used as dogwhistles for opposing 2SLGBTQA+ affirming practises, perhaps it should be of some concern that a slate campaigning against “woke” has a member who apparently views the existence of trans youth as a conspiratorial plot.
Desgranges views other issues through a similar conspiratorial lens. He has compared the treatment of Canadians who chose not to receive COVID vaccinations to Jewish victims of the Holocaust and claimed that this parallel treatment was “planned”. He’s also claimed that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is controlled by “Butts (Former Principal Secretary Gerald Butts) and other globalists” and that he heard Home Depot was “blackmailed” by special interest groups who could be financed by “Soros or WEF”. (George Soros is a Jewish philanthropist and a common antisemitic dogwhistle.)
The State of Competition
The former Treasurers’ open letter asks voters to consider the election’s other major competitive slate, the Bencher Good Governance Coalition. The coalition, which boasts endorsements from a number of legal organizations, platforms on a vision to support “a Law Society that actively addresses discrimination and which includes representation from each of its many perspectives”.
Though lawyers I spoke with who are voting in this election have said that both slates at least appear to them to have a competitive chance of reaching a majority of seats, many independent Bencher candidates are running as well. Among them is Ottawa Family Law lawyer Anne Vespry, who is running to regain her seat lost in the 2019 election. In an interview, she spoke to the responsibility of voters to look towards who they are voting for, not just their affiliated political slate.
“Voters should look at whole persons, and the individual person, their individual beliefs and whether that person has the integrity and the personal wisdom to do the job,” urged Vespry.
Though only lawyers and paralegals in Ontario can vote for lawyer benchers and paralegal benchers, respectively, the outcome of the LSO’s elections can impact any Ontario resident that has to deal with legal professionals.
“The Law Society will be playing a role in what lawyers and paralegals do when they retire, whether paralegals can do certain kinds of work or not. They influence things like legal aid,” said Vespry. “The law society really has some quite powerful regulatory functions.”
The LSO also oversees disciplinary procedures for legal professionals in Ontario. Though it may be rare, this can include professionals who are investigated for roles in far-right extremist movements. In 2020, the LSO investigated neo-Nazi paralegal Everett Field, who was identified by the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, for “engaging in discriminatory/racist/misogynistic conduct; engaging in incivility, and engaging in conduct that was otherwise dishonourable”. However, the LSO ultimately disciplined Field for misleading the LSO about his neo-Nazi pseudonym “Red Serge” and not for his activities conducted as Red Serge, which included engagement in hate groups and appearances on neo-Nazi podcasts.
Voting for the Law Society of Ontario’s 2023 Bencher Election takes place between April 19 and April 28. Voting guides for paralegals and lawyers can be found on the LSO’s website.
FullStop was emailed for comment and asked about the organization’s definition of the word “woke”. By the time of publication, no response has been received. This story will be updated accordingly.
This article was updated on April 19, 2023 to include a paragraph on the LSO’s role in investigating legal professionals in Ontario.